‘It’s still incomprehensible to me that you never confronted Louise with your suspicions, which had become convictions. How could you live with somebody who was a spy?’
‘I did confront her. Twice. The first time was the year Palme was killed. That had nothing to do with it, of course, but they were unsettled times. I was sitting with my colleagues, drinking coffee and talking about my suspicions that there was a spy in our ranks. It was a terrible situation, nibbling on a biscuit and talking about a possible spy who I thought might well be my wife.’
Wallander had a sudden attack of sneezing. Von Enke waited until it had passed.
‘I confronted her in the summer of 1986,’ he said. ‘We had gone to the Riviera with some friends of ours, a Commander Friis and his wife - we used to play bridge with them. We were staying at a hotel in Menton. One evening Louise and I went for a walk through the town. Suddenly, I stopped dead in my tracks and asked her outright. I hadn’t planned to; I suppose you could say that something snapped inside me. I stood in front of her and asked her. Was she a spy or wasn’t she? She was upset, refused to answer at first, and raised a hand as if to hit me. Then she recovered her self-control and replied calmly that of course she wasn’t a spy. How on earth could such a ridiculous thought have entered my head? What did she have to say that could be of any interest to a foreign power? I remember her smiling. She didn’t take me seriously, and as a result I couldn’t do so either. I simply couldn’t believe that she was so convincing as a dissembler. I apologised, and made the excuse that I was tired. For the rest of that summer I was convinced I’d been wrong. But in the autumn my suspicions returned.’
‘What happened?’
‘The same thing again. Papers in the gun cupboard, a feeling that somebody had disturbed my briefcase.’
‘Did you notice any changes in her after you revealed your suspicions in Menton?’
He thought before answering.
‘I’ve asked myself the same question. I sometimes thought she was acting differently, but at other times not. I’m still not sure.’
‘What happened the second time you put her on the spot?’
‘It was the winter of 1996, exactly ten years later. We were at home. We were having breakfast, and it was snowing outside. She suddenly asked me about something I’d shouted at her during the night, while I was asleep. She claimed that I’d accused her of being a spy.’
‘Had you?’
‘I don’t know. I do sometimes talk in my sleep, but I never remember anything about it.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I turned her question on its head. I asked her if what I’d been dreaming was true.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She threw her napkin at me and stormed out of the kitchen. It was ten minutes before she came back. I remember checking the clock. Nine minutes and forty-five seconds, to be exact. She apologised and insisted, once and for all, as she put it, that she didn’t want to hear any more talk about my suspicions. They were absurd. If I ever repeated the accusations, she would be forced to conclude that I was either out of my mind or going senile.’
‘What happened then?’
‘Nothing. But my misgivings were not allayed. And rumours were still circulating about a spy in the Swedish military. Two years later things came to a point when I really did begin to think that I was going out of my mind.’
‘What happened?’
‘I was summoned to an interrogation by the military security services. They didn’t make any direct accusations, but it seems that for a while I was one of those suspected of being a spy. It was a grotesque situation. But I recall thinking that if Louise had sold military secrets to the Russians, she had found a perfect cover.’
‘You?’
‘Exactly. Me.’
‘So then what happened?’
‘Nothing. The rumours kept circulating, sometimes stronger than at others. Many of us were interrogated, even after we had retired. And as I said, I had the feeling I was being watched.’
Von Enke stood up, switched off the lamps that were still on, and opened some of the curtains. A grey dawn and an equally grey sea could be glimpsed through the trees. Wallander went over to one of the windows. A storm was brewing. He was worried about the boat. Von Enke accompanied him when he went to check that the painter was secure. A few eiders bobbed up and down on the choppy waves. The sun was beginning to disperse the night mist. The boat seemed safe enough, but the two men used their combined strength to drag it further up the pebbly beach.
‘Who killed Louise?’ Wallander asked when they had finished with the boat.
Von Enke turned to face him. It occurred to Wallander that he must have confronted Louise in Menton in more or less the same way.
‘Who killed her? You’re asking me? All I know is that it wasn’t me. But what do the police think? What do you think?’
‘The man in Stockholm who’s in charge of the case seems to be good. But he doesn’t know. Not yet, perhaps I should say. We tend not to jump to conclusions.’
They returned to the hunting lodge in silence, sat down at the kitchen table again, and continued their conversation.
‘We must begin at the beginning,’ said Wallander. ‘Why did she go missing? The obvious conclusion for third-party observers like me was that the two of you had a pact of some sort.’
‘That wasn’t the case. The first I knew of her disappearance was when I read about it in the papers. It was a shock.’
‘So she didn’t know where you were?’
‘No.’
‘How long did you intend to remain in hiding?’
‘I needed to be left in peace, to think. And I’d received death threats. I needed to find a way out.’
‘I met Louise on several occasions. She was genuinely and deeply concerned about what might have happened to you.’
‘She fooled you just as she’d fooled me.’
