The Dogs of Riga: A Kurt Wallendar Mystery

by Henning Mankell

  Nevertheless, something had made him keep going, and Preuss had sat beside him in the passenger seat, dozing all the time, while Wallander sped on following the directions Preuss gave him by pointing at a road atlas. They traveled eastwards through the former East Germany and by 5 p.m. were five kilometers short of the Polish border, where Wallander backed his car into a rickety barn next to a decaying farmhouse. The man who met them was yet another exiled Latvian, but he spoke good English. He promised that the car would be kept completely safe until Wallander returned. They waited until nightfall, then stumbled through a dense spruce forest until they reached the border, and crossed the first invisible line on the route to Riga. In a little town whose name Wallander quickly forgot, they were met by Janick, a man with a heavy cold, who picked them up in an old, rusty truck. A bumpy, jerky ride over the Polish steppe ensued. Wallander caught the driver’s cold, and longed for a decent meal and a bath, but all he was offered were cold pork chops and camp beds in freezing houses out in the Polish hinterland. Progress was slow. Generally they traveled at night or just before dawn. The rest of the time was passed in sleep or in uncomfortable silence. He tried to understand why Preuss was being so cautious. What had they to fear, as long as they were in Poland? He was given no explanation. Preuss understood little of what Wallander was saying, and Janick hummed an English pop song from the war years, when he wasn’t sniffing and snivelling and spreading germs in Wallander’s direction. When they finally got to the Lithuanian border Wallander had started to hate “We’ll Meet Again.” He could just as easily have been somewhere in the heart of Russia as in Poland. Or Czechoslovakia, or Bulgaria. He had completely lost all sense of where Sweden was in relation to where they were. The lunacy of the whole undertaking became more obvious with every kilometer that the truck took him deeper into the unknown. They traveled through Lithuania on a series of buses, none of which had any springs, and now, four whole days after Preuss had first contacted him on the ferry, they were close to the Latvian border, in the middle of a forest smelling strongly of resin.

  “Warten,” Preuss kept repeating, and Wallander sat down obediently on a tree stump and waited. He was cold, and felt sick.

  I’ll have pneumonia by the time I get to Riga, he thought desperately. Of all the stupid things I’ve done in my life, this is the stupidest, and it deserves no respect, nothing more than a loud guffaw of scorn. Here, on a tree stump in a Lithuanian forest, sits a Swedish police officer in early middle age, one who has completely lost his sense of judgment and gone out of his mind.

  But there was no going back. Clearly he would never be able to retrace his steps without help. He was totally dependent on the confounded Preuss, who the idiot Lippman had allocated to him as a guide, and there was no alternative but to keep going, further and further away from the dictates of reason, until they came to Riga.

  On the ferry, just as the Swedish coastline disappeared from view, Preuss had introduced himself as Wallander was having coffee in the cafeteria. They had gone out on deck in the biting wind. Preuss had with him a letter from Lippman, and to his astonishment Wallander found himself assuming yet another new identity. This time he wasn’t to be “Mr. Eckers,” but Herr Hegel, Herr Gottfried Hegel, a German sales representative for a sheet music and fine art book publisher. He was amazed when, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, Preuss handed over a German passport with Wallander’s photograph duly glued in place and stamped. He recognized it as a photograph Linda had taken of him several years earlier—how Lippman had got hold of it was a mystery. He was now Herr Hegel, and eventually realized from Preuss’s stubborn talk and gesticulating that he should hand over his Swedish passport for the time being. Wallander gave him the document, knowing he was insane to do so.

  It was now four days since he had been confronted by his new identity. Preuss had scrambled onto an uprooted tree, and Wallander could just see his face through the darkness. The man seemed to be peering into the east. It was a few minutes past midnight. Suddenly Preuss raised his hand and pointed eagerly to the east. They had hung a kerosene lamp on a branch so that Wallander wouldn’t lose contact with Preuss. He stood up and squinted in the direction Preuss was pointing. He made out a faint, blinking light as if a motorcyclist with a faulty engine was coming towards them.

