‘I’m on a little island, not much more than a bare rock, not far from Moja,’ he said. ‘Do you know where that is?’
‘No.’
‘At the outer edge of the Stockholm archipelago. It’s very beautiful.’
‘I’m glad you called,’ said Wallander. ‘Something has happened. I should have contacted you. Hakan has turned up.’
Wallander summarised what had happened.
‘Amazing!’ said Nordlander. ‘I thought about him when I stepped ashore here on the skerry.’
‘Any particular reason?’
‘He liked islands. He once told me about an ambition he’d had when he was young: he wanted to visit every island in the world.’
‘Did he ever try to achieve it?’
‘I don’t think so. Louise wasn’t keen on sea voyages.’
‘Did that cause any problems?’
‘Not that I know of. He was very fond of her, and she of him. But dreams can be of value even if you don’t have an opportunity to turn them into reality.’
The connection was poor; the skerry was at the very limit of the coverage area. They agreed that he would call Wallander again once he was back on the mainland.
Wallander slowly put the phone down on the table and sat motionless. He suddenly had the feeling that he knew where Hakan von Enke was. Sten Nordlander had shown him the direction he should be following.
He couldn’t be sure, and he had no proof. Nevertheless, he knew.
He thought about a book he’d seen in Signe von Enke’s bookcase, along with the books about Babar. The Sleeping Beauty. I’ve been lost in a deep sleep, Wallander thought. I should have realised long ago where he was. I’ve only just woken up.
Jussi started barking. Wallander went out and gave him some food.
The following day, early in the morning, he got into his car. The farmer’s wife looked surprised when he turned up with Jussi yet again.
She asked how long he was going to be away. He told her the truth.
He didn’t know. He had absolutely no idea.
30
The boat he hired was an open plastic craft, barely eighteen feet long, with an Evinrude outboard motor, seven horsepower. The proprietor had also lent him a sea chart. He had chosen that particular boat because it was not so big that it would be difficult to row, which he suspected he would need to do. When he signed the contract he produced his police ID. The man gave a start.
‘Everything’s fine,’ Wallander said. ‘But I need a spare can of diesel. I might be able to return the boat tomorrow, but then again, I might need it for a few more days. Anyway, you have my credit card number. You know you’ll be paid.’
‘A police officer,’ said the man. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘No, it’s just that I’m going to surprise a good friend on his fiftieth birthday.’
Wallander hadn’t prepared his lie in advance. But he was used to inventing excuses, and they came automatically now.
The boat was jammed between two big motor cruisers, one of them a Storo. There was no electric ignition, but it started the moment Wallander pulled the cord. The boat owner, who spoke with a Finnish accent, guaranteed that the engine was reliable.
‘I use it myself when I go fishing,’ he said. ‘The problem is, there are hardly any fish. But I go fishing even so.’
It was four o’clock in the afternoon. Wallander had arrived at Valdemarsvik an hour earlier. He’d eaten at what appeared to be the only restaurant in the village, then found his way to the boat-hire establishment just a couple of hundred yards away, on one side of the long inlet known as Valdemarsviken. Wallander had packed a backpack containing, among other things, two torches and some food. He’d also taken warm clothes, despite the fact that it was a warm afternoon.
On the way up to Ostergotland he had driven through several downpours of rain. One of them, just outside Ronneby, was so heavy that he’d been forced to pull into a lay-by and wait until it passed. As he listened to the pattering on the car roof and watched the water cascading down his windscreen, he began to wonder if he really had judged the situation correctly. Had his instinct let him down, or - as it had so often before - would it turn out to be right after all?
He stayed in the lay-by, lost in thought, for almost half an hour before the rain stopped. He set off again and eventually came to Valdemarsvik. It was clear now, and there was hardly any wind. The water in the inlet was ruffled only occasionally by a light breeze.
There was a smell of mud. He remembered it from the last time he was here.
