The Dogs of Riga: A Kurt Wallendar Mystery

by Henning Mankell

  Mossby Strand was deserted. As he clambered out of his car, the icy wind met him head-on. The beach shop was boarded up, and the shutters were creaking and groaning in the wind. High up on the path that sloped down to the beach was a woman waving her arms about agitatedly, the dog beside her tugging at its lead. Wallander strode out, fearful as usual about what was in store for him—he would never be able to reconcile himself to the sight of dead bodies. Dead people were just like the living. Always different.

  “Over there,” screeched the woman hysterically. Wallander looked in the direction she was pointing. A red life raft was bobbing up and down at the water’s edge, where it had become stuck among some rocks by the bathing jetty.

  “Wait here,” Wallander told the woman.

  He scrambled down the slope and ran over the sand, then walked out along the jetty and looked down into the rubber boat. There were two men, lying with their arms wrapped around each other, their faces ashen. He tried to capture what he saw in a mental photograph. His many years as a police officer had taught him that the first impression was always important. A dead body was generally the end of a long and complicated chain of events, and sometimes it was possible to get an idea of that chain right from the start.

  Martinsson waded out into the water to pull the life raft ashore, wearing gum boots. Wallander squatted down to examine the bodies. He could see Peters trying to calm the woman. It struck him how fortunate they were that the boat hadn’t come ashore in the summer, when there would have been hundreds of children playing and swimming on the beach. What he was looking at was not a pretty sight, and there was the unmistakable stench of rotting flesh despite the fierce wind.

  He took a pair of rubber gloves from his jacket and searched the men’s pockets carefully. He found nothing at all. When he opened the jacket of one of the men he could see a liver-colored stain on the chest of the white shirt. He looked at Martinsson.

  “This is no accident,” he said. “It’s murder. This man has been shot straight through the heart.”

  He stood up and moved to one side so that Norén could photograph the life raft.

  “What do you think?” he asked Martinsson.

  Martinsson shook his head.

  “I don’t know.”

  Wallander walked slowly around the boat without taking his eyes off the two dead men. Both were fair-haired, probably in their early 30s. Judging by their hands and clothes, they were not manual laborers. Who were they? Why was there nothing in their pockets? He continued walking around and around the boat, occasionally exchanging a few words with Martinsson. After half an hour he decided that there was nothing more for him to discover. By then the forensic team had begun their methodical examination. A plastic tent had been put up over the rubber boat. Norén had finished taking photographs; everybody was bitterly cold and couldn’t wait to get away. Wallander wondered what Rydberg would have said. What would Rydberg have seen that he’d missed? He sat in his car with the engine running to keep warm. The sea was gray and his head felt empty. Who were these men?

  It was several hours before Wallander was able to give the ambulance men the okay, and they moved forward with their stretchers. By then, Wallander was so cold that he couldn’t stop shivering. They had no choice but to break a few bones to release the men from their embrace. When the bodies had been removed, Wallander gave the boat another thorough investigation, but found nothing, not even a paddle. He gazed out to sea, as if the solution was to be found somewhere on the horizon.

  “You’d better have a talk with the woman who discovered the life raft,” he said to Martinsson.

  “I’ve done that already,” Martinsson said, surprised.

  “A serious talk,” Wallander said. “You can’t talk seriously in this wind. Take her down to the station. Norén must make sure this boat arrives there in the same state it’s in now. Tell him that.”

  Then he returned to his car.

  This is when I could have used Rydberg, he said to himself. What is it that I can’t see? What would he have been thinking now?

  When he got back to the station in Ystad, he went straight to see Björk, the chief of police, and reported briefly on what he’d seen out at Mossby Strand. Björk listened anxiously. He often seemed to Wallander to consider himself to have been attacked personally whenever a violent crime was committed in his district. At the same time, Wallander respected his boss. He never interfered in the investigations being carried out by his officers, and he was generous with his encouragement when a case seemed to be running out of steam. Sometimes he could be a bit temperamental, but Wallander was used to that.

  “I want you to take charge,” Björk said when Wallander had finished. “Martinsson and Hansson can give you some help. I think we can assign several men to this case.”

  “Hansson’s busy with that rapist we arrested the other night,” Wallander pointed out. “Wouldn’t it be better to use Svedberg?”

  Björk agreed. Wallander got his way, as usual.

  As he left Björk’s office, Wallander realized he was hungry. He was prone to put on weight, so he did without lunch, but the dead men in the boat worried him. He drove into town and parked as usual in Stickgatan, then made his way down the narrow, winding streets to Fridolf’s Café. He ordered some sandwiches and drank a glass of milk, going over what had happened in his mind. The previous evening, shortly before 6 p.m., a man had made an anonymous call to the police and warned them of what was to happen. Now they knew he’d been telling the truth. A red rubber life raft is washed ashore, containing two dead men. At least one of them has been murdered, shot through the heart. There is nothing at all in their pockets to indicate who they are.

  That was it.

  Wallander took out a pen and scribbled some notes on a paper napkin. He already had a long list of questions that needed answering. All the while, he was conducting a silent conversation with Rydberg. Am I on the right track, have I overlooked anything? He tried to imagine Rydberg’s answers and reactions. Sometimes he succeeded, but often all he could see was Rydberg’s drawn, haggard face as he lay on his deathbed.

