At the same time, however, he also considered the third possibility—the reason why the shadows were not moving in to arrest them. If his suspicions were correct, and he was becoming increasingly convinced they might well be, there was not just an enemy lurking in the shadows, but also the enemy’s enemy who was actually standing guard over them. The condor and the lapwing. He still didn’t know which of the colonels had which plumage, but perhaps the lapwing was aware of the condor, and wanted to protect its intended prey?
The night in the church was like a journey to an unknown continent, where they would try to find something but didn’t know what they were looking for. A brown paper parcel? A suitcase? Wallander was convinced the major was a wise man who knew that a hiding place was useless if it was too cleverly concealed. In order to break into the major’s way of thinking, however, he would have to find out more about Baiba Liepa. He asked questions he didn’t want to ask, but she insisted that he do so, begging him not to spare her feelings.
With her help he explored their lives in intimate detail. Occasionally they would come to a point where he thought they had cracked it, but then it would transpire that Baiba had already been down that trail and found it was cold. By 4:30 a.m. he was on the point of giving up. He looked wearily into her exhausted face.
“What else is there?” he asked. “What else is there we can do? A hiding place must exist somewhere, must be embodied in some kind of space. A motionless space, waterproof, fireproof, theft-proof. Where else is there?”
He forced himself to go on. “Is there a cellar in your block of apartments?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“We’ve already talked about the attic. We’ve been over every inch of the apartment. Your sister’s summer cottage. His father’s house in Ventspils. Think, Baiba. There must be another possibility.”
He could see she was close to the breaking point.
“No,” she said, “there is nowhere else.”
“It doesn’t need to be indoors. You said you sometimes used to drive out to the coast. Is there a rock you used to sit on? Where did you pitch your tent?”
“I’ve told you all that already. I know Karlis would never have hidden anything there.”
“Did you really always pitch your tent at exactly the same spot? For eight summers in a row? Maybe you chose a different site on one occasion?”
“We both enjoyed the pleasure of returning to the same place.”
She wanted to go on, but he was driving her backwards all the time. It seemed to him the major would never have chosen a place randomly. Wherever it was, it had to be part of their joint past.
He started all over again. The lamp was beginning to run out of kerosene, but Baiba found a church candle. Then they set out on yet another journey through the life she and the major had shared. Wallander was afraid Baiba would collapse with exhaustion, wondered when she had last had any sleep, and tried to cheer her up by trying to appear optimistic, even though he wasn’t optimistic at all. He started with the apartment they had shared. In spite of everything, was there any possibility at all that she might have overlooked something? After all, a house consists of innumerable cavities.
He dragged her through room after room, and in the end she was so tired she was yelling out her answers.
“There is nowhere!” she screamed. “We had a home, and apart from the summers, that’s where we lived. During the day I was at the university, and Karlis went to police headquarters. There is no testimony. Karlis must have thought he was immortal.”
Wallander understood that her anger was also directed at her husband. It was a lament that reminded him of the previous year when a Somali refugee had been brutally murdered, and Martinsson had tried to soothe the desperate widow. We are living in the age of the widow, he thought. Our homes are the dwellings of fear and widows. . . .
He broke off. Baiba could see that he had hit upon a new train of thought.
“What is it?” she whispered.
“Just a minute,” he replied, “I’ve got to think.”
Was it possible? He tested it from various angles, and tried to discard it as a pointless exercise. But he couldn’t shake it off.
“I’m going to ask you a question,” he said slowly, “and I want you to answer right away, without thinking. Answer without hesitation. If you do start thinking, it’s possible your answer might be wrong.”
She stared intently at him in the flickering candlelight.
“Is it possible that Karlis might have chosen the most unthinkable of all hiding places?” he asked. “Inside police headquarters?”
He could see a glint come into her eye.
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “He might well have done that.”
“Why?”
“Karlis was like that. It would fit with his character.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“His own office is a possibility. Did he ever talk to you about the police headquarters?”
“He hated it. Like a prison. It was a prison.”
“Think hard, Baiba. Was there any room in particular he talked about? Somewhere that meant something special to him? That he hated more than any other room? Or somewhere he even liked?”
“The interrogation rooms made him feel sick.”
“It’s not possible to hide anything there.”
“He hated the colonels’ offices.”
“He couldn’t have hidden anything there, either.”
She was thinking so hard that she closed her eyes. When she returned from her thoughts and reopened her eyes, she had found the answer.
“Karlis often used to talk about somewhere he called ‘The Evil Room,’” she said. “He used to say that room contained all the documents describing the injustices that afflicted our country. That’s where he’s hidden his testimony of course—in the midst of the memories of all those who have suffered so agonizingly and so long. He’s deposited his papers somewhere in the police headquarters archives.”
Wallander looked at her. There was no sign of her former exhaustion.