Wallander started the outboard motor and set out. The man who had rented him the boat stood for some time, watching him, before returning to his office. Wallander decided to leave the long inlet before darkness fell. Then he would moor somewhere and enjoy the summer twilight. He had tried to work out the current phase of the moon, without success. He could have called Linda, but since he didn’t want to reveal where he was going or why he was making this trip, he didn’t. Once he had left the inlet he would call Martinsson instead. If he decided to call anyone, that is. The task he had set himself wasn’t dependent on whether the night was dark or moonlit, but he wanted to know exactly what was in store for him.
When he glimpsed the open sea between the islands ahead of him, he let the engine turn over while he studied the sea chart in its plastic cover. Once he had established precisely where he was, he selected a place not too far from his final destination where he could moor and wait for dusk to fall. But it was already occupied by several boats. He continued and eventually found a small island, not much more than a rock with a few trees, where he could row to the beach, having first detached the outboard motor. He put on his jacket, leaned against one of the trees and took a drink of coffee from his Thermos. Then he called Martinsson. Once again it was a child who answered, possibly the same one as last time. Martinsson took the phone from her.
‘You’re a lucky man,’ he said. ‘My little granddaughter has become your secretary.’
‘The moon,’ said Wallander.
‘What about it?’
‘You’re asking too quickly. I haven’t finished yet.’
‘I’m sorry. But I can’t take my eyes off the grandchildren; they need watching all the time.’
‘I understand that, and I wouldn’t disturb you unless it was necessary. Do you have a calendar? What phase is the moon in right now?’
‘The moon? Is that what you’re asking about? Are you out on some sort of astronomical adventure?’
‘I could be. But can you answer my question?’
‘Hang on a minute.’
Martinsson put down the receiver. It was obvious from Wallander’s voice that he wasn’t going to get any sort of explanation.
‘It’s a new moon,’ he said when he returned to the phone. ‘A thin little crescent. Assuming you’re still in Sweden and not some other part of the world.’
‘I’m still in Sweden. Thank you for your help,’ said Wallander. ‘I’ll explain it all one of these days.’
‘I’m used to waiting.’
‘Waiting for what?’
‘For explanations. Including from my children when they don’t do as I tell them. But that was mainly when they were younger.’
‘Linda was just the same,’ said Wallander, in an attempt to appear interested. He thanked Martinsson again for his help regarding the moon, and hung up. He ate a couple of sandwiches, then lay down with a stone as a pillow.
The pains came from nowhere. He was lying there, looking up at the sky and listening to seagulls screeching in the distance, when he felt a stab of pain in his left arm, which then spread to his chest and stomach. At first he thought he must be lying on a sharp edge of stone, but then he realised that the pains were coming from inside his body, and he suspected that what he had always dreaded had now come to pass. He’d had a heart attack.
He lay completely motionless, stiff and terrified, and held his breath, afraid that if he tried to breathe he would use up the re
st of his heart’s ability to beat.
The memory of his mother’s death suddenly came vividly into his mind. It was as if her last moments were being played out by his side. She had been only fifty years old. His mother had never worked outside the home, but had always struggled to maintain her marriage to her temperamental husband, whose income could never be relied on, and look after their two children, Kurt and Kristina. They had been living in Limhamn at the time, sharing a house with a family that Wallander’s father couldn’t stand. The father was a train conductor who never hurt a fly, but once, in the friendliest possible way, he asked Wallander’s father if it might be relaxing to paint some other motif rather than the same old landscape over and over again. Wallander had overheard the conversation. The conductor, whose name was Nils Persson, had used his own working life as an example. After a long period driving back and forth between Malmo and Alvesta, he was very pleased when he was transferred to an express route that went to Gothenburg, and sometimes even as far as Oslo. Wallander’s father had naturally reacted furiously. After that it had been Wallander’s mother who tried to smooth things over and make living alongside the other family not completely intolerable.
