on my desk here in front of me,' he said. 'I think it will help you to forget drinking too much of Colonel Putnis's excellent cognac.'
'What kind of document?'
'Upitis's confession. Written and signed during the night.' Wallander said nothing.
'Are you still there?' Murniers asked. 'Perhaps you ought to call in at my office straight away.'
In the corridor Wallander bumped into Sergeant Zids and cup in hand, he entered Murniers's office. The colonel was sitting at his desk, wearing that weary smile of his, and he picked up a file from his desk as Wallander sat down.
'So, here we have a confession from the criminal, Upitis,' he said. 'It will be a real pleasure for me to translate it for you. You seem surprised?'
'I am,' Wallander said. 'Was it you who interrogated him?'
'No. Colonel Putnis had ordered Captain Emmanuelis to take charge of the interrogation. He has done even better than we had expected. Emmanuelis is clearly a police officer with a bright future.'
Did Wallander detect a note of irony in Murniers's voice? Or was it just the normal tone of voice of a tired, disillusioned police officer?
'So, Upitis, the drunken butterfly collector and poet, has decided to make a full confession,' Murniers continued. 'Together with two others, Messrs Bergklaus and Lapin, he admits to having murdered Major Liepa in the early hours of 23 February. The three men had undertaken to carry out a contract placed on the life of Major Liepa. Upitis claims he doesn't know who was behind the contract, and that is probably true. The contract passed through many hands before ending up at the right address. Since it was placed on the life of a senior police officer, the sum involved was considerable. Upitis and the other two gentlemen shared the reward, which corresponds to about a hundred years' wages for a worker here in Latvia. The contract was placed rather more than two months ago – long before Major Liepa left for Sweden. The person commissioning the murder did not lay down a deadline: the key thing was that Upitis and his accomplices didn't fail. Then, suddenly, that changed. Three days before the murder, when Major Liepa was still in Sweden, that is, Upitis was contacted by an intermediary and instructed that he must be disposed of immediately upon his return to Riga. No reason for this urgency was given, but the sum of money involved was increased and a car was put at Upitis's disposal. Upitis was to visit a cinema in the city, the Spartak to be exact, every day, in the morning and in the evening. On one of the black columns supporting the roof of the building someone would place an inscription – the kind of thing you in the West call graffiti – and when it appeared Major Liepa was to be liquidated straight away. That inscription appeared in the morning of the day Major Liepa was due back. Upitis immediately contacted Bergklaus and Lapin. The intermediary had told them that Major Liepa would be lured out of his flat late that evening. What happened next was up to them. This evidently caused the three murderers considerable problems. They assumed Major Liepa would be armed, that he would be on the alert, and that he would probably resist. This meant they would have to strike the moment he left the building. Naturally, there was every chance that they would make a mess of it.'
Murniers broke off abruptly and looked at Wallander.
'Am I going too fast?' he asked.
'No. I think I can follow.'
'They drove to the street where Major Liepa lived,' Murniers went on. 'They had taken out the bulb of the lamp by the front door, and they hid in the shadows, armed with various weapons. Earlier, they had been to a bar and fortified themselves with large amounts of strong liquor. When Major Liepa stepped through the door, they attacked. Upitis maintains it was Lapin who struck him on the back of the head. When we bring in Lapin and Bergklaus, no doubt they will all blame each other. Unlike Swedish law, ours permits us to condemn more than one man if it proves not to be possible to decide which of them was the actual killer. Major Liepa slumped down on to the pavement, the car drove up, and the body was crammed onto the back seat. On the way to the harbour he came round, whereupon Lapin is said to have struck him on the head again. Upitis claims Major Liepa was dead when they carried him out to the quayside. The intention was to give the impression that Major Liepa had been the victim of some kind of accident – that was doomed to failure, but it seems that Upitis and his accomplices didn't make much of an effort to mislead the police.'
Murniers tossed the report back on to his desk.
Wallander thought back to the evening he had spent at the hunting lodge, Upitis and all his questions, the strip of light from the door where somebody had been listening.
'We think Major Liepa was betrayed, we suspect Colonel Murniers'
'How could they know Major Liepa would come back home on that day?' he asked.
'Possibly somebody working for Aeroflot had been bribed. There are passenger lists, after all. Certainly we shall be looking into that.'
'Why was the major murdered?'
'Rumours spread quickly in a society like ours. Perhaps Major Liepa was being too awkward for certain powerful criminals to tolerate.'
Wallander thought for a moment before putting his next question. He had listened to Murniers's account of Upitis's confession, and realised that something was wrong – terribly wrong. Even though he knew it was a fabrication, he couldn't guess at the truth. The lies complemented each other, and what had really happened and the reasons for it were impossible to see.
He realised he didn't have any questions to ask. There were no more questions, just vague, helpless statements.
'You must know that not a word of Upitis's confession is true,' he said.
Murniers gave him a searching look. 'Why shouldn't it be true?'
'For the simple reason that Upitis didn't kill Major Liepa, of course. The whole confession is made up. He must have been forced to make it. Unless he's gone mad.'
'Why couldn't a criminal like Upitis have murdered Major Liepa?'
'Because I've met him,' Wallander said. 'I've spoken to him. I'm convinced that if anybody in this country can be excluded from suspicion of having murdered Major Liepa, it's Upitis.'
Murniers's astonishment couldn't possibly have been an act. So, it wasn't him standing in the shadows at the hunting lodge, listening, Wallander registered. Who was it, then? Baiba Liepa? Or Colonel Putnis?
'You say you've met Upitis?'
Wallander made a snap decision to go once again for a half-truth. He had no choice, he had to protect Baiba Liepa.
'He came to my hotel room, and introduced himself. I recognised him when Colonel Putnis pointed him out through the two-way mirror in the interrogation room. When he came to see me, he said he was a friend of Major Liepa's.'
Murniers was sitting tense and erect in his chair, all his attention concentrated on what Wallander had just said.
'Strange,' he said. 'Very strange.'
'He came to see me because he wanted to tell me he thought Major Liepa had been murdered by one of his colleagues.'
'By the police?'
'Yes. Upitis hoped I would be able to help him to work out what had happened. How he knew there was a Swedish police officer in Riga I have no idea.'
'What else did he say?'
'That Major Liepa's friends didn't have any proof, but that the major had said that he felt under threat.' 'Threatened by whom?'
'By somebody in the police. Perhaps also by the KGB.'
'Why should he feel threatened?'
'For the same reason that Upitis believes criminals in Riga had decided the major should be liquidated. There is an obvious link.'
'What link?'
'The fact that Upitis was right on two counts, although he must have lied on one occasion.'
Murniers leapt to his feet. Wallander wondered whether he, the police officer from Sweden, had overstepped the mark, pushed his luck too far, but the way Murniers looked at him suggested he was almost pleading with
