‘We think it’s all over and done with, that the final curtain has fallen. But it could be that somebody merely stepped into the wings and changed costume. The repertoire may be different, but everything is being acted out on the same stage.’
Sten Nordlander stood up.
‘We can continue another day. My wife is expecting me now.’
He drove Wallander back to his hotel. Just before they parted, Wallander realised he had another question to ask.
‘Was anyone else really close to Håkan?’
‘No one was close to Håkan. Except Louise, perhaps. Old sea dogs are usually reserved. They like to keep to themselves. I wasn’t really close to him myself. I suppose you could say we were close-ish, if that’s possible.’
Wallander could tell that Nordlander was hesitant about something. Was he going to say it, or wasn’t he?
‘Steven Atkins,’ said Nordlander. ‘An American submarine captain. A year or so younger. I think he’ll be seventy-five next year.’
Wallander took out his notebook and wrote down the name.
‘Do you have an address?’
‘He lives in California, not far from San Diego. He used to be stationed at Groton, the big naval base.’
Wallander wondered why Louise hadn’t mentioned Steven Atkins. But that wasn’t something Wallander wanted to trouble Nordlander about – he seemed to be in a hurry and was revving the engine impatiently.
Wallander watched the gleaming car drive off up the hill.
Then he went to his room and thought about what he had heard. But there was still no sign of Håkan von Enke, and Wallander felt that he wasn’t a single step closer to solving the problem.
8
The following morning Linda called to ask how Stockholm was. He didn’t beat around the bush but told her Louise seemed to be convinced that Håkan was no longer alive.
‘Hans refuses to believe that,’ she said. ‘He’s certain that his father isn’t dead.’
‘But deep down he probably suspects it’s as bad as Louise says.’
‘What do you think?’
‘It doesn’t look good.’
Wallander asked if she had spoken to anyone in Ystad. He knew she was sometimes in touch with Kristina Magnusson privately.
‘The internal affairs team has returned to Malmö,’ she said. ‘That probably means they’ll be reaching a decision on your case any time now.’
‘I might get the boot,’ Wallander said.
She sounded almost indignant when she responded.
‘It was incredibly silly of you to take the pistol to the restaurant with you, but if that leads to you getting fired we can assume that several hundred other Swedish police officers will get their marching orders as well. For much worse breaches of discipline.’
‘I’m assuming the worst,’ said Wallander gloomily.
‘When you’ve shrugged off that self-pity we can talk again,’ she said and hung up.
Wallander thought she was right, of course. He would probably get a warning, possibly a fine. He picked up the phone again to call her back but thought better of it. There was too big a risk that they might start arguing. He got dressed, had breakfast, and then called Ytterberg, who had promised to see him at nine o’clock. Wallander asked if they had any leads, but they didn’t.
‘We got a tip that von Enke had been seen in Södertälje,’ said Ytterberg. ‘God only knows why he should want to go there. But there was nothing in it. It was just a man in a uniform. And our friend wasn’t wearing a uniform when he set off on his long walk.’
‘All the same, it’s odd that nobody seems to have seen him,’ said Wallander. ‘As I understand it, lots of people go jogging or walk their dogs in Lill-Jansskogen.’
‘I agree,’ said Ytterberg. ‘That’s something that worries us as well. But nobody seems to have seen him at all. Come at nine o’clock and we can have a chat. I’ll be waiting for you in reception.’
Ytterberg was tall and powerfully built, and reminded Wallander of a well-known Swedish wrestler. He glanced at Ytterberg’s ears to see if there was any of the cauliflower-like disfigurement so common among wrestlers, but he could see no sign of an earlier wrestling career. Despite his bulk, Ytterberg was light on his feet. They hardly touched the ground as he hurried along the hallways with Wallander in tow. They eventually came to a messy office with a gigantic inflatable dolphin lying in the middle of the floor.
