The Troubled Man (2011) kw-10

by Henning Mankell

  When he finally went to bed, he took half a sleeping pill in the hope of avoiding a restless night. He simply didn’t want to think any more, neither about the woman asleep in his bed nor the thoughts that had tortured him when he’d been sitting in the garden.

  When he woke up the next morning he was astonished to find that she had left. He was normally a very light sleeper, but he hadn’t heard her get up and slip quietly out of the house. There was a note on the kitchen table: ‘Sorry for being here when you came home.’ That was all, nothing about what she actually wanted to be forgiven for. He wondered how many times during their marriage she had left similar notes, apologising for what she’d done to him. A vast number that he neither could nor even wanted to count.

  He drank coffee, fed Jussi, and wondered if he should call Linda and tell her about Mona’s visit, but since what he needed to do above all else was talk to Ytterberg, that would have to wait.

  It was a breezy morning, with a cold wind blowing from the north; summer had gone away for the time being. The neighbour’s sheep were grazing in their fenced-off field, and a few swans were flying east.

  Wallander called Ytterberg in his office. He picked up right away.

  ‘I heard that you were asking for me. Have you found the von Enkes?’

  ‘No. How are things going for you?’

  ‘Nothing new worthy of mention.’

  ‘Nothing at all?’

  ‘No. Do you have anything to report?’

  Wallander had been planning to tell Ytterberg about his visit to Boko and the remarkable cylinder he had found, but he changed his mind at the last minute. He didn’t know why. Surely he could rely on Ytterberg.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘I’ll be in touch again.’

  When the short and basically pointless call was over, Wallander drove to the police station. He needed to devote the whole day to going through a depressing assault case in connection with which he’d been called as a witness. Everybody blamed everybody else, and the victim, who had been in a coma for two weeks, had no memory of the incident. Wallander had been one of the first detectives to arrive at the scene, and would therefore have to testify in court. He had great difficulty recalling any details. Even the report he’d written himself seemed unfamiliar.

  Linda suddenly appeared in his office. It was about noon.

  ‘I hear you had an unexpected visit,’ she said.

  Wallander slid the open files to one side and looked at his daughter. Her face now seemed less puffy than it had been, and she might even have lost a few pounds.

  ‘Mona’s been knocking on your door, has she?’

  ‘She called from Malmo. She complained that you’d been nasty to her.’

  Wallander reacted in astonishment.

  ‘What did she mean by that?’

  ‘She said you only reluctantly let her in despite the fact that she was feeling sick. Then you gave her hardly anything to eat, and locked her in the bedroom.’

  ‘None of that is true. The bitch is lying.’

  ‘Don’t call my mum that,’ said Linda, her face darkening.

  ‘She’s lying, whether you like it or not. I welcomed her, I let her in, I dried her tears, and I even made up the bed with clean sheets for her.’

  ‘She wasn’t lying about her new man, at least. I’ve met him. He’s just as charming as psychopaths usually are. Mum has an odd talent for choosing the wrong man.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I don’t mean you, of course. But that lunatic golf player wasn’t much better than the guy she’s with now.’

  ‘The question is: what can I do about it?’

  Linda thought for a moment before answering. She rubbed her nose with the index finger of her left hand. Just like her grandfather used to do, Wallander thought. He’d never noticed that before, and now he burst out laughing. She looked at him in surprise. He explained. Then it was her turn to laugh.

  ‘I have Klara in the car,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to have a quick word about this business with Mum. We can talk later.’

  ‘You mean you left the baby alone in the car?’ Wallander was upset. ‘How could you do such a thing?’

  ‘I have a friend with me; she’s looking after Klara. How could you think I’d leave her alone?’

  She paused in the doorway.

  ‘I think Mum needs our help,’ she said.

  ‘I’m always here,’ said Wallander. ‘But I’d prefer her to be sober when she visits. And she should call in advance.’

