The Troubled Man (2011) kw-10

by Henning Mankell

  Wallander could guess what was coming next.

  ‘Boris had to die?’

  ‘Exactly. But not only that, it would have to look as if he had been stricken by remorse. He would have to kill himself and leave a suicide note in which he described his treachery as unforgivable. He would have to praise both the Soviet Union and East Germany, and with a large dose of self-contempt and an equally large dose of our doctored sleeping pills, he would have to lie down and die.’

  ‘How was it done?’

  ‘At that time I was working at a lab just outside Berlin - interestingly enough at a place not far from Wannsee, where the Nazis had assembled in order to decide how to solve the Jewish problem. One day a new man showed up.’

  Eber broke off and pointed to the notebook with the brown covers.

  ‘I saw you noticed it. I had to look up his name. My memory let me down, which it doesn’t normally. How’s your memory nowadays?’

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Wallander non-committally. ‘Go on.’

  Eber appeared to have quietly registered Wallander’s reluctance to talk about his memory. It seemed to Wallander that the perception of tone of voice and subtexts must be especially well developed in people who at some stage in their life have worked in the security services, where overstepping the mark or making an incorrect assessment could result in an appointment with a firing squad.

  ‘Klaus Dietmar,’ said Eber. ‘He had been transferred directly from the women swimmers, I know that for certain, even though he had never been their official coach. He was one of those behind the sports miracle. He was a small, slim man who moved without making a sound and had hands like a girl’s. People who misjudged him might have interpreted his bearing as a sort of apology for existing at all, but he was a fanatical Communist who no doubt prayed every night to Walter Ulbricht before switching off the light. He was the leader of a group to which I belonged. Our only task was to produce a substance that would kill Igor Kirov but leave no trace apart from what seemed to be that of an ordinary sleeping pill.’

  Eber stood up and disappeared into his house. Wallander couldn’t resist the temptation to peer in through a window. He had been right in his assumptions. The room was in a state of absolute chaos. Every square inch was filled with newspapers, clothes, rubbish, dirty plates and half-eaten meals. Some sort of path through all the mess could just about be discerned. The stench from inside the room seeped through the windows. The sun had disappeared behind a bank of clouds. Eber reappeared, adjusting his tracksuit bottoms. He sat down and scratched his chin, as if plagued by a sudden itch. Wallander had the distinct impression that he was sitting opposite somebody he would hate to change identity with. Just for a moment, he was endlessly grateful for being who he was.

  ‘It took us about two years,’ said Eber, contemplating his filthy nails. ‘Many of us thought the Stasi was committing far too many resources to the effort to nail Igor Kirov. But the Kirov affair was all about prestige. He had sworn allegiance to the holiest dogmas of the Communist church and would not be allowed to die in a state of sin. It didn’t take us all that long to find a chemical combination that corresponded to the most commonly prescribed sleeping pills available in England at that time. The problem was finding a moment when it would be possible to circumvent all the security protecting him. The most difficult part, of course, was getting past his own vigilance. He knew what he had done and was well aware of all the hounds baying for his blood.’

  Eber suffered a sudden attack of coughing. There was a wheezing and rasping in his bronchial tubes. Wallander waited. The wind was getting stronger, and the back of his neck felt cold.

  ‘Any agent knows that the most important thing in his or her life is to keep changing routines,’ Eber continued once he had recovered. ‘That’s what Kirov did, of course. But he overlooked one tiny detail. And that mistake cost him his life. Every Saturday, at three o’clock, he went to a pub in Notting Hill and watched football on the television. He always sat at the same table, drinking Russian tea. He would arrive at ten to three, and leave as soon as the match was over. Our cat burglar, who could break into any building you care to name, kept him under constant surveillance for quite a while, and eventually he came up with a plan for how to eliminate Igor Kirov. The weak link was two waitresses who were sometimes replaced by temporary stand-ins. We could replace them with some of our own. The execution took place in December 1972. The waitresses we supplied served him the poisoned tea. In the report I read it was stated specifically that the last match Kirov watched was Birmingham City versus Leicester City. The result was a draw, one-one. He returned to his apartment and died an hour or so later in his bed. The British security service had no doubt that it was suicide. The letter they found seemed to be in his own handwriting, and his fingerprints were on it. There was great rejoicing in the East German secret police; Igor Kirov had finally met his fate.’

