The Troubled Man (2011)

by Henning Mankell

  Hakan von Enke was staring at his hand. He seemed somehow uninterested in what Wallander had said. Possibly because he had to face up to the fact that what he had done had resulted in Louise’s death, Wallander thought, and now there was nothing he could do about it.

  ‘It was never the intention that she should die,’ von Enke said, without taking his eyes off his hand.

  ‘What did you think when you heard she was dead?’

  Von Enke’s reply was matter-of-fact, almost dry.

  ‘I came very close to putting an end to it all. The only thing that stopped me was the thought of my grandchild. But now I don’t know any more.’

  They fell silent again. Wallander thought it would soon be time for Sten Nordlander to come into the room. But there was another question he wanted answered first.

  ‘How did it happen?’ he asked.

  ‘How did what happen?’

  ‘What was it that made you into a spy?’

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘We have plenty of time. And you don’t need to give me an exhaustive answer; just tell me enough to help me understand.’

  Von Enke leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Wallander suddenly realised that he was facing a very old man.

  ‘It started a long time ago,’ von Enke said without opening his eyes. ‘I was contacted by the Americans as early as the beginning of the 1960s. I was soon convinced of how important it was for the USA and NATO to have access to information that would enable them to defend us. We would never be able to survive on our own. Without the USA we were lost from the very start.’

  ‘Who contacted you?’

  ‘You have to keep in mind what it was like in those days. There was a group of mainly young people who spent all their time protesting against the USA’s war in Vietnam. But most of us knew that we needed America’s support in order to survive when the balloon went up in Europe. I was upset by all those naive and romantic left-wingers. I felt that I needed to do something. I went in with my eyes wide open. I suppose you could say it was ideology. It’s the same today. Without the USA, the world would be at the mercy of forces whose only aim is to deprive Europe of power. What do you think China’s ambitions are? What will the Russians do once they’ve solved their internal problems?’

  ‘But money must have come into it somehow?’

  Von Enke didn’t reply. He turned away, lost in his own thoughts again. Wallander asked a few more questions, to which he received no answers. Von Enke had simply brought the conversation to a close.

  He suddenly stood up and walked towards the kitchenette. He took a bottle of beer out of the fridge, then opened one of the drawers in the kitchen cabinet. Wallander was watching him carefully.

  When von Enke turned to face him, he had a pistol in his hand. Wallander stood up quickly. The gun was pointed at him. Von Enke slowly put the bottle down on the work surface.

  He raised the gun. Wallander could see that it was pointing straight at his head. He shouted, roared at von Enke. Then he saw the pistol move.

  ‘I can’t go on any longer,’ said von Enke. ‘I have absolutely no future any more.’

  He placed the barrel against his chin and pulled the trigger. The sound echoed around the room. As he collapsed, his face covered in blood, Sten Nordlander came storming into the room.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ he screamed.’ Did he shoot you?’

  ‘No. He shot himself.’

  They stared at the man lying on the floor, his body in an unnatural position. The blood covering his face made it impossible to make out his eyes, to see if they were closed or not.

  Wallander was the first to realise that von Enke was still alive. He grabbed a sweater hanging over the arm of a chair and pressed it against von Enke’s chin. He shouted to Nordlander, telling him to get some towels. The bullet had exited through von Enke’s cheek. He had failed to send the bullet through his brain.

  ‘He missed,’ Wallander said as Nordlander handed him a sheet he had pulled off the bed.

  Hakan von Enke’s eyes were open; they had not glazed over.

  ‘Press hard,’ said Wallander, showing Nordlander what to do.

  He took out his mobile phone and dialled the emergency number. But there was no signal. He ran outside and scrambled up the rocky slope behind the house. But there was no signal there either. He went back inside.

  ‘He’ll bleed to death,’ said Nordlander.

  ‘You have to press hard,’ said Wallander. ‘My phone isn’t working. I’ll have to go and get help. Phone coverage is sometimes pretty bad here.’

  ‘I don’t think he’ll make it.’

  Sten Nordlander was kneeling beside the bleeding man. He looked up at Wallander with horror in his eyes.

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘You heard what we said?’

  ‘Every word. Is it true?’

  ‘It’s true. Everything I said and everything he said. He was a spy for the USA for about forty years. He sold our military secrets, and he must have made a good job of it if the Americans considered him so valuable that they didn’t even hesitate to murder his wife.’

  ‘I find this impossible to understand.’

  ‘Then we have another reason to try to keep him alive. He’s the only one who can tell us the truth. I’m going to get help. It will take time. But if you can stop the bleeding, we might be able to save him.’

  ‘So there’s no doubt?’

  ‘None at all.’

  ‘That means he has been deceiving me for years.’

  ‘He deceived everybody.’

  *

  Wallander ran down to the boat. He stumbled and fell several times. When he reached the water he noticed that the wind was blowing stronger now. He untied the painter, pushed the boat out and jumped in. The engine started on the first pull. It was so dark now that he wondered if he’d be able to see clearly enough to manoeuvre his way to the dock.

