The Dogs of Riga - Wallander 02

by Henning Mankell

  Wallander had been told where the light switches were, and groped his way along the wall until he came to them. Mikelis had assured him that the door fitted tighdy and there would be no light seeping through the cracks to alert the guard.

  The room was like a huge underground hangar. He had never imagined the archives would be as big as this. Just for a moment he paused, overwhelmed by the endless rows of cupboards and shelves crammed with files. The Evil Room, he thought. What was the major thinking when he came in here and planted the bomb he hoped would explode sooner or later?

  He glanced at his watch and was annoyed at having allowed himself to waste time thinking such thoughts. He was also uncomfortably aware that he couldn't wait much longer before emptying his bowels. There must be a lavatory somewhere in the archive, he thought desperately. But the question is, will I be able to find it?

  He started walking in the direction Mikelis had indicated. He had warned Wallander how easy it was to get lost among the shelves and cupboards, which all looked the same. He cursed the fact that so much of his attention was being distracted by his rumbling stomach, and he was frightened by what would happen if he didn't find a lavatory soon.

  He stopped and looked round. It was clear that he was off course - but had he gone too far or had he turned off somewhere where he shouldn't, according to Mikelis's map? He retraced his steps. It struck him he was now completely disorientated, and he panicked. He looked at his watch and saw he had 42 minutes left, but he ought to have found the right section of the archive by now. He cursed to himself. Was Mikelis's map wrong? Why couldn't he find it? He decided he would have to start all over again and ran back between the rows of shelves to the entrance. In his haste he managed to kick over a metal waste-paper bin which bounced into a filing cabinet with a loud crash. The guard, he thought. This noise must have been audible from outside. He stood stock still, listening, but there was no rattling of keys in the locks. It was then that he was forced to accept he couldn't control his bowels a moment longer. He pulled down his trousers, crouched over the waste-paper bin and relieved himself. Feeling furious and disgusted at the same time, he reached for a file on the nearest shelf, ripped out some sheets of paper that were presumably the record of some interrogation or other, and wiped himself. Then he began all over again, knowing that this time he really had to find the correct spot or it would be too late. He made a silent plea to Rydberg, asking him to guide him, then started counting the racks and bays, and this time was sure he had got it right. It had taken far too long, though, and now he had only 30 minutes in which to find the testimony. He doubted whether that would be long enough. He started searching. Mikelis hadn't been able to tell him in detail how the various files were arranged, and Wallander was forced to feel his way forward. He could see immediately that the archive did not follow alphabetical order. There were sections and sub-sections, and perhaps even sub-sub-sections. These are all the disloyal citizens, he thought. Here are all the people who have been kept under observation and terrorised, all the people who have been reported or marked out as candidates for the title "enemy of the state". There are so many of them, I'll never be able to find Baiba's file.

  He tried to identify the nerve centre of the archive, to pinpoint the logical position for a file that had been inserted as a joker in the pack. Time went by, and still he was none the wiser. Frantically, he went back and started again, pulling out files that seemed to be different in colour, trying hard all the time not to loose his cool.

  There were only 10 minutes to go, and still he hadn't found Baiba's file. He hadn't found anything at all, come to that. He felt increasingly desperate at the thought of having come this far, but now being forced to admit defeat. There was no longer time for a systematic search. All he could do now was to make one last sweep along the shelves and hope that his instinct would lead him to the right place. But he was well aware that there wasn't a single archive in the world that was arranged according to intuition and instinct, and he was convinced he had failed. The major had been a wise man, much too clever for Kurt Wallander of the Ystad police.

  Where, he thought. Where? What if this archive were a pack of cards? Where would the odd card be? At the side or in the middle?

