The Dogs of Riga: A Kurt Wallendar Mystery

  “You mean he was exaggerating?”

  “Unfortunately I think he was.”

  “Even when he claimed that a high-ranking police officer was deeply embroiled in criminal activity?”

  Colonel Putnis warmed his cognac glass in his hands. “He must have been referring to either Colonel Murniers or myself,” he said. “That surprises me. His accusation was both inaccurate and irrational.”

  “But there must have been some explanation?”

  “Perhaps Major Liepa thought Murniers and I were getting old too slowly,” Putnis said with a smile. “Perhaps he was dissatisfied by the fact that we stood between him and his own promotion?”

  “Major Liepa didn’t give me the impression of being especially concerned with his own career.”

  Putnis nodded sagely. “Let me suggest a plausible explanation,” he said, “but I must stress it is strictly between ourselves.”

  “I do not normally betray confidences.”

  “About ten years ago Colonel Murniers succumbed to an unfortunate weakness,” Putnis said. “He was caught taking a bribe from a director of one of our textile factories who had been arrested on suspicion of embezzlement. The money taken by Murniers was seen as compensation for his turning a blind eye to the fact that some of the arrested man’s fellow criminals had been given the opportunity to conceal certain documents that could have provided crucial proof.”

  “What happened next?”

  “The matter was hushed up. The businessman was given a symbolic sentence, and within a year he was appointed head of one of the country’s biggest sawmills.”

  “What happened to Murniers?”

  “Nothing. He was full of remorse. He had been overworked at the time, and had gone through a painful and lengthy divorce. The tribunal assigned the task of judging the case decided that the offense should be forgiven. Perhaps Major Liepa had assumed, wrongly, that a temporary weakness was in fact a chronic character defect? That’s the only explanation I can give you. Can I pour you some more cognac?”

  Wallander held out his glass. Something Colonel Putnis had said, and also Murniers earlier, nagged at him, although he couldn’t put his finger on it. Just then Ausma came in with the coffee tray, and began to tell Wallander with great enthusiasm about all the sights he must see before leaving Riga. As he listened to her, his anxiety nagged away in the back of his mind. Something crucial had been said, something barely noticeable: but it had caught his attention even so.

  “The Swedish Gate,” Ausma said. “You haven’t even seen our monument from the time when Sweden was one of the great powers of Europe?”

  “I must have missed it.”

  “Sweden is still a great power even today,” Colonel Putnis said. “A small country, but much envied on account of its great riches.”

  Afraid of losing the thread of the vague suspicion he had intuitively registered, Wallander excused himself and went to the bathroom. He locked the door and sat down. Many years ago, Rydberg had taught him the importance of immediately following up on a clue that seemed to dangle so close to his eyes that it was difficult to see. It dawned on him. Something Murniers had said, that had been contradicted by Colonel Putnis only moments ago, using almost the same words.

  Murniers had spoken of Major Liepa’s rationality, and Colonel Putnis about his irrationality. In view of what Putnis had vouchsafed about Murniers, perhaps that wasn’t difficult to understand; but as Wallander sat there on the toilet seat, he realized that he would have expected the pair to have precisely the opposite views.

  “We suspect Murniers,” Baiba Liepa had said. “We suspect he was betrayed.”

  Maybe I’ve got it all wrong, Wallander thought. Maybe I’m seeing in Murniers what I ought to be looking for in Colonel Putnis? The one who spoke of Major Liepa as rational was the one I’d have expected to think the opposite. He tried to recall Murniers’s voice, and it came to him that the colonel had possibly implied something more. Major Liepa is a rational person, a rational police officer: that would suggest his suspicions are correct.

  He considered that proposition, and realized he had been far too ready to accept suspicions and information passed on to him at second and third hand. He flushed the toilet and returned to his coffee and cognac.

  “Our daughters,” Ausma said, holding out two framed portraits. “Alda and Lija.”