  “Gehen!” he whispered. “Schnell, nun. Gehen!”

  Twigs and branches poked and scratched at Wallander’s face. I’m crossing the final border, he thought, but I have barbed wire in my stomach.

  They came to a boundary line cut through the forest like a street. Preuss held Wallander back briefly while he listened attentively, then he dragged him across the empty space and into the cover of the dense forest on the other side. After about ten minutes they came upon a muddy cart track and found a car waiting. Wallander could see the glow from a cigarette inside. Somebody got out and came towards him with a hooded flashlight. All of a sudden, he realized Inese was standing before him.

  It would be a long time before he forgot the surge of joy and relief at seeing her, at encountering something familiar after all the unknown. She smiled at him in the faint light from the flashlight, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. Preuss stretched out his skinny hand in farewell, then was swallowed up by the forest before Wallander even had time to say goodbye.

  “It’s a long way to Riga,” Inese said. “We must get going.”

  Occasionally they left the road so that Inese could have a rest, and they also had a puncture in one of the tires, which Wallander had managed to change with enormous effort. He had suggested he might do some of the driving, but she had merely shaken her head, without giving any explanation.

  He realized right away that something had happened. There was something hardened and determined about Inese that couldn’t simply be explained by exhaustion. He sat beside her in silence, unsure whether she’d have the strength to answer questions. He had been told that Baiba Liepa was expecting him, and that Upitis was still in prison, that his confession had been reported in the newspapers.

  “My name’s Gottfried Hegel this time,” he said when they’d been on their way for two hours and had stopped to fill up with gas from a spare can he’d gotten from the backseat.

  “I know,” Inese answered. “It’s not a very attractive name.”

  “Tell me why I’m here, Inese. How am I to help you?”

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she asked him if he was hungry and passed him a bottle of beer and two meat sandwiches in a paper bag. Then they continued their journey. At one point he dozed off, but shook himself awake, worried that she might fall asleep at the wheel.

  They reached the outskirts of Riga shortly before dawn. It was March 21, his sister’s birthday. In an attempt to embellish his new identity, he decided that Gottfried Hegel had a large number of brothers and sisters, and that his youngest sister was called Kristina. He could see Mrs. Hegel in his mind’s eye, a rather masculine woman with the beginnings of a moustache, and their house in Schwabingen built of red brick with a well-kept but characterless back garden. The story Lippman had supplied as background to the passport had been sketchy in the extreme. Wallander imagined it would take an experienced interrogator no more than a minute to demolish Gottfried Hegel, and expose the passport as fake.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “We’re nearly there,” she replied.

  “How can I be at all useful if nobody tells me anything?” he asked. “What are you keeping from me? What’s happened?”

  “I’m tired,” she said, “but we’re pleased you’ve come back. Baiba is happy. She’ll burst into tears when she sees you.”

  “Why won’t you answer my questions? Something’s happened, I can see you’re scared to death. What is it?”

  “Everything has become much more difficult these last two weeks, but it’s better if Baiba tells you herself. Anyway, there’s a lot I don’t know either.”

  They were driving through the endless suburbs. The silhoue
ttes of factories were vaguely visible against the yellow, streetlit sky. The deserted streets were shrouded in fog, and it occurred to Wallander that this was how he’d imagined the countries of Eastern Europe, countries that called themselves socialist and declared themselves to be paradise on earth.

  Inese stopped outside an oblong warehouse, switched off the engine, and pointed to a low, iron door at one gable end.

  “Go there,” she said. “Knock, and they’ll let you in. I must go.”

  “Will I see you again?”

  “I don’t know. That’s up to Baiba.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting you’re my girlfriend?”

  She smiled fleetingly before answering. “I might have been Mr. Eckers’s girlfriend,” she said, “but I’m not sure I’m as fond of Herr Hegel. I’m a good girl and I don’t run off with just any man.”

