Behind a curtain separating the bar from the dance floor a band was blaring away, and Wallander thought he recognised an Abba song. The air was foetid, and he was reminded once, again of the major's cigarettes. He noticed a table that seemed to be empty, and elbowed his way through the throng. All the time he had the feeling he was being watched, and realised there was every reason for him to be cautious. Nightclubs in the Eastern bloc countries were often the haunts of gangs who made a living robbing visitors from the West.
He managed to bawl out an order to a waiter through all the noise, and a few minutes later a glass of whisky landed on the table in front of him. It cost almost as much as the meal he'd had earlier. He sniffed at the contents of the glass, imagining a plot involving spiked drinks, and drank a depressed toast to himself.
A girl, who never told him her name, emerged from the shadows and sat down on the chair next to him. He didn't notice her until she leaned her head over towards him, and he could smell her perfume, reminiscent of winter apples. She spoke to him in German, and he shook his head; her English was awful, worse than the major's was, but she offered to keep him company and asked for a drink. Wallander felt at a loss. He realised she was a prostitute, but tried to put that fact out of his mind: Riga was dreary and cold, and he had an urge to talk to somebody who wasn't a colonel. He could buy her a drink, he was the one calling the shots after all. Only very occasionally when he was extremely drunk was he likely to lose control. The last time that had happened was the previous winter, when he'd thrown himself at the public prosecutor, Anette Brolin, in a moment of anger and lust. He shuddered at the memory. That must never happen again. Not here in Riga, at least. Nevertheless, he felt flattered by the girl's attention. She's come to my table too soon, he thought. I've only just arrived, and I haven't got used to this strange country yet.
'Maybe tomorrow,' he said. 'Not tonight.'
It struck him that she was barely 20. Behind all that make-up was a face that reminded him of his own daughter. He emptied his glass, stood up and left. That was a close call, he thought. Much too close. The man in the grey suit was still in the foyer, reading his newspaper.
Sleep well, Wallander said to himself. 1*11 see you again tomorrow, no doubt.
He slept badly. The duvet was heavy and the bed uncomfortable. Through the mists of his sleep he could hear a telephone ringing constantly. He wanted to get out of bed and answer it, but when he woke up everything was silent.
The next morning he was woken up by a knock on the door. Only half-awake, he shouted, 'Come in'. When the knock came again, he realised he'd left the key in the lock. He pulled on his trousers and opened the door to find a woman in a cleaner's apron with a breakfast tray. He was surprised as he hadn't ordered breakfast, but perhaps that was just part of the normal service? Maybe Sergeant Zids had arranged it?
The chambermaid said good morning in Latvian, and he tried to memorise the expression. She placed the tray on a table, gave him a shy little smile and went towards the door. He followed in order to lock it after her but instead of leaving the room, the chambermaid closed the door and put her finger to her mouth. Wallander stared at her in surprise. She slowly took a sheet of paper from the pocket of her apron, and Wallander was about to speak when she put her hand over his mouth. He could sense her fear, and knew she wasn't a chambermaid at all, but he could also see she that she wasn't a threat. She was just scared. He took the paper and read what it said, in English. He read it twice in order to memorise it, then looked up at her. She put her hand in her other pocket and produced something that looked like a crumpled poster. She handed it over, and when he unfolded it he realised it was the dust jacket of the book about Skane he'd given her husband, Major Liepa, the week before. He looked up at her again.
Besides the fear, her face also indicated something else -determination perhaps, or maybe obstinacy. He walked across the cold floor and fetched a pencil from the desk. On the inside of the dust jacket, which had a photograph on it of the cathedral in Lund, he wrote: I have understood. He gave her back the dust jacket, and it struck him that Baiba Liepa looked nothing like what he had imagined. He couldn't remember what the major had said when he was sitting on Wallander's settee in Mariagatan in Ystad, listening to Maria Callas and talking about his wife, but the impression he'd formed was different, not of a face like hers.
He cleared his throat as he carefully opened the door, and she melted away.
She had come to him because she wanted to speak to him about her dead husband, the major. And she was terrified. When somebody called his room and asked for a Mr Eckers, he was to take the lift to the foyer, then go down the steps leading to the hotel sauna and look for a grey-painted, steel door next to the dining room's loading bay. It should be unlocked, and when he came out into the street behind the hotel, she'd be waiting for him and would tell him about her dead husband.
Please, she'd written. Please, please. Now he was quite certain that there had been more than mere fear in her face: there was defiance as well, perhaps even hatred. There's something going on here that's bigger than I'd suspected, he thought. It needed a messenger in a chambermaid's uniform to make me realise. I'd forgotten that I'm in an alien world.
Just before 8 a.m. he emerged from the lift on the ground floor. There was no sign of a man reading a newspaper, but there was a man looking at postcards on a stand.
Wallander went out into the street. It was warmer than the previous day. Sergeant Zids was sitting in the car, waiting for him, and bade him good morning. Wallander climbed into the back seat and the sergeant started the engine. Day was slowly breaking over Riga. The traffic was heavy, and the sergeant was unable to drive as fast as he would have liked. All the time Wallander could see Baiba Liepa's face in his mind's eye. Suddenly, without warning, he felt scared.
CHAPTER 8
Shortly before 8.30 a.m., Wallander discovered that Colonel Murniers smoked the same extra-strong cigarettes as Major Liepa. He recognised the packet, with the brand name 'PRIMA' that the colonel took out of his uniform pocket and placed on the table in front of him.
Wallander felt as though he was in the middle of a labyrinth. Sergeant Zids had led him up and down stairs around the apparently endless police headquarters before stopping at a door that turned out to be to Murniers's office. It seemed to Wallander that there must surely be a shorter and more straightforward way to Murniers's office, but he was not allowed to know it.
The office was sparsely furnished, not especially big, and what immediately caught Wallander's interest was the fact that it had three telephones. On one wall was a dented filing cabinet, with locks. Besides the telephones there was a large cast-iron ashtray on his desk, decorated with an elaborate motif that Wallander thought at first was a pair of swans, then realised was a man with bulging muscles carrying a flag into a headwind.
Ashtray, telephones, but no papers. The Venetian blinds for the two high windows behind Murniers's back were either half-lowered, or broken, Wallander couldn't make up his mind which. He stared at the blinds as he digested the important news Murniers had just imparted.
'We've arrested a suspect,' the colonel had said. 'Our investigations during the night have produced the result we'd been hoping for.'
At first Wallander thought he was referring to the major's murderer, but then it came to him that Murniers meant the dead men in the life-raft.
'It was a gang,' Murniers said. 'A gang with branches in both Tallinn and Warsaw. A loose collection of criminals who make a living out of smuggling, robbery, burglary, anything that makes money. We suspect that they've recently started to profit from the drug-dealing that has unfortunately penetrated Latvia. Colonel Putnis is interrogating the man at this very moment. We shall soon know quite a lot more.'
The last few sentences were delivered as a calm, factual and measured statement. Wallander could see Putnis in his mind's eye, slowly extracting the truth from a man who'd been tortured. What did he know about the Latvian police? Was there any limit to what was permitted in a dictatorship? Come to that, was Latvia a dictatorship? He thought of Baiba Liepa's face. Fear, but also the opposite of fear. When somebody telephones and asks for Mr Eckers, you must come.
Murniers smiled at him, as if it was obvious he could read the Swedish police officer's thoughts. Wallander tried to hide his secret by saying something quite untrue.
'Major Liepa led me to understand that he was worried about his personal safety,' he said, 'but he gave no