  He had just turned the boat round and was about to accelerate away when he heard a shot. There was no doubt about it, it was a gunshot. Coming from the hunting lodge. He returned to neutral and listened carefully. Could he have been mistaken? He turned the boat round once more and headed for land. When he jumped ashore, he landed short and felt the water flowing into his shoes. The whole time, he was listening for any more sounds. The wind was getting stronger and stronger. He took the shotgun out of his bag and loaded it. Could there be people on the island he knew nothing about? He returned to the hunting lodge, his shotgun at the ready, trying to proceed as quietly as possible, and stopped when he saw the faint light through the gaps in the curtains. There wasn’t a sound, apart from the sighing of the wind in the treetops and the swishing of the waves.

  He had just began to advance towards the door of the hunting lodge when another shot rang out. He flung himself down onto the ground, his face pressed against the damp soil. He dropped the shotgun and protected his head with his hands. He expected to be shot dead at any moment.

  But nothing happened. Eventually he dared to sit up and pick up his shotgun. He checked to make sure there was no soil in the two barrels. He stood up slowly, then ducked down and headed for the front door. Still nothing happened. He shouted, but Sten Nordlander didn’t respond. Two shots, he thought frantically, and tried to work out what that implied.

  He could still see Sten Nordlander’s face when he asked his question. So there’s no doubt?

  Wallander opened the door and went in.

  Hakan von Enke was dead. Sten Nordlander had shot him in the forehead. He had then turned the gun on himself, and was lying dead on the floor next to the man who had been his friend and colleague. Wallander was upset; he should have foreseen this. Sten Nordlander had been standing out there in the darkness and heard how Hakan von Enke had betrayed everyone - perhaps most of all the ones who had trusted him and seen him not so much as a fellow officer, but as a friend.

  Wallander avoided treading in the blood that had run all over the floor. He flopped down onto the
chair where he had been sitting not so long ago, listening to what von Enke had to say. Weariness seemed to explode inside him. The older he became, the more difficult it seemed to be for him to cope with the truth. Nevertheless, that is what he always strove for.

  How far had they come since that birthday party in Djursholm? he wondered. If I assume that his conversation with me was part of a plan to persuade me to believe that his wife was a spy, and thus divert any possible suspicions away from himself, it follows that the most important decisions had already been made. Perhaps it was Hakan von Enke himself who had the idea of exploiting me. Making the most of the fact that his son was living with a woman whose father was a stupid provincial police officer.

  He felt both sorrow and anger as he sat there with the two dead men in front of him. But what upset him most was the thought that Klara would never get to know her paternal grandparents. She would have to make do with a grandmother on her mother’s side who was fighting a losing battle with alcohol, and a grandfather who was becoming older and more decrepit by the day.

  He sat there for half an hour, possibly longer, before forcing himself to become a police officer again. He worked out a simple idea based on leaving everything untouched. He took the car keys out of Sten Nordlander’s pocket, then left the hunting lodge and headed for the boat.

  But before pushing it into the water again, he paused on the beach and closed his eyes. It was as if the past had come rushing towards him. The big wide world that he had always known so little about. Now he had become a minor player on the big stage. What did he know now that he hadn’t known before? Not much at all, he thought. I’m still that same bewildered character on the periphery of all the major political and military developments. I’m still the same unhappy and insecure individual on the sidelines, just as I’ve always been.

  He pushed the boat out and despite the darkness managed to steer it in to the dock. He left the boat where he had picked it up. The harbour was deserted. It was 2 a.m. by the time he sat in Sten Nordlander’s car and drove off. He parked it outside the railway station, having carefully wiped clean the steering wheel and gearstick and door handle. Then he waited for the first early-morning train south. He spent several hours on a park bench. He thought how odd it was, sitting on a bench in this unfamiliar town with his father’s old shotgun in his bag.

  It had started drizzling as dawn broke, and he found a cafe that was already open. He ordered coffee and leafed through some old newspapers before returning to the railway station and catching a train. He would never go to Blue Island again.

  He looked out of the train window and saw Sten Nordlander’s car in the station’s car park. Sooner or later somebody would start to take an interest in it. One thing would lead to another. One question would be how he had got to the docks and then sailed out to Blue Island. But the man who rented the boat would not necessarily associate Wallander with the tragedy that had taken place in that isolated hunting lodge. Besides, all details would no doubt be classified.

  Wallander arrived in Malmo shortly after midday, picked up his car and headed for Ystad. As he came to the exit, he found himself at a police checkpoint. He showed his ID and blew into the breathalyser.

  ‘How’s it going?’ he asked, in an attempt to cheer up his colleague. ‘Are people sober?’

  ‘On the whole, yes. But we just started. No doubt we’ll nail one or two victims. How are things in Ystad?’

  ‘Pretty quiet at the moment. But August usually produces more work than July.’