  Hermann Eber asked a few questions about the dead woman. Wallander answered in as much detail as he could. But he was growing increasingly impatient. He didn’t want to sit here answering Eber’s questions. Eber seemed to detect his irritation.

  ‘So you think that Louise died after swallowing the same substance that killed Igor Kirov all those years ago?’

  ‘It seems so.’

  ‘Which would mean that she was murdered? And that the assumed suicide was an illusion?’

  ‘If the pathologist’s report is correct, that could be the case.’

  Wallander was sceptical and shook his head. Such things simply couldn’t happen in the world as he knew it.

  ‘Who makes stuff like this nowadays? Neither the Stasi nor East Germany exists any longer. You’re living here in Sweden, thinking up crossword puzzles.’

  ‘Secret police organisations never die. They change names, but they are always there. Anybody who thinks there’s less spying in the world today just doesn’t get it. Don’t forget that quite a few of the old masters are still around.’

  ‘Old masters?’

  Eber seemed to be almost offended when he answered.

  ‘Irrespective of what we did, no matter what people say about us, we were specialists. We knew what we were doing.’

  ‘But why should Louise von Enke of all people be subjected to something like this?’

  ‘That’s not a question I can answer.’

  Wallander was feeling both tired and uneasy. He stood up and shook Hermann Eber’s hand.

  ‘I’ll be back; you can count on that,’ he said by way of goodbye.

  ‘So I gather,’ said Eber. ‘In our world, we are used to meeting again at the most unlikely times.’

  Wallander went to his car and drove home. It started raining just as he came to the roundabout at the turn-off to Ystad. It was pouring by the time he ran from the car to his front door. Jussi was barking from his kennel. Wallander sat down at his kitchen table and watched the rain pattering on the windowpane. Water was dripping from his hair.

  He had no doubt that Hermann Eber was right. Louise von Enke had not committed suicide. She had been murdered.

  23

  Wallander took a piece of meat out of the fridge. Together with half a head of cauliflower, that would be his meal. When he sat down at the table and opened the newspaper he’d bought on the way home, he thought how, for as long as he could remember as an adult, he had always derived deep satisfaction from eating undisturbed while leafing through a newspaper. But on this occasion he had barely opened the paper when an enlarged photograph stared him in the face, with a dramatic headline. He wondered if he was imagining it - but no, it really was a picture of the hitchhiker he’d picked up. His astonishment increased as he read that the previous day she had killed her parents in the centre of Malmo, in a residential block just off Sodra Forstadsgatan, and had been on the run ever since. The police had no idea of her motive. But there was no doubt that she was the killer - her name was not Carola at all, but Anna-Lena. A police officer whose name Wallander thought he recognised described the m
urder as exceptionally violent, a frenzied attack culminating in a bloodbath in the little apartment the family had lived in. The police were now searching for the woman and had issued a ‘wanted’ report. Wallander slid both the newspaper and his plate to one side. He asked himself once again if it could possibly be the same woman. Then he reached for the phone and dialled Martinsson’s home number.

  ‘Come right away,’ Wallander said. ‘To my house.’

  ‘I’m bathing my grandchildren,’ said Martinsson. ‘Can’t it wait?’

  ‘No. It can’t wait.’

  Exactly thirty minutes later Martinsson drove up to Wallander’s house. Wallander was standing at the gate, waiting for him. It had stopped raining and was looking much brighter. Martinsson was well acquainted with Wallander’s methods and had no doubt that something serious had happened. Jussi had been let out of his kennel and was leaping around Martinsson’s feet. With considerable difficulty, Wallander succeeded in making him lie down.

