The Dogs of Riga: A Kurt Wallendar Mystery

by Henning Mankell

  CHAPTER 12

  Upitis was charged. When the police searched his apartment they found an old wooden club with strands of hair stuck to it. Upitis didn’t have an alibi for the night of Major Liepa’s murder. He claimed he was drunk, had been with some friends, but couldn’t remember whom. In the course of the morning Murniers sent out a squad of officers to question people who might have been able to supply Upitis with an alibi, but nobody remembered having seen or been visited by him. Murniers expended an enormous amount of energy on the search, while Colonel Putnis seemed more inclined to wait and see what developed.

  Wallander did everything he could to discover the truth. His first reaction when he saw Upitis through the two-way mirror was that Upitis had been betrayed, but then he started to have doubts. Too much was still unclear. Baiba Liepa’s description of living in a society where conspiracy was the highest common denominator echoed in his ears. Even if Major Liepa’s suspicions had been correct and Murniers was a corrupt police officer, if he was the person behind the major’s death, the whole case seemed to be descending into the unreal. Was Murniers prepared to risk sending an innocent man to court merely in order to get rid of him? Wasn’t that an act of extraordinary arrogance?

  “If he’s found guilty,” he asked Putnis, “what punishment will he get?”

  “We are sufficiently old-fashioned to have retained the death penalty,” Putnis said. “Murdering a high-ranking police officer is just about the worst crime you can commit. I would expect him to be shot. Personally, I think that would be an appropriate punishment—what is your view, Inspector Wallander?”

  Wallander made no reply. That he was in a country where they executed criminals was so horrific that he was rendered temporarily speechless.

  Putnis was playing a waiting game, and Wallander realized that the two colonels often went in different directions without telling each other. Putnis had not even been informed of Murniers’s anonymous tip. In the course of one of Murniers’s most frenzied moments of hyperactivity during the morning, Wallander had invited Putnis into his office, asked Sergeant Zids to fetch some coffee, and tried to get Putnis to explain to him what was actually going on. From the start he had observed a certain tension between the colonels, and now, when he was more confused than ever, he thought he had nothing to lose by putting his misgivings to Putnis.

  “Is this really the right man?” he asked. “What motive could he have? A wooden club with some bloodstains and strands of hair—how can that be proof before anybody has even carried out forensic tests? The hair could be from a cat, couldn’t it?”

  Putnis shrugged. “We shall see,” he said. “Murniers is pretty sure of what he’s doing. He very seldom arrests the wrong man—he’s much more efficient than I am. But you seem to have misgivings, Mr. Wallander. Might I ask on what grounds?”

  “I just wonder, that’s all,” Wallander said. “All too often I’ve arrested a criminal who seemed to be the most unlikely of suspects.”

  They sat in silence, drinking their coffee.

  “Of course, it would be marvelous if Major Liepa’s murderer could be caught,” Wallander said, “but this guy doesn’t look like the leader of a criminal network that made up its mind to dispose of a police officer.”

  “Possibly he’s a drug addict,” Putnis said hesitantly. “Drug addicts can be driven to do anything at all. Somebody in the background might have given him an order.”

  “To kill a senior police officer with a wooden club? A knife or a pistol, okay—but a wooden club? And how did he manage to carry the body to the harbor?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what Murniers is going to find out.”

  “How’s it going with that man you are interrogating?”

  “Well. He hasn’t admitted anything yet, but he will. I’m convinced he’s been part of the drug smuggling that the men who drifted ashore in the life raft were involved in. Just now I’m keeping him waiting, giving him time to think over the situation he’s in.”

  Putnis went back to his office, and Wallander sat perfectly still in his chair, trying to get a fix on the situation. He wondered whether Baiba Liepa knew that her friend Upitis had been arrested for the murder of her husband. He returned in his mind’s eye to the hunting lodge in the forest, and realized it was conceivable that Upitis might have been afraid that Wallander knew something which might also have forced him to smash a Swedish police officer’s head with a wooden club. Wallander could see that all theories were crumbling, all the trails getting cold, one by one. He tried to reassemble the pieces to see if there was anything he could salvage.