  Wallander got out and she drove off immediately. Just for a moment he considered trying to find a bus stop and traveling into the city center, where he’d be able to look for a Swedish consulate or embassy and get help to return home. He didn’t dare to imagine how a Swedish diplomat would react to the story the Swedish police officer would have to tell. He could only hope that handling acute mental derangement was one of the skills a diplomat possessed. But it was too late for that. He would have to go through with what he’d embarked on.

  He marched over the crunchy gravel and knocked on the iron door. A bearded man Wallander had never seen before opened it. He was cross-eyed, but gave him a friendly nod, peered over Wallander’s shoulder to make sure he hadn’t been followed, then ushered him quickly in and closed the door.

  Wallander found himself in a warehouse full of toys. Wherever he looked were wooden shelves piled high with dolls. It was as if he’d descended into an underground catacomb with dolls’ faces grinning at him like evil skulls. It was like a dream. Maybe he was in bed at his Mariagatan apartment in Ystad and nothing that surrounded him was real? All he needed to do was to breathe steadily and wait until he woke up. But there was no welcome awakening to look forward to. Three more men emerged from the shadows, followed by a woman. Wallander recognized the driver who had sat in silence in the shadows when he had spoken to Upitis.

  “Mr. Wallander,” the man who had opened the door for him said, “we’re so pleased you’ve come to assist us.”

  “I’ve come because Baiba Liepa asked me to,” Wallander answered. “Not for any other reason. She’s the one I want to meet.”

  “That’s not possible just now,” said the woman, in faultless English. “Baiba is being watched constantly, but we think we know how we can get you to her.”

  Wallander sat down on a rickety wooden chair, and was handed a cup of tea. He had difficulty making out the men’s faces in the dim light. The cross-eyed man, who seemed to be the leader of the welcoming committee, squatted down in front of Wallander.

  “We are in a very difficult position,” he said. “We’re all under constant observation because the police know there is a risk that Major Liepa has hidden away some documents that could threaten their existence.”

  “So Baiba hasn’t found the papers?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Has she any idea at all where he might have hidden them?”

  “No. But she believes you will be able to help her.”

  “How will I be able to do that?”

  “You are on our side, Mr. Wallander. You’re a police officer and used to solving riddles.”

  They’re insane, Wallander thought indignantly. They’re living in a dream world, and I’m the last straw they have to clutch at. All at once he could understand what oppression and fear did to people. They put their hope in some unknown savior who would spring from nowhere and redeem them.

  Major Liepa had not been like that. He trusted no one but himself and his close friends and confidants. For him the alpha and omega of all the injustices forced upon the Latvian nation was reality. He was religious, but had refrained from allowing his religious ideals to be obscured by a god. Now the major was gone, and they no longer had a central point from which to orientate themselves: Kurt Wallander, the Swedish police officer, would have to enter the arena and shoulder the fallen mantle.

  “I must see Baiba Liepa as soon as possible,” he insisted. “That’s the only thing that really matters.”

  “That will happen during the course of today,” the cross-eyed man said.

  Wallander felt exhausted. What he would most like to do would be to have a bath and then climb into bed and sleep. He didn’t trust his own judgment when he was overtired, and he was afraid that he would make a mistake that would have fatal consequences.

  The cross-eyed man was still squatting at his feet. Wallander noticed he had a revolver tucked inside his trousers.

  “What will happen when Major Liepa’s papers are found?” he asked.

  “We shall have to find ways of publishing them,” the man replied, “but the main thing is that you should get them out of the country and publish them in Sweden. That will be a revolutionary event, a historic occasion. The world will realize what has been going on in this stricken land of ours.”

  Wallander felt an overwhelming need to protest, to guide these confused people back to the path beaten by Major Liepa, but his weary brain was unable to conjure up the English word “savior,” and all he could manage to think was how incredible it was that he was here in Riga, in a toy warehouse, and that he didn’t have the slightest idea what he was going to do next.

