The Troubled Man (2011)

by Henning Mankell

  She told him about the years that had passed, and the astonishing developments that had taken place in her homeland.

  ‘We had no idea in the days you and I were together what was going to happen,’ she said. ‘Do you remember the Soviet Black Berets who took potshots all over Riga for no obvious reason? I can admit now that in those days I didn’t believe the Soviet Union would ever loosen its grip on us. I imagined the oppression would only increase. The worst of it was that nobody ever knew who could be trusted. Did your neighbours have anything to gain by you being free, or did that frighten them? Which of them were reporting to the KGB, which was everywhere, like a giant ear that nobody could get away from? Now I know I was wrong, and I’m grateful for that. But at the same time, nobody knows what the future holds for Latvia. Capitalism doesn’t solve the problems of socialism or the planned economy, nor does democracy solve all the economic crises. I think that right now we are living beyond our resources.’

  ‘Isn’t there talk of Baltic tigers?’ Wallander asked. ‘States that are as successful as countries in Asia?’

  She shook her head with a bitter expression on her face.

  ‘We’re living on borrowed money. Including Swedish money. I don’t claim to be a particularly knowledgeable or perceptive economist, but I’m quite sure that Swedish banks are lending large sums of money in my country with far too little security. And that can only end one way.’

  ‘Badly?’

  ‘Very badly. For the Swedish banks too.’

  Wallander thought back to the years at the beginning of the 1990s, when they had had their affair. He recalled how scared everybody was. So much had happened in those days that he still didn’t understand. Superficially, a major political development had drastically altered Europe, and hence the balance of power between the USA and the Soviet Union. Until he travelled to Riga to try to solve the case of the dead men in a rubber dinghy that drifted ashore near Ystad, it had never occurred to him that three of Sweden’s nearest neighbours were occupied by a foreign power. How could it be that so many of his generation, born in the late 1940s, had never truly comprehended that the Cold War actually was a war, with occupied and oppressed nations as a result? During the 1960s it often seemed that distant Vietnam lay closer to the Swedish border than did the Baltic countries.

  ‘It was difficult to understand for us as well,’ said Baiba in the middle of the night, when the first light of dawn was beginning to change the colour of the sky. ‘Behind every Latvian was a Russian, we used to say. But behind every Russian there was somebody else.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Even in the Baltic countries, the way the Russians thought was dictated by what the USA was doing.’

  ‘So behind every Russian was an American, is that right?’

  ‘You could put it like that. But nobody will really know until Russian historians tell us the full truth of everything that happened in those days.’

  Somewhere during this rambling conversation, their unexpected meeting came to an end. Wallander fell asleep. The last time he’d checked his watch it said five o’clock. When he woke up over an hour later, Baiba had left. He ran outside, but her car was no longer there. Under a stone on the garden table was a photograph. The picture had been taken in 1991, in May, at the Freedom Monument in Riga. Wallander remembered the occasion. Somebody who happened to be passing had taken it for them. They were both smiling, huddled up close, Baiba with her head resting on his shoulder. Next to the photograph was a scrap of paper that seemed to have been torn out of a diary. There was nothing written on it, just a drawing of a heart.

  Wallander thought he should drive to Ystad right away, to the quay where ferries to Poland came and went. He was already in the car and had started the engine when he realised that this was the last thing she would want him to do. He went back into the house and lay down on the bed, where he could still smell her body.

  He was tired out, and fell asleep. When he woke up a few hours later, he recalled what she had said. Behind every Russian there was somebody else. She had given him something to think about that might be relevant to Hakan and Louise von Enke. Behind every Russian there was somebody else.

  Who, he wondered, was standing behind them? And which of them was standing behind the other? He didn’t know the answer, but could see that it was important.

  He went out into the garden, got the ladder the chimney sweep always used, and climbed up onto the roof with a pair of binoculars in his hand. He could see the white ferry heading for Poland. A large part of the most important and happiest time in his life was on board and would never return. He felt a combination of sorrow and pain that he had difficulty coping with.

