The Troubled Man (2011) kw-10

by Henning Mankell

  His mobile phone started ringing in one of his pockets. He cursed under his breath as he pulled and tugged at his clothes in an effort to find it, dropping the torch in the process. He counted at least six rings before he finally succeeded in switching it off. He could see from the display that it was Linda who had been trying to reach him. He put the phone in his breast pocket and closed the zip. The ringing had sounded like an alarm in his ears. He listened hard, but there was nothing to be seen or heard in the darkness. Only the surging of the sea.

  He continued cautiously on his way until he could make out the outline of the house shrouded in darkness. He stationed himself behind an oak tree, but he couldn’t see any trace of a light. I got it wrong, he thought. There’s nobody here. My deduction was simply wrong.

  But then he noticed a faint gleam of light seeping out from between a lowered blind and a window frame. When he came closer he could see more faint glows from other windows as well.

  He walked as quietly as he could around the house. The windows were blacked out, as if it were wartime and all lights had been extinguished in order to confuse the enemy. I am the enemy, Wallander thought.

  He pressed his ear against the wooden wall and listened. He could hear the murmur of voices, and occasionally music. From a television set or a radio, he couldn’t be sure which.

  He withdrew into the shadows again and tried to make up his mind about what to do next. He had planned only as far as the point where he now found himself. Now what? Should he wait until the next morning before knocking on the door and waiting to see who answered?

  He hesitated. He was annoyed by his indecision. What was he afraid of?

  He had no time to answer that question. He felt a hand on his shoulder, gave a start and turned round. Even though this was the reason he had set out on his journey, he was still surprised to see Hakan von Enke standing there in the darkness, wearing a tracksuit top over a pair of jeans. He was unshaven and in need of a haircut.

  They stared at each other without speaking, Wallander with his torch in his hand, von Enke barefoot on the wet soil.

  ‘I suppose you heard the phone ringing?’ Wallander said.

  Von Enke shook his head. He seemed to be not only scared, but rueful.

  ‘I have alarms set all around the house. I’ve spent the last ten minutes trying to work out who tracked me to this island.’

  ‘It’s only me,’ said Wallander.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hakan von Enke. ‘It’s only you.’

  They went into the house. It was only when everything was lit up that Wallander noticed that von Enke was also armed. He was carrying a pistol, tucked into his waistband.

  What’s he afraid of? Wallander thought. Who is he hiding from?

  The surging of the sea could no longer be heard. Wallander contemplated the man who had been missing for such a long time.

  They sat down and said nothing for a while. Eventually they began talking, hesitantly. Slowly, approaching each other with maximum caution.

  PART 4

  The Phantom

  31

  It was a long night. Several times it seemed to Wallander that it was a direct continuation of the conversation he and von Enke had had nearly six months previously, in a windowless room off a banqueting hall just outside Stockholm. What he was now beginning to understand surprised him, but it was a more than sufficient explanation of why von Enke had been so worried on that occasion.

  Wallander felt nothing like a Stanley who had now found his Livingstone. He had guessed right, that was all. Once again, his intuition had shown him the path to follow. If von Enke was surprised at his hideaway being discovered, he didn’t show it. Wallander thought the old submarine commander was displaying his cold-blooded nature. He didn’t allow himself to be surprised, no matter what happened.

  The hunting lodge that seemed so primitive from the outside gave quite a different impression once Wallander had crossed the threshold. There were no inside walls, just one large room with an open kitchenette. A small extension containing a bathroom was the only space with a door. In one corner of the room was a bed. It’s on the small side, Wallander observed, more like a hammock, or the little bunk that even a commander has to make do with on board a submarine. In the middle of the room was a large table covered with books, files and documents. On one of the short walls was a shelf containing a radio, and there was a television set and a record player on a little table. Next to it was a dark red old-fashioned armchair.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d have electricity here,’ said Wallander.

  ‘There’s a generator sunk in a little basement blasted out of the rock. You can’t hear the engine even when the water is dead calm.’

  Von Enke stood by the stove, making coffee. Neither of them spoke, and Wallander tried to prepare himself for the conversation that would follow. But now that he’d found the man he’d spent so much time looking for, he didn’t know what to ask him. All his previous thoughts seemed to be a blurred jumble of unfinished conclusions.

  ‘If I remember correctly,’ said von Enke, interrupting Wallander’s thoughts, ‘you take neither milk nor sugar?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t have any bread or biscuits to offer you. Are you hungry?’

  ‘No.’

  Von Enke cleared off part of the big table. Wallander noted that most of the books were about modern warfare and contemporary politics. One that seemed to have been read more than any of the others was titled simply The Submarine Threat.

  The coffee was strong. Von Enke was drinking tea. Wallander regretted not having chosen the same.

  It was ten minutes to one.

  ‘Naturally I understand that you have a lot of questions you want answers to,’ said von Enke. ‘I may not be able or willing to answer all of them, but before we come to that I must ask you a few questions. First and foremost: did you come here alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who else knows where you are?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  Wallander could see that von Enke wasn’t sure whether to believe him.