  “I have a daughter too,” Wallander said. “She’s called Linda.”

  For the rest of the evening the conversation meandered aimlessly back and forth, and Wallander wished he could make a move to leave without appearing impolite. Nevertheless, it was almost 1 a.m. by the time Zids pulled up outside the Latvia Hotel. Wallander had dozed in the back seat, and he realized he had drunk more than he should have. The next day he would be exhausted, and he’d have a hangover in the bargain.

  He lay in bed staring out into the darkness for a long time before falling asleep. The two colonels melted into a single image. He would never be able to reconcile himself to going home until he’d done everything in his power to shed some light on Major Liepa’s death. There are links, he thought. Major Liepa, the dead men in the life raft, the arrest of Upitis. It’s all connected. It’s just that I can’t see the chain yet. And behind my head, on the other side of that thin wall, there are invisible people registering every breath I take. Perhaps they will take down and report the fact that I’m lying here wide awake for hours before falling asleep? Maybe they think that enables them to read my thoughts? A solitary truck trundled past in the street below. Just before he dozed off it occurred to him that he’d been in Riga for six days already.

  CHAPTER 13

  When Wallander woke the next morning he was just as tired and hungover as he had feared. His temples were throbbing, and when he brushed his teeth he thought he was going to be sick. He dissolved two headache tablets in a glass of water, and bemoaned the fact that his capacity for drinking strong liquor in the evening was a thing of the past.

  He examined his face in the mirror and saw that he was getting more and more like his father. His hangover was not only making him feel miserable, that something was now lost forever, but he was also noticing the first vestiges of age in his pale, puffy face. He went down to the dining room at 7:30 a.m., had a cup of coffee and forced down a fried egg. He felt rather better once he had some coffee inside him. He had half an hour to himself before Sergeant Zids was due to collect him, and he rehearsed once more the facts in this complicated chain of events that had begun when two well-dressed, dead men drifted ashore at Mossby Strand. He tried to digest the discovery he had made the previous night, the possibility that it might well be Putnis and not Murniers who was pulling the strings in the background, but this thought merely led him back to square one. Nothing was clear. He had gathered that an investigation in Latvia was conducted in circumstances entirely different from those applying in Sweden. The amassing of facts and the establishing of a chain of proof was so very much more complicated against the shadowy backdrop of a totalitarian state.

  Perhaps the first thing that had to be decided here was whether a crime should be investigated at all, he thought, or whether it might come into the category of “non-crimes.” It seemed to him that he should redouble his efforts to extract explanations from the two colonels. As things stood at the moment, he couldn’t know whether they were opening or closing invisible doors in front of him.

  Eventually he got up and went out to find Sergeant Zids. As they drove through Riga, the combination of decrepit buildings and dreadful, grim squares filled him once more with a special kind of melancholy he had never before experienced. He imagined that the people he saw standing at bus stops or scurrying along the sidewalks felt the same desolation, and he shuddered at the thought. He felt homesick again, although he was not sure what there was about home that filled him with longing.

  The phone rang as he opened the door of his office. He had sent Sergeant Zids to fetch some coffee.

  “Good morning,” Murniers said,
and Wallander could tell that the gloomy colonel was in a good mood. “Did you have a pleasant evening?”

  “I enjoyed the best food I’ve had since coming to Riga,” Wallander replied, “but I’m afraid I had too much to drink.”

  “Moderation is a virtue unknown in this country,” Murniers said. “As I understand it, the success of Sweden is based on an ability to live with restraint.”

  Before Wallander could think of a suitable response, Murniers continued. “I have a most interesting document on my desk here in front of me,” he said. “I think it will help you to forget drinking too much of Colonel Putnis’s excellent cognac.”

  “What kind of document?”

  “Upitis’s confession. Written and signed during the night.”

  Wallander said nothing.

  “Are you still there?” Murniers asked. “Perhaps you ought to come to my office right away.”