  He chose the middle, ran his hand over a row of files that all had brown covers, and suddenly noticed one that was blue. He pulled out the brown files from either side of the blue one - one was labelled Leonard Blooms, the other Baiba Kalns. Just for a moment, he couldn't think straight - and then it dawned on him that Baiba Liepa must have been called Kalns before she got married, and he took down the blue file, which he saw had no name at all, and no code number. He had no time to examine it, his time had run out already. He raced back to the entrance, put the light out and unlocked the door. There was no sign of the guard, but according to Mikelis's timetable he was due back any moment. Wallander hurried down the corridor, but then heard the echoing footsteps of the guard returning. He couldn't continue in that direction, and it was clear to Wallander he would have to ignore the map and try to find his way to the exit as best he could. He stood motionless as the guard went past along a parallel corridor. When the footsteps had died away, he decided the first thing he should do was to make his way up from the basement. He found a staircase and remembered how many flights he had walked down on his way there. When he came up to ground level, he had no idea where he was.

  He walked along the first empty corridor he came to.

  The man who surprised him had been having a smoke. He must have heard Wallander's footsteps approaching, put out his cigarette with his boot, and wondered who on earth was on duty so late at night. When Wallander turned the corner, the man was only a few metres away. He seemed to be in his 40s, his tunic was unbuttoned, and the moment he saw Wallander with the blue file in his hand, he must have realised immediately that this man had no business to be in the building. He drew his pistol and shouted something in Latvian. Wallander didn't understand a word, but raised his hands over his head. The man had continued to shout as he approached, the pistol pointing at Wallander's chest. It occurred to Wallander that the police officer wanted him to kneel down, so he did so, his hands still raised in a pathetic gesture. There was no possibility of escape, he had been captured, and before long one of the colonels would appear and take possession of the blue file containing the major's testimony.

  The man pointing his pistol at him was still shouting questions. Wallander was growing more and more terrified, realising he was going to be shot here in the corridor, and could think of nothing better than to reply in English.

  "It is a mistake," he said in a shrill voice. "It is a mistake. I am a police officer, too."

  But it wasn't a mistake, of course. The officer ordered him to stand up with his hands over his head, then told him to start moving. He kept jabbing Wallander in the back with the barrel of his pistol.

  It was when they came to a lift that the opportunity presented itself. Wallander had given up hope, convinced he was well and truly caught. There was no point in resisting. The man wouldn't hesitate to shoot him. However, while they were waiting for the lift his captor turned away slightly to light a cigarette, and in a split second Wallander realised that this was his only opportunity of getting away. He threw down the blue file at the man's feet, and simultaneously hit him in the back of the neck as hard as he could. He felt his knuckles crunching, and the pain was agonising, but his captor fell headlong to the floor, the pistol sliding away over the stone flags. Wallander didn't know if the man was dead or just unconscious, but his hand was stiff with pain. He picked up the file, stuffed the pistol into his pocket, and decided the stupidest thing for him to do would be to use the lift. He tried to work out where he was by looking out of a window facing the courtyard, and after a few seconds realised he must be on the opposite side from the colonels' corridor. The man on the floor started groaning, and Wallander knew he wouldn't be able to knock him out a second time. He hurried down the corridor to the left leading away from
the lift, and hoped he would come to an exit.

  He was lucky. The corridor led to one of the canteens, and he managed to open a carelessly bolted door in the kitchen that was obviously a goods entrance. He came out into the street. His hand was hurting badly and had started to swell.