‘It’s for one of my grandchildren,’ Ytterberg explained. ‘Anna Laura Constance is going to get it for her ninth birthday on Friday. Do you have any grandchildren?’
‘I’ve just got my first. A granddaughter.’
‘Named?’
‘Nothing yet. They’re waiting for a name to emerge of its own accord.’
Ytterberg muttered something inaudible and flopped down on his chair. He pointed to a coffee-maker on the windowsill, but Wallander shook his head.
‘We are assuming that he’s been the victim of a violent crime,’ said Ytterberg. ‘He’s been missing for too long. The whole business is very odd. Not a single clue. There were lots of people in the woods, but nobody saw anything. It’s the nearest you can get to going up in smoke. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘So he deviated from his routine and didn’t go there at all, is that it?’
‘Or maybe something happened to him before he got as far as the woods. Whatever the facts are, it’s very odd that nobody saw anything. You can’t just kill a man in Valhallavägen without anyone noticing. Nor can you just drag somebody into a car without a fuss.’
‘Could he have disappeared willingly, then, despite everything?’
‘That seems to be the obvious conclusion to draw. But then again, nothing else suggests that.’
Wallander nodded.
‘You said Säpo had shown an interest in his disappearance. Have they been able to make a contribution?’
Ytterberg screwed up his eyes, looked at Wallander and leaned back in his chair.
‘Since when has Säpo made a sensible contribution to anything at all in this country? They say it’s just routine to take an interest when a high-ranking military officer disappears, even if he did retire ages ago.’
Ytterberg poured himself a cup of coffee. Wallander shook his head again.
‘Von Enke seemed to be worried at his seventy-fifth birthday party,’ he said.
Wallander had decided that Ytterberg was reliable, so he told him in detail about the episode in the conservatory when von Enke had seemed frightened.
‘I also had the impression,’ Wallander went on, ‘that there was something he wanted to tell me. But nothing he said explained his agitation, or seemed a significant confidence.’
‘But he was afraid?’
‘I think so. I remember thinking that a submarine commander is hardly the type to worry about imagined dangers. Spending so much time under the sea should have made him immune to that.’
‘I know what you mean,’ said Ytterberg thoughtfully.
An excited female voice suddenly started screeching in the hallway. Wallander gathered that she was objecting vehemently to being ‘interrogated by a damn buffoon’. Then everything was quiet again.
‘One thing gave me food for thought,’ said Wallander. ‘I searched his study in the apartment in Grevgatan and had the impression that someone had been rummaging around in his files. It’s hard to be more precise, but you know what it’s like. You discover a kind of system in the way a person puts his belongings in order, especially the many documents we all accumulate – the flotsam and jetsam of our lives, as an old chief inspector once put it to me. But then it breaks down. There are strange gaps. In general everything was very neat, but one desk drawer was a real mess.’
‘What did his wife say?’
‘That nobody had been there.’
‘In that case there are only two possibilities. Either she’s been rummaging around, but for some reason doesn’t want to admit it. It could be simply that she doesn’t want t
o admit to her curiosity – perhaps she finds it embarrassing, who knows? Or he did it himself.’
Wallander thought hard about what Ytterberg had said. There was something he should have picked up on, a link that suddenly occurred to him, only to fade away again just as quickly. He hadn’t managed to pin it down.
‘What about the secret service boys? Säpo?’ Wallander wondered. ‘Could they have something on him? An old suspicion lying in a dusty drawer somewhere that recently became interesting again?’
‘I asked them that exact question. And got a very vague answer. It could mean almost anything. It could well be that the man they sent to see me didn’t know any details. That’s not impossible. We’ve all suspected that Säpo has quite a few secrets they keep to themselves even if they seem bad at staying quiet about what they know.’
‘But was there anything on von Enke?’
Ytterberg flung out his arms wide and accidentally hit his coffee cup, which tipped over and spilled. He hurled the cup angrily into the rubbish bin, then wiped down his desktop and all the soaking wet documents with a towel that had been lying on a shelf behind the desk. Wallander suspected that the coffee cup episode was not a one-off.
