The Troubled Man

by Henning Mankell

  He came to the harbour at Fyrudden at eleven o’clock. When he got out of the car he saw that the warehouse in the photo was still there, even though it had been converted and now had windows. But the fish boxes were gone, as was the big trawler alongside the quay. The harbour was now full of pleasure boats. Wallander parked outside the red-painted coastguard building, paid the required entrance fee at the chandler’s, and wandered out to the furthest of the jetties.

  He acknowledged to himself that the whole journey was like a game of roulette. He hadn’t warned Eskil Lundberg that he would be coming. If he’d called from Skåne he had no doubt that Lundberg would have refused to meet him. But if he was standing here on the quay? He sat on a bench outside the chandler’s shop and took out his mobile phone. Now it was sink or swim. If he had been a von Wallander, with a coat of arms and a family motto, those were the words he would have chosen: sink or swim. That’s the way it had always been throughout his life. He dialled the number and hoped for the best.

  Lundberg answered.

  ‘It’s Wallander. We spoke about a week ago.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  If he was surprised, he concealed it well, Wallander thought. Lundberg was evidently one of those enviable people who are always prepared for anything to happen, for anybody at all to call them out of the blue, a king or a fool – or a police officer from Ystad.

  ‘I’m in Fyrudden,’ Wallander informed him, and took the bull by the horns. ‘I hope you have time to meet me.’

  ‘Why do you think I’d have any more to tell you now than I did when we last spoke?’

  That was the moment when Wallander’s long experience as a police officer told him that Lundberg did have more to tell him.

  ‘I have the feeling we should talk,’ he said.

  ‘Is that your way of telling me that you want to interrogate me?’

  ‘Not at all. I just want to talk to you, and show you the photo I found.’

  Lundberg thought for a few moments.

  ‘I’ll pick you up in an hour,’ he said eventually.

  Wallander spent the time eating in the cafe, where he had a view of the harbour, the islands and in the distance the open sea. He had consulted a sea chart in a glass case on one of the cafe walls and established that Bokö was to the south of Fyrudden; so it was boats coming from that direction he kept an eye on. He assumed that a fisherman would have a boat at least superficially reminiscent of Sten Nordlander’s wooden gig, but he was completely wrong. Lundberg came in an open plastic boat with an outboard motor. It was filled with plastic buckets and net baskets. He berthed at the jetty and looked around. Wallander made himself known. It was only when he had clambered awkwardly down into the boat and almost fallen over that they shook hands.

  ‘I thought we could go to my place,’ said Lundberg. ‘There are far too many strangers around here for my taste.’

  Without waiting for an answer, he pulled away from the jetty and headed for the harbour entrance at what Wallander thought was far too fast a speed. A man in the cockpit of a berthed sailing boat stared at them in obvious disapproval. The engine noise was so loud that conversation was impossible. Wallander sat in the bow and watched the tree-clad islands and barren rocks flashing past. They passed through a strait that Wallander recognised from the map on the wall of the cafe as Halsösundet, and continued south. The islands were still numerous and close together; only occasionally was it possible to glimpse the open sea. Lundberg was wearing calf-length trousers, turned-down boots and a top with the somewhat surprising logo ‘I burn my own trash’. Wallander guessed he was about fifty, possibly slightly older. That could well fit in with the age of the boy in the photograph.

  They turned into an inlet lined with oaks and birches and berthed by a red-painted boathouse smelling of tar, with swallows flying in and out. Next to the boathouse were two large smoking ovens.

  ‘Your wife said there weren’t any eels left to catch,’ Wallander said. ‘Are things really that bad?’

  ‘Even worse,’ said Lundberg. ‘Soon there won’t be any fish left at all. Didn’t she say that?’

  The red-painted two-storey house could just be seen in a dip about a hundred yards from the water’s edge. Plastic toys were scattered about in front. Lundberg’s wife, Anna, seemed just as cautious when they shook hands as she had on the phone.

