The Troubled Man (2011)

by Henning Mankell

  ‘Presumably the threat of doomsday would be reduced?’

  Nordlander seemed almost impatient when he answered.

  ‘Military men have never been especially philosophical by nature. They are practical people. Hiding inside every competent general or admiral is nearly always a pretty good engineer. Doomsday wasn’t the most important question as far as they were concerned. What do you think it was?’

  ‘Defence expenditure?’

  ‘Right. Why should the Western world continue to be on a war footing if their main enemy was no longer a threat? You can’t find a new enemy of similar proportions just like that. China and to some extent India were next in line. But at that time China was still a non-starter in military terms. The core of their armed forces was still an apparently endless supply of soldiers to deploy at any given moment. But that wasn’t sufficient motivation for the Western world to continue developing advanced weapons designed exclusively for the arms race with Russia. So there was suddenly a major problem. It simply wasn’t appropriate to reveal what everybody knew, that the Russian bear was now limping badly. It was essential to make sure the spell didn’t break.’

  They came to a little hillock with a view of the sea. The previous year Wallander and Linda had carried there an old wooden bench she had bought at an auction for practically nothing. Now he and Nordlander sat down. Wallander shouted for Jussi, who clearly didn’t want to join them.

  ‘What we’re talking about took place when Russia was still a very real enemy,’ Nordlander went on. ‘It wasn’t only at ice hockey that we Swedes were convinced we’d never be able to beat them. We were certain that our enemies always came from the East, and hence we needed to be very aware of whatever they were up to in the Baltic Sea. It was around that time, at the end of the 1960s, that rumours started flying.’

  Nordlander looked around, as if he were afraid that somebody might be listening to their conversation. A combine was busy close to the main road to Simrishamn. Now and then the distant buzz of traffic drifted up to the hillock.

  ‘We knew that the Russians had a big naval base in Leningrad. And they had quite a few more bases, more or less secret, dotted around the Baltic Sea and in East Germany. We in Sweden weren’t the only ones blasting our way down into the rocks underneath the Baltic Sea. The Germans had been doing it even during the Hitler period, and the Russians continued in the same tradition after the swastika had been replaced by the red flag. A rumour spread that there was a cable over the bottom of the Baltic Sea, between Leningrad and their Baltic satellites, that handled most of their important electronic messages. It was considered safer to lay your own cables than to risk your messages being intercepted by others listening in to radio traffic. We shouldn’t forget that Sweden was deeply involved in what was going on. One of our reconnaissance planes was shot down at the beginning of the fifties, and nowadays nobody has any doubt that they were spying on the Russians.’

  ‘You say the cable was a rumour?’

  ‘It was supposedly laid at the beginning of the 1960s, when the Russians really believed that they could match the Americans and maybe even outdo them. Don’t forget how put out we were when the first Sputnik started cruising around up there in space and everybody was amazed that it wasn’t the Yanks who had launched it. There was some justification for the Russian view. It was a time when they nearly caught up with the West. Looking back, if you want to be cynical, you could say that was when they should have attacked. If they had wanted to start a war and bring about the doomsday scenario you talked about. In any case, it’s rumoured that there was a defector from the East German security forces, a general with a chest full of medals who had acquired a taste for the good life in London, and he is supposed to have revealed the existence of the cable to his British counterpart. The British then sold the information for a staggering amount to their American friends, who were always sitting at the ready with their hand held out. The problem was that they couldn’t send the really advanced US submarines through the Oresund because the Russians would have detected them immediately. So they had to find less conspicuous methods - mini-submarines and so on. But they didn’t have precise information. Where exactly was the cable? In the middle of the Baltic Sea, or had they chosen the shortest route from the Gulf of Finland? Perhaps the Russians had been even more cunning and laid it near Gotland, where nobody would have expected to find it. But they kept on looking, and the intention was to attach to it the sister of that bugging cylinder they had already placed off Kamchatka.’

  ‘You mean the one that’s now lying on my kitchen table?’

  ‘But is that the one? There could well be several.’

  ‘Even so, it’s all so strange. Russia no longer exists as a great power. The Baltic states are free again; the former East Germans are now united with the West Germans. Shouldn’t a bugging device like that be relegated to some museum of the Cold War?’

  ‘You would think so. I’m not capable of answering that question. All I can do is confirm what the thing is that’s come into your possession.’

  They continued their walk. It was only when they were back in the garden again that Wallander asked the most important question.

  ‘Where does this leave us with regard to the disappearance of Hakan and Louise?’

  ‘I don’t know. For me, it’s just becoming odder and odder. What are you going to do with the cylinder?’

  ‘Get in touch with the CID in Stockholm. The bottom line is that they are in charge of the investigation. What they do next in conjunction with Sapo has nothing to do with me.’

  At eleven o’clock Wallander drove Nordlander back to Sturup Airport. They said their goodbyes outside the yellow-painted terminal building. Yet again, Wallander tried to pay Nordlander’s travel expenses. But Sten Nordlander shook his head.

  ‘I want to know what happened. Never forget that Hakan was my best friend. I think about him every day. And about Louise.’