  By 3:30 p.m. he was on his way back to the station. He called Martinsson and Svedberg into his office, closed the door and instructed the switchboard to hold his calls.

  “This isn’t going to be easy,” he began. “We can only hope the postmortems and the forensic team’s examination of the life raft and the clothes come up with something. All the same, there are a few questions I’d like answered right away.”

  Svedberg was leaning against the wall, notebook in hand. He was in his 40s and balding, born in Ystad, and rumor had it that he started feeling homesick the minute he left the town. He often gave the impression of being slow and lacking in interest, but he was thorough, and that was something Wallander appreciated. In many ways Martinsson was the opposite of Svedberg: he was coming up on 30, born in Trollhättan, and had set his sights early on a police career. He was also involved in Liberal Party politics, and according to what Wallander had heard, had a good chance of being elected to the local council in the autumn elections. As a police officer, Martinsson was impulsive and sometimes careless, but he often had good ideas, and his ambition meant that he worked tirelessly when he thought he could see a solution to a problem.

  “I want to know where this life raft came from,” Wallander said. “When we know how long the two men have been dead, we’ll have to try and work out which direction the boat came from and how far it’s drifted.”

  Svedberg stared at him in surprise.

  “Will that be possible?” he asked.

  “We must talk to the meteorological office,” Wallander said. “They know all there is to know about the weather and the wind. We ought to be able to get a rough idea of where the boat has come from. And I want to know everything we can find out about the life raft itself. Where it was made, what type of vessels might carry such rafts. Everything.”

  He nodded towards Martinsson.

  “That’s your jo
b.”

  “Shouldn’t we begin by running a computer search to see if the men are listed anywhere as missing?” Martinsson asked.

  “You can start by doing that,” Wallander said. “Get in touch with the coast guard, contact all their stations along the south coast. And see what Björk has to say about bringing in Interpol right away. It’s obvious that if we’re going to trace who they are, we’ll have to cast our nets wide from the very beginning.”

  Martinsson nodded and made a note on a sheet of paper. Svedberg chewed thoughtfully on his pencil.

  “The forensic team will go over the men’s clothes thoroughly,” Wallander continued. “They must find some clues.”

  There was a knock on the door and Norén came in, carrying a rolled-up nautical chart.

  “I thought you might need this,” he said.

  They spread it out over his desk and pored over it, as if planning a naval battle.

  “How fast does a life raft drift?” Svedberg asked. “Currents and winds can slow it down as well as speed it up.”

  They contemplated the chart in silence. Then Wallander rolled it up again and stood it in the corner behind his chair. Nobody had anything to say.

  “Let’s get going, then,” he said. “We can meet here again at 6 p.m. and see how far we’ve gotten.”

  As Svedberg and Norén left the room, Wallander asked Martinsson to stay behind.

  “What did the woman have to say?” he asked.

  Martinsson shrugged.

  “Mrs. Forsell,” he said. “A widow. Lives in Mossby. She’s a retired teacher from the grammar school in Ängelholm. Lives here all the year round with her dog, Tegnér. Fancy naming a dog after a poet! Every day they go out for some fresh air on the beach. When she walked along the cliffs last night, there was no sign of a life raft; but it was there this morning. She saw it at about 10:15 a.m. and called us right away.”

  “Ten fifteen a.m.,” Wallander said thoughtfully. “Isn’t that a bit late to be walking a dog?”

  Martinsson nodded.

  “That occurred to me as well, but it turned out she’d been out at seven o’clock too, but they walked along the beach in the other direction.”

  Wallander changed the subject.

  “The man who rang yesterday,” he asked, “what did he sound like?”

  “Like I said. Convincing.”

  “Did he have an accent? Could you tell how old he was?”

  “He had a local accent. Like Svedberg’s. His voice was hoarse; I wouldn’t be surprised to find he’s a smoker. In his 40s or 50s, I’d say. He spoke simply and clearly. He could be anything from a bank clerk to a farmer.”

  Wallander had one more question.

  “Why did he call?”

  “I’ve been wondering that,” Martinsson answered. “He might have known the boat would drift ashore because he’d been mixed up in it himself. He might have been the one who did the shooting. He might have seen something, or heard something. There are several possibilities.”

  “What’s the logical explanation?”

  “The last one,” Martinsson answered without hesitation. “He saw or heard something. This doesn’t seem to be the type of murder where the killer would choose to set the police on his trail.”

  Wallander had come to the same conclusion.

  “Let’s go a step further,” he said. “Seen or heard something? Two men dead in a life raft? If he isn’t involved, he can hardly have seen the murder or murders. That means he must have seen the raft.”

  “A life raft drifting at sea,” Martinsson said. “How do you see something like that? Only by being in a boat yourself.”

  “Exactly,” Wallander said. “Precisely. But if he didn’t do it, why does he want to remain anonymous?”

  “Some people prefer not to get involved in things,” Martinsson said. “You know how it is.”

