The Troubled Man (23 page)

Wallander stopped dead and broke off his train of thought. They had entered the couple’s bedroom. There was blood on the floor and on one side of the bed. But what had caught Wallander’s attention was a painting hanging on the wall above the bed. It depicted a capercaillie in a woodland setting. Martinsson materialised by his side.

‘Painted by your father, right?’

Wallander nodded, but also shook his head in disbelief.

‘I never cease to be amazed.’

‘Well, at least he didn’t need to worry about forgeries,’ said Martinsson thoughtfully.

‘Of course not,’ said Wallander. ‘From an artistic point of view, it’s crap.’

‘Don’t say that,’ protested Martinsson.

‘I’m only calling a spade a spade,’ said Wallander. ‘Where’s the murder weapon?’

They went out into the garden. A plastic tent had been erected over an old axe. Wallander could see blood high up on the shaft.

‘Is there a plausible motive? How long had they been married?’

‘They celebrated their golden wedding anniversary last year. They have four grown children and goodness knows how many grandchildren. Nobody can understand what happened.’

‘Is there money involved?’

‘According to the neighbours they were both thrifty and stingy. I don’t know yet how much they have stashed away. The bank’s looking into it. But we can assume that there’s a fair amount.’

‘It looks as if there was a fight,’ Wallander said after a few minutes’ thought. ‘He resisted. Until we recover the body, we can’t say what sort of injuries she had.’

‘It’s not a big swamp,’ said Martinsson. ‘They expect to pull her out today.’

They drove back from the depressing scene of the crime to the police station. It seemed to Wallander that just for a moment, the summer landscape had been transformed into a black-and-white photograph. He spent some time swivelling back and forth in his desk chair, then dialled Eskil Lundberg’s number. His wife answered, and she said her husband was out in his boat. Wallander could hear young children playing in the background. He guessed that Eskil Lundberg was the boy he had seen in the photograph.

‘I assume he’s out fishing,’ said Wallander.

‘What else? He has nearly a mile of nets out there. Every other day he delivers fish to Soderkoping.’

‘Eel?’

She sounded almost offended when she replied.

‘If he’d been after eels he’d have taken eel traps with him,’ she said. ‘But there are no eels any more. Before long there won’t be any fish left at all.’

‘Does he still have the boat?’

‘Which boat?’

‘The big trawler. NRG123.’

Wallander noticed that she was becoming less and less cooperative, almost suspicious.

‘He tried to sell it ages ago. Nobody wanted it, it was such a wreck. It rotted away. He sold the engine for a hundred kronor. What exactly do you want?’

‘I want to speak to him,’ Wallander said, in as friendly a tone as he could manage. ‘Does he have a mobile phone with him?’

‘There’s not much of a signal out there. You’d be better off calling him when he gets back home. He should be here in about two hours.’

‘I’ll do that.’

He managed to bring the call to a close before she had another chance to ask him what he wanted. He leaned back and put his feet on his desk. Now he had no meetings, no tasks that required his immediate attention. He grabbed his jacket and left the police station - to be on the safe side, he left via the basement garage, so that nobody could catch him at the last moment. He walked down the hill into town, and felt a spring in his step. He wasn’t yet so old that nothing affected him any more. Sun and warm weather made everything more tolerable.

He had lunch in a cafe just off the square, read
Ystads Allehanda
and one of the evening newspapers. Then he sat on a bench in the square. He had another quarter of an hour to kill. He wondered where Hakan and Louise were at that moment. Were they still alive, or were they dead? Had they made some kind of pact regarding their disappearance? He was reminded of the turmoil caused by the spy Stig Bergling, but he had trouble finding any similarities between the serious submarine commander and the conceited Bergling.

Wallander also considered another factor that he reluctantly conceded could be of vital significance. Hakan von Enke had visited his daughter regularly. Was he really prepared to let her down by going underground? The inevitable conclusion was that von Enke must be dead.

