The Dogs of Riga: A Kurt Wallendar Mystery

  “Go on leave,” Wallander suggested.

  Björk petulantly shoved aside a paper lying on the desk in front of him.

  “Out of the question,” he said. “I’ll be able to go on leave when I retire. If I live that long. Of course, it would be very stupid to die at my desk. You want to go on leave, you said?”

  “I’m thinking of having a week’s skiing in the Alps. If I do it could help solve some of your problems regarding work over midsummer—I can work then and wait until the end of July before going on holiday.”

  Björk nodded. “Have you really managed to find a package trip at this time of year? I thought they were all fully booked by now.”

  “No.”

  Björk raised an eyebrow. “That sounds a bit iffy, doesn’t it?”

  “I’ll take the car down to the Alps. I don’t like package holidays.”

  “Who does?”

  Björk suddenly assumed the formal expression he wore when he considered it necessary to remind everyone who was the boss.

  “What cases have you got on your desk at the moment?”

  “Surprisingly few. That assault business out at Svarte is the most pressing of them, but that’s something any of the others can take over.”

  “When are you thinking of leaving? Today?”

  “Thursday will do.”

  “How long had you thought of staying away?”

  “I have ten days coming to me.”

  Björk nodded and made a note.

  “I think it’s a good idea for you to take some leave. You’ve been looking a bit out of sorts.”

  “You can say that again,” Wallander said, as he made his escape.

  He spent the rest of the day working on the assault case. He made several telephone calls and also managed to reply to an inquiry from the bank about some muddle with his salary payments. All the time he was expecting something to happen. He looked up the Stockholm telephone directory and found several people called Lippman, but there was nothing in the Yellow Pages about “Lippman’s Flowers.”

  Shortly after 5 p.m. he cleared his desk and went home. He made a little detour and pulled up outside the new furniture store, went inside and found a leather armchair he rather liked for his apartment, but was horrified by the price. He stopped at the grocer’s in Hamngatan to buy some potatoes and bacon. The young girl at the checkout smiled and seemed to recognize him, and he recalled that a year or so previously he’d spent a day trying to track down a man who’d robbed the shop. He drove home, made the dinner, and then plopped himself down in front of the television.

  They contacted him shortly after 9 p.m.

  The telephone rang, and a man speaking broken Swedish asked him to come to the pizzeria across the road from the Continental Hotel. Wallander suddenly felt sick and tired of all this secrecy business, and asked for the man’s name.

  “I have every reason to be suspicious,” he explained. “I want to know what I’m letting myself in for.”

  “My name is Joseph Lippman. I wrote to you.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I run a little business.”

  “A nursery?”

  “I suppose you could call it that.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “I think I expressed myself quite clearly in the letter.”

  Wallander hung up. He wasn’t getting any answers anyway. He was infuriated at being constantly surrounded by invisible faces who expected him to be interested and prepared to cooperate. What evidence was there to prove that this Lippman wasn’t one of the Latvian colonels’ henchmen?

  He didn’t take the car but walked down Regementsgatan to the center of town. It was 9:30 p.m. by the time he reached the pizzeria. There were people at about ten of the tables, but he couldn’t see a man who could possibly be Lippman. He remembered something Rydberg had once taught him. You should always decide whether it would be better to be the first or the last person to arrive at a predetermined meeting place. He didn’t know if it was of any importance in this case. He sat at a table in the corner, ordered a glass of beer, and waited.

  Joseph Lippman turned up just before 10 p.m. By then Wallander had begun to wonder whether the intention had been to lure him away from his apartment, but the moment the door opened and the man entered, Wallander had no doubt the new arrival was Joseph Lippman. He was in his 60s, and wearing an overcoat far too big for him. He moved slowly and cautiously among the tables, as if he were afraid of falling or treading on a mine. He smiled at Wallander, took off his overcoat and sat down opposite him. He was nervous, and kept glancing around the room. At one of the tables sat a couple of men who were being terribly rude about a third, who wasn’t with them.