“Yes,” he said. “I think you’re right. He’s chosen a hiding place hidden inside a hiding place. He’s chosen the Chinese puzzle. But how has he coded his testimony so that only you would be able to find it?”
She suddenly started laughing and crying at the same time.
“I know,” she sobbed. “Now I can see the way he did it. When we first met, he used to perform card tricks for me. As a young man he had dreamed of becoming an ornithologist, but he also dreamed of becoming a magician. I asked him to teach me some tricks. He refused. It became a sort of game between us. He did show me how to do one of his card tricks, the simplest of all. You split the pack up into two parts, one containing all the black cards and the other all the red cards. Then you ask somebody to pick a card, memorize it, and put it back into the pack. By switching the two halves, you make a red card appear among the black ones, and vice versa. He often used to say that the world was a gray sequence of misery, but I would light up his existence. That’s why we always used to look for a red flower among all the blue ones or yellow ones, and we went out of our way to find a green house in among all the white ones. It was a sort of game we used to play in secret. That’s what he must have been thinking of when he hid his testimony. I imagine the archives are full of files in different colors. Somewhere or other there’ll be one that’s different, different in color or maybe even in size. That’s where we’ll find what we’re looking for.”
“The police archives must be enormous,” Wallander said.
“Sometimes when he had to go away, he used to put the pack of cards on my pillow with the red card inserted among all the black ones,” she said. “I’ve no doubt there is a file on me in the archives. That’s where he’ll have inserted his wild card.”
It was 5:30 a.m. They hadn’t quite reached their destination, but at least they now thought they knew where it was. Wallander stretched out his
hand and touched her arm.
“I’d like you to come back to Sweden with me,” he said in Swedish.
She stared uncomprehendingly at him.
“I said we’d better get some rest,” he explained. “We’ve got to get away from here before dawn. We don’t know where we should be heading, nor do we know how we’re going to pull off the biggest trick of all—breaking into the police headquarters. That’s why we’ve got to get some rest.”
There was a blanket in a cupboard, rolled up under an old mitre. Baiba spread it out on the floor. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, they clung tightly to each other to keep warm.
“Get some sleep,” he said. “I just need to rest. I’ll stay awake. I’ll wake you up when we have to leave.”
He waited for a moment, but got no answer. She was asleep already.
CHAPTER 17
They left the church shortly before 7 a.m.
Wallander had to help Baiba, who was so exhausted she was barely conscious. It was still dark when they set off. While she was asleep on the floor beside him, he had lain awake and thought about what they should do. He knew he was obliged to have a plan ready. Baiba would hardly be able to help him any more: she had burned her bridges, and was now as much of an outlaw as he was. From now on he was also her savior, and it seemed to him as he lay there in the darkness that he was no longer capable of making any plans; he’d run out of ideas.
However, the thought that there might be a third possibility kept him going. He could see that it was extremely risky to rely on any such thing. He might be wrong, in which case they would never be able to evade the major’s murderer. But by the time they left the church, he was convinced there was no alternative.
It was a cold morning. They stood completely still in the darkness outside the door. Baiba was clinging on to his arm. Wallander detected an almost inaudible sound in the darkness, as if somebody had changed position and accidentally scraped a foot against the frozen gravel. Here they come, he thought. The dogs will be released now. But nothing happened, everything remained very still, and he led Baiba towards the gate in the churchyard wall. They emerged into the street, and now Wallander was certain their pursuers were close at hand. He thought he could see a shadowy movement in a doorway, and heard a slight creaking noise as the gate opened behind them for a second time. The dogs one of the colonels has on his leash are not especially skillful, he thought ironically. Unless they want us to know they have their eye on us all the time.
Baiba had been brought to her senses again by the cold of the morning. They paused at a street corner, and Wallander knew he had to think of something.
“Do you know anybody who has a car we could borrow?” he asked.
She thought for a while, then shook her head.
His fear suddenly made him feel annoyed. Why was everything so difficult in this country? How would he be able to help her when nothing was normal, nothing was like he was used to?
Then he remembered the car he had stolen the previous day. The chances of it still being where he had left it were small, but it seemed to him that he had nothing to lose by going to find out. They came to a café that had opened early, and he hustled Baiba inside, thinking how that would confuse the pack of dogs behind them. They would have to split into two groups, and they must be constantly on their guard in case he and Baiba had already found the proof. That thought put Wallander in a much better mood. There was a possibility he hadn’t thought of before. He might be able to lay false trails for their pursuers. He hurried along the street. First of all he must establish whether the car was still there.
It was still where he had left it. Without a pause for thought he climbed in behind the wheel, noticing again the smell of fish, joined the electric cables, this time remembering to put the gear shift into neutral first. He pulled up outside the café and left the engine running while he went in to fetch Baiba. She was sitting at a table over a cup of tea, and it occurred to him that he was also hungry, but that would have to wait. She had already paid, and they went straight out to the car.
