The Troubled Man (16 page)

He was an elusive man, somebody you could never pin down, Wallander thought. Am I becoming like him?

A man about his own age was sitting on the rail of his little fishing boat, cleaning a net. He was concentrating, and humming to himself as he worked. As Wallander contemplated him, it occurred to him that he would love to change places - from the bench to the net, from the police station to a handsome boat made of varnished wood.

His father was an unsolved riddle as far as he was concerned. Was he himself just as much of a riddle to Linda? What would Wallander’s granddaughter say about her grandfather? Would he be no more than a shadowy and silent old police officer who sat alone in his house, visited less and less often by fewer and fewer people? That’s what I’m afraid of, Wallander thought. And I have every reason in the world to be afraid. I certainly haven’t cherished and taken good care of my friendships.

In many cases it was too late now. Some of the people who had been close to him were dead. Rydberg above all, but also his old friend the racehorse trainer Sven Widen. Wallander had never understood those who claimed you didn’t need to lose touch with people simply because they were dead, that you could keep on talking to them in their graves. He had never managed to do that. The dead were faces he barely remembered any more, and their voices no longer spoke to him.

Reluctantly he stood up from the bench. He would have to go back to the police station. The investigation into the assault on the ferry was closed and a man had been found guilty, although Wallander was convinced that there had been two men involved in the attack. It was half a victory: one person was found guilty, one got justice, if that was possible after having your face smashed in. But another person had slipped through the net.

It was three in the afternoon by the time Wallander returned from his excursion to the bench on the jetty. There was a note on his desk saying Ytterberg had called and wanted to speak to him. Whoever had taken the call had noted that it was urgent. Everything was always urgent in Wallander’s life as a policeman. He had never received a non-urgent message. So he didn’t return the call right away, but first read a memo from the National Police Board that Lennart Mattson had asked him to comment on. It was about one of the reorganisations that were constantly being imposed on various local police forces. This time it was about setting up a system to ensure a bigger police presence in the streets on holidays and weekends, not only in the big cities but also in towns like Ystad. Wallander read through the document and was annoyed by the pompous and bureaucratic language in which it was couched. When he finished he was aware that he didn’t really understand what it had said. He wrote a few meaningless comments and put it all in an envelope that he would deposit in the chief’s in-box when he left for the day.

Then he called Ytterberg, who answered immediately.

‘You called,’ said Wallander.

‘Now she’s disappeared too.’

‘Who?’

‘Louise. Louise von Enke. She’s vanished as well.’

Wallander held his breath. Were his ears deceiving him? He asked Ytterberg to repeat himself.

‘Louise von Enke has disappeared.’

‘What happened?’

Wallander could hear paper rustling. Ytterberg was searching through his notes. He wanted to give an exact report.

‘These last few years the von Enkes have had a cleaning woman from Bulgaria. She has a residence permit. Her name’s the same as the capital, Sofia. She works for them on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, three hours in the morning. She was there on Monday and everything seemed to be as usual. When she left the apartment at about twelve o’clock on Monday, Louise said she was looking forward to seeing her again on Wednesday. When Sofia turned up at nine o’clock on Wednesday the apartment was deserted, but that was nothing out of the ordinary. Louise wasn’t always at home, and Sofia thought no more about it. But when she arrived this morning she realised something was wrong. She is certain that Louise has not been home since Wednesday. Everything was exactly as she left it. Louise has never before gone away for this long without giving advance warning. But there was no message, nothing, only the empty apartment. Sofia called the son in Copenhagen, who said he last spoke to his mother on Sunday - in other words, five days ago. So he called me next. Incidentally, do you know what line of business he’s in?’

‘Money,’ said Wallander. ‘He deals exclusively with money.’

‘That sounds like a fascinating job,’ said Ytterberg thoughtfully.

Then he returned to his notes.

‘Hans gave me Sofia’s number and we worked our way through the apartment together. The Bulgarian lady knew exactly what was in all the cabinets and drawers. And she said what I least wanted to hear. I assume you know what I mean?’

‘Yes,’ said Wallander. ‘That nothing was missing.’

‘Precisely. No suitcase, no clothes, no handbags, not even her passport. That was still in the drawer where Sofia knew she kept it.’

‘What about her mobile phone?’

‘That was charging in the kitchen. When I discovered that, I became really worried.’

Wallander thought it all over. He would never have thought that Hakan von Enke’s disappearance would be followed by another one.

‘It’s worrying,’ he said eventually. ‘Is there a plausible explanation?’

‘Not as far as I can see. I called all her closest friends, but nobody has seen or heard from her since Sunday, when she called a friend named Katarina Linden and asked about her experience at a mountain hotel in Norway where she’d stayed. According to Katarina Linden, she sounded exactly the same as she always does. Nobody’s spoken to her since then. We’ll consult the team dealing with her husband’s disappearance. I just wanted to call you first. To get your reaction, to be honest.’

‘My first thought is that she knows where Hakan is and went to join him. But of course the passport and the mobile phone tend to argue against that.’

‘I thought something similar myself. But I’m doubtful, just like you.’

‘Could there be a plausible explanation despite everything? Could she be ill? Could she have collapsed in the street?’

The hospitals were the first places I checked. According to what Sofia has told us, and we have no reason to doubt her, Louise always carried an ID in her jacket or overcoat. Since we haven’t found it in the apartment, there’s no reason to believe she didn’t have it with her when she went out, so the hospitals should be able to identify her.’