Her death had come suddenly one afternoon in the early autumn of 1962. She had been in their little garden, hanging up laundry. Wallander had just come home from school and was sitting at the kitchen table, eating a sandwich. He had looked out of the window and seen her hanging up sheets with some clothes pegs in her hand. He had returned to his sandwich. The next time he looked out, she was on her knees, clutching at her chest. At first he thought she had dropped something, but then he watched her fall over onto her side, slowly, as if she were trying hard not to. He ran outside, shouting her name, but she was beyond help. The doctor who performed the autopsy said she had suffered a massive heart attack. Even if she had been in a hospital when it happened, they wouldn’t have been able to save her.
Now he could see her in his mind’s eye, a series of blurred, jerky images as he tried to keep his own pains at arm’s length. He didn’t want his life to end early like hers had, and least of all now, all alone on a little island in the Baltic Sea.
He said silent, agitated prayers - not really to any god, but more to himself, urging himself to resist, not to allow himself to be dragged down into eternal silence. And he eventually realised that the pains were not getting any worse; his heart was still beating. He forced himself to remain calm, to act sensibly, not to sink into a desperate and blind panic. He sat up gingerly and felt for his mobile phone, which he had left next to his backpack. He started to dial Linda’s number but changed his mind. What would she be able to do? If he really had suffered a heart attack, he should be calling the emergency number.
But something held him back. Perhaps it was the feeling that the pain was receding? He carefully moved his left arm and found a position in which the pain was less, as well as other positions where it was worse. That was not in accordance with the symptoms of a serious heart attack. He sat up slowly and took his pulse. It was seventy-four beats per minute. His normal rate was somewhere between sixty-six and seventy-eight. Everything was as it should be. It’s stress, he thought. My body is simulating something that can afflict me if I don’t take it easy.
He lay down again. The pain faded away even more, even if it was still present, nagging away, a sort of background threat.
An hour later he was convinced that he hadn’t in fact suffered a heart attack. It had been a warning. He thought, I should stop fooling myself that I’m an irreplaceable police officer and take a proper holiday. Perhaps he should go home, call Ytterberg and tell him what conclusions he had drawn. But he decided to stay on. He had come a long way, and he was keen to establish if his suspicions were justified or not. No matter what the outcome, he could then hand the matter over to Ytterberg and not bother with it any more.
He felt very relieved. It was a sort of positive affirmation of life that he hadn’t experienced for years. He had an urge to stand up and roar in the direction of the open sea. But he remained seated, leaning against the tree trunk, watching the boats passing and relishing the smell of the sea. It was still warm. He lay down with his jacket draped over him and fell asleep. He woke up after about ten minutes. The pains had almost gone altogether now. He stood up and started walking around the little island. On one side, facing south, the rock formed an almost vertical cliff. It was strenuous, skirting it at the very edge of the water.
He suddenly stopped dead. There was a small, narrow creek about twenty yards ahead. A boat had anchored at its entrance, and a dinghy had been beached on the rocks. A couple was lying at the edge of the water, making love. He pressed himself against the cliff, but he couldn’t resist the temptation to watch. They were young - barely twenty years old, he guessed. He stared as if bewitched at their naked bodies before gathering the strength to drag himself away and retrace his steps as quietly as possible. A few hours later, as twilight was at last beginning to creep up on the island, he saw the motor cruiser with the dinghy bobbing along behind it sailing past. He stood up and waved. The couple on board waved back.
In a way he was jealous of them. But his thoughts were far from gloomy. His own earliest erotic experiences had been just like most other people’s - uncertain, disappointing, bordering on the embarrassing. He had never really believed his friends’ descriptions of their escapades and conquests. It was only after he met Mona that sex had become a serious pleasure as far as he was concerned. During their early years together their sex life was beyond his wildest dreams. He had achieved considerable satisfaction with a handful of other women, but nothing like what he and Mona experienced at the beginning of their relationship. The big exception in his life was, of course, Baiba.
