‘Kurt Wallander?’
‘Speaking.’
‘My name is Lilja. You know who I am?’
‘No.’
The woman suddenly burst out crying. She screamed into his ear. He was scared stiff.
‘Baiba,’ she yelled. ‘Baiba.’
‘What about her? I know her.’
‘She dead.’
Wallander was standing with the bag of fish from Kaseberga in his hand. He dropped it.
‘She’s dead? She was here only a couple of days ago!’
‘I know. She was my friend. But now she dead.’
Wallander could feel his heart pounding. He sat down on the stool just inside the front door. He eventually managed to piece together the confused and anguished message that Lilja was trying to convey. Baiba had been only a few miles outside Riga when she drove off the road at high speed and crashed into a stone wall, wrecking the car and killing herself. She had died on the spot; that was something Lilja repeated over and over again, as if it might prevent Wallander from sinking into a bottomless pit of sorrow. But it was in vain, of course. The despair welling up inside him was something he had never experienced before.
They were suddenly cut off, without warning, before Wallander could get Lilja’s phone number. He waited for her to call him again, still sitting on the stool in the hall. Only when it became clear that she was unable to get through did he move into the kitchen. He left the bag with the smoked fish lying on the floor. He had no idea what to do next. He lit a candle and placed it on the table. She must have been driving non-stop, he thought. From the ferry when it docked in Poland, through Poland, through Lithuania, and then almost all the way to Riga. Had she fallen asleep at the wheel? Or had she driven into the wall on purpose, intending to kill herself? Wallander knew that fatal car accidents involving nobody but the driver were often suicides. A former secretary who used to work in the Ystad police station, a divorcee with a drinking problem, had chosen that way out only a few years ago. But he didn’t think Baiba would do anything like that. Somebody who decides to travel around to say goodbye to her friends and lovers would hardly be likely to set up a car crash to bring her life to a close. She must have been tired and lost control; that was the only explanation he could think of.
He picked up his mobile phone to call Linda - he didn’t feel capable of coping with what had happened on his own. There were times when he needed to have other people on hand. He dialled the number, but then hung up when her phone started ringing. It was too soon; he didn’t have anything to say to her. He threw his phone onto the sofa and went out to Jussi, let him out of his kennel, sat down on the ground and started stroking him. The phone rang. He rushed indoors. It was Lilja. She was calmer now. He asked her questions and got a clearer picture of what had happened. There was also something else he wanted to ask about.
‘Why are you calling me? How did you know that I exist?’
‘Baiba asked me to.’
‘Asked you to do what?’
‘To call you when she was dead. But I didn’t think it would be quickly like this. Baiba thought she would live until Christmas.’
‘She told me she hoped to live until the autumn.’
‘She said different things to different people. I think she wanted us to have the same uncertainty that she had.’
Lilja explained who she was, an old friend and colleague who had known Baiba since they were teenagers.
‘I knew about you,’ she said. ‘One day Baiba rings and she says: “Now he is here in Riga, my Swedish friend. I take him to the cafe in Hotel Latvia this afternoon. Go there and you will see him.” I went there, and I saw you.’
‘Perhaps Baiba mentioned your name. I think so. But we never met, is that right?’
‘Never. But I saw you. Baiba always thought much of you. She loved you.’
She burst out crying again. Wallander waited. Thunder was rumbling in the distance. He could hear her coughing, and blowing her nose.
‘What happens now?’ he asked when she picked up the phone again.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Who are her closest relations?’
‘Her mother, and brothers and sisters.’
‘If her mother is still alive she must be very old. I don’t remember Baiba ever talking about her.’
‘She is ninety-five years. But she is clear in the head. She knows her daughter is dead. They had hard relations since Baiba was child.’
‘I want to know when the funeral will take place,’ Wallander said.
‘I promise to call you.’
‘What did she say about me?’ Wallander asked in the end.
‘Not much.’
‘But she must have said something?’
‘Yes. But not much. We were friends, but Baiba never allowed anybody very close.’
‘I know,’ he said.
When the call was over, he lay down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling where a patch of damp had appeared a couple of months ago. He lay there for quite a while before returning to the kitchen table.
Shortly after eight he called Linda and told her what had happened. He found it very difficult, and could feel a sense of mounting desperation.
29
On 14 July, at eleven o’clock in the morning, Baiba Liepa’s funeral took place at a chapel in central Riga. Wallander had arrived the previous day on a flight from Copenhagen. When he disembarked he recognised the airport immediately, even though the terminal had been rebuilt. The Soviet military planes that had been visible all over the place at the beginning of the 1990s were no longer there, and from the windows of the taxi taking him into Riga he noted that there had been a lot of changes. The hoardings were different; the facades had been newly painted; the pavements had been repaired. But pigs were still rooting around in dunghills next to tumbledown farmhouses, and in the centre of town the old buildings were still standing. The main difference was the large number of people in the streets, their clothes, and the cars lining up at red lights and at turn-offs to centrally located car parks.