‘I’m not sure. Could she not have loved you just as much as you loved her?’
Von Enke said nothing, merely shook his head.
‘Did you do it?’ Wallander asked. ‘Was that the escape route you hit upon?’
‘No.’
‘You must have spent hours thinking, brooding, lying sleepless in this hunting lodge. I believe you when you say you loved Louise. Nevertheless, you didn’t leave your hideaway when she died. One would have thought that the danger to your life was over now that she was dead. But you still stayed in hiding. I can’t make sense of that.’
‘I’ve lost twenty pounds since she died. I can’t eat; I can hardly sleep. I try to understand what has happened, but I can’t make head or tail of it. It’s as if Louise has become a stranger to me. I don’t know who she used to meet, or what led to her death. I don’t have any answers.’
‘Did she ever give you the impression that she was afraid?’
‘Never.’
‘I can tell you something that hasn’t appeared in the newspapers, something the police haven’t yet released for public consumption.’
Wallander told him about the suspicions that Louise had been killed by a poison that had previously been used in East Germany.
‘It seems likely that you’ve been right all along,’ Wallander concluded. ‘Somewhere along the way your wife, Louise, became an agent for the Russian intelligence service. She was who you suspected she was. She was the spy the Russians talked about.’
*
Von Enke stood up and stormed out of the house. Wallander waited. After a while he began to worry, and he went out to investigate. He eventually found von Enke lying in a gully on the side of the island facing the open sea. Wallander sat down on a rock by his side.
‘You must come back,’ he said. ‘Nothing will ever be solved if you continue to hide here.’
‘Perhaps the same poison is lying in wait for me. What will be gained if I die as well?’
‘Nothing. But the police have resources to protect you.’
‘I have to get us
ed to the idea. That I was right after all. I have to try to understand why and how she did what she did. I can’t return until I’ve done that.’
‘You’d better not take too long,’ said Wallander, standing up.
He returned to the hunting lodge. Now he was the one making the coffee. He was feeling the strain of the long night. When von Enke returned, he had already emptied his second cup.
‘Let’s talk about Signe,’ Wallander said. ‘I went to see her, and I discovered a folder you’d hidden among her books.’
‘I loved my daughter. But I made my visits in secret. Louise never knew I’d been there.’
‘So you’re the only one who ever visited her?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re wrong. Since you went missing, somebody else has been there at least once. He claimed to be your brother.’
Hakan von Enke shook his head in disbelief.
‘I don’t have a brother. I have a relative who lives in England, but that’s all.’
‘I believe you,’ said Wallander. ‘We don’t know who visited your daughter. Which might suggest that everything is even more complicated than either you or I could have foreseen.’
Wallander could see that Hakan von Enke’s demeanour had suddenly changed. Nothing they had talked about had worried him as much as the news that somebody else had visited Signe at Niklasgarden.
It was nearly six o’clock. Their long nocturnal conversation was over. Neither of them had the strength to continue.
‘I will leave now,’ said Wallander. ‘At the moment, I’m the only one who knows you are here. But you can’t wait forever before returning to civilisation. Besides, I’ll keep on pestering you with questions. Think about who it might have been who visited Niklasgarden. Someone must have been on your trail. Who? Why? We must keep this conversation going.’
‘Tell Hans and Linda that I’m OK. I don’t want them to worry. Tell them I sent you a letter.’
‘I’ll say you called. The first thing Linda would do would be to demand to see the letter.’
They went to the boat and together shoved it out onto the water. Before leaving the house, Wallander had made a note of von Enke’s phone number. But he also established that communications links to Blue Island could be bad. The wind was getting stronger. Wallander was starting to worry about the journey back. He clambered onto the boat and lowered the outboard motor.
‘I have to know what happened to Louise,’ said von Enke. ‘I must know who killed her. I need to know why she chose to lead the life of a traitor.’
The engine started at the first pull. Wallander waved goodbye and headed for the mainland. Just before rounding the Blue Island promontory he looked back. Hakan von Enke was still standing on the beach.
At that moment Wallander had a premonition that something was wrong. He didn’t know what, or why. But the feeling was very strong.
He returned the boat and set off on the long drive back to Skane. He stopped at a lay-by near Gamleby and slept for a few hours.
When he woke up, feeling stiff, the premonition was still there. After that long night with Hakan von Enke, one thing still nagged away at him.
It was a sort of warning. Something didn’t add up, something he had overlooked.
When he pulled into the parking area outside his house many hours later, he still didn’t know what it was that he’d missed.
But he thought: Nothing is what it seems to be.
33
The following day, Wallander wrote a summary of his conversation with Hakan von Enke. Once again he went through all the material he had gathered. Louise was still a mystery to him. If it was true that she had sold information to the Russians, she had cleverly hidden herself behind a mask of insignificance. Who was she, really? Wallander asked himself. Perhaps she was one of those people who become comprehensible only after they are dead.