  He was still on the roof when the refuse truck arrived. But the man who collected the bags of rubbish didn’t notice Wallander, perched up there like a crow.

  27

  Wallander watched the refuse truck drive away. The Poland ferry had vanished in a bank of fog drifting in towards the Scanian coast. His thoughts scared him. Baiba was close to the brink of the abyss at the edge of the unknown. She had said she had a few months, no more.

  He suddenly seemed to see himself as he really was. A man filled with self-pity, a thoroughly pathetic figure. He sat there on his roof, and the only truly important thing as far as he was concerned was that Baiba was going to die, not him.

  In the end he climbed down and took Jussi for a walk, which was more of an escape. He was who he was, he finally concluded. A man, good at his job, even astute. All his life he had tried to be part of the forces of good in this world, and if he had failed, well, he wasn’t the only one. What else could a person do but try his best?

  The sky had clouded over. Expecting it to start raining at any moment, he walked with Jussi through fields where the grass had recently been cut, or was lying fallow, or was waiting for the combine. He tried to think a new thought after every fifty strides but couldn’t manage it. It was a game he used to play with Linda when she was a child. Now he tried to think thoughts about his life, about Baiba’s courage in the face of the inevitable, and about the courage he was sure he lacked himself. He walked slowly along the edge of fields, allowing Jussi to roam freely.

  Wallander had worked up a sweat, and he sat down by the side of a small pond surrounded by rusty remains of old agricultural machines. Jussi sniffed at the water, drank, then came to lie down at Wallander’s side. The clouds had begun to disperse; it wasn’t going to rain after all. Wallander could hear emergency sirens in the distance. Fire engines this time, not an ambulance or some of his colleagues. He closed his eyes and tried to conjure up Baiba. The sirens were coming closer; they were behind him now, on the road leading to Simrishamn. He turned round. The binoculars he’d had with him on the roof were still hanging around his neck. The sirens were very loud and clear now. He stood up. Could one of his neighbours’ houses be on fire? He hoped it wasn’t the house occupied by the Hanssons, an old couple: Elin was practically immobile, and her husband, Rune, could barely walk with the aid of a walking stick. The sirens were getting closer and closer. He raised the binoculars and saw to his horror two fire engines coming to a halt outside his own house. He started running, with Jussi ahead of him on the path. He occasionally stopped to view his house through the binoculars. Every time, he expected to see flames shooting through the roof, where he had been sitting not long ago, or smoke belching from shattered windows. But there was none of that. Only the fire engines, whose sirens were now silent, and firemen swarming around.

  When he arrived at the house, his heart threatening to burst through his chest, fire chief Peter Edler was stroking Jussi, who had arrived first by a large margin. He smiled grimly when Wallander came staggering up. The firemen were preparing to leave. Peter Edler was about the same age as Wallander, a freckled man with a slight Smaland accent. They sometimes met in connection with an investigation. Wallander had great respect for him, and appreciated his dry humour.

  ‘One of my men knew you lived here,’ said Ed
ler, continuing to stroke Jussi.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘That’s what I should be asking you.’

  ‘Is the place on fire?’

  ‘Apparently not. But it could easily have been.’

  Wallander stared uncomprehendingly at Edler.

  ‘I went for a walk about half an hour ago.’

  Edler nodded towards the house.

  ‘Come in and take a look.’

  The stench of burned rubber that hit Wallander when he entered the building was strong, almost choking. Edler led him into the kitchen. The firemen had opened a window to let the fumes out. On one of the stove’s burners was a frying pan, and next to it a charred rubber place mat. Edler sniffed at the frying pan, from which smoke was still rising.

  ‘Fried egg? Sausage?’

  ‘Egg.’

  ‘You went out for a walk without turning off the stove. Not only that, but you left a place mat on a burner. How careless can a detective get?’