Wallander wondered why Louise hadn’t told him that she had a cleaning woman come in three times a week. Hans hadn’t mentioned her either. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything. The von Enke family belonged to the upper class, and to them household help were taken for granted. You didn’t need to talk about them; they were simply there.

Ytterberg promised to keep him informed. They were just about to end their conversation when Wallander asked if Ytterberg had contacted Atkins, whom he had met in Stockholm.

‘Does he have any useful information?’ Ytterberg sounded doubtful.

Wallander thought it was odd that Ytterberg evidently didn’t know how close the two families were. Or had Atkins told him a different story?

‘What time is it in California?’ Ytterberg asked. ‘There’s not much point in waking people up in the middle of the night.’

‘The difference between us and the east coast of the USA is six hours,’ said Wallander, ‘but I don’t know about California. I can find out and give him a call.’

‘Do that,’ said Ytterberg. ‘Order the call and we’ll pay for it.’

‘My official telephone hasn’t been blocked yet,’ said Wallander. ‘I don’t think the police lose money on unpaid phone bills. Things haven’t gone quite that far yet.’

Wallander called directory assistance and was informed that the time difference was nine hours. That meant it was six in the morning in San Diego, so he decided to wait a couple of hours before calling Atkins. Instead he called Linda. She had already had a long conversation with Hans in Copenhagen.

‘Come over,’ she said. ‘I’m just sitting around, and Klara is asleep in her pushchair.’

‘Klara?’

Linda laughed lightly at his confusion.

‘We decided last night. She’s going to be named Klara. She’s already named Klara.’

‘Like my mother? Your grandma?’

‘I never met her, as you know. Don’t get upset, but we chose it basically because it’s a nice name. And it goes well with both last names. Klara Wallander and Klara von Enke.’

‘What will her full name be?’

‘For now it will be Klara Wallander. She can make up her own mind eventually. Are you coming? You can have a cup of coffee and we can have a provisional baptism celebration.’

‘Are you going to have her baptised? Properly?’

She didn’t answer that. And Wallander was sensible enough not to push the issue.

Fifteen minutes later he pulled up outside Linda’s house. The garden was aflame with colour. Wallander thought about his own neglected garden, in which he planted almost nothing. When he lived in Mariagatan he had always envisioned an entirely different environment, with him crawling around on his hands and knees inhaling all the earthy smells, weeding the flower beds.

Klara was asleep in her pushchair in the shade of a pear tree. Wallander observed her little face behind the mosquito net.

‘Klara’s a pretty name,’ he said. ‘What made you think of it?’

‘We saw it in a newspaper. Someone named Klara behaved heroically in connection with a major fire in Ostersund. We made up our minds more or less on the spot.’

They wandered around the garden talking about what had happened. The disappearance of Louise was as big a surprise for Linda and Hans as for everybody else. There had been no indications, nothing to suggest that Louise had been hatching a plan.

‘Could it be another act of violence?’ Wallander wondered. ‘If we assume that Hakan was attacked in some way?’

‘You mean someone wanted to get rid of the pair of them?’ Linda said. ‘But why? What could the motive possibly be?’

‘That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,’ said Wallander, contemplating a bush covered in flame-red roses. ‘Could they both have been involved in something the rest of us know nothing about?’

They continued their tour of the garden in silence. Linda was considering his question.

‘We know so little about people,’ she said in the end, when they had returned to the front of the house and she had checked on Klara behind the net.

Klara was fast asleep, her hands gripping a quilt.

‘You could say that I know no more about that couple than this little girl does,’ she said.

‘Did you find Louise and Hakan mysterious?’

‘Not at all. On the contrary! They were always frank and straightforward with me.’

‘Some people can leave false tracks,’ Wallander said thoughtfully. ‘Frankness and straightforwardness could be a sort of invisible lock protecting a reality they’d prefer not to reveal.’

They sat in the garden drinking coffee until Wallander checked his watch and saw that it was time for him to call Atkins. He went back to the police station and dialled the number from his office. After four rings Atkins answered with a grunt that sounded as if he were waiting to receive an order. Wallander told him what had happened. When he finished there was such a long silence that he began to wonder if they had been cut off. Then Atkins reacted in a loud voice.

‘It’s not possible,’ he said.

‘Nevertheless, she’s been missing since Monday or Tuesday.’

Wallander could hear that Atkins was shocked. He was breathing heavily. Wallander asked when he had last spoken to her. There was a pause while Atkins thought it over.

‘Friday afternoon. Her afternoon, my morning.’

‘Who made the call?’

‘She did.’

Wallander frowned. That was not the answer he had expected.

‘What did she want?’

‘She wanted to wish my wife a happy birthday. Both my wife and I were surprised. Neither of us bothers about birthdays.’

‘Could there have been some other reason why she called?’

‘We had the impression that she was feeling lonely, and wanted to talk to somebody. That’s not so difficult to understand.’

‘If you think carefully, looking back, was there anything she said that could be tied to her disappearance?’

Wallander didn’t trust his bad English, but Atkins understood what he meant. There was a pause before he answered.

‘Nothing,’ he said eventually. ‘She sounded exactly the same as always.’

‘But there must be something going on,’ said Wallander. ‘First he disappears, and then she does.’

‘It’s sort of like the poem about the ten little Indians,’ said Atkins. ‘They disappear one after the other. Half the family has vanished now. There’s only the two children left.’

Wallander gave a start. Had he heard wrong?

‘But there’s only one who could disappear,’ he said tentatively. ‘You’re not including Linda, surely?’

‘We shouldn’t forget the sister,’ said Atkins.

‘Sister? Does Hans have a sister?’