The Troubled Man

by Henning Mankell

  Eber sighed and scratched at where his hair used to be. Wallander knew it was important to keep a grip on him, otherwise he might disappear to spend endless hours composing his crossword puzzles.

  ‘What is it you want to forget?’ Wallander repeated.

  Eber began rocking back and forth on his chair, but he said nothing. Wallander’s patience was stretched thin.

  ‘I want to know if you can identify these substances,’ he said sharply.

  ‘I’ve dealt with them in the past.’

  ‘That’s not a good enough answer. “Dealt with”? You have to be clearer than that! Don’t forget you once promised me you’d do me a favour when I asked for one.’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten.’

  Eber shook his head, and Wallander could see that he was tortured by the situation.

  ‘Take your time,’ he said. ‘I need your answer, your views and your thoughts. But there’s no hurry. I can come back later if you prefer.’

  ‘No, no, stay! I just need time to find my way back into the past. It’s as if I’m being forced to dig out a tunnel that I’ve already refilled carefully.’

  Wallander stood up.

  ‘I’ll go for a walk,’ he said. ‘I’ll take a closer look at the Icelandic horses.’

  ‘Half an hour, that’s all I need.’

  Hermann Eber wiped the sweat from his brow. Wallander walked out of the hollow and back to the nearest paddock.

  After half an hour, it had started to get windy, and a bank of clouds was building up from the south. Hermann Eber was sitting motionless in the garden chair when Wallander opened the rusty gate. Now there was another book lying on the table, an old diary with brown covers. Eber started talking the moment Wallander sat down. When he was agitated, as he was now, his voice became shrill, almost strident. Wallander had several times wondered with distaste what it would have been like to be interrogated by Hermann Eber when he was still convinced that East Germany was a paradise on earth.

  ‘Igor Kirov,’ Eber began, ‘also known as “Boris”. That was his stage name, the alias he used. A Russian citizen, the official liaison with one of the KGB’s special divisions in Moscow. He came to East Berlin a few months before the Wall went up. I met him several times, though I had no direct contact with him. But there was no doubt about his reputation: Boris knew his stuff. He had zero tolerance for irregularities or slapdash procedures. It was no more than a couple of months before several of the highest officials in the Stasi had been transferred or demoted. You could say he was the Russian star, the much-feared centre of the KGB’s operations in East Berlin. Before he had been with us for six months, he had cracked Great Britain’s most efficient spy ring. Three or four of their agents were executed after secret and summary trials. They would normally have been exchanged for Soviet or East German agents imprisoned in London, but Boris went straight to Ulbricht and demanded that the British agents be executed. He wanted to send an unambiguous warning not only to foreign agents, but also to any East German citisens who might be contemplating treason. Boris had turned himself into a universally feared legend after less than a year in East Berlin. He apparently led a simple life. Nobody knew if he was married, if he had any children, if he drank, or even if he played chess. The only thing that could be said about him with any certainty was that he had a unique ability to organise effective cooperation between the Stasi and the KGB. When the end came, we in the Stasi were stunned. The whole of East Germany would have been, if events had been made public. But everything was hushed up, of course.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘One day he simply vanished. A magician had draped a cloth over his head and hey presto, he was no longer there! But obviously, nobody applauded. The big hero had sold his soul to the English, and of course to the USA as well. I don’t know how he managed to conceal the fact that he had been responsible for the execution of British agents. Perhaps he didn’t need to. Security organisations have to be cynical in order to operate efficiently. It was a slap in the face for both the KGB and the Stasi. Heads rolled. Ulbricht was summoned to Moscow and came back crestfallen, even though it was hardly his fault that Boris hadn’t been unmasked. Markus Wolf, the head of the Stasi, was very close to being left out in the cold. No doubt he would have been if he hadn’t issued an order that brings us back to why you’re sitting here today. An order that was given the highest priority.’

  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 Malmö, in a residential block just off Södra Förstadsgatan, 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 murder 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 Höör this morning,’ he said. ‘She said she was on her way to Småland, 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 Höör?’

  ‘I have a good friend there.’

  ‘In Höör?’

  ‘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 Håkan 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?’