  Edler shook his head. They went outside again. The firemen were already in the trucks, waiting for their leader.

  ‘It’s never happened to me before,’ said Wallander.

  ‘It had better not happen again.’

  Edler looked around, admiring the view.

  ‘So you moved out to the country in the end. To be honest, I never thought you’d get round to it. You have a lovely view.’

  ‘You haven’t moved yourself?’

  ‘We’re still in the same house in the middle of town. Gunnel wants to move out to the country, but I don’t. Not as long as I’m still working.’

  ‘How long to go?’

  Edler shuddered and looked miserable. He smacked the shiny helmet he was holding in his hand against his thigh, as if it were a gun.

  ‘As long as I can, or am allowed to. I might be able to keep going for a few more years, but then I’ll be on the scrapheap as well. What I’ll do then, I have no idea. I can’t just sit at home doing crossword puzzles.’

  ‘You could try writing them,’ said Wallander, thinking of Hermann Eber.

  Edler looked at him in surprise, but didn’t ask what he meant. It almost seemed as if he hoped Wallander’s future would turn out to be as grim as his own.

  ‘Maybe we could form a team? Start a little company and travel around telling people how to protect themselves from burglary and fire?’

  ‘Is it possible to protect yourself from burglary?’

  ‘Hardly. But you can teach people some simple methods of making thieves think twice before targeting your house or apartment.’

  Edler eyed him doubtfully.

  ‘Do you really believe what you’re saying?’

  ‘I’m trying to. But thieves are like children. They learn quickly.’

  Edler shook his head at Wallander’s highly dubious comparison, and climbed into his fire engine.

  ‘Remember to turn off your burners,’ he said by way of farewell. ‘But it was smart of you to have a first-rate fire alarm installed that’s linked directly to us. Your house could have burned down. Then you’d have had to cope with the nightmare of a smouldering ruin in the middle of summer.’

  Wallander didn’t respond. It was Linda who had insisted on the fire alarm. She had paid for it, given it to him as a Christmas present and made sure it was installed.

  He fed Jussi and was just about to start his lawnmower when Linda drove up. She didn’t have Klara with her. He could see right away that she was upset. He assumed she had passed the fire engines on the way here.

  ‘What were fire engines doing on your road?’ she asked.

  ‘They’d taken a wrong turn,’ he lied. ‘There was a short circuit in a neighbour’s barn.’

  ‘Which barn?’

  ‘The Hanssons’.’

  ‘Who are they?

  ‘What does it matter? You don’t know where their house is anyway.’

  She suddenly threw her bag at him as hard as she could. He managed to duck and was hit only on the shoulder. He picked it up, furious.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Why the hell do I have to stand here while you tell me bold-faced lies!’

  ‘I’m not telling you lies.’

  ‘The fire brigade was here! I stopped and spoke to your neighbour. He said you were standing next to two fire engines.’

  ‘I forgot to switch off one of the burners.’

  ‘Did you fall asleep?’

  Wallander pointed out into the fields, from where only a few minutes ago he had come racing back; he could still feel the pain in his leg muscles.

  ‘I was out with Jussi.’

  Without a word, Linda grabbed her bag out of his hand and went into the house. Wallander considered getting into his car and driving off. Linda would go on and on about his lie, and then about his incredible carelessness. She would continue to be upset, and that in turn would make him angry. Indeed, he was already well on the way there. He didn’t know what she had in her handbag, but it had been heavy, and his shoulder hurt. He felt even more agitated when he thought about the fact that this was the first time she had ever used physical violence towards him.

  Linda came out again.

  ‘Do you remember what we talked about a few weeks ago? That day when it was pouring rain, and I was here with Klara?’

  ‘How can I be expected to remember everything we say to each other?’

  ‘We talked about how she could come here and stay with you when she was a bit older.’