  The first rendezvous that he had agreed with Baiba was at 12.30 p.m. Wallander stood in the shadows by the old church in Esplanade Park that had been turned into a planetarium. All around him were tall, bare, motionless lime trees. There was no sign of her. The pain in his hand was now almost unbearable. When it reached 1.15 p.m., he was forced to accept that something must have happened. She wasn't going to come. He was extremely worried. Inese's blood-covered face hovered in his mind's eye, and he tried to work out what might have gone wrong. Had the dogs and their handlers realised that Wallander had managed to slip out of the university building unseen, despite their best efforts? In which case, what would they have done with Baiba? He did not dare to even think about that. He left the park, not knowing where to go next. What made him keep walking along the dark, deserted streets was really the pain in his hand. A military jeep with sirens blaring forced him to leap headfirst into a dark entrance, and not long afterwards a police car came racing down the street he was walking along, forcing him once more to withdraw into the shadows. He had put the file containing the major's testimony down the front of his shirt, and the edges were scratching against his ribs. He wondered where he was going to spend the night. The temperature had dropped, and he was trembling with cold. The alternative rendezvous he and Baiba had agreed on was the fourth floor of the central department store, but that wasn't until 10 a.m. the next morning, so he had nine hours to fill and couldn't possibly spend them walking the streets. He was convinced he had broken his hand, and knew he should go to a doctor, he daren't go to a casualty department. Not now that he had the testimony with him. He wondered whether he ought to try and find shelter for the night at the Swedish Embassy, assuming there was one, but he didn't like that option either. What if the law said that a Swedish police officer who had entered the country illegally should be sent home immediately under guard? He daren't take the risk.

  Uneasily, he decided to go to the car that had served him well for two whole days now, but when he got to where he'd left it, it had gone. He thought for a moment that he was so disorientated by the pain in his hand that he had remembered wrongly. Was this really the place where he'd parked the car? Yes, it definitely was - no doubt the car had been dismanded and quartered like a farm animal by now. Whichever one of the colonels was pursuing him had doubdess made certain the major's testimony wasn't hidden somewhere in the car.

  Where was he going to spend the night? He suddenly felt totally helpless, deep inside enemy territory, at the mercy of a pack of dogs managed by somebody who wouldn't hesitate to butcher him and sling him into the frozen harbour or bury him in a remote wood. His homesickness was primitive but tangible. The reason why he was now stranded in Latvia in the middle of the night - a life-raft containing two dead men, washed up on the Swedish coast - seemed vague and distant, like it had never really happened.

  For want of an alternative he made his way back through the empty streets to the hotel where he had earlier spent the night, but the door was locked and no lights went on upstairs when he rang the night bell. The pain in his hand was making him confused, and he was beginning to worry about whether he would lose his ability to think rationally altogether if he didn't get indoors soon, and thaw out. He went on to the next hotel, but once again he was unable to get any response when he rang the night bell. At the third hotel, though, which was even more decrepit and unappealing than the others, the outer door was not locked and he went in to find a man asleep behind the reception desk, his head resting on a table, a half-empty bottle of vodka at his feet. Wallander shook the man to wake him up, flourished the passport he'd been given by Preuss, and was handed a room key. He pointed at the vodka bottle, put a Swedish hundred-krona note on the desk, and took it with him.

  The room was small, with an acrid smell of musty furniture and nicotine-stained wallpaper. He flopped down on to the edge of the bed, took a couple of long swigs from the bottle, and could feel his body warmth slowly starting to return. Then he took off his jacket, filled the basin with cold water, and immersed his swollen, throbbing hand. The pain began to ease, and he reconciled himself to having to sit like this all night. Occasionally he took another swig from the bottle, and wondered anxiously what could have happened to Baiba.

  He took the blue file from inside his shirt and opened it with his free hand. It contained about 50 typewritten pages, plus some blurred photocopies, but no photographs, which was what he had hoped for. The major's text was in Latvian, and Wallander couldn't understand a word. He noted that from page nine onwards the names Murniers and Putnis kept recurring at regular intervals: sometimes they were together in the same sentence. He couldn't work out what that meant, whether both colonels were being accused or whether the major's accusing finger had been pointed at just one of them. He gave up the attempt to decipher the secret document, put the file down on the floor, refilled the hand basin with water, and leaned his head back against the edge of the table. It was 4 a.m., and he dozed off. When he woke up with a start, he found he'd been asleep for 10 minutes. His hand had started hurting again, and the cold water was no longer easing the pain. He finished off what was left in the vodka bottle, wrapped a damp towel round his hand, and lay down on the bed.