  “Could be. But there might be another explanation. He might have quite a different reason for not wanting to get mixed up with the police.”

  “Isn’t that a bit far-fetched?”

  “I’m only thinking aloud,” Wallander said. “Somehow or other we have to trace that man.”

  “Shall we send out an appeal for him to get in touch with us again?”

  “Yes,” Wallander said. “Not today, though. I want to find out more about the dead men first.”

  Wallander drove to the hospital. He’d been there many times, but he still had trouble finding the newly built complex. He paused in the cafeteria on the ground floor and bought a banana, then went upstairs to the pathology department. The pathologist, whose name was Mörth, hadn’t yet started the detailed examination of the corpses. Even so, he was able to answer Wallander’s first question.

  “Both men were shot,” he stated. “At close range, through the heart. I assume that is the cause of death.”

  “I’d like to see your report as soon as possible,” Wallander said. “Is there anything you can say now about the time of death?”

  Mörth shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “But that’s an answer in a way.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “That they’ve probably been dead for quite a long time. That makes it more difficult to pin down the precise time of death.”

  “Two days? Three? A week?”

  “I can’t answer that,” Mörth said, “and I don’t want to guess.”

  He disappeared into the lab. Wallander took off his jacket, put on a pair of rubber gloves, and started to go through the men’s clothes, which were laid out on what looked like an old-fashioned kitchen sink.

  One of the suits was made in England, the other in Belgium. The shoes were Italian, and it seemed to Wallander that they were expensive. Shirts, ties and underwear told the same story: they were good quality, certainly not cheap. When Wallander had finished examining the clothes twice, he realized he was unlikely to get any further. All he knew was that in all probability, the two men were not short of money. But where were the wallets? Wedding rings? Watches? Even more bewildering was the fact that the men had not been wearing their jackets when they were shot. There were no holes or powder burns on them.

  Wallander tried to conjure up the scene. Somebody shoots two men straight through the heart. When they’re dead, whoever did it then puts their jackets on them before dumping the bodies into a life raft. Why?

  He went through the clothes one more time. There’s something I’m not seeing, he thought. Rydberg, help me.

  But Rydberg had nothing to say.

  Wallander went back to the police station. He knew the postmortems would take several hours, and that he wouldn’t get a preliminary report until the next day at the earliest. Back in his office, he found a note on his desk from Björk, saying they should wait another day or so before calling in Interpol. Wallander felt himself getting annoyed: he often found it hard to sympathize with Björk’s cautious approach.

  The meeting at 6 p.m. was brief. Martinsson reported that there was no record of any missing persons who could possibly be the men in the life raft. Svedberg had had a long discussion with someone at the meteorological office in Norrköping who had promised to help the moment he received a formal request from the Ystad police.

  Wallander told them that, as expected, the pathologist had confirmed that both men had been murdered. He asked Svedberg and Martinsson to consider why someone would have shot two men and then put their jackets back on the bodies.

  “Let’s keep going for a few more hours,” Wallander said. “If you’re involved in other cases, either put them on ice for the time being or pass them on to somebody else. This is going to be a tough nut to crack. I’ll see to it that we get some more men first thing tomorrow.”

  When Wallander was alone in his office, he unrolled the chart on his desk again. With his finger, he traced the coastline as far as Mossby Strand. The raft could have drifted a long way, he thought. Or no distance at all. It might have been drifting backwards and forwards on the tide.

 
; The phone rang. For a moment he tried to decide whether to answer it: it was late, and he wanted to go home and think about what had happened in peace and quiet. But he lifted the receiver.

  It was Mörth.

  “Have you finished already?” Wallander asked, surprised.

  “No,” Mörth said. “But there’s something I think is important. Something I can let you know now.”

  Wallander held his breath.

  “The men are not Swedes,” Mörth said. “At least, they weren’t born in Sweden.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “I’ve looked at their teeth,” Mörth said. “Their dental work wasn’t done by a Swedish dentist. Could have been by Russian ones, though.”

  “Russian?”

  “Yes. Russian dentists. Or dentists from one of the Eastern bloc countries. They use quite different methods from us.”

  “Are you absolutely sure?”

  “I wouldn’t have called otherwise,” Mörth said, and Wallander could tell he was annoyed.

  “I believe you,” he said quickly.

  “There’s another thing,” Mörth continued. “Something that might be at least as important. These two men were no doubt very relieved when they were shot, if you’ll pardon my cynicism. They’d been tortured pretty comprehensively before they died. Burns, peeled skin, thumbscrews, the whole damned lot.”

  Wallander sat in silence.

  “Are you still there?” Mörth asked.

  “Yes,” Wallander said. “I’m still here. I’m just letting what you said sink in.”

  “I’m quite sure about it.”

  “I don’t doubt that for a moment. This is a bit out of the ordinary, though.”

  “That’s precisely why I thought it was important to phone you.”

  “You did the right thing,” Wallander said.

  “You’ll get my full report tomorrow,” Mörth said. “Apart from the results of laboratory tests that will take a bit longer.”

  He hung up. Wallander went out to the canteen. The room was deserted. He poured out the last drops from the coffee machine and sat down at one of the tables.