The Troubled Man (2011)

by Henning Mankell

  ‘No,’ said Wallander. ‘I don’t know anything you don’t.’

  It was after that conversation that Wallander began writing. He collected all his thoughts, all his notes, and invented a system of Post-its that he stuck up on one of the living-room walls. But every time Linda came to visit him, with or without Hans and Klara, he took them down. He wanted to write his story without the involvement of anybody else, and without anyone’s even suspecting what he was doing.

  He began by trying to tie up the remaining loose ends. It wasn’t difficult to check that ‘USG Enterprises’, whose name he had seen in the entrance hall of the building where George Talboth lived, was the name of a consultancy firm. There was no indication that it wasn’t above-board. But he couldn’t work out who had broken into his house while he was away, nor who could have visited Niklasgarden. It was obvious that they were people who had assisted Hakan von Enke in some way, but Wallander never established why they did it. Even if the most likely explanation was that they were looking for what Wallander called Signe’s book. It was lying on the kitchen table as he wrote, but otherwise he continued to hide it in Jussi’s kennel.

  It wasn’t long before it dawned on him what he was really doing. He was writing about himself and his own life just as much as about Hakan von Enke. When he returned in his thoughts to everything he had heard about the Cold War, the divided attitude of the Swedish armed forces to neutrality and not joining alliances or the necessity of being an integrated part of NATO, he realised how little he actually knew about the world he had lived in. It was impossible to catch up on the knowledge he hadn’t bothered to acquire earlier. What he could learn now about that world obviously had to be from the perspective of somebody in the present looking back in time. He wondered grimly if that might be typical of his generation. An unwillingness to care about the real world they lived in, the political circumstances that were shifting all the time. Or had his generation been split? Between those who cared, and those who didn’t?

  His father had often been better informed than Wallander on all kinds of events, he could see that now. It wasn’t only the episode with Tage Erlander and his speech in the People’s Park in Malmo. He also recalled a time in the early 1970s when his father had told him off for not bothering to vote in the election that had taken place a few days earlier. Wallander could still remember his father’s fury, how he had called him ‘an idle idiot when it comes to politics’ before throwing a paintbrush at him and telling him to get out of his sight. Which he had done, of course. At the time he just thought his father was weird. Why should Wallander care about the way Swedish politicians were always arguing with one another? The only things that were of any interest to him were lower taxes and higher wages, nothing else.

  He often sat at his kitchen table and wondered if his closest friends thought the same way. Not interested in politics, only worried about their own circumstances. On the few occasions he ever talked about politics it was mainly a matter of attacking individual politicians, complaining about their idiotic shenanigans without moving on to the next stage and wondering what the alternatives were.

  There had been only one short period when he thought seriously about the political situation in Sweden, Europe and perhaps even the world. That was nearly twenty years ago, in connection with the brutal double murder of an elderly farming couple in Lenarp. Fingers were pointed at illegal immigrants or asylum seekers, and Wallander had been forced to face up to his own opinions on the massive immigration into Sweden. He realised that behind his usual peaceful and tolerant exterior lurked dark, even racist, views. The realisation had surprised and scared him. He had eliminated all such thoughts. But after that investigation, which had come to its remarkable conclusion in the market square at Kivik, where the two murderers had been arrested, he sank back into his political apathy.

  He visited the Ystad library several times during the autumn and borrowed books about Swedish post-war history. He read about all the discussions concerning whether or not Sweden should acquire nuclear weapons or join NATO. Despite the fact that he was reaching adulthood when some of these debates were taking place, he had no recollection of reacting to what the politicians were talking about. It was as if he had been living in a glass bubble.

  On one occasion he told Linda about how he had started to examine his past. It turned out that she had much more interest in political matters than he did. He was surprised - he’d never noticed it before. She merely commented that a person’s political awareness wasn’t something that necessarily showed on the surface.

  ‘When did you ever ask me a political question?’ she asked. ‘Why would I discuss politics with you when I know you’re not interested?’

  ‘What does Hans say?’

  ‘He knows a lot about the world. But we don’t always agree.’

  Wallander often thought about Hans. In the late autumn of 2008, in the middle of October, Linda had called him, obviously upset, and told him that the Danish police had raided Hans’s office in Copenhagen. Some of the brokers, including two Icelanders, had rigged the increase in value of certain stocks and shares in order to secure their own commissions and bonuses. When the financial crisis hit, the bubble burst. For a while, all employees, including Hans, were under suspicion of having been involved in the scam. It was as recently as March that Hans had been informed that he was no longer suspected of shady dealings. It had been a heavy burden for him to bear when he was also mourning the death of another parent. He had frequently visited Wallander and asked him to explain what had actually happened. Wallander told him as much as he could, but was careful not even to imply what really lay behind it all.

  Wallander was particularly concerned about how to make sure that the summary of his thoughts and the knowledge he had acquired would become public. Should he send his text anonymously to the authorities? Would anybody take it seriously? Who wanted to destroy the good relationship between Sweden and the USA? Perhaps the silence surrounding Hakan von Enke’s espionage was best for everybody involved?

