The Dogs of Riga: A Kurt Wallendar Mystery

  “Who told you this?”

  “I got lucky when I called the coastguard. The man who answered had worked on one of the Customs boats that Österdahl skippered.”

  “Good,” said Wallander. “Maybe he can help us.”

  “If he can’t, then nobody can,” Martinsson said philosophically. “He lives out at Sandhammaren. I thought I’d drive out and fetch him so that he can take a look at the boat. Have there been any developments?”

  Wallander told him Mörth’s conclusions while he listened attentively.

  “So we may have to cooperate with the Russian police,” he said when Wallander had finished. “Can you speak Russian?”

  “Not a word. You know, it might mean that we can drop the whole business.”

  “No harm in hoping.”

  Martinsson suddenly became thoughtful.

  “That’s the way I feel sometimes, in fact,” he said after a while. “That I wish we could just drop certain criminal cases. Because they’re so awful. Too bloody and unreal. When I was at the police academy, we didn’t learn how to cope with tortured corpses abandoned in life rafts. It’s as if developments in crime have left me behind. And I’m only 30.”

  In recent years Kurt Wallander had often felt the same way as Martinsson. It had become more difficult to be a police officer. They were living at a time characterized by a sort of criminality that nobody had experienced before. It was a myth that a lot of police officers left the force in order to become security guards or work for private firms for financial reasons. The truth was that most police officers that left the force did so on grounds of insecurity.

  “Maybe we ought to go and see Björk and request advanced training in how to deal with tortured humans,” Martinsson said.

  Wallander knew that there was nothing cynical in what Martinsson was saying, just the insecurity he himself often felt.

  “Every generation of police officers seems to say the same thing,” he said. “We’re no exception.”

  “I can’t remember Rydberg ever complaining, can you?”

  “Rydberg was an exception. But I’d like to ask you something before you go. The man who phoned. There was nothing to suggest he might be a foreigner, was there?”

  Martinsson had no doubt.

  “Nothing at all. He came from around here. Full stop.”

  “Has anything else struck you about that conversation?”

  “No.”

  Martinsson stood up.

  “I’ll go to Sandhammaren now, to look for Captain Österdahl,” he said.

  “The raft’s in the basement,” Wallander said. “Good luck. By the way, do you have any idea where Svedberg is?”

  “I haven’t a clue. I don’t know what he’s up to. Contacting the meteorological office, perhaps.”

  Wallander drove to the town center for lunch. He thought of the unreal incident of the night before, and ordered a salad.

  He was back at the station shortly before the press conference was due to begin. He had made a few notes on a piece of paper, and checked in with Björk.

  “I hate press conferences,” Björk said. “That’s why I’ll never become national police commissioner. Not that I would anyway.”

  They walked together to the room where the reporters were waiting. Wallander recalled the mass of journalists who came when they were dealing with the double murder at Lenarp. Now there were only three people sitting there. He recognized two of them: one was a lady on the Ystad Recorder who wrote precise and lucid reports; the other was a man from the local office of Labor News, whom he’d only met once or twice before. The third person was a man with a crew cut and glasses. Wallander had never seen him before.

  “Where’s the South Sweden Daily News?” Björk whispered in his ear. “And the Skåne Daily News? Not to mention local radio?”

  “No idea,” Wallander said. “Let’s get started.”

  Björk stepped up onto the dais in one corner of the room. His speaking style was rather hesitant and distant, and Wallander hoped he wouldn’t go on any longer than necessary.

  Then it was his turn.

  “Two dead men have been washed ashore at Mossby Strand in a life raft,” he said. “We haven’t been able to identify the bodies. As far as we know there has been no accident that could be linked with the life raft, nor do we have any reports of anybody being lost at sea. That means we need assistance from the public. And from you.”

  He didn’t mention the anonymous phone call.

  “We’d like to ask anybody who might have relevant information to contact the police. That’s all.”

  Björk returned to the platform.

  “We’ll try to answer any questions you might have,” he said.

  The friendly lady from the Ystad Recorder asked whether there wasn’t an unusually high number of incidents of violence in Skåne, where everything used to be so peaceful.

  Wallander snorted to himself at the question. Peaceful, he thought. It’s never been especially peaceful around here.

  Björk said that there really hadn’t been a significant increase in violent crimes reported, and the lady from the Ystad Recorder seemed satisfied with his answer. The local correspondent from Labor News had no questions, and Björk was just about to close the conference when the young man in glasses raised his hand.

  “I’ve got a question,” he said. “Why haven’t you said that the men in the raft had been murdered?”

  Wallander looked quickly at Björk.

  “At this stage we cannot be certain how the two men died,” Björk said.

  “Come on, that’s not true. Everybody knows they were shot through the heart.”

  “Next question,” Björk said, and Wallander could see he had broken into a sweat.

  “Next question?” the reporter said angrily. “Why should I ask another question when you haven’t answered my first one?”

  “You’ve had the only answer I can give you at present,” Björk said.