  ‘Nobody,’ he repeated. ‘This trip was entirely my own idea. Nobody else has been involved.’

  ‘Not even Linda?’

  ‘Not even Linda.’

  ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘In a little boat with an outboard motor. If you want I can give you the name of the firm I hired it from. But the man had no idea where I was going. I told him I was going to surprise an old friend for his birthday. I’m sure he believed me.’

  ‘Where is the boat?’

  Wallander pointed over his shoulder.

  ‘On the other side of the island. Beached, and tied up to some alder trees.’

  Von Enke sat there silently, staring at his teacup. Wallander waited.

  ‘How did you find me?’

  Von Enke seemed tired when he asked the question. Wallander could understand that being on the run was strenuous, even if you weren’t on the move all the time.

  ‘When I visited Boko, Eskil Lundberg mentioned in passing that this cottage was perfect for anybody who wanted to disappear from the face of the earth. We were on the way to the mainland when we sailed past. You know I’ve been to see him, of course. What he said stayed at the back of my mind, nagging away at me. And then when I heard that you were particularly fond of islands, I realised that this might be where you were.’

  ‘Who told you about me and my islands?’

  Wallander decided on the spot not to say anything about Sten Nordlander for the time being. He could give von Enke an answer that would be impossible to check.

  ‘Louise.’

  Von Enke nodded, silently. Then he straightened his back, as if steeling himself for battle.

  ‘We can do this in two ways,’ Wallander said. ‘Either you tell me all about it, or I ask questions and you answer them.’

  ‘Am I accused of anything?’

  ‘No. But your wife is dead, so you are aut
omatically a suspect.’

  ‘I can understand that completely.’

  Suicide or murder, Wallander thought. You seem to be well aware of the score. Wallander knew he had to proceed cautiously. After all, the man he was talking to was somebody he knew very little about.

  ‘Let’s hear it, then,’ said Wallander. ‘I’ll interrupt you if anything is unclear. You can start at Djursholm, when you had your birthday party.’

  Von Enke shook his head demonstratively. His tiredness seemed to have evaporated. He walked over to the stove, refilled his cup with hot water and added a new tea bag. He remained standing, cup in hand.

  ‘I need to begin earlier than that. There can be only one starting point,’ he said. ‘It’s simple, but absolutely true. I loved my wife, Louise, more than anything else in the world. God forgive me for saying it, but I loved her more than I did my son. Louise embodied the happiness in my life - seeing her come into a room, seeing her smile, hearing her moving around in the next room.’

  He fell silent and gave Wallander a look that was both piercing and challenging. He demanded an answer, or at least a reaction from Wallander’s side.

  ‘Yes,’ said Wallander. ‘I believe you.’

  Von Enke began his story.

  ‘We need to go back a long way. There’s no need for me to go into detail. It would take too much time, and it isn’t necessary. But we have to go back to the 1960s and 70s. I was still active on board naval vessels then, often in command of one of our most modern minesweepers. Louise was working as a teacher. She spent her free time coaching young divers, and once in a while visited Eastern Europe, mainly East Germany, which in those days was very successful in producing champions. Nowadays we know that this was due to a combination of fanatical, almost slavish training techniques and an advanced use of various drugs. At the end of the 1970s I was transferred to staff duties and promoted to the top operations command of the Swedish navy. That involved a lot of work, much of it done at home. Several evenings every week I used to take home secret documents. I had a gun cupboard because I occasionally used to go hunting, mainly for deer, but sometimes I used to take part in the annual elk hunt. I had my rifles and ammunition locked away in that cupboard, and I also used to put my secret documents in there overnight, or when Louise and I went out, either to the theatre or to some dinner party.’

  He paused, carefully removed the tea bag from his cup and put it on a saucer, then continued.

  ‘When exactly do you notice that something is not as it should be? The almost invisible signs that suggest something has been changed, or moved? You are a police officer - I assume you must often find yourself in situations where you catch on to these vague signals. One morning, when I opened the gun cupboard, I noticed that something was wrong. I can still recall how I felt. I was just going to take out my briefcase when I paused. Had I really left it the way it was now? There was something about the lock, and the position of the handle. My doubts bothered me for about five seconds, no more. Then I dismissed them. I always used to check that all the documents were where they should be, and that morning was no exception. I didn’t think any more about it. I think I’m pretty observant and have a good memory. Or at least, that was the case when I was younger. As you grow older, all your faculties deteriorate bit by bit, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You are considerably younger than I am, but maybe you’ve noticed this?’

  ‘Eyesight,’ Wallander said. ‘I have to buy new reading glasses every couple of years. And I don’t think I hear as well as I used to.’

  ‘It’s your sense of smell that lasts best as you grow older. That’s the only one of my senses that I think is unaffected. The smell of flowers is just as clear and subtle as it ever was.’

  They sat there in silence. Wallander noticed a rustling sound in the wall behind him.

