The Troubled Man (2011)

was short and precise. Both stones Swedish. Neither from USA’s coasts. Hans-Olov.

Wallander sat motionless in his chair. He couldn’t decide immediately what that meant, but now he knew for sure that something didn’t add up.

He felt that this was a sort of breakthrough. But exactly what the implications were he didn’t know.

He couldn’t decide if the von Enkes were gliding further away from him or if they were slowly getting closer.

15

A few days before midsummer, Wallander drove north along the coast road. Shortly after Vastervik he nearly ran into an elk. He pulled onto the shoulder, his heart racing, and thought of Klara before he could bring himself to continue. His journey took him past a cafe where, many years ago, he had stopped, exhausted, and been allowed to sleep in a back room. Several times over the years he had thought with a sort of melancholy longing about the waitress who had been so kind to him. When he came to the cafe he slowed down and drove into the parking area. But he didn’t leave the car. He sat there, hesitating, his hands clamped to the steering wheel. Then he continued on his way.

He knew why he didn’t go in, of course. He was afraid of finding somebody else behind the counter, and being forced to accept that here too, in that cafe, time had moved on and that he would never be able to return to what now lay so far away in the past.

He came to the harbour at Fyrudden at eleven o’clock. When he got out of the car he saw that the warehouse in the photo was still there, even though it had been converted and now had windows. But the fish boxes were gone, as was the big trawler alongside the quay. The harbour was now full of pleasure boats. Wallander parked outside the red-painted coastguard building, paid the required entrance fee at the chandler’s, and wandered out to the furthest of the jetties.

He acknowledged to himself that the whole journey was like a game of roulette. He hadn’t warned Eskil Lundberg that he would be coming. If he’d called from Skane he had no doubt that Lundberg would have refused to meet him. But if he was standing here on the quay? He sat on a bench outside the chandler’s shop and took out his mobile phone. Now it was sink or swim. If he had been a von Wallander, with a coat of arms and a family motto, those were the words he would have chosen: sink or swim. That’s the way it had always been throughout his life. He dialled the number and hoped for the best.

Lundberg answered.

‘It’s Wallander. We spoke about a week ago.’

‘What do you want?’

If he was surprised, he concealed it well, Wallander thought. Lundberg was evidently one of those enviable people who are always prepared for anything to happen, for anybody at all to call them out of the blue, a king or a fool - or a police officer from Ystad.

‘I’m in Fyrudden,’ Wallander informed him, and took the bull by the horns. ‘I hope you have time to meet me.’

‘Why do you think I’d have any more to tell you now than I did when we last spoke?’

That was the moment when Wallander’s long experience as a police officer told him that Lundberg did have more to tell him.

‘I have the feeling we should talk,’ he said.

‘Is that your way of telling me that you want to interrogate me?’

‘Not at all. I just want to talk to you, and show you the photo I found.’

Lundberg thought for a few moments.

‘I’ll pick you up in an hour,’ he said eventually.

Wallander spent the time eating in the cafe, where he had a view of the harbour, the islands and in the distance the open sea. He had consulted a sea chart in a glass case on one of the cafe walls and established that Boko was to the south of Fyrudden; so it was boats coming from that direction he kept an eye on. He assumed that a fisherman would have a boat at least superficially reminiscent of Sten Nordlander’s wooden gig, but he was completely wrong. Lundberg came in an open plastic boat with an outboard motor. It was filled with plastic buckets and net baskets. He berthed at the jetty and looked around. Wallander made himself known. It was only when he had clambered awkwardly down into the boat and almost fallen over that they shook hands.

‘I thought we could go to my place,’ said Lundberg. ‘There are far too many strangers around here for my taste.’

Without waiting for an answer, he pulled away from the jetty and headed for the harbour entrance at what Wallander thought was far too fast a speed. A man in the cockpit of a berthed sailing boat stared at them in obvious disapproval. The engine noise was so loud that conversation was impossible. Wallander sat in the bow and watched the tree-clad islands and barren rocks flashing past. They passed through a strait that Wallander recognised from the map on the wall of the cafe as Halsosundet, and continued south. The islands were still numerous and close together; only occasionally was it possible to glimpse the open sea. Lundberg was wearing calf-length trousers, turned-down boots and a top with the somewhat surprising logo ‘I burn my own trash’. Wallander guessed he was about fifty, possibly slightly older. That could well fit in with the age of the boy in the photograph.

They turned into an inlet lined with oaks and birches and berthed by a red-painted boathouse smelling of tar, with swallows flying in and out. Next to the boathouse were two large smoking ovens.

‘Your wife said there weren’t any eels left to catch,’ Wallander said. ‘Are things really that bad?’

‘Even worse,’ said Lundberg. ‘Soon there won’t be any fish left at all. Didn’t she say that?’

The red-painted two-storey house could just be seen in a dip about a hundred yards from the water’s edge. Plastic toys were scattered about in front. Lundberg’s wife, Anna, seemed just as cautious when they shook hands as she had on the phone.

The kitchen smelled of boiled potatoes and fish, and a radio was playing almost inaudible music. Anna Lundberg put a coffee pot on the table, then left the room. She was about the same age as her husband, and in a way they were quite similar in appearance.

A dog came bounding into the kitchen from some other room. A handsome cocker spaniel, Wallander thought, and stroked it while Lundberg was serving coffee.

Wallander laid the photo on the table. Lundberg took a pair of glasses from his breast pocket. He glanced at the picture, then slid it to one side.

‘That must have been 1968 or 1969. In the autumn, if I remember correctly.’

‘I found it among Hakan von Enke’s papers.’

Lundberg looked him straight in the eye.

‘I don’t know who that man is.’

‘He was a high-ranking officer in the Swedish navy. A commander. Could your father have known him?’

‘It’s possible. But I doubt it.’

‘Why?’

‘He wasn’t all that fond of military men.’

‘You’re in the picture as well.’

‘I can’t answer your questions. Even if I’d like to.’

Wallander decided to try a different tack and started again from the beginning.

‘Were you born here on the island?’

‘Yes. So was my dad. I’m the fourth generation.’

‘When did he die?’

‘In 1994. He had a heart attack while he was out in the boat, dealing with the nets. When he didn’t come home, I called the coastguard. Our neighbour Lasse Aman found him. He was lying in the boat and drifting towards Bjorkskar. But I reckon that was how the old man would have preferred to go.’

Wallander thought he could detect a tone of voice that suggested the father-son relationship was less than perfect.

‘Have you always lived here on the island? While your father was alive?’

‘That would never have worked. You can’t be a hired hand for your own father. Especially when he makes all the decisions, and is always right. Even when he’s completely wrong.’