  He picked up his bag and went into the terminal. Wallander walked back to his car and drove home.

  When he entered the house he felt exhausted and wondered if he was becoming ill again. He decided to take a shower.

  The last thing he remembered was having difficulty closing the plastic shower curtain.

  When he woke up he was in a hospital room. Linda was standing at the foot of the bed. Fixed to the back of his hand was an IV supplying him with fluid. He had no idea why he was there.

  ‘What happened?’

  Linda told him, objectively, as if she were reading from a police report. Her words awoke no memories, merely filled the vacuum in his mind. She had called him at about six o’clock but there was no answer, even when she tried again repeatedly. By ten o’clock she was so worried that she left Klara with Hans, who was at home for once, and drove out to Loderup. She had found him in the shower, soaking wet and unconscious. She had called an ambulance, and was able to give the doctor who examined him some background information. It wasn’t long before it was established that Wallander had gone into insulin shock. His blood sugar level had become so low that he had lost consciousness.

  ‘I remember being hungry,’ he said slowly when Linda finished her account. ‘But I didn’t actually eat anything.’

  ‘You could have died,’ said Linda.

  He could see that she had tears in her eyes. If she hadn’t driven to his house, hadn’t suspected that something was wrong, his life could have ended there, with him naked on a tiled floor. He shuddered.

  ‘You neglect yourself, Dad,’ she said. ‘One of these days you’ll do it once too often. I want you to let Klara have a grandfather for at least another fifteen years. Then you can do whatever you want with your life.’

  ‘I don’t understand how it could have happened. It’s not the first time my blood sugar has been too low.’

  ‘You’ll have to discuss that with your doctor. I’m talking about something different. Your duty to stay alive.’

  He merely nodded. Every word he uttered was a
strain. He was filled with a strange feeling of echoing exhaustion.

  ‘What’s in the fluid I’m getting?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘How long am I going to have to lie here?’

  ‘I don’t know that either.’

  She stood up. He could see how tired she was, and realised with a sort of misty insight that she might have been sitting at his bedside for a long time.

  ‘Go home now,’ he said. ‘I’ll manage.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You’ll manage. This time.’

  She leaned over him and looked him in the eye.

  ‘Greetings from Klara. She also thinks it’s good that you survived.’

  Wallander was left alone in the room. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. What he wanted most of all was to wake up with the feeing that what had happened was not his fault.

  But later in the day Wallander was visited by his own doctor, who was not on duty but had come to the hospital to see him anyway, and told him that the time was now past when he could be careless about keeping tabs on his blood sugar readings. Wallander had been Dr Hansen’s patient for nearly twenty years, and there were no excuses that would impress this decidedly unsentimental physician. Dr Hansen told him over and over again that as far as he was concerned, Wallander was welcome to walk the tightrope and not take his illness seriously, but the next time anything like this happened he should expect consequences that he was really too young to suffer.

  ‘I’m sixty years old,’ Wallander said. ‘Isn’t that old?’

  ‘A couple of generations ago that was old. But not now. The body gets older; there’s nothing we can do about that. But nowadays we can expect to live for another fifteen or twenty years.’

  ‘What’s going to happen now?’

  ‘You’ll stay in the hospital until tomorrow so that my colleagues can make sure that your blood sugar readings have stabilised, and that you haven’t suffered any damage. Then you can go home and continue in your sinful ways.’

  ‘But I don’t lead a sinful life, do I?’

  Dr Hansen was a few years older than Wallander and had been married no less than six times. Local gossip in Ystad suggested that his maintenance payments to his former wives forced him to spend his holidays working in Norwegian hospitals way up inside the Arctic circle, where nobody would volunteer unless they had to.

  ‘Maybe that’s what’s missing from your life. A little pinch of refreshing sinfulness - a detective breaking the rules.’

  It was only after Dr Hansen had left that it really dawned on him how close to death he had been. For a brief moment he was overcome by panic and fear, stronger than ever before. In situations not connected with his professional duties, that is. There was a sort of fear that police officers felt, and a different sort that was experienced by a civilian.

  He was reminded yet again of the time he had been stabbed when he was a young constable on foot patrol in Malmo. On that occasion the final darkness had been only a hair’s breadth away. Now death had been breathing down his neck once again, and this time it was Wallander himself who had opened the door and let him in.

  That evening, lying in his hospital bed, Wallander made a series of decisions that he knew he would probably never be able to stick to. They were about eating habits, exercise, new interests, a renewed battle with loneliness. Above all he must make the most of his holiday, not work, not keep hunting for Hans’s missing parents. He must take it easy, rest, catch up on sleep, go for long walks along the beach, play with Klara.

  He made a plan. Over the next five years he would walk the whole length of the Skane coastline, from the end of Hallandsasen in the west to the Blekinge border in the east. He doubted he would ever make it happen, but it made him feel a bit better, letting a dream form then watching it slowly fade away again.