  ‘Mice,’ said von Enke. ‘It was still cold when I first came here. At times there was a hellish rustling and rattling inside the walls. But one of these days I’ll no longer be able to hear the mice scampering around under the floorboards.’

  ‘I don’t want to interrupt your story,’ Wallander said. ‘But when you vanished that morning, did you come straight here?’

  ‘I was picked up.’

  ‘By whom?’

  Von Enke shook his head, didn’t want to answer. Wallander didn’t press him.

  ‘Let me go back to the gun cupboard,’ von Enke continued. ‘A few months later I had the impression yet again that my briefcase had been moved. I decided I was imagining it. The documents inside the briefcase hadn’t been jumbled up or interfered with in any other way. But since this was the second occasion, I was worried. The keys to the gun cupboard were underneath some letter scales on my desk. The only person who knew where the keys were was Louise. So I did what you have to do when there’s something worrying you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I asked her outright. She was in the kitchen, having breakfast.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She said no. And asked the obvious question: why on earth would she be interested in what was in my gun cupboard? I don’t think she ever liked the idea of my keeping guns in the apartment, even if she never said anything about it. I remember feeling ashamed when I walked down the stairs to the car waiting to take me to general staff headquarters. The job I had then gave me the right to have a chauffeur.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  Wallander noticed that his questions were disturbing von Enke, who wanted to dictate the pace of his revelations himself. He raised his hands as a sort of apology, indicating that he wouldn’t interrupt any more.

  ‘I’m convinced that Louise told me the truth. But even after that I still had the feeling that my briefcase and my documents had been interfered with. I started to set little traps: I purposely put some of the papers in the wrong order, I left a strand of hair over the lock of my briefcase, a blob of grease on the handle. What was hardest to grasp was why Louise would be interested in my papers. I couldn’t believe it had to do with pure curiosity or jealousy. She knew there was no reason at all to suspect anything like that. It was at least a year before I first began to wonder if the unthinkable really was a possibility.’

  Von Enke paused briefly before continuing.

  ‘Could Louise be in touch with a foreign power? It seemed highly improbable for a very simple reason. The documents I took home with me were rarely anything that could be of the slightest interest to a foreign intelligence service. But I couldn’t help feeling worried. I was starting to distrust my wife, to suspect her of treachery for no reason other than a strand of hair that had been disturbed. In the end - and by then it was the late 1970s - I decided to establish once and for all whether or not my suspicions of Louise were justified.’

  He stood up and rummaged around in a corner of the room full of maps. He came back with a scroll, which he spread out over the table - a sea chart of the central area of the Baltic Sea. He placed pebbles on the corners to weigh it down.

  ‘Autumn 1979,’ he said. ‘To be more precise, August and September. We were due for our usual autumn manoeuvres involving nearly all our naval vessels. There was nothing special about this particular exercise. It was while I was attached to the general staff, and my role was to be an observer. About a month before the manoeuvres were to take place, when all the plans and timetables were already drawn up, the navigation routes established and the vessels assigned to specific areas, I made my own plan. I created a document and labelled it “Secret”. It was even signed by the supreme commander - although he knew nothing about it, of course. I introduced into the exercise a top-secret element featuring one of our submarines being refuelled in very advanced fashion by a remotely controlled tanker. It was all a complete fabrication, but something that could just about be regarded as possible. I noted the exact location and the precise time when the exercise would take place. I knew that the destroyer Smaland, with the observers on board, would be close to that location at that time. I
took the document home with me, locked it in the gun cupboard overnight, then hid it in my desk when I went to staff headquarters the following day. I repeated the same procedure for several days. The next week I placed the document in a secure bank vault I had rented for this very purpose. I considered tearing it up, but I knew I might need it some day as proof. The month that passed before the manoeuvres took place was the worst I have ever endured. I had to make sure that Louise didn’t suspect anything, but I had set a trap for her that would shatter both of us if my suspicions turned out to be well founded.’

  He pointed to a spot on the sea chart. Wallander leaned forward and saw that it was a point just north-east of Gotska Sandon.

  ‘This is where the alleged meeting between the submarine and the nonexistent tanker was supposed to happen. It was on the periphery of the area where the manoeuvres would be held. There was nothing unusual about the fact that Russian vessels were keeping track of us. We did the same when Warsaw Pact countries’ manoeuvres were under way. We used to keep at a discreet distance, avoiding provocation. I chose this location for the fictitious meeting because the supreme commander was due to be dropped off at Berga that same morning, so the destroyer would be in the right place, on its way to where the exercises were in full swing, when my fictional refuelling operation was to happen.’

  ‘I don’t want to interrupt,’ said Wallander, ‘but was it really possible to stick to such a tight schedule when so many vessels were involved?’

  ‘That was part of the point of the whole manoeuvre. What you need in wartime is not just a lot of money, but also a high degree of punctuality.’

  Wallander gave a start when there was a loud thud on the roof of the lodge. Von Enke didn’t seem to react at all.