“How did you manage to get the car?” she asked.
“I’ll explain another time,” he said. “For the moment just tell me how to get out of Riga.”
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know yet. To start with, just let’s get out into the country.”
There was more traffic on the roads now, and Wallander moaned and groaned about the lack of power in the engine, but at last they reached the outskirts of the city and were in flat countryside with farms here and there among the fields.
“Where does this lead to?” Wallander asked.
“Estonia. It ends up in Tallinn.”
“We’re not going that far.”
The pointer on the fuel gauge had started jerking up and down, and he turned into a gas station. An old man, blind in one eye, filled the tank, and when Wallander came to pay, he found he didn’t have enough money. Baiba was able to make up the difference, and they drove off. Wallander had been keeping his eye on the road, and noticed a black car of a make he didn’t recognize pass by, followed closely by another. As they had emerged from the gas station, he had glanced in the rearview mirror and seen another car parked on the hard shoulder behind them. So, three of them, he thought. At least three cars, maybe more.
They came to a town whose name Wallander never discovered. He stopped the car in a square where a group of people were gathered around a stall selling fish. He was very tired. If he didn’t get some sleep soon, his brain would no longer function. He noticed a hotel sign on the far side of the square, and made up his mind on the spot.
“I have to get some sleep,” he said to Baiba. “How much money have you got on you? Enough for a room?”
She nodded. They left the car where it was, crossed the square and checked into the little hotel. Baiba said something in Latvian that made the girl at the reception desk blush, but she didn’t ask them to fill in any registration forms.
“What did you tell her?” Wallander asked when they were safely inside their room overlooking a courtyard.
“The truth,” she said. “That we are not married and are only going to stay for a few hours.”
“She blushed, didn’t she? Did you see her blush?”
“I would have too.”
Just for a moment the tension was relieved. Wallander burst out laughing and Baiba blushed. Then he turned serious again.
“I don’t know if you realize this, but this is the craziest escapade I’ve ever been involved in,” he said. “Nor do I know if you realize I’m at least as scared as you are. Unlike your husband, I’m a police officer who has spent the whole of his life working in a town not much bigger than the one we’re in now. I have no experience with complicated criminal networks and police massacres. Now and then I have to solve a murder, of course, but I spend most of my time chasing drunken burglars and escaped bulls.”
She sat beside him on the edge of the bed.
“Karlis said you were a good police officer,” she said. “He said you had made a careless mistake, but nevertheless you were a good police officer.”
Wallander reluctantly recalled the life raft.
“Our two countries are so different,” he said. “Karlis and I had completely different starting points for the work we had to do. He would no doubt have been able to operate in Sweden as well, but I could never be a police officer in Latvia.”
“That’s exactly what you are now,” she said.
“No,” he objected. “I’m here because you asked me to come. Maybe I’m here because Karlis was who he was. I don’t actually know what I’m doing here in Latvia. There’s only one thing I do know for certain, and that’s that I want you to come back to Sweden with me. When all this is over.”
She looked at him in astonishment. “Why?” she asked.
He realized he wouldn’t be able to explain it to her, as his own feelings were so contradictory and uncertain.
“Never mind
,” he said. “Forget it. I have to get some sleep now if I’m going to be able to think clearly. You also need some rest. Maybe it’s best if you ask the receptionist to knock on the door in three hours.”
“The girl will start blushing again,” Baiba said as she got up from the bed.
Wallander curled up under the quilt. He was already asleep when Baiba came back from reception.
When he woke up three hours later, it felt as if he’d only been asleep for a couple of minutes. The knocking on the door had not disturbed Baiba, who was still sleeping. Wallander forced himself to take a cold shower in order to drive the tiredness from his body. When he’d finished dressing, he thought he’d let her go on sleeping until he had worked out what they were going to do next. He wrote her a message, saying that she should wait for him to come back, that he wouldn’t be long.
The girl in reception smiled hesitantly at him, and Wallander thought that there was a trace of sensuousness in her eyes. She turned out to understand a little English, and when he asked where he could get a bite to eat she pointed to the door of a little dining room that formed part of the hotel. He sat down at a table with a view of the square. People were still crowded around the fish stall, bundled up against the cold morning. The car was where Wallander had left it.
On the other side of the square was one of the black cars he had seen pass by the petrol station. He hoped the dogs were freezing as they sat on guard in their cars. The girl in reception also acted as waitress, and came in with a plate of sandwiches and a pot of coffee. He kept glancing out at the square as he ate, and all the time he was working out a plan of action. It was so outrageous, it might just have a chance of succeeding.
When he had finished eating he felt better. He returned to the room and found Baiba awake. He sat down on the bed and began to explain what he had decided to do.