The Dogs of Riga: A Kurt Wallendar Mystery

by Henning Mankell

  “Upitis, the butterfly collector and poet, is a crafty fellow,” he said. “One has to admit it is a very clever move to divert suspicion from himself by going to see a Swedish police officer who happens to be visiting Riga, but there is nothing false about his confession. I’ve been expecting him to cave in. The murder of Major Liepa is solved. That means there is no longer any reason why you should stay in Riga. I’ll see about arranging for your journey home right away. We will express our thanks to the Swedish foreign ministry through the official channels.”

  It was then that it dawned on Wallander just how the whole of this gigantic conspiracy must be organized. He could see not just the scope of it, and the ingenious mixture of truth and lies, false trails and genuine chains of cause and effect, but it was also clear to him that Major Liepa had been the skillful and honorable police officer he had thought him to be. He understood Baiba Liepa’s fear just as well as he understood her defiance. Although he was now going to be forced to go home, he knew he would have to see her again. He owed her that, just as he knew he had an obligation to the dead major.

  “Of course I’ll go home,” he said, “but I’ll stay until tomorrow. I’ve had far too little time to see the beautiful city I’ve been staying in—that’s something I realized last night, talking to your wife.”

  He had been addressing both the colonels, apart from this last bit, which was directed at Putnis.

  “Sergeant Zids is an excellent guide,” he continued. “I trust I can make use of his services for the rest of today, even though my work here is now finished.”

  “Of course,” Murniers said. “Perhaps we ought to celebrate the fact that this peculiar business is about to be solved. It would be impolite of us to allow you to fly back home without our presenting you with a souvenir, or drinking one another’s health.”

  Wallander thought about the coming evening. Inese would be waiting for him in the hotel nightclub and pretending to be his mistress, to take him to his appointment with Baiba Liepa.

  “Let’s keep it low key,” he said. “We’re police officers after all, not actors celebrating a successful opening night. Besides, I’ve already got something arranged for tonight. A young lady has agreed to keep me company.”

  Murniers smiled and produced a bottle of vodka from one of his desk drawers.

  “That’s something we wouldn’t want to spoil,” he said. “Let’s drink a toast here and now!”

  They’re in a hurry, Wallander thought. They can’t get me out of the country quickly enough.

  They drank one another’s health. Wallander raised his glass to the two colonels, and wondered if he would ever discover which one had signed the order leading to the murder of the major. That was the only thing he was still doubtful about, the only thing he couldn’t know. Putnis or Murniers? What was quite certain now was that Major Liepa had been right. His secret investigations had led him to a truth he had taken with him to the grave, unless he had left a record. That is what Baiba Liepa would have to find if she wanted to know who had killed her husband, if it was Murniers or Putnis. Only then would she discover why Upitis had made a false confession in a desperate attempt to find out which of the colonels was responsible for the major’s death.

  Here I am drinking with one of the worst criminals I’ve ever come across, Wallander thought. The only thing is, I don’t know which one it is.

  “We shall accompany you to the airport in the morning, of course,” Putnis said when the toasts were over.

  Wallander left police headquarters feeling like a newly released prisoner, marching a few paces behind Sergeant Zids. They drove through the streets with the sergeant pointing out various places of interest. Wallander looked and nodded, muttering “yes” and “very pretty” when it seemed appropriate. But his thoughts were miles away. He was thinking about Upitis, and the choice he’d obviously been given. What had Murniers or Putnis whispered in his ear? What had they produced from their store of threats, the scope of which Wallander hardly dared imagine? Perhaps Upitis had a Baiba Liepa of his own, perhaps he had children. Did they still shoot children in Latvia? Or was it sufficient just to threaten that every door would be closed to them in the future, that their future would be over before it had even started? Was that how a totalitarian state functioned? What choice did Upitis have? Had he saved his own life, his family, Baiba Liepa, by pretending to be the murderer? Wallander tried to recall the little he knew about the show trials that had led to a series of appalling injustices throughout the history of communism. Upitis fitted into that pattern somewhere or another. Wallander knew he would never be able to comprehend how people could be forced to admit to crimes they could never have committed, admit to murdering their best friend deliberately and in cold blood.