  ‘Let’s stay calm and talk things through,’ Wallander said. ‘You arranged the installation of a fire alarm. Now we know it works. The house didn’t burn down. I forgot to turn off a burner. Has that never happened to you?’

  She answered without hesitation.

  ‘Not since Klara was born, no.’

  ‘I don’t think it ever happened to me either when you were little.’

  The argument died away. They were both good fencers, but neither had the strength to deliver a fatal blow. Linda sat down on one of the garden chairs. Wallander remained standing, afraid her fury might boil over again. She looked at him, clearly worried.

  ‘Are you starting to become forgetful?’

  ‘I’ve always been forgetful, to a certain extent. Maybe it would be better to say that I’m absent-minded.’

  He sat down, tired of hiding the truth.

  ‘Sometimes whole chunks of time just disappear. Like ice melting away.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Wallander told her about his trip to Hoor. But he left out the part about the hitchhiker.

  ‘I suddenly had no idea why I was there. It was like being in a brightly lit room when somebody turns off the light, without warning. I don’t know how long I was in pitch darkness. It was as if I didn’t even know who I was any more.’

  ‘Has that ever happened before?’

  ‘Not as badly. But I’ve gone to a doctor, a specialist in Malmo, and she says I’m just overworked. That I think I’m a dashing young thirty-year-old who can still do everything I used to be able to do.’

  ‘I don’t like what I’m hearing. Go and see another doctor.’

  He nodded but didn’t say anything. She stood up and disappeared into the house, emerging eventually with two glasses of water. Wallander suddenly asked if the police had found the woman from Malmo who killed her parents.

  ‘I heard she was arrested in Vaxjo. Someone had given her a lift and become suspicious. He treated her to a cup of coffee at a roadside cafe outside the town and called the police. She tried to stab herself through the heart with a knife she had with her, but she didn’t succeed.’

  ‘Have you ever wanted to kill me?’ he asked, relieved to hear that his own part in her flight hadn’t come to light. Martinsson had kept his word and said nothing.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, and burst out laughing. ‘Plenty of times. Most recently a few minutes ago. I hope the old man doesn’t live until he’s gaga, I keep thinking. Every child occasionally wishes h
er parents were dead. How often have you wanted to kill me?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Do you expect me to believe that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I can console you by telling you that Mona’s the one I’ve had in my sights more often. But naturally, I’m horrified at the thought of one day no longer having you two around. Incidentally, Hans and I managed to persuade Mona to go to a clinic for treatment.’

  Jussi caught sight of a hare in the field and started barking. They sat in silence and watched his vain attempts to break out of his kennel. The hare ran off, and Jussi quietened down.

  ‘I came for another reason,’ she said out of the blue.

  ‘Don’t tell me something’s happened to Klara?’

  ‘No, she’s fine. Hans is at home with her today. I make him accept his responsibilities. I think he enjoys it, actually. Klara is about as far away from the stressful banking world as you can get.’

  ‘But something else must have happened?’

  ‘I was in Copenhagen yesterday evening. With a couple of friends. We went to a concert - Madonna, the idol of my youth. It was terrific. Afterwards we had a late dinner, then went our separate ways. I was staying at the posh Hotel d’Angleterre - the firm Hans works for gets a corporate rate. I was in a good mood and not all that sleepy, so I went for a walk along Stroget. There were a lot of people out. I sat down on a bench, and that was when I saw him.’

  ‘Saw who?’

  ‘Hakan.’

  Wallander held his breath and stared at her. She was quite certain, he could see that; she had no hesitation.

  ‘It wasn’t just his face, which I only caught a glimpse of. It was the way he walked, shoulders back, short rapid strides.’

  ‘Describe in detail exactly what you saw.’

  ‘I’d sat down on a bench in a little square on Stroget, I don’t know what it’s called. He was coming from Nyhavn and had already passed me when I noticed him. First I recognised his hair from behind, then the way he walked, and finally his overcoat.’