  ‘I see you’ve taught him how to behave at last,’ said Martinsson.

  ‘Not really. Let’s go and sit in the kitchen.’

  They went inside. Wallander pointed at the picture in the newspaper.

  ‘I picked her up and drove her to Hoor this morning,’ he said. ‘She said she was on her way to Smaland, but that might not be true, of course. The probability is that with a picture like this in the newspapers, somebody will have recognised her already. But the police should start looking there.’

  Martinsson stared at Wallander.

  ‘I seem to recall that as recently as last year we talked about the fact that we never pick up hitchhikers, you and I.’

  ‘I made an exception this morning.’

  ‘On the way to Hoor?’

  ‘I have a good friend there.’

  ‘In Hoor?’

  ‘It’s possible that you don’t know where all my friends live. Why shouldn’t I have a good friend there? Don’t you have a good friend in the Hebrides? Every word I say is true.’

  Martinsson nodded. He took a notebook out of his pocket. His pen wouldn’t write. Wallander gave him one that did, and placed a towel over his plate - several flies had settled on his food. Martinsson made a note of what the woman had been wearing, what she’d said, the exact times. He already had his mobile phone in his hand when Wallander held him back.

  ‘Maybe it would be best to say that the police received an anonymous tip?’

  ‘I’ve already thought of that. We’d better not say that it was a well-known police officer from Ystad who gave a woman a lift and helped her to escape.’

  ‘I didn’t know who she was.’

  ‘But you know as well as I do what the papers will write. If the truth comes out. You’d be an excellent news item to liven up the summer.’

  Wallander listened as Martinsson called the police station.

  ‘The call was anonymous,’ Martinsson said in conclusion. ‘I have no idea how he got my home number, but the man who called was sober and very credible.’

  He hung up.

  ‘Who isn’t sober at lunchtime?’ wondered Wallander sarcastically. ‘Was that necessary?’

  ‘When we catch that woman she’ll say that she thumbed a ride with an unknown man. That’s all. She won’t know it was you. Nor will anybody else.’

  Wallander suddenly remembered something else his passenger had said.

  ‘She said the driver of the car that had taken her to where I picked her up had been making a nuisance of himself. I forgot to mention that.’

  Martinsson pointed at the photo in the newspaper.

  ‘She looks good, even if she’s a murderer. Did you say she was wearing a short yellow skirt?’

  ‘She was very attractive,’ said Wallander. ‘Apart from her bitten nails. I can’t think of a bigger turn-off than that.’

  Martinsson smiled at Wallander.

  ‘We’ve more or less stopped all that,’ he said. ‘Discussing women. There was a time when we never stopped talking about them.’

  Wallander offered Martinsson coffee, but he declined. Wallander saw him off, then resumed his interrupted meal. It tasted good, but it didn’t fill him. He took Jussi for a long walk, trimmed a hedge at the back of the house, and reattached his mailbox to the gatepost, where it had been hanging askew. The whole time, he was chewing over what Hermann Eber had said. He was tempted to call Ytterberg but decided to wait until the following day. He needed time to think. A suicide was developing into a murder, in a way he didn’t understand. He began to feel once again that there was something he’d overlooked. Not only him, but all the others who were involved in the investigation. He couldn’t put his finger on it. It was just his intuition at work yet again, and he had become increasingly sceptical about its reliability.

  Until now he had assumed that Hakan was the main character. But what if it was Louise? That’s where I have to start, he thought. I need to go through everything again, this time from a different perspective. But first he needed to sleep for a few hours in order to clear his mind. He undressed and got into bed. A spider scuttled along a beam in the ceiling. Then he fell asleep.

  He had just finished breakfast at eight o’clock when Linda drove up to the gate. She had Klara with her. Wallander was annoyed at her coming so early in the morning. Now that he was on holiday, a rare occurrence, he wanted to spend his morning in peace.