  Wallander guessed that Joseph Lippman was Jewish. At least, he looked like what Wallander thought of as a typical Jew. His cheeks were covered in tough gray stubble, and his eyes were dark behind rimless spectacles. But then, what did Wallander know about what Jews looked like? Nothing.

  The waitress approached, and Lippman ordered a cup of tea. He was so excessively polite that Wallander suspected he had endured many humiliations in his life.

  “I’m most grateful that you came,” Lippman said quietly. Wallander had to lean forward in order to hear what he was saying.

  “You didn’t give me any choice,” he said. “First a letter, then a telephone call. Maybe you should start by telling me who you are.”

  Lippman shook his head. “Who I am is of no significance. You are the important one, Mr. Wallander.”

  “No,” Wallander said, feeling himself getting annoyed again. “You must understand that I’ve no intention of listening to what you’ve got to say if you’re not even prepared to confide in me who you are.”

  The waitress arrived with the tea, and they waited until they were alone again.

  “My role is merely that of organizer and messenger,” Lippman said. “Who wants to know the name of the messenger? It doesn’t matter. We are meeting here tonight, and then I shall disappear. We will probably never meet again. The important thing, therefore, is not confiding in you, but practical decisions. Security is always a practical matter. In my view the business of trust is also a practical matter.”

  “In that case we might just as well conclude the conversation now,” Wallander said.

  “I’ve got a message for you from Baiba Liepa,” Lippman said hastily. “Don’t you even want to hear that?”

  Wallander relaxed. He observed the man sitting opposite him, strangely hunched up, as if his health were so fragile he might collapse any moment.

  “I don’t want to hear anything until I know who you are,” he said eventually. “It’s as simple as that.”

  Lippman took off his glasses and carefully poured some milk into his tea.

  “I’m merely thinking of your own best interests, Mr. Wallander,” Lippman said. “In this day and age it’s often best to know as little as possible.”

  “I’ve been to Latvia,” Wallander said. “I’ve been there, and I think I know what it is to be constantly under observation, forever being checked. But we’re in Sweden now, not Riga.”

  Lippman nodded pensively. “You may be right,” he said, “Perhaps I am an old man who can no longer discern how reality is changing.”

  “A nursery,” Wallander said, in an attempt to help him out. “I don’t suppose they have always been like they are now?”

  “I came to Sweden in the autumn of 1941,” Lippman said, stirring his tea. “I was a young man then, and I had the naïve ambition of becoming an artist, a great artist. It was freezing cold as dawn broke and we caught sight of the Gotland coast. That was the moment we knew we’d made it, despite the fact that the boat had sprung a leak and several of my companions on board were seriously ill. We were undernourished, we had tuberculosis. Nevertheless, I have a clear memory of that freezing cold dawn. It was the beginning of October, and I made up my mind I was going to paint a picture of the Swedish coast that would symbolize freedom. That’s what it
might look like, the gates of paradise. Cold and frozen, a few black cliffs barely visible through the mist. But I never did paint that picture. I became a gardener instead. Now I make a living by suggesting appropriate decorative plants for various Swedish firms. I’ve noticed how people, and especially people working for the new information technology companies, have an insatiable need to hide their machines among green plants. I shall never paint that picture of paradise. I’ll just have to make do with the fact that I’ve seen it. I know paradise has many gates, just as hell does. One has to learn to distinguish between them, or one is lost.”

  “And that is something Major Liepa could do?”

  Lippman did not react to Wallander’s mention of the major.

  “Major Liepa knew what the gates looked like,” he said, “but that’s not why he had to die. He died because he had seen who was going in and out through those gates. People who are afraid of the light, because the light makes them visible to people like Major Liepa.”

  Wallander had the impression that Lippman was a deeply religious man. He expressed himself like a priest standing before a congregation.