‘There was nothing at all,’ Ytterberg said when he had finished wiping. ‘Håkan von Enke is a thoroughly honest and honourable member of the Swedish military. I spoke to somebody whose name I forget who has access to the records of naval officers. Håkan von Enke was promoted rapidly, became a commander very quickly. But then things came to a halt. His career levelled off, you might say.’
Wallander thought for a while, his chin resting on his hand, remembering what Sten Nordlander had said about von Enke putting his career on the line. Ytterberg was cleaning his fingernails with a letter opener. Somebody passed by in the hall, whistling. To his surprise Wallander recognised the tune – it was an old hit song from World War II. ‘We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when …’ He hummed it quietly to himself.
‘How long are you staying in Stockholm?’ Ytterberg asked, breaking the silence.
‘I’m going back home this afternoon.’
‘Give me your phone number and I’ll keep you informed.’
Ytterberg escorted him as far as the door leading to Bergsgatan. Wallander walked towards Kungsholmstorg, flagged down a taxi and returned to his hotel. He went to his room, hung the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door handle and lay down on the bed. He journeyed back in his mind to the birthday party in Djursholm. He thought of it in terms of taking off his shoes and approaching on tiptoe his recollections of how Håkan von Enke had behaved and what he had said. He reviewed his memories for anything that didn’t ring true. Perhaps he had been wrong. Maybe what he had diagnosed as fear wasn’t that at all. A person’s facial expression can be interpreted in many different ways. Near-sighted people who screw up their eyes are sometimes mistaken for rude or contemptuous. The man he was trying to track down had been missing now for six days. Wallander knew they had now passed the point where most missing persons are found. After such a long time, they either return or at least show some sign of life. But there was no trace at all of Håkan von Enke.
He simply vanished, Wallander told himself. He went out for a walk and didn’t come back. His passport was at home; he had no money with him; he didn’t even take his mobile phone. The phone was one of the points that made Wallander stop and think. It was a riddle that demanded a solution, an answer. Håkan could simply have forgotten the phone, of course. But why do so the morning he disappeared? It seemed implausible and strengthened the probability of the theory that his disappearance was not voluntary.
Wallander prepared for the journey back to Ystad. An hour before the train was due to leave, he had lunch at a restaurant near the station. He passed the time on the train by solving a couple of crossword puzzles. As usual there were a few words he couldn’t work out, and he was forced to sit there worrying about them. He was back at his house by nine o’clock. When he collected Jussi he was almost bowled over by the dog’s delight at being reunited with him.
Wallander called Martinsson’s direct line at the police station. Martinsson’s recorded voice informed him that he was away all day at a seminar in Lund on illegal immigration. Wallander wondered if he should call Kristina Magnusson, but he decided not to. He solved a couple more crosswords, defrosted the freezer, then went for a long walk with Jussi. He felt bored and restless as a result of not being able to work. When the phone rang he grabbed the receiver. A young woman with a chirpy voice asked him if he was interested in a massage machine that could be stored in a cupboard and took up very little space even when it was in use. Wallander slammed the receiver down, but then regretted snapping at the girl, who hadn’t done anything to deserve it.
The phone rang again. He wondered if he should answer, but after a pause, he did. There was a crackling noise in the background, as if the call was coming from far away. Eventually he heard a voice.
It was speaking English.
It was a man who asked if he was talking to the right person: he was hoping to reach Kurt, Kurt Wallander.
‘That’s me,’ shouted Wallander in an attempt to make himself heard through all the background noise. ‘Who are you?’
It seemed as if contact had been lost. Wallander was just about to replace the receiver when the voice became audible again, more clearly now, nearer.
‘Wallander?’ he said. ‘Is that you, Kurt?’
‘Yes, that’s me.’
‘Steven Atkins here. Do you know who I am?’