  Wallander had no idea what to do if Baiba failed to keep their rendezvous at the department store. He was beginning to have the feeling he had been defeated. He lay awake until dawn.

  CHAPTER 18

  He sensed danger the moment he woke. It was nearly 7 a.m. He lay quite still in the darkness, listening. Eventually, he realised the danger was not a threat outside the door or somewhere in the room, but inside himself. It was a warning that he still hadn't turned over every stone to discover what was lying underneath it.

  The pain seemed to have eased a little. Carefully, he tried to move his fingers although he still couldn't bear to look at his hand. The pain returned immediately. He wouldn't be able to last many hours more before seeing a doctor.

  Wallander was exhausted. Before he'd dozed off, some hours earlier, he had felt defeated. The colonels' power was too great, and his own ability to handle the situation had been continually curtailed. Now, he could see that he was also being defeated by exhaustion. He didn't trust his own judgement, and he knew this was due to a lack of sleep over a long period.

  He tried to analyse the nagging feeling he had experienced on waking. What had he overlooked? Where, in all his thoughts and his constant efforts to establish connections, had he drawn the wrong conclusions, or perhaps not thought things through properly? What had he still not managed to see? He couldn't ignore his instinct. Just now, in his dazed condition, it was his only chance of getting his bearings.

  What had he still not managed to see? He sat up in bed carefully, still not having answered the question. He looked in disgust at his swollen hand for the first time, and filled the basin with cold water. He first dipped his face into it, then his injured hand. After a few minutes he went over to the window and opened the blind. There was a very strong smell of coal. Misty dawn was just breaking over the church towers of the city. He stayed at the window and watched all the people hurrying along the pavements, but he was still unable to answer his own question: what had he failed to see?

  Then he left the room, paid, and allowed himself to be swallowed up by the city. It was as he walked through one of the city's many parks - he couldn't remember what it was called - that he noticed how many dogs there were in Riga. It wasn't just the invisible pack that was pursuing him. There were lots of other dogs, real ones, the kind people play with and take for walks. He paused to watch a pair of dogs involved in a violent fight. One was an Alsatian, the other a mongrel. The two owners were shouting at their dogs as they tried to separate them, and then
began to shout at each other as well. The owner of the Alsatian was an elderly man, but the mongrel belonged to a woman in her 30s. Wallander had the feeling that what he was witnessing was symbolic of the opposing forces in Latvia. The dogs were fighting and the people as well, and there were no outcomes that could be predicted in advance.

  He arrived at the central department store just as they were opening at 10 a.m. The blue folder was burning hot inside his shirt: his instinct told him he ought to get rid of it, to find a temporary hiding place.

  While he'd been wandering around the streets that morning, he had monitored every movement behind and in front of him, and he was now certain that the colonels had encircled him again. There were more shadows than ever now, and the grim thought that a storm was brewing struck him. He stopped just inside the entrance and pretended to read an information board, but in fact he was observing a left luggage counter where customers could leave bags and parcels. The counter was L-shaped. He had remembered it all correctly. He went over to the bureau de change, handed over a Swedish note and received a bundle of Latvian notes in exchange. Then he went up to the floor where they sold records. He picked out two LPs of Verdi, and noted that the records were just about the same size as the file. When he paid and had the records put in a carrier bag, he saw the closest of the shadows pretending to study a shelf with jazz records. He then went back to the left luggage counter and waited for a few seconds until there were several people waiting to be served. He walked quickly to the farthest corner of the counter, pulled out the file and placed it between the records. He acted quickly, even though he could only use one hand properly. He handed in the carrier bag, was given a tag with a number, and walked away. The various shadows were dotted around near the entrance doors, but even so he felt pretty sure they hadn't noticed him putting the file into the carrier. Of course, there was a risk that they would search the bag, but he thought it was unlikely since they had watched him buy the two records.