  “I have lived the whole of my life in exile,” Lippman continued. “For the first ten years, until the middle of the 1950s, I believed I would one day be able to return to my home country. Then came the interminable 1960s and 70s, when I’d completely given up hope. Only very ancient Latvians living in exile, only the really old and the really young and the really crazy Latvians believed the world would change so that we might one day be able to return to our homeland. They believed in a dramatic turning point, while I was expecting a long drawn-out conclusion to the tragedy that even then seemed to be complete. But very suddenly things began to happen. We received mysterious reports from our homeland, optimistic reports. We saw the gigantic Soviet Union beginning to tremble, as if some latent fever had at last begun to take hold. Could it really be that what we had never dared to believe might actually happen? We still don’t know the answer to that question. We realize that we might yet again be tricked out of our freedom. The Soviet Union is weakened, but that could be a temporary condition. We do not have much time at our disposal. Major Liepa knew that, and that is what drove him on.”

  “We?” Wallander said. “Who are we?”

  “All Latvians in Sweden belong to an organization,” Lippman answered. “We have joined various organizations as a substitute for our lost homeland. We have tried to help people retain their culture, we have constructed various lifelines, we have established foundations. We have listened to cries for help and we have attempted to respond to them. We have fought constantly to avoid being forgotten. Our exile organizations have been our way of replacing the cities and villages we have lost.”

  The glass door opened and a man entered. Lippman reacted immediately. Wallander recognized the man—his name was Elmberg and he was the manager of one of the local gas stations.

  “There’s no cause for alarm,” he said. “That man hasn’t hurt a fly since the day he was born. I doubt if he’s ever given a thought to the existence of Latvia. He’s the manager of a gas station.”

  “Baiba Liepa has sent a cry for help,” Lippman said. “She is asking you to come. She needs your assistance.”

  He took an envelope from his inside pocket. “From Baiba Liepa,” he said. “For you.”

  Wallander took the envelope. It was not sealed, and he carefully extracted the thin writing paper. Her message was brief, and written in pencil, as if in a hurry.

  There is a testimony and a guardian, she had written, but I’m afraid I shall be unable to discover the right place on my own. Trust the messenger as you once trusted my husband, Baiba.

  “We can supply everything you need in order to get to Riga,” Lippman said when Wallander put the letter down.

  “You can hardly make me invisible!”

  “Invisible?”

  “If I go to Riga I must become somebody new. How will you manage that? How can you guarantee my safety?”

  “You will have to trust us, Mr. Wallander. But we don’t have much time.”

  Wallander could see that Lippman was anxious. He tried to convince himself that none of what was happening all around him was real. But he knew that this was what the world was like. Baiba Liepa had made one of the thousands of cries for help that are constantly sent across continents. This one was meant for him, and he was obliged to answer.

  “I’ve requested leave from Thursday onwards,” he said. “Officially I’m going skiing in the Alps. I can be away for just over a week.”

  Lippman slid his cup to one side. His weak, melancholy expression had been replaced by fierce determination.

  “That’s an excellent idea,” he said. “Naturally, a Swedish police officer goes to the Alps every winter to try his luck on the piste. What route are you travelling?”

  “Via Sassnitz, then by car through the old East Germany.”

  “What’s the name of your hotel?”

  “I’ve no idea. I’ve never been to the Alps before.”

  “But you can ski?”

  “Yes.”

  Lippman was deep in thought. Wallander beckoned the waitress and ordered a cup of coffee. Lippman shook his head absentmindedly when Wallander asked him if he wanted any more tea. Eventually he removed his glasses and rubbed them carefully against the sleeve of his jacket.

  “Going to the Alps is an excellent idea,” he repeated. “But I need a bit of time to make the necessary arrangements. Tomorrow evening somebody will phone you and inform you which of the morning ferries you should take from Trelleborg. Whatever else you do, don’t forget to put your skis on the roof rack. Pack everything as if you really were going to the Alps.”

  “How do you think I’m going to be able to enter Latvia?”