  In the corridor Wallander bumped into Sergeant Zids, and, cup in hand, he entered Murniers’s office. The colonel was sitting at his desk, wearing that weary smile of his, and he picked up a file from his desk as Wallander sat down.

  “So, here we have a confession from the criminal, Upitis,” he said. “It will be a real pleasure for me to translate it for you. You seem surprised?”

  “I am,” Wallander said. “Was it you who interrogated him?”

  “No. Colonel Putnis had ordered Captain Emmanuelis to take charge of the interrogation. He has done even better than we had expected. Emmanuelis is clearly a police officer with a bright future.”

  Did Wallander detect a note of irony in Murniers’s voice? Or was it just the normal tone of voice of a tired, disillusioned police officer?

  “So, Upitis, the drunken butterfly collector and poet, has decided to make a full confession,” Murniers continued. “Together with two others, Bergklaus and Lapin, he admits to having murdered Major Liepa in the early hours of February 23. The three men had undertaken to carry out a contract placed on the life of Major Liepa. Upitis claims he doesn’t know who was behind the contract, and that is probably true. The contract passed through many hands before ending up at the right address. Since it was placed on the life of a senior police officer, the sum involved was considerable. Upitis and the other two gentlemen shared the reward, which corresponds to about a hundred years’ wages for a worker here in Latvia. The contract was placed well over two months ago—long before Major Liepa left for Sweden. The person commissioning the murder did not lay down a deadline: the key thing was that Upitis and his accomplices didn’t fail. Then, suddenly, that changed. Three days before the murder, when Major Liepa was still in Sweden, that is, Upitis was contacted by an intermediary and instructed that he must be disposed of immediately upon his return to Riga. No reason for this urgency was given, but the sum of money involved was increased and a car was put at Upitis’s disposal. Upitis was to visit a cinema in the city, the Spartak to be exact, every day, in the morning and in the evening. On one of the black columns supporting the roof of the building someone would place an inscription—the kind of thing you in the West call graffiti—and when it appeared Major Liepa was to be liquidated straight away. That inscription appeared in the morning of the day Major Liepa was due back. Upitis immediately contacted Bergklaus and Lapin. The intermediary had told them that Major Liepa would be lured out of his apartment late that evening. What happened next was up to them. This evidently caused the three murderers considerable problems. They assumed Major Liepa would be armed, that he would be on the alert, and that he would probably resist. This meant they would have to strike the moment he left the building. Naturally, there was every chance that they would make a mess of it.”

  Murniers broke off abruptly and looked at Wallander.

  “Am I going too fast?” he asked.

  “No. I think I can follow.”

  “They drove to the street where Major Liepa lived,” Murniers went on. “They had taken out the bulb of the lamp by the front door, and they hid in the shadows, armed with various weapons. Earlier, they had been to a bar and fortified themselves with large amounts of strong liquor. When Major Liepa stepped through the door, they attacked. Upitis maintains it was Lapin who struck him on the back of the head. When we bring in Lapin and Bergklaus, no doubt they will all blame each other. Unlike Swedish law, ours permits us to condemn more than one man if it proves not to be possible to decide which of them was the actual killer. Major Liepa slumped down on to the pavement, the car drove up, and the body was crammed into the backseat. On the way to the harbor he came around, whereupon Lapin is said to have struck him on the head again. Upitis claims Major Liepa was dead when they carried him out to the quayside. The intention was to give the impression that Major Liepa had been the victim of some kind of accident—that was doomed to failure, but it seems that Upitis and his accomplices didn’t make much of an effort to mislead the police.”

  Murniers tossed the report back onto his desk.

  Wallander thought back to the evening he had spent at the hunting lodge, Upitis and all his questions, the strip of light from the door where somebody had been listening.

  “We think Major Liepa was betrayed, we suspect Colonel Murniers.”

  “How could they know Major Liepa would come back home on that day?” he asked.

  “Possibly somebody working for Aeroflot had been bribed. There are passenger lists, after all. Certainly we shall be looking into that.”