  They sat down in the garden. Wallander noticed that she had blue streaks in her hair.

  ‘Why the blue streaks?’

  ‘I think they’re attractive.’

  ‘What does Hans say?’

  ‘He also thinks they’re pretty.’

  ‘Allow me to disagree. Why can’t he look after the baby if he’s home from work?’

  ‘He felt compelled to go to the office today.’

  She suddenly looked anxious; a shadow passed quickly over her face.

  ‘Why is he worried?’

  ‘There are things going on in the global finance sector that he doesn’t understand.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying either. “Things going on in the global finance sector”? But I don’t need to know any more about things that are beyond me.’

  Wallander got up to pour a glass of water. Klara was crawling around happily on the grass.

  ‘How’s Mona?’

  ‘She’s lying low, doesn’t answer the phone. And when I ring her doorbell she doesn’t open up, even though I know she’s at home.’

  ‘Is she still drinking?’

  ‘I don’t know. Right now I don’t think I can take on responsibility for another child. I have enough on my plate with this one.’

  A low-flying plane came roaring overhead, descending into Sturup Airport. When the noise had subsided, Wallander told Linda about his visit to Hermann Eber. He repeated their conversation in detail, and the thoughts that had occurred to him as a result. While he was becoming more convinced than ever that Louise had been murdered, he was at a complete loss as to why anyone would want to kill her. Could this quiet, retiring woman have had some sort of link with East Germany? A country that was dead and buried now?

  Wallander paused. Klara was crawling around her mother’s legs. Linda shook her head slowly.

  ‘I don’t doubt any of what you’ve told me - but what does it mean?’

  ‘I don’t know. Right now I have only one question: Who was Louise von Enke? What is there about her that I don’t know?’

  ‘What does anybody ever know about another person? Isn’t that what you’re always reminding me of? Telling me never to be surprised? Anyway, there is a connection with the former East Germany,’ Linda said thoughtfully. ‘Haven’t I mentioned it?’

  ‘You’ve only said that she was interested in classical German culture, and taught German.’

  ‘What I’m thinking of goes further back than that,’ Linda said. ‘Nearly fifty years. Before Hans was born, before Signe. You really should speak to Hans about this.’

  ‘Let’s start wi
th what you know,’ said Wallander.

  ‘It’s not a lot. But Louise was in East Germany at the beginning of the 1960s with a group of promising young Swedish swimmers and divers. It was some kind of sporting exchange. Louise used to coach up-and-coming young girls. Apparently she was a diver herself in her younger days, but I don’t know much about that. I think she went to East Berlin and Leipzig several times over a few years. Then it suddenly stopped. Hans thinks there’s a reason why.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Hakan simply made it clear to her that the trips to East Germany had to stop. It wasn’t good for his military career to have a wife who kept visiting a country regarded as an enemy. You can well imagine that the Swedish top brass and politicians regarded East Germany as one of Russia’s nastiest vassals.’

  ‘But you say you don’t know this for sure?’

  ‘Louise always did what her husband told her to do. I think the situation in the early sixties simply became untenable. Hakan was on his way to the very top in the navy.’

  ‘Do you know anything about how she reacted?’

  ‘No, not a thing.’

  Klara scratched herself on something lying on the ground and started screaming. Wallander couldn’t stand the sound of children screeching and went over to the dog kennel to stroke Jussi. He stayed there until Klara had quietened down.

  ‘What did you used to do when I started crying?’ Linda asked.

  ‘My ears were more tolerant in those days.’

  They sat in silence watching Klara investigate a dandelion growing in the middle of some stones.

  ‘I’ve obviously been doing some thinking during the time the von Enkes have been missing,’ Linda said then. ‘I’ve been ransacking my memory, trying to recall details of conversations and how they treated each other. I’ve tried to wheedle out of Hans everything he knows, everything he assumed I knew as well. Only a few days ago I had the impression that something didn’t add up, that he hadn’t told me the whole truth.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The money.’

  ‘What money?’