Yugoslavian life-rafts on Latvian vessels, including police boats. But you had examined the raft, I believe?'
'Yes,' Wallander answered. And then he realised the fatal error he'd made. Nobody had let the air out of the rubber boat, nobody had looked inside it. It had not occurred to him to do so. Major Liepa seemed to have understood already, and Wallander felt embarrassed. How could he have failed to open the raft up? He would have thought of it sooner or later, of course, but he ought to have done it straight away. It would be a waste of time to explain to Major Liepa what he'd already worked out for himself.
'What could have been inside?' he asked.
Major Liepa shrugged.
'Drugs, I suppose,' he said.
Wallander thought for a moment.
'That doesn't follow. Two corpses are dumped in a life-raft filled with drugs? Then left to drift wherever the wind takes it?'
'That's right,' said Major Liepa. 'Perhaps a mistake had been made. The person who collected the life-raft was given the task of putting it right.'
They made a minute inspection of the whole basement. Wallander hurried up to reception and asked Ebba to devise a plausible emergency that had prevented him from presenting his report to Anette Brolin. The news that the police station had been burgled spread like wildfire, and Bjork came storming down the stairs.
'If this gets out,' he said, 'we'll be the laughing stock of the whole country.'
'This won't be leaked,' Wallander said. 'It's too painful.'
Wallander told Bjork what he guessed had happened, realising that Bjork would have serious reservations as to whether he was competent to run a serious crime investigation. It had been an inexcusable lapse.
Have I grown complacent? he wondered. Am I even up to being a security officer at the Trelleborg Rubber Company? Maybe the best thing would be for me to go back on the beat again in Malmo?
They found not a single clue. No fingerprints, no footprints on the dusty floor. The gravel outside the forced door had been churned up by police cars, and there was nothing to indicate that any of the tyre tracks weren't from the police's own cars. Eventually they agreed that there was nothing more they could do, and they went back to the conference room. Peters had turned up, sullen and angry at having been called in. All he could contribute was the exact time that he had discovered the break-in. Wallander had also checked with the night duty staff, but nobody had seen or heard anything. Nothing. Nothing at all. Wallander suddenly felt very tired. He had a headache from Major Liepa's cigarettes. What should I do now? he wondered. What would Rydberg have done?
Two days later the missing life-raft was still a mystery. Major Liepa had advised that trying to track it down would waste resources. Wallander had to agree, however reluctantly, but he couldn't shake off the sense of having made an unforgivable mistake. He was despondent, and woke every morning with a headache.
Skane was in the grip of a fierce snowstorm. The police were warning people via the radio to stay at home and venture out on to the roads only if it was absolutely essential. Wallander's father was snowed in, but when he phoned, his father told him he hadn't even noticed that the road was deep in snow drifts. The chaos caused by the blizzard meant that more or less no progress was made with the case. Major Liepa had shut himself in Svedberg's office and was studying the ballistic report. Wallander had a long meeting with Anette Brolin. Every time he met her he was stung by the memory of the crush he had on her the year before; but the memory seemed unreal, as if he'd imagined it all. Brolin contacted the director of public prosecutions, and the legal section of the foreign ministry, to get approval to close the case in Sweden and hand it over to the police in Riga. Major Liepa had also arranged for his headquarters to make a formal request to the foreign ministry.
On an evening when the blizzard was at its height, Wallander invited Major Liepa round to his flat. He'd bought a botde of whisky, which they emptied during the course of the evening. Wallander started feeling drunk after a couple of glasses, but Major Liepa appeared completely unaffected. Wallander had started addressing him simply as 'major', and he didn't seem to object. It wasn't easy to hold a conversation with the Latvian police officer. Wallander couldn't decide whether this was due to shyness, if his poor English embarrassed him, or if he might have a touch of aristocratic reserve. Wallander told him about his family, chiefly Linda and the college she was at in Stockholm. For his part, Major Liepa said simply that he was married to a woman named Baiba, but that they had no children. As the evening wore on, they sat for long intervals holding their glasses, saying nothing.