  I’ll never know, he thought. I’ll never know what happened, and that’s just as well because I’d never be able to understand it anyway. But Baiba Liepa would understand, and she has got to know. Someone is in possession of the major’s last will and testimony, his investigation is not dead, it’s still alive but it is outlawed and hiding somewhere where not only the major’s soul is keeping watch over it.

  What I’m looking for is the “Guardian,” and that’s something Baiba Liepa must know. She must know that somewhere, there is a secret that mustn’t be lost. It’s so cleverly hidden that nobody but her will be able to find it and interpret it. She was the person he trusted, she was the major’s angel in a world where all the other angels had fallen.

  Sergeant Zids stopped before a gate in the ancient city wall of Riga, and Wallander got out of the car, realizing it must be the Swedish Gate that Mrs. Putnis had spoken about. He shivered. It had grown cold again. He inspected the cracked brick wall absentmindedly, and tried to decipher some ancient symbols carved into it. He gave up more or less immediately, and went back to the car.

  “Shall we go on?” the sergeant asked.

  “Yes,” said Wallander. “I want to see all there is to see.”

  He had realized that Zids liked driving, and all alone in the backseat, despite the cold, despite the sergeant’s constant glances in the rearview mirror, he preferred the car to his hotel room. He was thinking about the evening, about how essential it was that nothing should prevent his meeting with Baiba Liepa. For a moment he considered contacting her at the university and telling her what he knew in a deserted corridor. But he had no idea what subject she taught, and he didn’t even know if there was more than one university in Riga.

  There was also something else that had begun to form in his mind. The brief meetings he had had with Baiba Liepa, although fleeting and overshadowed by the grim point of departure, had been more than mere conversations about a sudden death. They had an emotional content far beyond what he was used to. Deep down he could hear his father’s tetchy voice bewailing his son who had gone astray and not only become a police officer but had also been stupid enough to fall for the widow of a dead Latvian police officer.

  Is that the way it was? Had he really fallen in love with Baiba Liepa?

  As if Sergeant Zids could read his thoughts, he stuck out his arm and pointed to a long, ugly building, telling him that it was a part of Riga University. Wallander contemplated the grim brick edifice through the misted-up car window. Somewhere in there was Baiba Liepa. All official buildings in this country looked like prisons, and it seemed to Wallander their occupants really were prisoners. Not the major, and not Upitis, although he was now a real prisoner and not just one trapped in an endless nightmare.

  He suddenly felt tired of driving around with the sergeant, and requested him to return to the hotel. Without knowing why, he asked him to come back at 2 p.m.

  He spotted one of the men in gray immediately, and it occurred to him that the colonels no longer needed to pretend. He went into the dining room and deliberately sat down at a different table, ignoring the anxious face of the waiter who came to attend to him. I can really stir things up by refusing to cooperate with the government department that takes car
e of table placing, he thought, feeling furious. He slammed himself into the chair, ordered a beer and schnapps, and then noticed that the boil he got on his buttock from time to time had reappeared, making him even angrier. He stayed in the dining room for more than two hours, and whenever his glass was empty he beckoned the waiter and ordered a refill. As he grew more and more drunk, he staggered around in his mind and, in a burst of sentimentality, he imagined taking Baiba Liepa back to Sweden with him. As he left the dining room, he couldn’t help waving to the man in gray who was keeping watch from one of the sofas. He took the elevator to his room, lay down on the bed and fell asleep. Much later somebody started knocking on a door somewhere inside his head. It took him a while to realize that it was the sergeant knocking on his door. Wallander jumped out of bed, yelled at him to wait, and doused his face with cold water. He asked the sergeant to take him out of town to a forest where he could go for a walk and prepare for his meeting with the lover who would take him to Baiba Liepa.