  Then everything happened very fast. The warehouse door was flung open, Wallander got up from his chair and he saw Inese running between rows of shelves, screaming. He had no idea what was happening, but then came a violent explosion and he threw himself headlong behind some shelves crammed with dolls’ heads.

  The building was flooded with searchlights and there was a series of loud bangs, but it was only when he saw the cross-eyed man had taken out his revolver and fired that he realized the place was being subjected to intensive gunfire. He crawled further back behind the shelving but came up against a wall. The noise was unbearable. He heard a scream, and when he turned to look he saw that Inese had fallen over the chair he had just been sitting on. Her face was covered with blood and it seemed she had been shot straight through the eye. She was dead. At that very moment the cross-eyed man raised an arm to his head: he’d been hit, but Wallander couldn’t tell whether he was alive. He knew he must escape, but he was trapped in a corner and now the first of the men in uniform came racing up, machine guns in hand. Without hesitating, he knocked over a rack of Russian dolls which rained down on him, and he lay down on the floor, allowing himself to be immersed in a flood of toys. All the time he was thinking he would be discovered at any moment and shot—his false passport wouldn’t help him. Inese was dead, the warehouse had been surrounded, and the insane, daydreaming people inside had no chance to resist.

  The gunfire ceased as abruptly as it had started. The silence was deafening, and he tried not to breathe. He could hear voices, soldiers or police officers talking to one another, and then he recognized one of them: there was no doubt at all, it was Sergeant Zids. He could just see the uniformed men through his covering of dolls. All the major’s friends appeared to be dead and were being carried out on gray canvas stretchers. Then Sergeant Zids emerged from the shadows and ordered his men to search the warehouse. Wallander closed his eyes, thinking it would soon be over. He wondered if Linda would ever know what had happened to her father, who disappeared while holidaying in the Alps, or whether his disappearance would become a mystery in the annals of the Swedish police force.

  But nobody came to kick the dolls away from his face. The echoing jackboots slowly faded away, the sergeant’s irritated voice ceased to urge on his men, and only silence and the acrid stench of spent ammunition were left behind. Wallander had no idea how long he lay there, motionless. Eventually the cold of the concrete floor made him shiver so much that the dolls started rattling. He sat up carefully. One o
f his feet had gone to sleep, or been frozen stiff, he wasn’t sure which. The floor was spattered with blood, there were bullet holes everywhere, and he forced himself to take a series of deep breaths so as not to start vomiting.

  They know I’m here, he thought. It was me Sergeant Zids ordered his soldiers to look for. Or maybe they thought I hadn’t arrived yet? Perhaps they thought they had moved in too soon?

  He forced himself to think, even though he couldn’t get the image of Inese out of his mind. He would have to get out of this house of death, he would have to accept the fact that he was on his own now. There was only one thing to do: find the Swedish embassy. His heart was pounding violently, and he feared he was suffering a heart attack that he would never recover from. Tears streamed down his face as he thought of Inese lying dead. Looking back, he could never work out how long it took for him to regain his self-control and start to think rationally again.

  The iron door was locked. He assumed the whole warehouse was under observation. He would never be able to get away in daylight. Behind one of the overturned racks was a window, almost completely obscured by dust. He picked his way over to it through the broken and shattered toys, and looked out. Two jeeps were parked, facing the warehouse. Four soldiers were keeping watch on the building, their weapons at the ready. Wallander stepped back from the window and explored the building. He was thirsty—there must be water somewhere. While he was looking, his mind was working overtime. He was a hunted man, and the hunters had introduced themselves with shattering brutality. There was no question of establishing contact with Baiba Liepa. He might as well arrange his own execution. The two colonels, or at least one of them, would stop at nothing in order to prevent the major’s discoveries from being published. Shy, modest Inese had been gunned down in cold blood, like vermin. Perhaps it had been friendly Sergeant Zids who had fired the shot that had passed straight through her eye.