  “You’ll find out all you need to know on the ferry. Somebody will make contact with you. You will have to trust us.”

  “I can’t guarantee that I’ll accept your plan.”

  “There’s no such thing as a guarantee in this world of ours, Mr. Wallander. All I can do is promise that we shall do our best to excel ourselves. Perhaps we ought to pay and go now?”

  They took leave of each other outside the pizzeria. The wind had come up and was squalling. Joseph Lippman bade him a hasty farewell before disappearing in the direction of the railway station. Wallander walked home through the deserted town, thinking over what Baiba Liepa had written.

  The dogs are on her trail, he thought. She’s scared and worried. The colonels have also caught on to the fact that the major must have left a testimony somewhere. It dawned on him that there was no time to lose. There was no longer any place for fear or second thoughts. He had to respond to her cry for help.

  The next day he prepared for the journey.

  Shortly after 6 p.m. a woman called to say he’d been booked on the ferry leaving Trelleborg at 5:30 a.m. the next morning. To Wallander’s astonishment, she announced herself as a representative for “Lippman’s Travel Agency.”

  He went to bed at midnight. His last thought before going to sleep was how crazy the whole scheme was. He was on the point of getting involved voluntarily in something that was doomed to fail. At the same time, Baiba’s cry for help was real, and he felt bound to answer it.

  Early the next morning he drove onto the ferry in Trelleborg harbor. One of the passport officials waved to him and asked where he was going.

  “To the Alps,” Wallander told him.

  “Sounds great.”

  “Does you good to get away occasionally.”

  “That’s what we all need to do.”

  “I couldn’t have kept going a single day longer.”

  “Well, you can forget all about being a police officer for a few days.”

  “I will,” Wallander said, but knew that was definitely not true. He was about to embark on his toughest assignment. An assignment that didn’t even exist.

  The dawn skies were gray. He went up on deck as the ferry pulled away. H
e shivered as he watched the open sea slowly grow as the ship moved further from land and the Swedish coast disappeared from view.

  He was in the cafeteria having a bite to eat when a man in his 50s, with a ruddy face and shifty eyes, approached him and introduced himself as Preuss. Preuss had written instructions from Joseph Lippman, and a brand new identity that Wallander was to use from now on.

  “Let’s take a walk up on deck,” Preuss suggested.

  There was thick fog over the Baltic the day Wallander went back to Riga.

  CHAPTER 15

  The border was invisible.

  It was there nevertheless, inside him, like a coil of barbed wire, just under his breastbone. Kurt Wallander was scared. He would look back on the final steps he took on Lithuanian soil to the Latvian border as a crippling trek towards a country from where he would find himself shouting Dante’s words: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here! Nobody returns from here—at least, no Swedish police officer will get out alive.

  The night sky was filled with stars. Preuss had been with him from the moment he had made contact onboard the Trelleborg ferry, and he didn’t seem unmoved by what was in store. Through the darkness Wallander could hear that his breathing was fast and irregular.

  “We must wait,” Preuss whispered in his barely comprehensible German. “Warten, warten.”

  At first, Wallander had been furious at being supplied with a guide who didn’t speak a word of English. He wondered what Joseph Lippman had been thinking of, assuming that a Swedish police officer, barely able to string together a few words of English, would be a German speaker. Wallander had come very close to calling off the whole thing, which now appeared to be the triumph of wild fantasy over his own common sense. It seemed to him that the Latvians had been living in exile for too long and had lost all touch with reality. Twisted by grief, over-optimistic or just plain crazy. How could this man Preuss, this skinny little man with the scarred face, inspire Wallander with sufficient courage, and not least provide sufficient security, to enable him to return to Latvia as an invisible, non-existent person? What did he actually know about Preuss, who had simply appeared in the ferry cafeteria? That he might be a Latvian citizen living in exile, that he might be earning his living as a coin dealer in the German city of Kiel—but what else? Absolutely nothing.