  Wallander wished him good luck, then rolled up his window and drove on. Only a few hours ago I was sitting with two dead men at my feet, he thought. But that’s not something that anybody else can see. Our memories don’t pop up next to us in Technicolor.

  He went to the shop to buy a few groceries, collected Jussi and eventually pulled into the parking area outside his house.

  After putting his purchases in the fridge, he sat down at his kitchen table. Everything was quiet and calm.

  He tried to figure out what he would tell Linda.

  But he didn’t call her that day, not even in the evening.

  He simply had no idea what to say to her.

  Epilogue

  One night in May 2009 Wallander woke up from a dream. That was happening more and more often. All the memories of the night lived on when he opened his eyes. Until recently he rarely remembered his dreams. Jussi, who had been ill, was asleep on the floor by his bed. The clock on the bedside table said four fifteen. Perhaps it wasn’t just the dream that had woken him up. Perhaps the calling of an owl had drifted in through the open window and into his consciousness - it wouldn’t be the first time.

  But now there was no owl calling. He had dreamed about Linda and the conversation they should have had the day he returned from Blue Island. In his dream he had in fact called her and told her what had happened. She had listened without saying anything. And that was all. The dream had broken off abruptly, like a rotten branch.

  He woke up feeling very uncomfortable. He hadn’t called her at all, in fact. He hadn’t had the strength to do it. His excuse was simple. He hadn’t played a part in the tragedy, and calling her would only have led to an unbearable situation as far as he was concerned; if he gave her an exact version of events, he would be suspected of having been involved. Only when the tragedy became public knowledge would she and Hans discover what had happened. And with a bit of luck, he would be able to stay out of it.

  Wallander thought that this case was among the worst experiences of his life. The only thing he could compare it to was the incident many years ago when he killed a man for the first time in the line of duty, and seriously wondered if he could continue as a police officer. He considered doing what Martinsson had now done: throw in the towel as a policeman and devote himself to something entirely different.

  Wallander leaned carefully over the side of the bed and checked on his dog. Jussi was asleep. He was also dreaming, scratching in the air with his front paws. Wallander leaned back in bed again. The air drifting in through the window was refreshing. He kicked off the duvet. His thoughts wandered to the bundle of papers lying on the kitchen table. He had started writing a report last September, noting down everything that had happened and culminating in the tragedy in the hunting lodge on Blue Island.

  *

  It was Eskil Lundberg who found the dead bodies. Ytterberg had immediately called in the CID in Norrkoping to assist. Since it was a matter for the security police and the military intelligence service, an embargo had been immediately imposed on all aspects of the investigation, and everything was shrouded in secrecy. Wallander was informed by Ytterberg of whatever he was allowed to pass on, in strict confidence. The whole time, Wallander worried about the possibility of his own presence at the scene being discovered. What concerned him most was whether Nordlander had told his wife about the trip he was going to make, but evidently he hadn’t. With great reluctance Wallander read in the newspapers about Mrs Nordlander’s despair over her husband’s death and her refusal to believe that he had killed his old friend and then shot himself.

  Ytterberg occasionally complained to Wallander about the fact that not even he, the man in charge of the police investigation, knew what was going on behind the scenes. But there was no doubt that Sten Nordlander had killed Hakan von Enke using two shots to the head, and had then shot himself. What was mysterious and what nobody could explain was how Sten Nordlander had come to Blue Island. Ytterberg said on several occasions that he suspected a third party had been involved, but who that could have been and what role he or she played he had no idea. The real motive for the tragedy was also something that nobody could work out.

  The newspapers and other media were full of speculation. They wallowed in the bloody drama played out in the hunting lodge. Linda and Hans and Klara had almost been forced to move in order to avoid all the inquisitive journalists and their intrusive questions. The wildest of the conspiracy theorists maintained that Hakan von Enke and
Sten Nordlander had taken to their graves a secret linked to the death of Olof Palme.

  Occasionally during his conversations with Ytterberg, Wallander had asked cautiously, almost out of politeness, how things were going with regard to the suspicions that Louise von Enke could have been a Russian spy. Ytterberg had only extremely meagre information to give him.

  ‘I have the impression that everything is at a standstill as far as she is concerned,’ he said. ‘What facts the security police are looking for, or trying to suppress, I have no idea. We might have to wait until some investigative journalist goes to town on that.’

  Wallander never heard a word about the possibility of Hakan von Enke’s being a spy for the USA. There were no suspicions, no rumours, no speculations that this might be the cause of what had happened. Wallander once asked Ytterberg point-blank if there were any such theories. Ytterberg had been totally incredulous.

  ‘Why in God’s name should he have been a US spy?’

  ‘I’m just trying to think of any possible explanation for what happened,’ Wallander said. ‘Given there have been suspicions that Louise was spying for the Russians, why not try a different possibility?’

  ‘I think I’d have heard if the security police or military intelligence had any suspicions of that sort.’

  ‘I was only thinking aloud,’ said Wallander.

  ‘Do you know something I don’t?’ Ytterberg suddenly asked with an unexpected edge to his voice.