Warm rain was falling over Riga the day Wallander returned. Lilja, whose surname was Blooms, had called and given him the details of Baiba’s funeral. His only question had been whether his presence might somehow be regarded as inappropriate.
‘Why should it be?’
‘Perhaps there are circumstances within the family that I don’t know about?’
‘Everybody knows who you are,’ said Lilja Blooms. ‘Baiba told about you. You were never a secret.’
‘The question is what she said.’
‘Why are you so worried? I thought you and Baiba were in love? I thought you would be married. We all thought that.’
‘She didn’t want to.’
He could tell that what he’d said surprised her.
‘We thought it was you who backed out. She said nothing. It was long before we understood it was over. But she never wanted to talk about it.’
It was Linda who had persuaded him to go to the funeral. When he called her she had jumped into her car and come over. She was so upset that she had tears in her eyes when she walked through his front door. That helped him to mourn Baiba openly. He sat there for a long time, reminiscing to his daughter about the time he and Baiba had spent together.
‘Baiba’s husband, Karlis Liepa, had been murdered,’ he said. ‘It was a political murder. Tensions between the Russians and the Latvians were running high in those days. That was why I went to Riga, to assist in the murder investigation. Needless to say, I had no idea about the political chasms that opened up the country. Looking back, that could well be the moment when I began to understand what the world looked like during the Cold War. It was seventeen years ago.’
‘I remember you going,’ said Linda. ‘I was in my last year of school at the time, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do with myself. Although deep down I think I realised that I wanted to become a police officer.’
‘I seem to recall that you talked about all kin
ds of possibilities, but never that one.’
‘That should have made you suspicious. I can’t believe you had no idea what I was thinking!’
‘Nor did I have any idea about Baiba when Karlis Liepa came to the police station in Ystad.’
Wallander remembered the details very clearly. Apart from his chain-smoking, which aroused vehement protests from all the non-smokers, Karlis Liepa had been a calm, reserved man, and Wallander had got along well with him. One evening, during a heavy snowstorm, he had taken Liepa back to his apartment in Mariagatan. He had produced a bottle of whisky, and to his delight had discovered that Liepa was almost as interested in opera as he was himself. They had listened to a recording of Turandot with Maria Callas as the snow whirled about in the strong winds blowing through the deserted streets of Ystad.
But where was that record now? It hadn’t been among those he had found in the attic the previous day. The question was solved when Linda told him she had it at home.
‘You gave it to me in the days when I was dreaming of becoming an actress,’ she said. ‘I thought of putting on a one-woman show depicting the tragic fate of Maria Callas. Can you imagine? If there’s anything I’m totally different from, it’s a Greek opera singer.’
‘With bad nerves,’ Wallander added.
‘What was Baiba? A teacher?’
‘When I met her she was translating technical literature from English. I think she did a bit of practically everything.’
‘You must go to her funeral. For your own sake.’
It wasn’t all that straightforward, but she convinced him in the end. She also made sure that he bought a new dark suit, accompanied him to a tailor’s in Malmo, and when he expressed his astonishment at the price she explained that it was a high-quality suit that would last him for the rest of his life.
‘You’ll be attending fewer weddings,’ Linda said. ‘But at your age, the number of funerals increases.’
He muttered something inaudible and paid. Linda didn’t press him to repeat whatever it was he had said.
He clambered out of the taxi and carried his little suitcase into the reception area at the Hotel Latvia. He noted right away that the cafe where Lilja Blooms had seen him and Baiba together was no longer there. He checked in and was given room 1516. When he got out of the lift and stood in front of the door, he had the feeling that this was the very room he’d stayed in the first time he went to Riga. He was quite sure that the figures 5 and 6 had been part of the room number then as well. He unlocked the door and went in. It didn’t look at all like what he remembered. But the view from the window was the same, a beautiful church whose name he had forgotten. He unpacked his bag and hung up his new suit. The thought that it was in this hotel, and possibly even in this very room, that he first met Baiba filled him with almost unbearable pain.
He went to the bathroom and rinsed his face. It was only twelve thirty. He had no plans, but thought he might take a walk. He wanted to mourn Baiba by remembering her as she was when he met her for the first time.
A thought suddenly struck him, a thought he had never dared to confront before. Had his love for Baiba been stronger than the love he had once felt for Mona? Despite the fact that Mona was Linda’s mother? He didn’t know, and would never be sure.
He went out and strolled through the town, had a meal in a restaurant even though he wasn’t especially hungry. That evening he sat in one of the hotel bars. A girl in her twenties came up and asked him if he wanted company. He didn’t even answer, merely shook his head. Shortly before the hotel restaurant closed, he had another meal, a spaghetti dish that he hardly touched. He drank red wine, and felt tipsy when he stood up to leave the table.
It had been raining while he ate, but it was clear now. He retrieved his jacket and went out into the damp summer evening. He found his way to the Freedom Monument, where he and Baiba had once had their photograph taken. A few youths on skateboards were practising their skills on the flagstones in front. He continued his walk, and didn’t arrive back at the hotel until very late. He fell asleep on top of the bed without taking off anything but his shoes.