  “This is absurd,” said the reporter. “But I will ask another question. Why don’t you say you suspect that the two murdered men are Russian citizens? Why do you call a press conference when you either don’t answer questions or don’t reveal the facts?”

  How the hell did he find out about all that? Wallander thought to himself. On the other hand, he didn’t understand why Björk wasn’t coming clean. The journalist was quite right. Why should they conceal facts that were patently obvious?

  “As Inspector Wallander just pointed out, we haven’t yet been able to identify the two men,” Björk said. “That’s precisely why we are appealing to the general public. We hope the press will make a splash of this so that people know we are looking for information.”

  The young reporter stuffed his notebook demonstratively into his jacket pocket.

  “Thank you for coming,” Björk said.

  At the exit Wallander cornered the lady from the Ystad Recorder.

  “Who was that reporter?” he asked.

  “I’ve no idea. I’ve never seen him before. Was what he said true?”

  Wallander didn’t answer, and the lady from the Ystad Recorder was sufficiently polite not to press him.

  “Why didn’t you come clean?” Wallander asked when he had caught up with Björk in the corridor.

  “These damned reporters,” Björk growled. “How did he find all that out? Who’s responsible for the leaks?”

  “It could be anybody,” said Wallander said. “It could even be me.”

  Björk stopped dead in his tracks and stared at him, but didn’t comment.

  “The foreign ministry have asked us to lie low,” he said instead.

  “Why?” Wallander asked.

  “You’ll have to ask them that,” Björk said. “I’m hoping to get some more instructions this afternoon.”

  Wallander returned to his office. He was starting to get fed up with the whole business. He sat down and unlocked one of his desk drawers. It contained a photocopy of an advertisement for a job. The Tre
lleborg Rubber Company was looking for a new head of security. With the ad was the application letter Wallander had written the week before. He was trying to decide whether to send it in. If police work had become a sort of game, with information being either leaked or held back for no good reason, he no longer wanted to be involved. Police work was more than this as far as he was concerned. He couldn’t operate in an environment in which his job wasn’t constantly underpinned by rational and moral principles that would never be questioned.

  His train of thought was interrupted by Svedberg, who nudged the door open with his foot and marched in.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Wallander asked.

  Svedberg stared at him in astonishment.

  “I left a note on your desk,” he said. “Haven’t you seen it?”

  The note had fallen on the floor. Wallander picked it up. Svedberg had told him he could be contacted at the meteorological office at Sturup.

  “I thought we could take a shortcut,” Svedberg said. “I know one of the men at Sturup Airport. We go bird-watching together at Falsterbo. He helped me to try and work out where the raft might have come from.”

  “I thought the meteorological office in Norrköping was doing that.”

  “I thought this way would be quicker.”

  He took some rolls of paper out of his pocket and spread them on the table. Wallander could see diagrams and columns of numbers.

  “We calculated on the assumption that the raft had been drifting for five days,” Svedberg said. “The wind directions have been pretty constant in recent weeks, so we were able to be quite accurate. Of course, it won’t help us much.”

  “Meaning?”

  “That the life raft probably drifted quite a long way.”

  “Meaning?”

  “It could have come from countries as far apart as Denmark and Estonia.”

  Wallander stared at Svedberg in disbelief.

  “Is that really possible?”

  “Yes. You can ask Johnny yourself.”

  “Good work,” Wallander said. “Go and tell Björk. He can pass the information on to the foreign ministry. Then maybe we can get rid of the whole affair.”

  “Get rid of?”

  Wallander told him what had happened earlier in the day. He could see that Svedberg was disappointed.

  “I don’t like dropping something I’ve started,” Svedberg said.

  “Nothing is certain. I’m just letting you know.”

  Svedberg went off to see Björk, and Wallander went back to his job application. All the time, the raft with the murdered men was bobbing up and down in his mind.

  Mörth’s postmortem report was delivered at 4 p.m. He was still awaiting the results from the laboratory tests, but he estimated that the men had been dead for approximately seven days. They had probably been exposed to salt water for about the same length of time. One of the men was about 28, the other slightly older. Both had been in good health. They had been subjected to extreme torture. East European dentists had treated their teeth. Wallander put the report aside and looked out the window. It was dark already, and he was hungry.

  Björk called to say that the foreign ministry would get back to him in the morning with further instructions.

  “In that case, I’m going home,” Wallander said.

  “Do that,” Björk said. “I wonder who that journalist was?”

  They found out the next day. Placards for the Express were full of the sensational discovery of dead bodies on the Scanian coast. The front-page story revealed that the murdered men were almost certainly Soviet citizens, and that the foreign ministry had been brought in. The Ystad police had been ordered to hush up the whole affair, and the newspaper wanted to know why.

  But it was 3 p.m. the following afternoon before Wallander saw the placards. By that time, a lot more water had flowed under the bridge.

  CHAPTER 4

  When Wallander arrived at the police station shortly after 8 a.m., everything seemed to happen at once.