  After an hour of quiet contemplation, he concluded there was only one thing for him to do—go back to Sweden. He had come to Riga because the Latvian police had asked for his assistance. He hadn’t been able to give them any help, and now that a culprit seemed to have been arrested, there was no longer any reason for him to stay. He had no choice but to accept his own confusion, accept that he had actually been interrogated at night by a man who might turn out to be the person he’d been looking for. He had played the role of Mr. Eckers without knowing anything about the play he assumed he was taking part in. The only sensible thing to do was to go home as soon as possible and forget the whole business. And yet, he was reluctant to do that. Beyond all the uneasiness and confusion there was something else: Baiba Liepa’s fear and defiance, Upitis’s weary eyes. It occurred to him that much about Latvian society was beyond his comprehension; it might also be that he could see things the others couldn’t see.

  He decided to give it a few more days. As he felt the need to do something practical, instead of just sitting and brooding in his office, he asked Sergeant Zids, who had been waiting patiently in the corridor, to fetch the documentation for all the cases Major Liepa had been concerned with over the past twelve months. He could see no obvious way forward, so he decided to go backwards for a while, into the major’s recent past. Perhaps he might be able to find something in the archives that could provide a lead.

  Sergeant Zids demonstrated his usual efficiency by returning after half an hour with a bundle of dusty files. Six hours later Sergeant Zids was hoarse and complaining of a headache. Wallander had allowed neither Zids nor himself a lunch break: they had gone through the files one by one, and Sergeant Zids had translated, explained, answered Wallander’s questions, then gone on translating. Now they had come to the last page of the last report in the last file, and Wallander had to face his disappointment. He knew that during the last year of his life Major Liepa had arrested a rapist, a robber who had been terrorizing one of Riga’s suburbs for ages, solved two cases of postal forgery, and cracked three murders of which two had taken place in families where the murderer and the victim had known each other. He had found no trace of what Baiba Liepa had maintained was her husband’s real task. There was no doubt that Major Liepa had been a conscientious and at times even pedantic investigator, but that was all Wallander had been able to glean from the day’s work. As he sent Zids off to return the files, it occurred to him that the only remarkable thing about them was what wasn’t there. Major Liepa must have saved his data from the covert investigation somewhere, Wallander was certain of it. He couldn’t have carried it all in his head. He had no doubt there was a risk of being caught out, so how could he seriously contemplate conducting an investigation aimed at the future without leaving a testimony somewhere or another? He could have been run over by a bus, and there would be no record. There must be a written record somewhere, and somebody must know where it was. Did Baiba Liepa know? Or Upitis? Was there some other person in the major’s background, somebody the major had even kept secret from his wife? “Every secret we confide in another person can be a burden to them,” Baiba Liepa had said, and those were certainly her husband’s words.

  Sergeant Zids came back from the archives.

  “Did Major Liepa have any family apart from his wife?” Wallander asked him.

  “I don’t know,” he replied, “but no doubt Mrs. Liepa
will.”

  Wallander didn’t want to ask Baiba Liepa that question just yet. He thought that from now on, he had no alternative but to follow what seemed to be the normal procedure here, and not to pass on any unnecessary information or confidences, but act on his own according to a private agenda.

  “There must be a personal dossier on Major Liepa,” he said. “I’d like to see it.”

  “I don’t have access to that,” Sergeant Zids said. “Only a few people can access the personal archives.”

  Wallander pointed to the telephone. “Call somebody who does have that access,” he said. “Tell them that the Swedish police officer wants to see Major Liepa’s personal dossier.”

  Sergeant Zids finally managed to contact Colonel Murniers, who promised that Major Liepa’s dossier would be produced immediately. Three quarters of an hour later it was on Wallander’s desk. It was in a red file, and the first thing he saw on opening it was the major’s face. It was an old photograph, and he was surprised to see that the major’s appearance had hardly changed in over ten years.