  “Why was the major murdered?”

  “Rumors spread quickly in a society like ours. Perhaps Major Liepa was being too awkward for certain powerful criminals to tolerate.”

  Wallander thought for a moment before putting his next question. He had listened to Murniers’s account of Upitis’s confession, and realized that something was wrong—terribly wrong. Even though he knew it was a fabrication, he couldn’t guess at the truth. The lies complemented each other, and what had really happened and the reasons for it were impossible to see.

  He realized he didn’t have any questions to ask. There were no more questions, just vague, helpless statements.

  “You must know that not a word of Upitis’s confession is true,” he said.

  Murniers gave him a searching look. “Why shouldn’t it be true?”

  “For the simple reason that Upitis didn’t kill Major Liepa, of course. The whole confession is made up. He must have been forced to make it. Unless he’s gone insane.”

  “Why couldn’t a criminal like Upitis have murdered Major Liepa?”

  “Because I’ve met him,” Wallander said. “I’ve spoken to him. I’m convinced that if anybody in this country can be excluded from suspicion of having murdered Major Liepa, it’s Upitis.”

  Murniers’s astonishment couldn’t possibly have been an act. So, it wasn’t him standing in the shadows at the hunting lodge, listening, Wallander registered. Who was it, then? Baiba Liepa? Or Colonel Putnis?

  “You say you’ve met Upitis?”

  Wallander made a snap decision to go once again for a half-truth. He had no choice, he had to protect Baiba Liepa.

  “He came to my hotel room and introduced himself. I recognized him when Colonel Putnis pointed him out through the two-way mirror in the interrogation room. When he came to see me, he said he was a friend of Major Liepa’s.”

  Murniers was sitting tense and erect in his chair, all his attention concentrated on what Wallander had just said.

  “Strange,” he said. “Very strange.”

  “He came to see me because he wanted to tell me he thought Major Liepa had been murdered by one of his colleagues.”

  “By the police?”

  “Yes. Upitis hoped I would be able to help him to work out what had happened. How he knew there was a Swedish police officer in Riga I have no idea.”

  “What else did he say?”

  “That Major Liepa’s friends didn’t have any proof, but that the major had said that he felt under threat.”

  “Threatened by whom?”

  “By so
mebody in the police. Perhaps also by the KGB.”

  “Why should he feel threatened?”

  “For the same reason that Upitis believes criminals in Riga had decided the major should be liquidated. There is an obvious link.”

  “What link?”

  “The fact that Upitis was right on two counts, although he must have lied on one occasion.”

  Murniers leapt to his feet. Wallander wondered whether he, the police officer from Sweden, had overstepped the mark, pushed his luck too far, but the way Murniers looked at him suggested he was almost pleading with him.

  “Colonel Putnis must hear this,” Murniers said.

  “Indeed,” Wallander said. “He must.”

  Ten minutes later Putnis strode through the door. Wallander had no opportunity to thank him for the dinner before Murniers, speaking excitedly and forcefully in Latvian, recounted what Wallander had just told him about his meeting with Upitis. Wallander was certain that Putnis’s expression would reveal whether he had been the one in the shadows that night in the hunting lodge, but he gave nothing away. Wallander tried to think of a plausible explanation for Upitis having made a false confession, but everything was so confused and obscure that he gave up the attempt.

  Putnis’s reaction was very different from that of Murniers.

  “Why didn’t you tell anybody before that you had met this criminal Upitis?” he asked.

  Wallander didn’t know what to say. He could tell that he had broken the bond of trust between them, but at the same time he wondered whether it was a coincidence that he had been having dinner with the Putnises the night Upitis made his alleged confession. Was there any such thing as a coincidence in a totalitarian society? Hadn’t Putnis also said he always preferred to interrogate his prisoners alone?

  Putnis’s indignation subsided as quickly as it flared up. He was smiling again, and put his arm on Wallander’s shoulder.