It was a windy, rainy day in Skane. Wallander observed the dreary weather through his windows, and concluded that this summer promised to be one of the worst he could remember. Nevertheless, he forced himself to go for a long walk with Jussi. He needed to get his blood moving and clear his head. He longed for calm, sunny days when he could lie down in his garden without needing to trouble his brain with the problems that were occupying him now.
When he had returned after the walk and taken off his wet clothes, he sat down by the phone in his shabby old robe and began leafing through his address book. It was full of crossed-out phone numbers, changes and additions. In the car the day before, he had remembered an old school friend, Solve Hagberg, who might be able to help him. It was his phone number he was looking for. He’d made a note of it when they bumped into each other by pure chance in a Malmo street a few years ago.
Solve Hagberg was an odd person even as a child. Wallander recalled with a sense of guilt that he had been one of the students who bullied Solve, because of his near-sightedness and his determination to actually learn something at school. But all attempts to undermine Solve’s self-confidence had failed. All the scornful abuse, all the punches and kicks had been shaken off, like water off a duck’s back.
After leaving school they had not been in contact until one day Wallander was amazed to discover that Solve Hagberg was going to take part in a TV show called Double or Quits. Even more astonishing was that his chosen subject was going to be the history of the Swedish navy. He had been overweight as a child, another reason why he had been bullied. But if he’d been overweight then, he was positively fat now. He seemed to roll up to the microphone on invisible wheels. He was bald, wore rimless glasses, and spoke with the same broad Scanian accent that Wallander remembered from school. Mona had commented disparagingly on his appearance and gone into the kitchen to make coffee, but Wallander stayed to watch him answer all the questions correctly. He won, thanks to precise and detailed replies delivered with complete self-confidence. As far as Wallander could recall, he hadn’t hesitated for a moment. He really did know everything about the long, complicated history of the Swedish navy. It had been Hagberg’s big ambition to become a naval officer. But thanks to his ungainliness he had been turned down as a recruit and sent back home to his books and model ships. Now he had taken his revenge.
For a short while the newspapers showed an interest in this strange man, who still lived in Limhamn and made a living writing articles for journals and books published by various military institutions. The press wrote about Hagberg’s comprehensive archive. He had detailed information about Swedish naval officers from the seventeenth century to the present day, constantly updated. Perhaps Wallander might be able to find something in this archive to tell him more about who Hakan von Enke really was.
He finally found Hagberg’s number scribbled in the greasy margin of the letter H. He picked up the phone and dialled. A woman answered. Wallander gave his name and asked to speak to Solve.
‘He’s dead.’
Wallander was dumbstruck. After a few seconds of silence the woman asked if he was still there.
‘Yes, I’m still here. I had no idea he was dead.’
‘He died two years ago. He had a heart attack. He was in Ronneby, addressing a group of retired naval engineers. He collapsed during the dinner following his lecture.’
‘I take it you are his wife?’
‘Asta Hagberg. We were married for twenty-six years. I told him he should lose weight, but all he did was put three sugars in his coffee instead of four. Who are you?’
Wallander explained, and decided to end the call as quickly as possible.
‘You were one of the kids who used to torment him,’ she surprised him by saying. ‘I remember your name now. One of the bullies at school. He had a list of your names, and kept tabs on how you led your lives. He wasn’t ashamed to feel pleased when things went badly for anyone on the list. Why are you calling? What do you want?’
‘I’d hoped to be allowed access to his archive.’
‘I might be able to help you, but I don’t know if I should. Why couldn�
��t you leave him alone?’
‘I don’t think any of us really understood what we were doing. Children can be cruel. I was no exception.’
‘Do you regret it?’
‘Of course.’
‘Come by, then. Solve suspected that he wouldn’t live much longer, so he taught me all about the archive and how to use it. What will happen to it when I’m gone, I don’t know. But I’m always at home. Solve left a fair amount of money, so I don’t need to work.’
She laughed.
‘Do you know how he made his money?’
‘I expect he was much sought-after as a lecturer.’
‘He never asked to be paid for that. Try again!’
‘Then I don’t know.’
‘He played poker. He went to illegal gaming clubs. I suppose that’s something you deal with in your work?’
‘I thought people turned to the Internet these days for gambling.’
‘He couldn’t be bothered with that. He went to his clubs, and was away for several weeks sometimes. Once in a while he lost a large amount of money, but usually he came home with a suitcase full of cash. He told me to count it and put it in the bank. He would then go to bed and sleep, often for days on end. The police were here now and then, and he was sometimes arrested when they raided a club, but he was never charged. I think he had an understanding with the police.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Can I mean anything but that he sometimes tipped them off? Maybe some wanted persons turned up at the clubs with money they’d stolen? Nobody would ever imagine that nice old Fatman Solve could be a copper’s nark, would they? Anyway, are you coming or aren’t you?’
The Troubled Man (2011) kw-10 Page 37