  “Translate!” he told Zids.

  The sergeant shook his head. “I don’t have the authority to see the contents of red files,” he said.

  “If you’re allowed to collect the file, surely you’re allowed to translate the contents for me?”

  Sergeant Zids shook his head sadly. “I don’t have the authority,” he said.

  “I’m giving you the authority. All you need to do is to tell me if Major Liepa had any other family besides his wife. Then I’ll order you to forget everything.”

  Reluctantly, Sergeant Zids sat down and leafed through the papers. Wallander had the impression that Zids was handling the papers with as much distaste as if they were dead bodies.

  Major Liepa had a father. According to the dossier he had the same first name as his son, Karlis, and was a retired postmaster with an address in Ventspils. Wallander recalled the brochure the red-lipped lady at the hotel had shown him: it contained details of an excursion to the coast and the town of Ventspils. Major Liepa’s father was 74, and a widower. Wallander studied the major’s face one more time, and pushed the file to one side. At that moment Murniers entered the room. Sergeant Zids hurriedly got to his feet and tried to put as much distance as possible between himself and the red file.

  “Have you found anything interesting?” Murniers asked. “Anything we’ve overlooked?”

  “Nothing. I was just going to send the dossier back to the archive.”

  The sergeant took the file and left the room.

  “How is the interrogation of the man you’ve arrested?” Wallander asked.

  “We’ll break him,” Murniers said coldly. “I’m sure we’ve got the right man, even if Colonel Putnis seems to have his doubts.”

  I also have my doubts, Wallander thought. Maybe I can talk to Putnis about it when we meet tonight? Try to find out what grounds we have for our doubts?

  He decided there and then that it was the time to set off on a lonely march out of his confusion. There was no reason any longer to keep his thoughts to himself. In the realm of lies, perhaps the half-truth is king, he told himself. Why stick to the facts when all around the truth is being twisted every which way?

  “I’ve been very puzzled by something Major Liepa said to me during his stay in Sweden,” he said. “It wasn’t clear what he meant. He had drunk a good deal of whisky, but he seemed to be suggesting he was worried that some of his colleagues might not be totally reliable.”

  Murniers showed no sign of surprise at what Wallander said.

  “He was a bit drunk, of course,” Wallander went on, feeling a little uneasy about slandering a dead colleague, “but I think he suspected that one of his superiors was in collusion with various criminal networks here in Latvia.”

  “An interesting claim, even if it did come from a drunk man,” Murniers said thoughtfully. “If he used the word ‘superiors,’ he could only have been referring to Colonel Putnis and myself.”

  “He didn’t name any names,” Wallander said.

  “Did he give any reasons for his suspicions?”

  “He spoke about drug smuggling. About new routes through Eastern Europe. He thought it would be impossible to exploit these trafficking routes without some highly placed person protecting the activity.”

  “That’s interesting,” Murniers said. “I always regarded Major Liepa as an unusually rational person. A man with a very special conscience.”

  He’s unconcerned, Wallander thought. Would that be possible if Major Liepa was right?

  “What conclusions do you draw yourself?” Murniers asked.

  “None at all. I just thought I’d mention it.”

  “You were right to,” Murniers said. “Perhaps you should mention it to my colleague Colonel Putnis as well.”

  Murniers left. Wallander put on his jacket and found Sergeant Zids in the corridor. When he got back to the hotel he lay on the bed and slept for an hour. He forced himself to take a quick, cold shower and put on the dark blue suit he had brought with him from Sweden. Shortly after 7 p.m. he went down to the foyer where Sergeant Zids was leaning on the reception desk, waiting for him.

  Colonel Putnis lived in the country, quite a way south of Riga. It occurred to Wallander during the journey that he was always being driven through Latvia at night. He was moving in the dark, and thinking in the dark. Sitting in the back of the car, he suddenly felt pangs of homesickness. He realized that what caused it was the vagueness of his mission. He stared out into the darkness, and decided he had better phone his father the next day. His father was bound to ask when he was coming home. Soon, he’d say. Very soon.