  It was cold in the forest, the ground was hard under his feet and it seemed to Wallander he was in an impossible situation. We live in an age when the mice are hunting the cats, he thought. But that isn’t true either, as nobody knows any more who are the mice and who the cats. That sums up my situation precisely. How can I be a police officer when nothing is what it seems to be anymore, nothing makes sense. Not even Sweden, the country I once thought I understood, is an exception. A year ago I drove a car in an advanced state of intoxication, but I wasn’t punished because my colleagues rallied to protect me—just another case of the criminal shaking hands with the man who’s chasing him.

  As he walked through the fir trees while Zids waited in the black limousine, he made up his mind to apply for the job at the Trelleborg Rubber Company. He’d come to the point where a decision like this was inevitable. Without any doubt, without needing to convince himself, he realized it was time to get out.

  The thought put him in a good mood, and he returned to the car. They drove back to Riga. He said goodbye to the sergeant and went to the reception desk for his key, where he was handed a letter from Colonel Putnis informing him that his flight to Helsinki would leave at 9:30 a.m. the next morning. He went up to his room, took a bath in the lukewarm water, and went to bed. There were three hours to go before he was due to meet Inese, and he ran through everything that had happened once more. He tried to put himself in the major’s position, and imagined the extent of the loathing Karlis Liepa must have felt. The loathing and also the feeling of impotence at having access to proof, but not being able to do anything about it. He had seen into the very heart of the corruption, which involved either Putnis or Murniers or possibly both of them, meeting criminals and creating a situation not even the Mafia had managed to achieve: state-controlled crime. Liepa had seen, and he’d seen too much, and he’d been murdered. Somewhere or other was his testimony, records of his investigation and his proof.

  Wallander sat bolt upright in bed. He had overlooked the most serious consequence of this testimony. It must have occurred to Putnis or Murniers as well. They would have reached the same conclusion and be just as keen to find the proof that Major Liepa had hidden. His fear returned. Nothing could be easier than arranging for a Swedish police officer to disappear. There could be an accident, a criminal investigation that was in fact just a game with words, and a zinc coffin could be sent back to Sweden, with deepest regrets.

  Possibly they already suspected that he knew too much. Or was the rapid decision to send him back home a sign that they were confident that he knew nothing at all?

  There’s nobody here I can trust, Wallander thought. I’m all on my own, and I must do as Baiba Liepa, decide who to confide in, and risk making a decision that might turn out to be wrong. But I’m isolated, while all around me are eyes and ears that would have no hesitation in sending me down the same road as the major. Perhaps another conversation with Baiba Liepa would be too risky.

  He got out of bed and stood at the window, looking out over the rooftops. It had grown dark, it was nearly 7 p.m., and he would have to make up his mind.

  I am not a courageous man, he thought. Least of all am I a police officer with a disregard for death, who takes risks without hesitation. What I would most like to be doing is investigating bloodless burglaries and frauds in some quiet corner of Sweden.

  Then he thought of Baiba, her fear and her defiance, and he knew he would never be able to live with himself were he to fail her now. He put on his suit and went downstairs shortly after 8 p.m. There was a different man in gray with a different newspaper in the foyer, but this time Wallander didn’t bother to wave. Although it was quite early in the evening, the nightclub was already packed. He elbowed his way through the throng, past several women giving him come-hither smiles, and finally reached an empty table. He knew he shouldn’t have anything to drink, but when a waiter came to his table he ordered a whisky even so. There was no band on the platform, but music was blaring out of loudspeakers suspended from the black ceiling. He tried to make out people in this murky, twilight world, but everything was just shadows and voices drowned by the awful music.

  Inese appeared from nowhere, and she played her part with an assurance that surprised him. There was no sign of the shy lady he had met a couple of days earlier. She was heavily made up and provocatively dressed in a miniskirt, and he realized he hadn’t prepared himself at all for this charade. He held out his hand to greet her, but she ignored it and stooped down to kiss him.