But he had never made love to a woman on a rock by the open sea. The nearest he had been to something as risky as that was when he had been slightly tipsy and managed to entice Mona into a toilet on a train. But they had been interrupted by angry pounding on the door. Mona had found it embarrassing in the extreme, and insisted angrily that he promise never again to try to engage her in such erotic adventures.
And he never had. Towards the end of their long relationship and marriage, their sexual desire had ebbed - although it returned in spades for Wallander when she told him she wanted a divorce. But she had no longer accepted his advances. Her door was locked, once and for all.
Suddenly he seemed to see his life mapped out before his very eyes. Four decisive moments. The first was when I rebelled against my dominating father and became a police officer, he thought. The second was when I killed a man in the line of duty, and didn’t think I could take any more, but in the end decided not to resign from the police force. The third was when I left Mariagatan, moved out to the country and got Jussi. The fourth was probably when I finally accepted that Mona and I could never live together again. That was probably the most difficult to negotiate. But I’ve made my choices; I haven’t ummed and aahed and then realised one day that it was too late. I have nobody but myself to thank for that. When I see the bitterness in a lot of people around me, I’m glad I’m not one of them. Despite everything, I’ve tried to take responsibility for my life, and not merely allowed it to float away at the mercy of whatever current came along.
As dusk fell, so the mosquitoes arrived to plague him. But he had remembered to take mosquito repellent, and he pulled the hood of his anorak over his head. There weren’t many motor cruisers to be heard now, plying the surrounding channels and straits. A lone yacht was heading for the open sea.
Shortly after midnight, with the mosquitoes whining around his ears, he left the island. He followed the increasingly dark silhouettes of the islands lining the route he had planned with the aid of his sea chart. He was travelling slowly, constantly checking to make sure he didn’t deviate from his course. When he was approaching his goal he reduced his speed still further, and eventually he switched off the engine completely. A gentle evening breeze had begun to blow. He tilted up
the motor, set up the oars and started rowing. He occasionally paused and tried to peer through the darkness, but he couldn’t see any light, and that worried him. There should be a light, he thought. It shouldn’t be dark.
He rowed up to the beach and climbed cautiously out of the boat. There was a scraping noise as he pulled it over the shingle. He tied the painter around some of the alders growing on the shore. He had taken the torches out of his backpack before he beached the boat, and now he put one of them in his pocket. He held the other one in his hand.
But there was something else that he was groping for, among the sandwich wrappings and the spare clothes. He had also packed his service pistol. He had hesitated until the very last moment, but eventually he made up his mind and put it in his backpack, along with a full magazine. He wasn’t at all sure why he had done this. There was nothing to suggest that he was exposing himself to immediate physical danger.
But Louise is dead, he had thought. And Hermann Eber convinced me that she was murdered. Until I have more information, I have to assume that the culprit could be Hakan, even if I have neither proof nor motive.
He loaded the pistol and checked that the safety catch was on. Then he switched on the torch and checked that the blue filter he had placed over the lens was still in place. The light was very pale, and would be difficult to detect by anybody not on his guard.
He listened through the darkness. The noise from the sea drowned out other sounds. He put his backpack back into the boat, then checked the painter and made sure that the boat was securely moored. He began walking slowly and carefully away from the shore. The brushwood was dense near the water’s edge. He had been walking for only a few yards when he stepped into a spiderweb, and he started flailing with his arms when he realised that an enormous spider was clinging to his anorak. He could cope with snakes, but not spiders. Instead of fumbling through the brush, he decided to walk along the shore in the hope of finding somewhere where it was less overgrown. After about fifty yards he came to a place where the remains of an old slipway could be made out. Since he had never been ashore on this island before, and had seen it only from a boat, he was finding it difficult to orient himself. The last time he was here they had passed by on the other side, facing west. This time he had landed on the east side, hoping that this was what you might call the rear of the island.
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