There was an alternative, of course, Wallander thought as he watched people rummaging through old LP records at one of the market stands. Von Enke had been scared. Could it be that whoever he was afraid of had caught up with him? Wallander had no answers, only questions that he must try to formulate as clearly and precisely as possible.

When the time came he called Boko just as a somewhat drunk man sat down on the other end of the bench. A man’s voice eventually answered. Wallander decided to put all his cards on the table. He said his name, and explained that he was a police officer.

‘I found a photograph in a file that belongs to a man called Hakan von Enke. Do you know him?’

‘No.’

The answer came quickly and firmly. Wallander had the impression that Lundberg was on his guard.

‘Do you know his wife? Louise?’

‘No.’

‘But your paths must have crossed somehow. Why else would he have a photo of you and a man I assume is your father. And of the boat NRG123. That’s your boat, isn’t it?’

‘My father bought it in Gothenburg sometime in the early 1960s. Around the time when they started building bigger boats and no longer used wood as the main material. He got it cheap. There was no shortage of herring in those days.’

Wallander described the photo, and wondered where it had been taken.

‘Fyrudden,’ said Lundberg. ‘That’s where the boat was berthed.
Helga
, she was named. She was built in a yard in the south of Norway. Tonsberg, I think.’

‘Who took the picture?’

‘It must have been Gustav Holmqvist. He ran a marine joinery business and was always taking pictures when he wasn’t working.’

‘Could your father have known Hakan von Enke?’

‘My father’s dead. He never mixed with that crowd.’

‘What do you mean, “that crowd”?’

‘Noblemen.’

‘Hakan von Enke is also a seafarer. Like you and your father.’

‘I don’t know him. Neither did my dad.’

‘Then how did he get hold of that photograph?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Maybe I should ask Gustav Holmqvist. Do you have his phone number?’

‘He doesn’t have a phone number. He’s been dead for fifteen years. And his wife is dead. Their daughter too. They’re all dead.’

Wallander obviously wasn’t going to get any further. There was nothing to suggest that Eskil Lundberg wasn’t telling the truth. Yet at the same time, Wallander had the feeling that something didn’t add up. He couldn’t put his finger on it.

Wallander apologised to Lundberg for disturbing him, and remained sitting with his mobile phone in his hand. The drunken man on the other end of the bench had fallen asleep. It suddenly dawned on Wallander that he recognised him. Several years ago Wallander had arrested him and some accomplices for a series of burglaries. The man had spent some years in jail, and then left Ystad. Evidently he was back again.

Wallander stood up and began walking to the police station. He repeated the conversation to himself, word for word. Lundberg hadn’t displayed any curiosity at all. Was he really as uninterested as he seemed to be? Or did he know what I was going to ask about? Wallander continued rehashing the conversation until he was back in his office. He hadn’t reached any clear conclusion.

His thoughts were interrupted by Martinsson, who appeared in the doorway.

‘We’ve found the old woman,’ he said.

Wallander stared at him. He didn’t know what Martinsson was talking about.

‘Who?’

‘The woman who killed her husband with an axe. Evelina Andersson. The woman in the swamp. I’m going to drive out there again. Do you want to come with me?’

‘Yes, I’ll come.’

Wallander racked his memory in vain. But he didn’t have the slightest idea what Martinsson was talking about.

They took Martinsson’s car. Wallander still didn’t know where they were going, or why. He was feeling increasingly desperate. Martinsson glanced at him.

‘Are you feeling all right?’

‘I’m fine.’

It was only after they had left Ystad that his memory became unblocked. It’s that shadow inside my head, Wallander thought, furious with himself. Everything came back to him now, with full force.

‘Something just occurred to me,’ he said. ‘I forgot that I have a dentist appointment.’

Martinsson braked.

‘Should I turn round?’

‘No. One of the others can drive me back.’