  The kitchen smelled of boiled potatoes and fish, and a radio was playing almost inaudible music. Anna Lundberg put a coffee pot on the table, then left the room. She was about the same age as her husband, and in a way they were quite similar in appearance.

  A dog came bounding into the kitchen from some other room. A handsome cocker spaniel, Wallander thought, and stroked it while Lundberg was serving coffee.

  Wallander laid the photo on the table. Lundberg took a pair of glasses from his breast pocket. He glanced at the picture, then slid it to one side.

  ‘That must have been 1968 or 1969. In the autumn, if I remember correctly.’

  ‘I found it among Håkan von Enke’s papers.’

  Lundberg looked him straight in the eye.

  ‘I don’t know who that man is.’

  ‘He was a high-ranking officer in the Swedish navy. A commander. Could your father have known him?’

  ‘It’s possible. But I doubt it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He wasn’t all that fond of military men.’

  ‘You’re in the picture as well.’

  ‘I can’t answer your questions. Even if I’d like to.’

  Wallander decided to try a different tack and started again from the beginning.

  ‘Were you born here on the island?’

  ‘Yes. So was my dad. I’m the fourth generation.’

  ‘When did he die?’

  ‘In 1994. He had a heart attack while he was out in the boat, dealing with the nets. When he didn’t come home, I called the coastguard. Our neighbour Lasse Åman found him. He was lying in the boat and drifting towards Björkskär. But I reckon that was how the old man would have preferred to go.’

  Wallander thought he could detect a tone of voice that suggested the father–son relationship was less than perfect.

  ‘Have you always lived here on the island? While your father was alive?’

  ‘That would never have worked. You can’t be a hired hand for your own father. Especially when he makes all the decisions, and is always right. Even when he’s completely wrong.’

  Eskil Lundberg burst out laughing.

  ‘It wasn’t only when we were out fishing that he was always right,’ he said. ‘I remember we were watching a TV show one evening, some kind of quiz show. The question was: Which country shares a border with the Rock of Gibraltar? He said it was Italy and I said it was Spain. When it turned out that I was right, he switched off the television and went to bed. That’s the way he was.’

  ‘And so you moved away?’

  Eskil Lundberg pulled a face.

  ‘Is it important?’

  ‘It might be.’

  ‘Tell me again, one more time, so that I understand. Somebody disappeared, is that right?’

  ‘Two people, a man and his wife. Håkan and Louise von Enke. I found this photo in a diary belonging to the husband, the naval commander.’

  ‘They live in Stockholm, you said? And you’re from Ystad? What’s the connection?’

  ‘My daughter is going to marry the son of the missing couple. They have a child. The couple who have vanished are her future parents-in-law.’

  Lundberg nodded. He suddenly seemed to be looking at Wallander less suspiciously.

  ‘I left the island as soon as I finished school,’ he said. ‘I found a job in a factory just outside Kalmar. I lived there for a year. Then I came back home and worked with my dad as a fisherman. But we couldn’t get along. If you didn’t do exactly as he said, he was furious. I left again.’

  ‘Did you go back to the factory?’

  ‘Not that one. I travelled east, to the island of Gotla
nd. I worked in the cement factory at Slite for twenty years, until Dad got sick. It was on Gotland that I met my wife. We had two children. We came back here when Dad couldn’t keep the business going any longer. Mum had died and my sister lives in Denmark, so we were the only ones who could help out. We own farmland, fishing waters, thirty-six little islands, countless rocky outcrops.’

  ‘So that means you weren’t here in the early 1980s?’

  ‘The occasional week in the summer, but that’s all.’

  ‘Could it be that around that time your father was in touch with a naval officer?’ Wallander asked. ‘Without you knowing about it?’

  Lundberg shook his head energetically.

