The Troubled Man (2011)

Wallander hadn’t prepared his questions. They simply tumbled out on their own, as if they were inevitable.

‘We were roughly the same age,’ said Atkins, ‘both children of the Cold War. I was twenty-three when the Russians launched their Sputnik. I remember I was scared to death, frightened they were going to aim it at us. Hakan told me once that he’d had similar thoughts, but more innocent, not so hair-raising. The Russians were there all right, but they weren’t quite the monsters for him that they were for me. We were affected by all kinds of things in those days. I remember Hakan was worried because Sweden wasn’t a member of NATO. He saw that as a catastrophic error of judgement. In his opinion, neutrality wasn’t only wrong and dangerous, but outright hypocrisy. We were on the same side. Sweden wasn’t in some sort of neutral no-man’s-land, no matter what the politicians maintained. When Wennerstrom was unmasked, Hakan called me - I can still remember it clearly. It was June 1963. I was second in command on a submarine that was about to be deployed in the Pacific Ocean. He wasn’t indignant at the fact that Wennerstrom was guilty of treason and had been spying for the Russians. He was exultant about that! At long last the Swedish people would realise what had been going on. The Russians had infiltrated the whole Swedish defence system. There were defectors wherever you looked, and when the day came for Russia to move in and occupy his country, the only thing that could save Sweden would be NATO membership. You asked if there was a theme that kept cropping up in our conversations. Yes, we always talked about politics. Including about how politicians reduced the possibility of maintaining the balance of power between us and the Russians. I can’t recall a single conversation we had that didn’t contain some kind of political discussion.’

‘If your conversations were always dominated by politics,’ Wallander wondered, ‘what could have been the conclusion he reached? Were there any previous occasions when he reached a conclusion that made him exultant?’

‘Not as far as I can recall. But we’ve known each other for nearly fifty years. A lot of memories have faded away.’

‘How did you meet?’

‘In the way that all important meetings take place. By pure and peculiar coincidence.’

It had started raining when Atkins told the story of his first meeting with Hakan von Enke. He was a much better storyteller than the man Wallander had listened to in the windowless room in Djursholm during the birthday party. But perhaps it has to do with the language, Wallander thought. I’m used to thinking that stories in English are so much richer or more important than stories I hear in my own language.

‘It was nearly fifty years ago,’ said Atkins in his low voice. ‘August 1961, to be precise. In a place where you might least expect to find two young naval officers. I had flown to Europe with my father, who was a colonel in the US Army. He wanted to show me Berlin, that little isolated fortress in the middle of the Russian Zone. We flew Pan Am from Hamburg, I recall; the plane was full of military servicemen - there were hardly any civilians on board, apart from some priests dressed in black. The situation was tense, but at least there were no lines of tanks from east and west, confronting each other like deer in heat. But one evening, not far from Friedrichstrasse, my father and I suddenly found ourselves in a crowd of people. Across from us a group of East German soldiers was busy setting up a barbed-wire fence that would eventually become a wall built of cinder blocks and cement. Standing next to me was a man of about my own age, dressed in a uniform. I asked where he was from, and he said he was Swedish. Of course it was Hakan. That was our first meeting. We stood there watching Berlin be divided by a wall - a world was amputated, you might say. Ulbricht, the East German leader, claimed that it was a measure “to protect freedom and lay the foundation of the socialist state that would continue to flourish”. But that day, as the Berlin Wall began to be built, we saw an old woman standing on the other side, weeping. She was shabbily dressed and had a big scar on her face; she might have had some kind of false plastic ear, but neither of us was sure. But what we both saw, and would never forget, was that she stretched out a hand in a sort of helpless gesture toward those soldiers who were building a wall before her very eyes. That poor woman was not nailed to a cross, but she was reaching out toward us. I think that was the moment when we both realised what our duty was: to keep the free world free, and to make sure that no other countries ended up within prison-like walls. We became even more convinced a few weeks later when the Russians resumed nuclear weapons testing. By then I had returned to Groton, where I was stationed, and Hakan was on a train back to Sweden. But we had each other’s addresses in our pockets, and that was the beginning of a friendship that still continues. Hakan was twenty-eight at the time, and I had just celebrated my twenty-seventh birthday. Forty-seven years is a very long time.’

‘Did he ever visit you in America?’

‘Oh yes, often. He must have come over fifteen times, maybe more.’

The reply surprised Wallander. He had been under the impression that Hakan von Enke made only the occasional visit to the USA. Wasn’t that what Linda said? Or did he misremember?

‘That’s about one trip every three years,’ said Wallander.

‘He was a big fan of America.’

‘Did he usually stay long?’

‘Rarely less than three weeks. Louise was always with him. She and my wife got along well. We looked forward to their visits.’

‘Perhaps you know that their son, Hans, works in Copenhagen?’

‘I’ve arranged to meet him this evening.’

‘I take it you know that he lives with my daughter?’

‘Yes, I know. But I’ll have to meet her another time. Hans is very busy. We’re going to meet after ten this evening in my hotel. I’m flying to Stockholm tomorrow to see Louise.’

It had stopped raining. An aeroplane on its descent into Sturup flew low over the house, making the windows rattle.

‘What do you think happened?’ Wallander asked. ‘You knew him better than I did.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Atkins. ‘I don’t like saying that. I’m not the kind of person who avoids giving a straight answer. But I can’t believe he would leave of his own free will, abandoning his wife and son, and now even a grandchild, leaving them to fret and worry. I have to throw up my hands, even though I don’t want to.’

Atkins emptied his cup and stood. It was time for him to return to Copenhagen. Wallander explained the best way of getting to the main road into Ystad and then to Malmo. Just as Atkins was about to leave, he took a little stone out of his pocket and handed it to Wallander.

‘A present,’ he said. ‘An old Indian once told me about a tradition in his tribe; I think it was the Kiowa. If a person has a problem, he carries a stone - preferably a heavy one - in his clothes, and lugs it around until he has solved his difficulties. Then he can get rid of the stone and continue on his way through life more easily. Pop this stone in your pocket. Leave it there until we know what has happened to Hakan.’

It’s just an ordinary granite pebble, Wallander thought after he had waved goodbye to Atkins as he drove away down the hill. He thought about what Atkins had said about his first meeting with Hakan von Enke. Wallander couldn’t remember anything about those days in August 1961. That was the year he celebrated his thirteenth birthday, and all he could recall was the battering he received from his hormones, which resulted in his life consisting of dreams - dreams about women, real or imagined.

Wallander belonged to the generation that grew up in the 1960s. But he had never been involved in any of the political movements, had never joined any of the protest rallies in Malmo, never really understood what the Vietnam War was all about or had any interest in freedom movements in countries he had barely heard of. Linda often reminded him how poorly informed he was. He usually dismissed politics as a higher authority that restricted the ability of the police to enforce law and order, and that was it. He generally voted in elections but was never sure about whom to vote for. His father had been a dyed-in-the-wool Social Democrat, and that was the party he usually supported. But rarely with any real conviction.

The meeting with Atkins had unsettled him. He searched for a Berlin Wall inside himself, but failed to find one. Was his life really so restricted that major events taking place in the outside world never had much effect on him? What aspects of life had upset him? Pictures of children who had been badly treated, of course - but he had never been sufficiently moved to do anything about it. His excuse was always that he was too busy with work. I sometimes manage to help people by making sure that criminals are removed from the streets, he thought. But aside from that? He gazed out over the fields where nothing was yet growing, but he failed to find what he was looking for.

That evening he straightened his desk, and dumped onto it all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle Linda had given