  A few years earlier he had attended a dinner party at Martinsson’s house and spoken to a retired schoolteacher, who told him about his experiences walking to Santiago de Compostela, the classic pilgrimage. Wallander had immediately wanted to make that pilgrimage himself, divided into instalments, perhaps over a five-year period. He even started to train, carrying a backpack full of stones - but he overdid it and succumbed to bone spurs in his left foot. His pilgrimage came to an end before it had even started. The bone spurs were cured now, thanks to treatment that included painful cortisone injections into his heel. But perhaps a number of well-planned walks along Scanian beaches might be within the bounds of possibility.

  The following day he was discharged and sent home. He picked up Jussi, who had once again been looked after by his neighbour, and declined Linda’s offer to drive to Loderup to make him dinner. He felt he needed to come to terms with his situation without her help. He was on his own, so he had to accept personal responsibility.

  Before going to bed that night he wrote a long email to Ytterberg. He didn’t mention having been ill, merely that he had to take a holiday since he was feeling burned out, and he needed to give Hakan and Louise von Enke a rest for a while. For the first time, I have to acknowledge the limitations imposed by my age and my depleted strength, he ended the message. I’ve never done that before. I’m not forty years old any more, and I have to reconcile myself to the fact that time past will never return. I think that’s an illusion I share with more or less everyone - that it’s possible to step into the same river twice.

  He read through what he had written, clicked on Send, then switched off his computer. As he went to bed, he could hear the rumble of thunder in the distance.

  The storm was approaching, but the summer evening sky was still light.

  20

  Wallander woke the next day to find that the thunderstorm had moved on without affecting his house. The front had veered away to the east. Wallander felt fully rested when he got up at about eight o’clock. It was chilly, but even so he took his breakfast with him into the garden and ate it at the white wooden table. As a way of celebrating his holiday, he snipped a few roses from one of the bushes and laid them on the table. He had just sat down again when his mobile phone rang. It was Linda, wanting to know how he was feeling.

  ‘I’ve had my warning,’ he said. ‘Everything’s fine at the moment. But I’m going to make sure my mobile phone is always within reach.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I was going to advise you to do.’

  ‘How are you all?’

  ‘Klara has a bit of a cold. Hans took this week off.’

  ‘Because he wanted to, or against his will?’

  ‘Because I wanted him to! He didn’t dare do anything else. I gave him an ultimatum.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Me or his work. We don’t negotiate where Klara is concerned.’

  Wallander ate the rest of his breakfast, thinking that it was becoming more and more obvious how much Linda took after her grandfather. The same caustic tone of voice, the same ironic, slightly mocking attitude to the world around her. But also a tendency to anger lurking just under the surface.

  Wallander put his feet up on a chair, leaned back and closed his eyes. At last his holiday had begun.

  The phone rang.

  ‘Ytterberg here. Did I wake you?’

  ‘You’d have had to call a few hours ago to do that.’

  ‘We found Louise von Enke. She’s dead.’

  Wallander held his breath, and slowly rose to his feet.

  ‘I wanted to call you right away,’ said Ytterberg. ‘We might be able to keep the news quiet for another hour or so, but we need to inform her son. Am I right in thinking the only other family member is the cousin in England?’

  ‘You’re forgetting the daughter at Niklasgarden. The staff there should be informed. But I can take care of that.’

  ‘I suspected you would want to - but if you’d rather not, which I would understand perfectly, I’ll call them myself.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said Wallander. ‘Just tell me the most important details that I need to know.’

  ‘The
whole thing is absurd, to be honest,’ said Ytterberg. ‘Last night a senile woman went missing from a nursing home on Varmdo island. She usually went out for walks in the evening - they’d fitted her with some sort of GPS tag that would make it easier to track her down, but she somehow managed to take it off. So the police had to organise a search party. They eventually found her; she wasn’t in too bad a state. But two of the searchers got lost - can you believe it? The batteries in their mobile phones were so low that another search party had to be sent out to find them. Which they did. But on the way back they happened to come across somebody else.’

  ‘Louise?’

  ‘Yes. She was lying at the side of a woodland path, a couple of miles from the nearest road. The path went through a clear-cut area, and I just got back from there.’

  ‘Was she murdered?’

  ‘There’s no sign of violence. In all probability she committed suicide. We found an empty bottle of sleeping pills. If the bottle was full, she would have swallowed a hundred tablets. We’re waiting to see what the forensic boys have to say.’

  ‘What did she look like?’

  ‘She was lying on her side, a bit hunched up, wearing a skirt, socks, a grey blouse and an overcoat. Her shoes were next to her body. There was also a handbag with various papers and keys. Some animal or other had been sniffing around, but the body hadn’t been nibbled at.’

  ‘No sign of Hakan?’

  ‘None at all.’

  ‘But why would she choose that particular place? An open area where all the trees had been cut down?’

  ‘I don’t know. It wasn’t to die in idyllic surroundings. The spot is full of dry twigs and dead tree stumps. I’ll send you a map. Call if you have any comments.’

  ‘What about your holiday?’

  ‘It’s not the first time in my life that a holiday has been shot down.’

  The map arrived a few minutes later. With his hand on the phone, it occurred to Wallander that this was something he shared with every other police officer he knew: the reluctance to be the one to inform relatives about a death. That was never routine.