The next morning he put on his funeral suit and went down to the dining room for breakfast, despite the fact that he wasn’t hungry.
He had bought two half-bottles of vodka at Kastrup Airport. He had one of them in his inside pocket. As the lift conveyed him down to the dining room, he unscrewed the top and took a swig.
When Lilja Blooms came in through the glass doors, Wallander was already in the reception area, waiting for her. She went over to him right away. Baiba must have shown her pictures of him, he thought.
Lilja was short and plump, and her hair was cropped. She didn’t look anything like what he had imagined. He thought she would look more like Baiba. When they shook hands, Wallander felt embarrassed, without knowing why.
‘The chapel isn’t far from here,’ she said. ‘It’s only a ten-minute walk. I have time for a cigarette. You can wait here.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Wallander.
They stood in the sun outside the hotel, Lilja wearing sunglasses and holding a cigarette in her hand.
‘She was drunk,’ she said.
It was a moment before Wallander realised what she was referring to.
‘Baiba?’
‘She was drunk when she died. The autopsy made that clear. She had a lot of alcohol in her blood when she crashed her car.’
‘I find that hard to believe.’
‘So do I. All her friends are astonished. But then, what do we know about the thoughts of a person who is going to die?’
‘Are you saying that she committed suicide? That she crashed the car on purpose? Drove into that stone wall?’
‘There’s no point in worrying about it - we’ll never know for certain. But there were no skid marks on the road. A motorist behind her said that she wasn’t driving unusually fast, but that the car was wobbling all over the road.’
Wallander tried to picture the last moments of Baiba’s life. He couldn’t be sure about what had happened, whether it was an accident or suicide. But another thought struck him. Could Louise von Enke’s death also have been an accident, and not murder or suicide after all?
He never followed that thought through because Lilja stubbed out her cigarette and announced that it was time to set off. Wallander excused himself, paid a visit to the men’s room in reception, and took another swig of the vodka. He examined himself in the mirror. What he saw was a man on his way into old age, worried about what was in store for him in life.
They came to the chapel. The darkness inside was all the more intense because the sunshine had been so bright. It was some time before Wallander’s eyes adjusted.
When they did, he had the feeling that Baiba Liepa’s funeral was a sort of rehearsal for his own. It scared him, and almost made him stand up and leave. He should never have gone to Riga; he had nothing to do there.
But he remained seated nevertheless, and thanks mainly to the vodka, he didn’t even start crying, not even when he saw how upset Lilja Blooms was by his side. The coffin was like a desert island, washed up in the sea - the last resting place for a person he had once been in love with, Wallander thought.
For some unknown reason, he suddenly saw Hakan von Enke in his mind’s eye. He felt annoyed, and he brushed aside the thought.
He was beginning to feel drunk. It was as if the funeral had nothing to do with him. When it ended, and Lilja Blooms hastened over to express her condolences to Baiba’s mother, Wallander took the opportunity to slip out of the chapel. He didn’t give a backward glance, but went straight to the hotel and asked the receptionist to help him change his flight. He had planned to stay until the next day, but now he wanted to leave as soon as possible. There were seats available on an afternoon flight to Copenhagen. He packed his suitcase, kept his funeral suit on, and left the hotel in a taxi, afraid that Lilja Blooms might come looking for him. He sat outside the terminal building for nearly three hours bef
ore it was time for him to pass through security.
He continued drinking on the plane. When he came to Ystad, he took a taxi home and almost fell out of the car. As usual, Jussi was being looked after by the neighbours, and he decided to leave him there until the next day.
He collapsed into bed and slept soundly. When he woke up shortly before nine the next morning, he regretted having fled from the chapel without even having said goodbye to Lilja. He would have to call her soon and try to make a plausible excuse. But what on earth would he say?
Although he had slept well, Wallander felt ill. He couldn’t find any aspirin, despite searching through the bathroom and all the drawers in the kitchen. Since he couldn’t face driving to Ystad, he asked his neighbour if she had any. She did, and he dissolved one in a glass of water and drank it in her kitchen. She gave him a few extra to take home with him.
When he got back, he put Jussi in his kennel. The light on the answering machine was blinking when he entered the house. Sten Nordlander had called again. Wallander got his mobile phone and called him. He could hear the wind howling around Nordlander when he answered.
‘I’ll call you back,’ he said. ‘I have to find a spot sheltered from the wind.’
‘I’m at home.’
‘Give me ten minutes. Are you OK?’
‘Yes, I’m fine.’
Wallander sat down at the kitchen table to wait. Jussi wandered around his kennel, sniffing to see if he had been visited by any mice or birds. He occasionally glanced at the kitchen window. Wallander raised his hand and waved to him, but Jussi didn’t react; he couldn’t see anything, but he knew that Wallander was in the house somewhere. Wallander opened the window. Jussi immediately started wagging his tail and stood up on his hind legs, resting his front paws on the bars.
The phone rang. It was Sten Nordlander. He had found a sheltered spot; there was no sound of any wind.
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