Wallander didn’t bother to take a look at the woman they had just lifted out of the swamp. A patrol car took him back to Ystad. He got out at the police station and thanked the driver for the lift, then sat in his own car. He felt cold and worried. The gaps in his memory were scaring him.

After a while he went up to his office. He had decided to talk to his doctor about the sudden spells of darkness that filled his head. He had just sat down when his mobile phone gave a chime: he had received a text. It was short and precise.
Both stones Swedish. Neither from USA’s coasts. Hans-Olov
.

Wallander sat motionless in his chair. He couldn’t decide immediately what that meant, but now he knew for sure that something didn’t add up.

He felt that this was a sort of breakthrough. But exactly what the implications were he didn’t know.

He couldn’t decide if the von Enkes were gliding further away from him or if they were slowly getting closer.

A few days before midsummer, Wallander drove north along the coast road. Shortly after Vastervik he nearly ran into an elk. He pulled onto the shoulder, his heart racing, and thought of Klara before he could bring himself to continue. His journey took him past a cafe where, many years ago, he had stopped, exhausted, and been allowed to sleep in a back room. Several times over the years he had thought with a sort of melancholy longing about the waitress who had been so kind to him. When he came to the cafe he slowed down and drove into the parking area. But he didn’t leave the car. He sat there, hesitating, his hands clamped to the steering wheel. Then he continued on his way.

He knew why he didn’t go in, of course. He was afraid of finding somebody else behind the counter, and being forced to accept that here too, in that cafe, time had moved on and that he would never be able to return to what now lay so far away in the past.

He came to the harbour at Fyrudden at eleven o’clock. When he got out of the car he saw that the warehouse in the photo was still there, even though it had been converted and now had windows. But the fish boxes were gone, as was the big trawler alongside the quay. The harbour was now full of pleasure boats. Wallander parked outside the red-painted coastguard building, paid the required entrance fee at the chandler’s, and wandered out to the furthest of the jetties.

He acknowledged to himself that the whole journey was like a game of roulette. He hadn’t warned Eskil Lundberg that he would be coming. If he’d called from Skane he had no doubt that Lundberg would have refused to meet him. But if he was standing here on the quay? He sat on a bench outside the chandler’s shop and took out his mobile phone. Now it was sink or swim. If he had been a von Wallander, with a coat of arms and a family motto, those were the words he would have chosen:
sink or swim
. That’s the way it had always been throughout his life. He dialled the number and hoped for the best.

Lundberg answered.

‘It’s Wallander. We spoke about a week ago.’

‘What do you want?’

If he was surprised, he concealed it well, Wallander thought. Lundberg was evidently one of those enviable people who are always prepared for anything to happen, for anybody at all to call them out of the blue, a king or a fool - or a police officer from Ystad.

‘I’m in Fyrudden,’ Wallander informed him, and took the bull by the horns. ‘I hope you have time to meet me.’

‘Why do you think I’d have any more to tell you now than I did when we last spoke?’

That was the moment when Wallander’s long experience as a police officer told him that Lundberg
did
have more to tell him.

‘I have the feeling we should talk,’ he said.

‘Is that your way of telling me that you want to interrogate me?’

‘Not at all. I just want to talk to you, and show you the photo I found.’

Lundberg thought for a few moments.

‘I’ll pick you up in an hour,’ he said eventually.

Wallander spent the time eating in the cafe, where he had a view of the harbour, the islands and in the distance the open sea. He had consulted a sea chart in a glass case on one of the cafe walls and established that Boko was to the south of Fyrudden; so it was boats coming from that direction he kept an eye on. He assumed that a fisherman would have a boat at least superficially reminiscent of Sten Nordlander’s wooden gig, but he was completely wrong. Lundberg came in an open plastic boat with an outboard motor. It was filled with plastic buckets and net baskets. He berthed at the jetty and looked around. Wallander made himself known. It was only when he had clambered awkwardly down into the boat and almost fallen over that they shook hands.