him.
'Colonel Putnis must hear this,' Murniers said.
'Indeed,' Wallander said. 'He must.'
Ten minutes later Putnis strode through the door. Wallander had no opportunity to thank him for the dinner before Murniers, speaking excitedly and forcefully in Latvian, recounted what Wallander had just told him about his meeting with Upitis. Wallander was certain that Putnis's expression would reveal whether he had been the one in the shadows that night in the hunting lodge, but he gave nothing away. Wallander tried to think of a plausible explanation for Upitis having made a false confession, but everything was so confused and obscure that he gave up the attempt.
Putnis's reaction was very different from that of Murniers.
'Why didn't you tell anybody before that you had met this criminal Upitis?' he asked.
Wallander didn't know what to say. He could tell that he had broken the bond of trust between them, but at the same time he wondered whether it was a coincidence that he had been having dinner with the Putnises the night Upitis made his alleged confession. Was there any such thing as a coincidence in a totalitarian society? Hadn't Putnis also said he always preferred to interrogate his prisoners alone?
Putnis's indignation subsided as quickly as it flared up. He was smiling again, and put his arm on Wallander's shoulder.
'Upitis, the butterfly collector and poet, is a crafty fellow,' he said. 'One has to admit it is a very clever move to divert suspicion from himself by going to see a Swedish police officer who happens to be visiting Riga, but there is nothing false about his confession. I've been expecting him to cave in. The murder of Major Liepa is solved. That means there is no longer any reason why you should stay in Riga.
I'll see about arranging for your journey home straight away. We will express our thanks to the Swedish foreign ministry through the official channels.'
It was then that it dawned on Wallander just how the whole of this gigantic conspiracy must be organised. He could see not just the scope of it, and the ingenious mixture of truth and lies, false trails and genuine chains of cause and effect, but it was also clear to him that Major Liepa had been the skilful and honourable police officer he had thought him to be. He understood Baiba Liepa's fear just as well as he understood her defiance. Although he was now going to be forced to go home, he knew he would have to see her again. He owed her that, just as he knew he had an obligation to the dead major.
'Of course I'll go home,' he said, 'but I'll stay until tomorrow. I've had far too little time to see the beautiful city I've been staying in – that's something I realised last night, talking to your wife.'
He had been addressing both the colonels, apart from this last bit, which was directed at Putnis.
'Sergeant Zids is an excellent guide,' he continued. 'I trust I can make use of his services for the rest of today, even though my work here is now finished.'
'Of course,' Murniers said. 'Perhaps we ought to celebrate the fact that this peculiar business is about to be solved. It would be impolite of us to allow you to fly back home without our presenting you with a souvenir, or drinking one another's health.'
Wallander thought about the coming evening. Inese would be waiting for him in the hotel nightclub and pretending to be his mistress, to take him to his appointment with Baiba Liepa.
'Let's keep it low key,' he said. 'We're police officers after all, not actors celebrating a successful first night. Besides, I've already got something arranged for tonight. A young lady has agreed to keep me company.'
Murniers smiled and produced a bottle of vodka from one of his desk drawers.
'That's something we wouldn't want to spoil,' he said. 'Let's drink a toast here and now!'
They're in a hurry, Wallander thought. They can't get me out of the country quickly enough.
They drank one another's health. Wallander raised his glass to the two colonels, and wondered if he would ever discover which one had signed the order leading to the murder of the major. That was the only thing he was still doubtful about, the only thing he couldn't know. Putnis or Murniers? What was quite certain now was that Major Liepa had been right. His secret investigations had led him to a truth he had taken with him to the grave, unless he had left a record. That is what Baiba Liepa would have to find if she wanted to know who had killed her husband, if it was Murniers or Putnis. Only then would she discover why Upitis had made a false confession in a desperate attempt to find out which of the colonels was responsible for the major's death.
Here I am drinking with one of the worst criminals I've ever come across, Wallander thought. The only thing is, I don't know which one it is.
'We shall accompany you to the airport in the morning, of course,' Putnis said when the toasts were over.
Wallander left police headquarters feeling like a newly released prisoner, marching a few paces behind Sergeant Zids. They drove through the streets with the sergeant pointing out various places of interest. Wallander looked and nodded, muttering 'yes' and 'very pretty' when it seemed appropriate. But his thoughts were miles away. He was thinking about Upitis, and the choice he'd obviously been given. What had Murniers or Putnis whispered in his ear? What had they produced from their store of threats, the scope of which Wallander hardly dared imagine? Perhaps Upitis had a Baiba Liepa of his own, perhaps he had children. Did they still shoot children in Latvia? Or was it sufficient just to threaten that every door would be closed to them in future, that their future would be over before it had even started? Was that how a totalitarian state functioned? What choice did Upitis have? Had he saved his own life, his family, Baiba Liepa, by pretending to be the murderer? Wallander tried to recall the little he knew about the show trials that had led to a series of appalling injustices throughout the history of communism. Upitis fitted into that pattern somewhere or other. Wallander knew he would never be able to comprehend how people could be forced to admit to crimes they could never have committed, admit to murdering their best friend deliberately and in cold blood.
I'll never know, he thought. I'll never know what happened, and that's just as well because I'd never be able to understand it anyway. But Baiba Liepa would understand, and she has got to know. Someone is in possession of the major's last will and testimony, his investigation is not dead, it's still alive but it is outlawed and hiding somewhere where not only the major's soul is keeping watch over it.
What I'm looking for is the 'Guardian', and that's something Baiba Liepa must know. She must know that somewhere, there is a secret that mustn't be lost. It's so cleverly hidden that nobody but her will be able to find it and interpret it. She was the person he trusted, she was the major's angel in a world where all the other angels had fallen.
Sergeant Zids stopped before a gate in the ancient city wall of Riga, and Wallander got out of the car, realising it must be the Swedish Gate that Mrs Putnis had spoken about. He shivered. It had grown cold again. He inspected the cracked brick wall absent-mindedly, and tried to decipher some ancient symbols carved into it. He gave up more or less straight away, and went back to the car.
'Shall we go on?' the sergeant asked.
'Yes,' said Wallander. 'I want to see all there is to see.'
He had realised that Zids liked driving, and all alone in the back seat, despite the cold, despite the sergeant's constant glances in the rear-view mirror, he preferred the car to his hotel room. He was thinking about the evening, about how essential it was that nothing should prevent his meeting with Baiba Liepa. For a moment he considered contacting her at the university, and telling her what he knew in a deserted corridor. But he had no idea what subject she taught, and he didn't even know if there was more than one university in Riga.
There was also something else that had begun to form in his mind. The brief meetings he had had with Baiba Liepa, although fleeting and overshadowed by the grim point of departure, had been more than mere conversations about a sudden death. They had an emotional content far beyond what he was used to. Deep down he could hear his father's tetchy voice bewailing his son who had gone astray and not only become a police officer but had also been stupid enough to fall for the widow of a dead Latvian police officer.
Is that the way it was? Had he really fallen in love with Baiba Liepa?
As if Sergeant Zids could read his thoughts, he stuck out his arm and pointed to a long, ugly building, telling him that it was a part of Riga University. Wallander contemplated the grim brick edifice through the misted-up car window. Somewhere in there was Baiba Liepa. All official buildings in this country looked like prisons, and it seemed to Wallander their occupants were really prisoners. Not the major, and not Upitis, although he was now a real prisoner and not just one trapped in an endless nightmare.
He suddenly felt tired of driving round with the sergeant, and requested him to return to the hotel. Without knowing why, he asked him to come back at 2 p.m.