  ‘That wouldn’t fit at all with the way he was. He thought there should be a bounty on the head of every member of the Swedish navy. Especially if they were captains.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They were far too gung-ho during their manoeuvres. We have a jetty on the other side of the island where the trawler used to be berthed. Two years in a row the swell from the navy boats wrecked it – the stone caissons were dragged loose. And they refused to pay for repairs. Dad wrote letters, protested, but nothing happened. And the crew often threw slops from the kitchen into wells on the islands – if you know what a freshwater well means to island dwellers, you don’t do things like that. There were other things too.’

  Lundberg seemed to hesitate again. Wallander waited, didn’t nudge him.

  ‘Shortly before he died, he told me about something that happened at the beginning of the 1980s,’ Lundberg said eventually. ‘You could say that he’d become less malevolent, finally reconciled to the fact that I was going to take over everything, no matter what.’

  Lundberg stood up and left the room. Wallander was beginning to think that he wasn’t going to say any more when he came back, carrying a few old diaries.

  ‘September 1982,’ he said. ‘These are his diaries. He noted down catches, and the weather. But also anything unusual that happened. And something unusual happened on 19 September 1982.’

  He passed the diary over the table to Wallander and pointed out the appropriate place. It said, in very neat handwriting: Almost pulled down.

  ‘What did he mean by that?’

  ‘He told me about it once. At first I thought he was confused and sinking into senility, but what he said was too detailed to be imagined.’

  ‘Tell me all about it, from the beginning,’ said Wallander. ‘I’m especially interested in what happened in the autumn of 1982.’

  Lundberg moved his cup to one side, as if he needed the extra space in order to tell his story.

  ‘He was drifting off the east coast of Gotland, fishing, when it happened. The boat seemed to come to a sudden stop. Something was tugging at the nets, and the boat nearly capsised. He had no idea what had happened, apart from the obvious fact that something heavy had become caught in the nets. He was very careful because in his younger days he had occasionally fished up gas shells. He and the two assistants he had on board tried to cut themselves loose – but then they realised that the boat had turned and the trawl had worked itself free. They managed to haul it in, and found they had caught a steel cylinder about three feet long. It wasn’t a shell or a mine; it looked more like a part of a ship’s engine. It was heavy, and it didn’t seem to have been lying in the water very long. They tried to decide what it was, but to no avail. When they got back home Dad continued examining the cylinder, but he couldn’t work out what it had been used for. He put it aside and continued repairing the trawl. He had always been cheap, and it went against the grain to throw anything away. But there’s a sequel to the story.’

  Lundberg slid the diary back towards himself and leafed forward a few days, to 27 September. Once again he showed Wallander the open page. They are searching. Three words, no more.

  ‘He’d almost forgotten about the cylinder when navy vessels suddenly started turning up at the precise spot where he’d found it. He often used to fish there, off the east coast of Gotland. He knew it wasn’t a routine manoeuvre – the ships were moving in such strange ways. They would stay still for a while, then start moving in ever-decreasing circles. It wasn’t long before he worked out what was going on.’

  Lundberg closed the diary and looked at Wallander.

  ‘They were looking for something they had lost. But Dad didn’t have the slightest intention of returning the steel cylinder. It had ruined his trawl. He continued fishing and took no notice of them.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘The navy had ships and divers deployed there during the autumn and on until December. Then the last of the ships moved away. There were rumours that a submarine had sunk there. But the place where they were searching wasn’t deep enough for a submarine. The navy never got its cylinder back, and Dad never really understood what it was. But he was pleased to have got back at them for destroying his jetty. I honestly can’t believe that he was in close touch with a naval officer.’

  They sat there without speaking. Wallander was trying to work out how von Enke could have fitted in to what he had just been told.

  ‘I think it’s still there,’ said Lundberg.

  Wallander thought he must have misheard, but Eskil Lundberg had already got to his feet.

  ‘The cylinder,’ he said. ‘I think it’s still in the shed.’