‘Yes, I know,’ Wallander shouted. ‘Håkan’s friend.’
‘Has he been found yet?’
‘No.’
‘Did you say “no”?’
‘Yes, I said “no.”’
‘So he’s been missing for a week now?’
‘Yes, more or less.’
The line started crackling again. Wallander assumed Atkins was using a mobile phone.
‘I’m getting worried,’ Atkins shouted. ‘He’s not the kind of man who simply vanishes.’
‘When did you last speak to him?’
‘On Sunday last week. In the afternoon. Swedish time.’
The day before he disappeared, Wallander thought.
‘Was it you who called, or did he call you?’
‘He called me. He said he’d reached a conclusion.’
‘What about?’
‘I don’t know. He didn’t say.’
‘Is that all? A conclusion? Surely he must have said something else?’
‘Not at all. He was always very careful when he spoke on the phone. Sometimes he called from a public phone.’
The line crackled and faded again. Wallander held his breath; he didn’t want to lose the call.
‘I want to know what’s going on,’ said Atkins. ‘I’m worried.’
‘Did he say anything about going away?’
‘He sounded happier than he had been in a while. Håkan could be very gloomy. He didn’t like growing old; he was afraid of running out of time. How old are you, Kurt?’
‘I’m sixty.’
‘That’s nothing. Do you have an email address, Kurt?’
Wallander spelled out his address with some difficulty, but he didn’t mention that he hardly ever used it.
‘I’ll send you a message, Kurt,’ Atkins shouted. ‘Why don’t you come over and visit? But find Håkan first!’
His voice grew fainter again, and then the connection was broken. Wallander stood there with the receiver in his hand. Why don’t you come over? He replaced the receiver and sat down at the kitchen table, notepad and pencil in hand. Steven Atkins had given him new information, straight into his ear, from distant California. He thought back through the conversation with Atkins, line by line, point by point. The day before he disappeared, Håkan von Enke called California – not Sten Nordlander or his son. Was that a conscious choice? Had that particular call come from a public phone? Had von Enke gone out into the streets of St
ockholm in order to make that call? It was a question with no answer. He continued writing until he had worked his way meticulously through the whole conversation. Then he stood up, stood some six feet away from the table, and stared at his notebook, like a painter studying what was on his easel from a distance. It was Sten Nordlander, of course, who had given Steven Atkins Wallander’s phone number. That wasn’t especially surprising. Atkins was just as worried as everybody else. Or was he? Wallander suddenly had the feeling that Håkan von Enke had been standing next to Steven Atkins when he made that call to Sweden. Then he dismissed the thought.
Wallander was growing tired of this case. It wasn’t his job to track down the missing person or to speculate about the various circumstances. He was filling his inactivity with spectres. Perhaps this was a test run for all the misery he would be bound to endure once he had also gone into retirement?
He prepared a meal, did some cleaning, then tried to read a book he had been given by Linda – about the history of the police force in Sweden. He was dozing off over the book when the phone woke him.
It was Ytterberg.
‘I hope I’m not disturbing you,’ he began.
‘Not at all. I was reading.’
‘We’ve made a discovery,’ said Ytterberg. ‘I thought you should know.’
‘A dead body?’
‘Burned to a cinder. We found him a few hours ago in a burned-out boarding house on Lidingö. Not that far from Lill-Jansskogen. The age is about right, but there’s no firm evidence that it’s him. We’re not saying anything to his wife or to anybody else right now.’
‘What about the press?’
‘We’re saying nothing at all to them.’
Wallander slept badly again that night. He kept getting out of bed, starting to read his book then putting it down again almost immediately. Jussi was lying in front of the open fire, watching him. Wallander sometimes allowed him to sleep indoors.
Shortly after six the next morning Ytterberg called. The body they found wasn’t Håkan von Enke. A ring on a charred finger had led to the identification. Wallander felt relieved, and went back to sleep until nine. He was having his breakfast when Lennart Mattson called.