  ‘Are you always sober? Do you always call before you visit somebody? Have you never felt sick?’

  She didn’t wait for a reply but vanished into the hallway. Wallander had just started reading his report again when Ytterberg called.

  ‘I’m taking a few days off,’ he said. ‘I forgot to mention that.’

  ‘Going anywhere interesting?’

  ‘I’ll be staying in an old cottage in a lovely location by a lake just outside Vasteras. But I wanted to tell you a few of my thoughts about the von Enkes. I was a bit curt when we spoke a few minutes ago.’

  ‘I’m all ears.’

  ‘Let me put it like this. I have two theories about their disappearance, and my colleagues agree with me. Let’s see if you’re thinking along the same lines. One possibility is that they planned their disappearance in advance, but for some reason they decided to vanish at different times. There could be various explanations for that. For instance, if they wanted to change their identity, he might have gone ahead to some unknown place in order to prepare for her arrival. Meet her on a road filled with palm fronds and roses, to use a biblical image. But there could be other reasons, of course. There’s really only one other plausible possibility: that they’ve been subjected to some sort of attack. In other words, that they’re dead. It’s hard to find a reason why they might have been exposed to violence, and if so, why it should happen at different times. But apart from those two alternatives, we have no idea. There’s just a black hole.’

  ‘I think I’d have reached the same conclusions as you.’

  ‘I’ve consulted the leading experts in the country about possible circumstances associated with missing persons, and our job is simple in the sense that there’s only one way for us to approach this.’

  ‘Find them, you mean.’

  ‘Or at least understand why we can’t find them.’

  ‘Have there been any new details at all?’

  ‘None. But there is one other person we have to take into account.’

  ‘You mean the son?’

  ‘Yes. We can’t avoid it. If we assume that they engineered their disappearance, we have to ask why they’d subject him to such horrors. It’s inhuman, to put it mildly. Our impression is that they are not cruel people. You know that yourself; you’ve met them. What we’ve dug up about Hakan von Enke indicates that he was a well-liked senior officer, unassuming, shrewd, fair, never temperamental. The worst we’ve heard about him is that he could occasionally be impatient. But can’t we all? As a teacher, Louise was well liked by her pupils. Uncommunicative, quite a few said. But refraining from speaking non-stop is hardly grounds for suspicion - you have to listen now and then too. Anyway, it doesn’t seem credible that they could have lived double lives. We’ve even consulted experts in Europol. I’ve had several phone conversations with a French policewoman, Mlle Germain in Paris, who had a lot of sensible things to say. She confirmed my own thought, that we also need to look at the matter in a radically different light.’

  Wallander knew what he was getting at.

  ‘You mean what role Hans might have played?’

  ‘Exactly. If there was a large fortune at stake, that might have provided us with a lead. But there isn’t. All in all, the Enkes have about a million kronor - plus their apartment, which is probably worth seven or eight million. You could argue that it’s a lot of money for an ordinary mortal. But given contemporary circumstances, you could say that a person with no debts and the assets I
’ve referred to is well off, but hardly rich.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Hans?’

  ‘About a week ago he was in Stockholm for a meeting with the Financial Supervisory Authority. He was the one who took the initiative and got in touch with me, and we had a chat. I have to say that he seemed genuinely worried, and that he simply couldn’t understand what had happened. Besides, he earns a pretty substantial salary.’

  ‘So that’s where we are, is it?’

  ‘Not exactly a strong position to be in. But we’ll keep digging, even if the ground seems very hard.’

  Ytterberg suddenly put down the receiver. Wallander could hear him cursing in the background. Then he picked up the receiver again.

  ‘I’m leaving in two days,’ said Ytterberg. ‘But you can always contact me if there’s an emergency.’

  ‘I promise to call only if it’s important,’ said Wallander, and hung up.

  After that phone call Wallander went down to sit on the bench outside the entrance to the station. He thought through what Ytterberg had said.