  The temperature had risen above freezing again, and the town was enveloped in a steady drizzle. Wallander had slept well, without experiencing a recurrence of the previous night’s problems. He felt rested. The only thing that he was worried about was the mood his father might be in when they drove to Malmö later that day.

  Martinsson met him in the corridor, and Wallander could see at once that he had something important to tell him. Everyone knew that when Martinsson was too restless to stay in his own office, something had happened.

  “Captain Österdahl has solved the mystery of the life raft!” he bellowed. “Have you got a minute?”

  “I’ve always got a minute,” Wallander said. “Come into my office. See if Svedberg’s here yet.”

  A few minutes later they were gathered in Wallander’s room.

  “People like Captain Österdahl ought to be put on a register, you know,” Martinsson said. “The police should set up a department on a national basis whose only job is to work with people who have unusual expertise.”

  Wallander nodded. He’d often thought the same thing himself. There were people with comprehensive expertise in many esoteric fields dotted around the country. Everybody knew about the old lumberjack in Härjedalen who had identified the top to a bottle of Asian beer that had defeated not only the police, but also the experts at the Wine & Spirits monopoly. The lumberjack’s evidence had helped to convict a murderer who would otherwise have gotten away with it.

  “Give me somebody like Captain Österdahl any day, rather than these consultants who run around stating the obvious for huge fees,” Martinsson continued. “And he was only too glad to help.”

  “And was he of help?”

  Martinsson took his notebook out of his pocket and slammed it down on the desk. It was as if he’d pulled a rabbit out of an invisible hat. Wallander could feel himself getting irritated. Martinsson’s dramatic gestures could be trying—but perhaps that was the way provincial Liberal Party politicians behaved.

  “We’re all agog,” Wallander said, after a brief silence.

  “When the rest of you had gone home last night, Captain Österdahl and I spent a few hours examining the life raft in the basement,” Martinsson said. “It couldn’t be earlier, as he plays bridge every afternoon, and he refused to break that habit. Captain Österdahl is an old gentleman with very firm views. I hope I’m like him when I get to that age.”

  “Get on with it,” Wallander said. He knew all about opinionated old gentlemen—his father was constantly in the back of his mind.

  “He crawled around the life raft like a dog,” Martinsson went on. “He even smelled it. Finally he announced that it was at least 20 years old and had been made in Yugoslavia.”

  “How could he know that?”

  “The way it was made—the mixture of materials. Once he’d considered all the evidence, he didn’t hesitate for a second. All his reasons are here in this notebook. I really admire people who know what they’re talking about.”

  “Why wasn’t there a label stating that the boat was made in Yugoslavia?”

  “Not boat,” said Martinsson. “That was the first thing Captain Österdahl taught me. It’s a raft, and nothing else. And he had an excellent explanation for why there was nothing to indicate its country of origin. They often send their life rafts to Greece and Italy, and firms there fit them with false labels. It’s no more unusual than watches made in Asia having European trademarks.”

  “What else did he have to say?”

  “Lots more. I think I now know the history of life rafts by heart. There were various types of life raft, even in prehistoric times. The earliest seem to have been made of reeds. This particular type is most commonly used on smaller East European or Russian freighters. You never find them on Scandinavian vessels. They’re not approved by the shipping authorities.”

  “Why not?”

  Martinsson shrugged.

  “Poor quality. They can collapse. The rubber used is often sub-stand
ard.”

  Wallander thought for a moment.

  “If Captain Österdahl’s analysis is correct, this is a raft that comes direct from Yugoslavia, without having been via Italy or wherever and given a manufacturer’s label. So we’re talking about a Yugoslavian vessel.”

  “Not necessarily,” Martinsson said. “A certain proportion of these rafts go to Russia. I imagine it’s part of the compulsory exchange of goods between Moscow and the dependent states. He said he’d seen an identical raft on a Russian fishing boat that was seized off Häradskär.”

  “But it’s definite that we can concentrate on an East European ship, is it?”

  “That’s Captain Österdahl’s opinion.”

  “Good,” Wallander said. “At least we know that.”

  “But that’s just about all we do know,” Svedberg said.

  “If the man who telephoned doesn’t get in touch again, we won’t know nearly enough,” Wallander said. “All the same, it looks as if these men have drifted over here from the other side of the Baltic.”

  He was interrupted by a knock on the door. A clerk handed him an envelope containing the final details of the postmortem examination. Wallander asked Martinsson and Svedberg to stay while he glanced through the papers. He reacted almost at once.

  “Now here’s something,” he said. “Mörth has found some interesting traces in their blood.”

  “AIDS?” Svedberg asked.

  “No, drugs. Large doses of amphetamines.”

  “Russian junkies,” Martinsson said. “The Russians tortured and murdered a couple of junkies. Wearing suits and ties. Adrift in a Yugoslav life raft. At least it’s different. Makes a change from shifty bootleggers and minor assaults.”

  “We don’t know that they are Russian,” Wallander said. “The bottom line is we don’t know anything at all.”

  He dialed Björk’s number.