  “We can’t go just yet,” she said. “Order me a drink. Laugh. Look as if you’re pleased to see me.”

  She drank whisky, smoking nervously, keeping an eye on the nightclub entrance. Wallander tried to play the part of a middle-aged man flattered by the attention of a young woman. He tried to pierce the wall of sound, and told her about his long tour of the city with the sergeant as his guide. When Wallander said he would be going back home the next day, she started. He wondered how deeply involved she was, whether she was one of the “friends” Baiba Liepa had referred to, the friends whose dreams were the guarantee that the future of their country wouldn’t be thrown to the dogs. But I can’t trust her either, Wallander thought. She too might be leading a double life, having been given no choice, or as a last desperate ploy.

  “Pay now,” she said. “We’ll be leaving in a moment.”

  Wallander noticed that the lights had gone on over the platform and the band in their pink silk jackets were starting to tune their instruments. He paid the waiter, and Inese smiled, pretending to whisper sweet nothings in his ear.

  “There’s a back door next to the bathrooms,” she said. “It’s locked, but if you knock somebody will open it. You’ll come out into a garage. There’ll be a white Moskvitch standing there with a yellow mudguard over the right front wheel. The car isn’t locked. Get into the backseat. I’ll be there shortly after you. Smile now, whisper in my ear, give me a kiss. Then go.”

  He did as he was told, then stood up. Next to the bathrooms he knocked on a metal door and heard a key turn immediately. People were going in and out of the bathrooms, but nobody seemed to pay any attention as he slipped through the door into the garage. I’m in a country full of secret entrances and exits, he thought. Nothing seems to happen in the open.

  The garage was cramped and dimly lit, and smelled of engine oil and gas. Wallander could see a truck with one wheel missing, some bicycles, and then the white Moskvitch. There was no sign of the man who had opened the door for him. Wallander tried the car door. It was unlocked. He got into the backseat and waited. Shortly afterwards Inese appeared. She was clearly in a hurry. She started the engine, the garage doors slid open, and she drove out of the hotel, turning left away from the wide streets surrounding the block with the Latvia Hotel at its core. He noticed that she was keeping a constant lookout in the rearview mirror, and kept changing direction, following some invisible map. After about 20 minutes of twisting and turning, she seemed satisfied they were not being followed. She ask
ed Wallander for a cigarette, and he lit one for her. They crossed over the long iron bridge and into a maze of dirty factories and endless clusters of barrack-like blocks of flats. Wallander was not sure if he recognized the building outside which she came to a halt.

  “Hurry up,” she said. “We don’t have much time.”

  Baiba Liepa let them in, and exchanged a few hurried words with Inese. Wallander wondered if she had already been told he would be leaving Riga the next morning, but she said nothing, merely taking his jacket and putting it over a chair back. Inese had disappeared, and they were once again alone together in the quiet room with the heavy curtains. Wallander had no idea how to start, what he ought to say, and so he did what Rydberg had so often told him to do: tell it how it is, it can’t make things any worse, just tell it how it is!

  She slumped back in the sofa as if struck by a terrible pain when Wallander told her Upitis had confessed to murdering her husband. “It’s not true,” she whispered.

  “I’ve had his confession translated for me,” he said. “It claims he had two accomplices.”

  “It’s not true!” she screamed, and it was as if a floodgate had finally burst. Inese appeared in the shadows and looked at Wallander: he knew immediately what he should do. He moved over to the sofa and put his arms around Baiba, who was shivering and sobbing. Wallander had time to register that she might be crying because Upitis had committed an act of betrayal that was so outrageous, it was impossible to comprehend, or she could be crying because the truth was about to be suppressed by means of a false, forced confession. She was sobbing frantically, and clinging on to him as if she were seized with pain.

  Looking back, it seemed to Wallander that was the moment when he burned his boats and began to accept that he was in love with Baiba Liepa. He had realized the love he now felt had its origins in another person’s need of him. He asked himself briefly if he had ever felt anything like it before.