  He stayed there for a long time. Mona’s sudden visit had tired him out. This was not the way he wanted things to be; he didn’t want her turning his life upside down by making new demands on him. He would have to make this clear to her if she turned up on his doorstep again, and he must persuade Linda to be his ally. He was prepared to help Mona - that wasn’t a problem - but the past was the past. It no longer existed.

  Wallander walked down the hill to a sausage stand across from the hospital. A lump of mashed potato fell off his tray, and a jackdaw swooped down immediately to steal it.

  He suddenly had the feeling that he’d forgotten something. He felt around for his service pistol. Or could he have forgotten something else? He wasn’t sure if he’d come to the sausage stand by car, or walked down the hill from the police station.

  He dumped the half-eaten sausage and mashed potatoes into a rubbish bin and looked around one more time. No sign of a car. He slowly started to trudge back up the hill. About halfway there, his memory returned. He broke into a cold sweat and his heart was racing. He couldn’t put off consulting his doctor any longer. This was the third time it had happened within a short period, and he wanted to know what was going on inside his head.

  He called the doctor he had consulted earlier when he’d returned to duty. He was given an appointment shortly after midsummer. When he put the receiver down, he checked to make sure that his gun was locked up where it should be.

  He spent the rest of the day preparing for his court appearance. It was six o’clock when he closed the last of his files and threw it onto his guest chair. He had stood up and picked up his jacket when a thought suddenly struck him. He had no idea where it came from. Why hadn’t von Enke taken his secret diary away with him when he visited Signe for the last time? Wallander could see only two possible explanations. Either he intended to go back, or something had happened to make a return impossible.

  He sat down at his desk again and looked up the number for Niklasgarden. It was the woman with the melodious foreign voice who answered.

  ‘I just wanted to check that all is well with Signe,’ he said.

  ‘She lives in a world where very little changes. Apart from that which affects all of us - growing older.’

  ‘I don’t suppose her dad has been to visit her, has he?’

  ‘I thought he went missing. Is he back?’

  ‘No. I was just wondering.’

  ‘Her uncle was here yesterday on a visit. It was my day off, but I noticed it in the ledger where we keep a record of visits.’

  Wallander held his breath.

  ‘An uncle?’

  ‘He signed himself in as Gustaf von Enke. He came in the afternoon and stayed for about an hour.’

  ‘Are you absolutely certain about this?’

  ‘Why would I make it up?’

  ‘No, as you say, why would you? If this uncle comes back to visit Signe, could you please give me a call?’

  She suddenly sounded worried.

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘No, not at all. Thanks for your time.’

  Wallander replaced the receiver but remained seated. He was not mistaken; he was sure of that. He had studied the von Enke family tree meticulously, and he was certain there was no uncle.

  Whoever the man was that had visited Signe, he had given a false name and relationship.

  Wallander drove home. The worry he had felt earlier had now returned in spades.

  18

  The following morning, Wallander had a temperature and a sore throat. He tried hard to convince himself that it was his imagination, but in the end he got a thermometer, which registered 102. He called the police station and told them he was ill. He spent most of the day either in bed or in the kitchen, surrounded by the books from the library he still hadn’t read.

  During the night he’d had a dream about Signe. He’d been visiting Niklasgarden, and suddenly noticed that it was in fact somebody else curled up in her bed. It was dark in the room; he tried to switch the light on, but it didn’t work. So he took out his mobile phone and used it as a torch. In the pale blue glow he discovered that it was Louise lying there. She was an exact copy of her daughter. He was overcome by fear, but when he tried to leave the room he found that the door was locked.

  That was when he woke up. It was four o’clock and already light. He could feel a pain in his throat, but he felt warm and soon dropped off to sleep again. When he eventually woke up he tried to interpret his dream, but he didn’t reach any conclusions. Apart from the fact that everything seemed to be a cover-up for everything else when it came to the disappearance of Hakan and Louise von Enke.