  He had started writing at the end of September, and now he had been going for more than eight months. He didn’t want what had happened to be buried in silence. That possibility made him feel indignant.

  While writing he also continued his work as a police officer. Two depressing investigations into cases of aggravated assault occupied him throughout the autumn. Then in April 2009 he started looking into a series of arson attacks in the Ystad area.

  What worried Wallander more than anything else during this period was that his sudden losses of memory kept recurring. The worst incident was during the Christmas break. It had snowed during the night. He had dressed and gone out to shovel the driveway and the parking area. When he had finished, he didn’t know where he was. He didn’t even recognise Jussi. It was quite a while before it dawned on him whose house he was standing in front of. He never did what he should have done. He didn’t see a doctor, because he was simply too scared.

  He tried to convince himself that he was working too hard, that he was burning himself out. Sometimes he succeeded. But he was constantly afraid that his forgetfulness would get worse. He was terrified of succumbing to dementia, that he might be suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

  Wallander stayed in bed. It was Sunday morning; he wasn’t on duty. Linda was due to visit him after lunch, with Klara. Hans might come too, if he felt up to it.

  He got up, let Jussi out and made breakfast. He devoted the rest of the morning to his papers. For the first time, this very morning, he believed that what he was writing was in fact a sort of ‘life story’, a testament. This is what his life had been like. Even if he lived for another ten or fifteen years, nothing would change very much. But he did wonder, with an empty feeling deep inside himself, what he would do after retiring as a police officer.

  There was only one answer, and that was Klara. Her presence always cheered him up. She would be there for him when everything else was over.

 
; He finished his story that morning in May. He had nothing more to say. A printout was lying on the table in front of him. Laboriously, one word at a time, he had reconstructed the story of the man who had tricked him into thinking that his wife was a spy. Wallander too was a part of the story, not just the person who had written it down.

  He had never found explanations for some of the loose ends. What he had perhaps spent most time thinking about was the question of Louise’s shoes. Why were they standing neatly next to her body on Varmdo? Wallander eventually came to believe that she had been killed somewhere else and didn’t have her shoes on at the time. Whoever placed them by her side hadn’t really thought about what he was doing. Wallander also didn’t have an answer to where Louise had been during the time she was missing. She had presumably been held prisoner until somebody decided she had to die for the sake of Hakan von Enke.

  The other continuing mystery as far as Wallander was concerned was the question of the stones. The stone he had seen on Hakan von Enke’s desk, the stone he had been given by Atkins, and the one he had noticed on George Talboth’s balcony table. He gathered they were some sort of souvenirs, taken from the Swedish archipelago by people who shouldn’t have been there among the little islands and rocks. But he couldn’t explain why von Enke’s had eventually disappeared from his desk. There were several possibilities, but he was reluctant to choose any of them.

  He had occasionally spoken to Atkins on the phone. Listened to him crying when he talked about his lost friend. Or rather, friends, as he always corrected himself. He didn’t forget Louise. Atkins had said he would come to the funeral, but when it actually took place, in the middle of August, he never showed up. And he never contacted Wallander again after that. Wallander sometimes wondered what Atkins and Hakan von Enke had talked about the many times they’d met. But he would never know.

  There was another question he would have liked to ask Hakan and Louise. Why had one of his desk drawers been such a mess? Did he intend to go to Cambodia if he was forced to flee? Nor did he know why Louise had withdrawn 200,000 kronor from the bank. He didn’t find the money when the Stockholm apartment was cleaned out. It had simply disappeared, without a trace.

  And why had Sten Nordlander decided to kill Hakan von Enke and then himself?

  The dead had taken their secrets with them.

  At the end of November, when Wallander was at a conference in Stockholm, he rented a car and drove out to Niklasgarden. He was accompanied by Hans, who still hadn’t been able to bring himself to visit his unknown sister. It was a moving moment for Wallander, watching Hans at the side of Signe’s bed. He also thought about the fact that Hakan von Enke had always visited his daughter regularly. He could rely on her, Wallander thought. He had dared to trust her with his most secret documents.

  He spent a long time wondering whether he should give a name to what he had written. In the end he left the title page blank. The manuscript amounted to 212 pages in all. He leafed through it one last time, stopping occasionally to check that he hadn’t got something wrong. He decided that despite everything, he had come as close to the truth as possible.

  He decided to send the material to Ytterberg. He wouldn’t sign it but would post it to his sister, Kristina, and ask her to forward it to Stockholm. Ytterberg would naturally know that it must have been Wallander who had sent it, but he would never be able to prove it.

  Ytterberg is an intelligent man, Wallander thought. He will make the best possible use of what I have written. He’ll also be able to work out why I chose to send it to him anonymously.

  But Wallander was aware that even Ytterberg might not be able to convince a higher authority to investigate further. The USA was still the Great Redeemer as far as many Swedes were concerned. A Europe without the USA would be more or less defenceless. It could be that nobody would want to face up to the truth that Wallander was convinced he had established.