  They left the house, the dog scampering around at their feet sniffing for tracks. A wind was blowing up. Anna Lundberg was hanging washing on a line suspended between two old cherry trees. The white pillowcases were smacking in the wind. Behind the boathouse was a shed balancing precariously on the uneven rocks. There was just one light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Wallander entered a space full of smells. An ancient-looking eel spear hung from one of the walls. Lundberg squatted down and rummaged around in one corner of the shed among tangled ropes, broken bailers, old cork floats and tattered nets. He poked and prodded with a degree of violence that suggested he shared his father’s anger at the trouble caused by the navy. He eventually stood up, took a step to one side and pointed. Wallander could see a cylindrical object, in grey steel, like a large cigar case with a diameter of about eight inches. At one end was a half-open lid, revealing a mass of electric cords and switching relays.

  ‘We can take it outside,’ said Lundberg, ‘if you give me a hand.’

  They lifted it down onto the jetty. The dog ran up immediately to examine it. Wallander tried to imagine what the cylinder’s function could be. He doubted it was part of an engine. It might have something to do with radar equipment, or with the launching of torpedoes or mines.

  Wallander squatted down and searched for a serial number or a place of manufacture, but found nothing. The dog was licking his face until Lundberg shooed her away.

  ‘What do you think it is?’ he asked when he stood up again.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Lundberg. ‘Neither did my dad. He didn’t like that. That’s one way in which I’m like him. We want answers to our questions.’

  Lundberg paused for a few moments before continuing.

  ‘I don’t need it. Maybe it’s of some use to you?’

  Wallander didn’t realise at first that Lundberg was referring to the steel cylinder at their feet.

  ‘Yes, I’d be happy to take it,’ he said, thinking that Sten Nordlander might be able to explain what the cylinder was used for.

  They put it in the boat and Wallander unfastened the line. Lundberg turned east and headed for the strait between Bokö and Björkskär. They passed a small island with a building at the edge of a clump of trees.

  ‘An old hunting lodge,’ said Lundberg. ‘They used to use it as a base when they were out shooting seabirds. My dad sometimes stayed there for a few nights when he wanted to spend some time drinking and be on his own. It’s a good hiding place for anybody who wants to disappear from the face of the earth for a while.’

  They docked at the pier. Wallander reversed the car to the water’s edge, and they li
fted the steel cylinder onto the back seat.

  ‘There’s one thing I’m wondering about,’ said Lundberg. ‘You said that both husband and wife vanished. Am I right in thinking that they didn’t disappear at the same time?’

  ‘Yes. Håkan von Enke disappeared in April, and his wife only a few weeks ago.’

  ‘That’s strange. The fact that there’s no trace of them at all. Where could he have gone to? Or they?’

  ‘We simply don’t know. They might be alive, they might be dead.’

  Lundberg shook his head.

  ‘There’s still the question about the photograph,’ said Wallander.

  ‘I don’t have an answer for you.’

  Was it because Lundberg’s reply came too quickly? Wallander wasn’t sure, but he did wonder, purely intuitively, if what Lundberg said was true. Was there something he didn’t want to tell Wallander about, despite everything?

  ‘Maybe it will come to you,’ said Wallander. ‘You never know. A memory might rise to the surface one of these days.’

  Wallander watched him backing away from the quay, then they both raised their hands to say goodbye, and the boat shot off at high speed towards the strait and Halsö.

  Wallander took a different route home. He wanted to avoid passing that little cafe again.

  When he arrived he was tired and hungry, and he didn’t pick up Jussi from the neighbour’s. He could hear the rumble of thunder in the distance. It had been raining; he could smell it in the grass under his feet.

  He unlocked the door and went into the house, took off his jacket and kicked off his shoes.

  He paused in the hall, held his breath, listened intently. Nobody there. Nothing had been disturbed, but even so he knew that somebody had been in the house while he was away. He went into the kitchen in his socks. No message on the table. If it had been Linda, she would have scribbled a note and left it there. He went into the living room and looked around.

  He’d had a visitor. Somebody had been there and had left.