  Wallander got out of bed, wrapped a towel around his neck, and looked up Gustaf von Enke on the Internet. There was nobody by that name. At eight o’clock he called Ytterberg, who would be going on holiday the following day. He was on his way to what he expected to be an extremely unpleasant interrogation of a man who had tried to strangle his wife and his two children, probably because he had found another woman he wanted to live with.

  ‘But why did he have to kill the children?’ he wondered. ‘It’s like a Greek tragedy.’

  Wallander didn’t know much about the dramas written more than two thousand years ago. Linda had once taken him to a production of Medea in Malmo. He had been moved by it, but not so much that he became a regular theatergoer. His last visit hadn’t exactly increased his interest either.

  He told Ytterberg about his call to Niklasgarden the previous day.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Wallander. ‘There is no uncle. There’s a cousin in England, but that’s it.’

  ‘It certainly sounds odd.’

  ‘I know you’re about to go away. Maybe you can send somebody else out to Niklasgarden to try to get a description of the man?’

  ‘I have a very good cop named Rebecka Andersson,’ he said. ‘She’s phenomenal with assignments like this, even though she’s very young. I’ll speak to her.’

  Wallander was just about to end the call when Ytterberg asked him a question.

  ‘Do you ever feel like I do?’ he asked. ‘An almost desperate longing to get away from all this shit that we’re chest-deep in?’

  ‘It happens.’

  ‘How do we manage to survive it all?’

  ‘I don’t know. Some sort of feeling of responsibility, I suspect. I once had a mentor, an old detective named Rydberg. That’s what he always used to say. It was a matter of responsibility, nothing more.’

  Rebecka Andersson called at about two o’clock from Niklasgarden.

  ‘I understood that you wanted the information as soon as possible,’ she said. ‘I’m sitting on a bench on the grounds. It’s lovely weather. Do you have a pencil handy?’

  ‘Yes, I’m ready to go.’

  ‘A man in his fifties, neatly dressed in suit and tie, very friendly, light curly hair, blue eyes. He spoke what is usually called
standard Swedish, in other words, no particular dialect and certainly without any trace of a foreign accent. One thing was obvious from the start: he’d never been here before. They had to show him which room she was in, but nobody seems to have thought that was at all remarkable.’

  ‘What did he have to say?’

  ‘Nothing, really. He was just very friendly.’

  ‘And the room?’

  ‘I asked two members of the staff, separately, to check the room and see if anything had been moved. They couldn’t find any changes. I had the impression that they were very sure about that.’

  ‘But even so, he stayed for as long as an hour?’

  ‘That’s not definite. Assessments varied. They’re evidently not all that strict when it comes to entering visits and times in their ledger. I’d say he was there for at least an hour, an hour and a half at most.’

  ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘He left.’

  ‘How did he get there?’

  ‘By car, I assume. But nobody saw a car. Then suddenly he simply wasn’t there any more.’

  Wallander thought it all over, but he had no more questions, so he thanked her for her help. He looked out of the window and caught a glimpse of the yellow post van driving away. He went out to the mailbox in his robe and a pair of wooden clogs. There was just one letter, postmarked Ystad. The sender was somebody by the name of Robert Akerblom. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but Wallander couldn’t remember the circumstances in which he had met the man. He sat down at his kitchen table and opened the envelope. It contained a photo of a man and two young women. When Wallander saw the man, he knew immediately who it was. A painful memory, over fifteen years old, rose up to the surface. At the beginning of the 1990s Robert Akerblom’s wife had been brutally murdered, an incident linked to remarkable events in South Africa and an attempt to murder Nelson Mandela. He turned the photo over and read what it said on the reverse side: ‘A reminder of our existence, and a thank-you for all the support you gave us during the most difficult period of our lives.’

  Just what I needed, Wallander thought. Proof that despite everything, what we do has significance for a lot of people. He pinned up the photo on the wall.