  Wallander thought about the Swedish soldiers who had been sent to Afghanistan. That would never have happened if the Americans hadn’t asked for them. Not openly, but behind the scenes, just as their submarines had hidden themselves in Swedish territorial waters in the early 1980s with the approval of the Swedish navy and Swedish politicians. Or as CIA operatives were allowed to capture two suspected Egyptian terrorists on Swedish territory on 18 December 2001, and have them returned in humiliating circumstances to their home country, where they were imprisoned and tortured. Wallander could imagine that if Hakan von Enke were to be unmasked, he would be hailed as a hero, not as a despicable traitor.

  Nothing, he thought, is certain. Not the way in which these events are interpreted, nor what the rest of my life will be like.

  The May morning was fine but chilly. Around noon he went for a long walk with Jussi, who seemed to be back in good health. When Linda arrived, without Hans but with Klara, Wallander had finished straightening up the house and checking that there weren’t any papers lying around that he didn’t want her to see. Klara had fallen asleep in the car. Wallander carefully carried her indoors and laid her down on the sofa. Holding her in his arms always gave him the feeling that Linda had returned in another guise.

  They sat down at the kitchen table to drink coffee.

  ‘Did you clean?’ Linda asked.

  ‘I’ve done nothing else all day.’

  She laughed and shook her head. Then she turned serious again. Wallander knew that all the problems Hans had been forced to cope with had been shattering for her as well.

  ‘I want to start work again,’ she said. ‘I can’t go on much longer just being a mum.’

  ‘But there are only four more months of your maternity leave -‘

  ‘Four months can be a very long time. I’m getting very impatient.’

  ‘With Klara?’

  ‘With myself.’

  ‘That’s something you inherited from me. Impatience.’

  ‘I thought you always said that patience was the most important virtue for a police officer.’

  ‘But that doesn’t mean that patience is something you’re born with - you have to learn it.’

  She took a sip of coffee and thought over what he had said.

  ‘I feel old,’ Wallander said. ‘I wake up every day feeling that everything is going so incredibly fast. I don’t know if I’m running after something or away from something. I just run. To be completely honest, I’m scared stiff of growing old.’

  ‘Think of Grandad! He just kept on going as usual and never worried about the fact that he was growing old.’

  ‘That’s not true. He was scared of dying.’

  ‘Sometimes, maybe. But not all the time.’

  ‘He was a strange man. I don’t think anyone can compare themselves to him.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You had a relationship with him that I lost when I was very young. I sometimes think about the fact that he always had a better relationship with Kristina. Maybe it’s just that he found it easier to get along with women? I was born the wrong sex. He never wanted a son.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous, and you know it.’

  ‘Ridiculous or not, that’s what I keep thinking. I’m scared of old age.’

  She reached across the table and stroked his arm.

  ‘I’ve noticed that you get worried. But deep down you know there’s no point. You can’t do anything about your age.’

  ‘I know,’ said Wallander. ‘But sometimes it feels like complaining is all you can do.’

  Linda stayed for several hours. They talked until Klara woke up, and with a broad smile on her face she ran over to Wallander.

  Wallander suddenly felt terrified. His memory had deserted him again. He didn’t know who the girl running towards him was. He knew he’d seen her before, but what her name was or what she was doing in his house he had no idea.

  It was as if everything had fallen silent. As if all colours had faded away, and all he was left with was black and white.

  The shadow grew more intense. And Kurt Wa
llander slowly descended into a darkness that some years later transported him into the empty universe known as Alzheimer’s disease.

  After that there is nothing more. The story of Kurt Wallander is finished, once and for all. The years - ten, perhaps more - he has left to live are his own. His and Linda’s, his and Klara’s; nobody else’s.

  Afterword

  In the world of fiction it is possible to take many liberties. For instance, it is not unusual for me to change a landscape slightly so that nobody can say: ‘It was exactly there! That’s precisely where the action took place!’

  The thought behind this is of course to stress the difference between fact and fiction. What I write could have taken place as I narrate it. But it didn’t necessarily do so.

  There are many shifts of that type in this book, between what actually happened and what might conceivably have happened.

  Like most other authors, I write in order to try to make the world more understandable. In that respect, fiction can be superior to factual realism.

  So it doesn’t matter whether or not there is a nursing home somewhere in central Sweden called Niklasgarden. Nor does it matter if there is a banqueting hall on Ostermalm in Stockholm where naval officers congregate. Or a cafe just outside Stockholm that serves the same purpose, where a submarine officer by the name of Hans-Olov Fredhall might turn up. And Madonna didn’t give a concert in Copenhagen in 2008.

  But the most important things in this book are built on the solid foundation of reality.

  Many people have helped me in doing the necessary research. I thank them all most gratefully.

  However, the responsibility for the contents right up to the final period lies with me. Completely, and with no exceptions.

  Henning Mankell

  Gothenburg, June 2009