'Sweden and Latvia,' Wallander said, 'are there any similarities? Or is everything different? I try to picture Latvia, but I just can't. And yet we're neighbours.'
The moment he'd uttered the question, Wallander realised it was pointless. Sweden was not a country governed as a colony by a foreign power. There were no barricades in the streets of Sweden. Innocent people were not shot or run over by military vehicles. Surely everything was different?
The major's reply was surprising.
'I'm a religious man,' he said. 'I don't believe in a particular God, but even so one can have a faith, something beyond the limits of rationality. Marxism has a large element of built-in faith, although it claims to be a science and not merely an ideology. This is my first visit to the West: until now I have only been able to go to the Soviet Union or Poland or the Baltic states. In your country I see an abundance of material things. It seems to be unlimited. But there's a difference between our countries that is also a similarity. Both are poor. You see, poverty has different faces. We lack the abundance that you have, and we don't have the freedom of choice. In your country I detect a kind of poverty, which is that you do not need to fight for your survival. For me the struggle has a religious dimension, and I would not want to exchange that for your abundance.'
Wallander knew the major had prepared this speech in advance: he hadn't paused to search for words. But what exactly had he said? Swedish poverty? Wallander felt he must protest.
'You're wrong, major,' he said. 'There's a struggle going on in this country too. A lot of people here are excluded – was that the right word? – from the abundance you describe. Nobody starves to death, it is true, but you are wrong if you think we don't have to fight.'
'One can only fight for survival,' the major said. 'I include the fight for freedom and independence. Whatever a person does beyond that is something they choose to do, not something they have to do.'
Silence followed. Wallander would have liked to ask so many questions, not least about recent events in Riga, but he didn't want to reveal his ignorance. Instead, he got up and put on a Maria Callas record.
'Turandot? the major said. 'Very beautiful.'
The snow and wind raged outside as Wallander watched the major striding away towards his hotel soon after midnight. He was hunched into the wind, wearing his cumbersome overcoat.
The snowstorm had blown itself out by the following morning, and blocked roads could be reopened.
When Wallander woke up, he had a hangover, but he'd made a decision. While they were awaiting the decision from the director of public prosecutions, he would take Major Liepa with him to Brantevik to see the fishing boat he'd visited one night the week before.
Just after 9 a.m. they were in Wallander's car, heading east. The snow-covered landscape glittered in the bright sunshine, it was -3°C.
The harbour was deserted. Several fishing boats were moored at the jetty furthest out, but Wallander couldn't tell straight away which one he'd been on. They walked out along the jetty, Wallander counting 73 steps.
The boat was called Byron. It was timber-built, painted white, and about 40 feet long. Wallander grasped the thick mooring rope and closed his eyes: did he recognise it? He couldn't say. They clambered aboard. A dark red tarpaulin was lashed over the hold. As they approached the wheel-house, which was secured by a large padlock, Wallander tripped over a coiled hawser, and knew he was on the right boat. The major pulled loose a corner of the tarpaulin and shone a torch into the hold: it was empty.
'No smell of fish,' Wallander said. 'No sign of any fish scales, no nets. This boat is used for smuggling. But what are they smuggling? And where to?'
'Everything,' said the major. 'There has been an acute shortage of everything in the Baltic states up until now, and so smugglers can bring us anything at all.'
'I'll find out who owns the boat,' Wallander said. 'Even if I've made a promise, I can still find out who owns it. Would you have made the promise I did, major?'
'No,' Major Liepa replied. 'I'd never have done that.'
There wasn't much more to see. When they got back to Ystad Wallander spent the afternoon trying to establish who owned the Byron. It wasn't easy. It had changed owners numerous times in the last few years, and one of the many owners had been a trading company in Simrishamn with the imaginative name Wankers' Fish. Next the boat