  Sergeant Zids turned off the main road and drove through tall iron gates. Colonel Putnis’s driveway was the best cared for stretch of road Wallander had encountered during his stay in Latvia. Sergeant Zids pulled up alongside a terrace lit by spotlights. Wallander had a strong sense of finding himself in a different land. When he got out of the car and everything around him was no longer dark and decrepit, he had left Latvia behind.

  Colonel Putnis was on the terrace to welcome them. He had discarded his police uniform in favor of a well-cut suit that reminded Wallander of the clothes worn by the dead men in the life raft. Standing by his side was his wife, a woman much younger than her husband. Wallander guessed she was not yet 30. When they were introduced it emerged that she spoke excellent English, and Wallander strode into the handsome mansion with that special kind of well-being one only gets on completing a long and strenuous journey. Colonel Putnis, crystal whisky glass in hand, showed him around the house, and the colonel made no attempt to conceal his pride. Wallander could see that the rooms were furnished with pieces imported from the West, giving the house a luxurious, yet restrained air.

  No doubt I’d have been just like this couple if I lived in a country where everything seems nearly to be on the point of running out or breaking down, he thought. But the house must have cost a great deal of money, and he was surprised that a police colonel could earn as much. Bribes, he thought. Bribes and corruption. But then he quashed the thought immediately. He didn’t know Colonel Putnis and his wife, Ausma. Perhaps there were still such things as family fortunes in Latvia, despite the fact that those in government had had nearly 50 years in which to change all the financial norms? What did he know about it? Nothing.

  They dined by the light of a tall candelabra. Wallander gathered from the conversation that Ausma also worked for the police, but in a different sector. He had the impression that her work was top secret, and it occurred to him that she might belong to the local section of the Latvian KGB. She asked him a lot of questions about Sweden, and the wine encouraged him to be expansive, despite his efforts to control himself.

  After dinner Ausma disappeared into the kitchen to make coffee. Putnis served cognac in a living room where attractive leather armchairs stood in various groups. Wallander would never be able to afford furniture like that no matter how long he worked,
and the thought made him aggressive. He felt a vague personal responsibility. It was as if—by not protesting—he would have contributed to the bribes that made Colonel Putnis’s home affordable.

  “Latvia is a land of enormous contrasts,” he said, stumbling over the English words.

  “Isn’t Sweden as well?”

  “Of course—but not as obviously as here. It would be unthinkable for a Swedish police officer to live in a house like yours.”

  Colonel Putnis stretched out his hands as if to excuse himself.

  “My wife and I are not rich,” he said, “but we have lived frugally for many years. I’m 55 now, and would like to live in comfort in my old age. Is there anything wrong with that?”

  “I’m not talking about rights and wrongs,” Wallander said, “I’m talking about differences. When I met Major Liepa, it was the first time I’d come across anybody from one of the Baltic states. I had the impression he came from a country with much poverty.”

  “There are a lot of poor people here, I’m not denying that.”

  “I’d like to know how things really stand.”

  Colonel Putnis’s gaze was penetrating. “I don’t think I understand your question.”

  “With regard to bribes. Corruption. Links between criminal organizations and politicians. I’d like to know the answer to something Major Liepa said when he came to my apartment in Sweden. Something he said when he was about as drunk as I am now.”

  Colonel Putnis observed him with a smile. “Of course,” he said. “Of course I shall explain if I can—but first I need to know what Major Liepa actually said.”

  Wallander repeated the invented quotation he’d presented to Colonel Murniers a few hours earlier.

  “Irregularities do occur, even in the Latvian police force,” Putnis said. “Many police officers receive low wages, and the temptation to accept bribes can be great. At the same time, though, I have to say that Major Liepa had a tendency to exaggerate the prevailing circumstances. His honesty and industry were admirable, of course, but occasionally he may have been guilty of confusing facts with emotional misconceptions.”