Wallander went outside and sat down in the garden. There was a cold wind blowing, but he found a sheltered spot next to the house. He had released Jussi, who disappeared behind the back of the house. The questions he now asked himself were few and straightforward. How had one of those bugging cylinders found its way into a Swedish shed behind a boathouse? How was it linked with Hakan and Louise von Enke? This whole business is bigger than I ever imagined, he thought. There is something behind their disappearance that I don’t have the information to understand. I need help.
He hesitated, but not for long. He went back inside and called Sten Nordlander. As usual the connection was bad, but with some effort they were able to understand each other.
‘Where are you?’ Wallander asked.
‘Just off Gavle, in the Gavlebukten. South-westerly breeze, light cloud cover - it’s spectacular! Where are you?’
‘At home. You need to come here. I found something you should look at. Take a flight.’
‘It’s that important, is it?’
‘I’m as certain as it’s possible to be. It’s somehow connected with Hakan’s disappearance.’
‘I must say I’m curious.’
‘There’s a chance I’m wrong, of course. But in that case you can be back on your boat tomorrow. I’ll pay for all your tickets.’
‘That’s not necessary. But don’t count on seeing me before late tonight. It’ll take me a while to sail back to Gavle.’
It was six o’clock when Nordlander called back. He’d got as far as Arlanda, and would be catching a flight from Stockholm to Malmo an hour later.
Wallander got ready to pick him up. He let Jussi stay in the house - his presence would no doubt deter any possible intruders.
The flight landed on time. Wallander was waiting in the arrivals hall when Nordlander emerged. They drove back to Wallander’s house to examine the mysterious steel cylinder.
19
Sten Nordlander recognised immediately the steel cylinder Wallander had lifted up onto the kitchen table. He hadn’t seen the genuine article before, but he had seen a lot of sketches, plans and pictures that enabled him to identify it.
He made no attempt to disguise the fact that he was astonished. Wallander decided there was no longer any reason to maintain the cat-and-mouse game with him. If Nordlander had been Hakan von Enke’s best friend while he was alive, and if the worst-case scenario turned out to be reality, he could also be his best friend in death. Wallander served coffee and told his guest the full story of how he had obtained the cylinder. He left nothing out, beginning with the photo of the two men and the fishing boat and finishing only when he explained how he had been able to identify the cylinder they had dragged out of the dark shed on Boko.
‘I don’t know what you think,’ Wallander said in the end. ‘Whether it was worth the trip from Gavle.’
‘It certainly was,’ said Nordlander. ‘I’m as mystified as you are. This isn’t a dummy. Maybe I can see some sort of connection.’
It was past eleven. Nordlander declined the offer of a full meal and said he’d be satisfied with a cup of tea and some biscuits. Wallander had to spend some time ransacking the pantry before he finally found a packet of oatcakes. Most of them had broken and were not much more than a heap of crumbs.
‘It’s tempting to keep talking now,’ said Nordlander, ‘but my doctor tells me I must go to bed at a decent hour, whether or not alcohol is involved. I’m afraid we’ll have to continue tomorrow. Let me just have a look through the book where you found the photograph before I go to sleep.’
The next day was warm, with no wind. A hawk hovered over the edge of a neighbouring field. Jussi was fascinated and sat motionless, watching the bird. Wallander had been up since five o’clock, impatient to hear what Sten Nordlander had to say.
At seven thirty Nordlander emerged from the guest room. He gazed out of the window at the garden and the vista beyond, obviously impressed.
‘The myth is that Skane is a flat and rather lifeless landscape,’ he said. ‘But this strikes me as much more than that. It feels to me like a gentle swell out at sea. And beyond it the waves.’
‘I see it in much the same way,’ Wallander said. ‘Dark, dense forests scare me to death. This openness makes it hard to hide. We all need to hide sometimes, no doubt, but some people do it too often.’
‘Have you been thinking along the same lines as I have? That maybe, for reasons we know nothing about, Hakan and Louise have gone into hiding?’
‘That is always a possibility when you are looking for missing persons.’
After breakfast Nordlander suggested they go for a walk.
‘I have to do some exercise every morning. It’s the only way to get my digestive juices flowing.’
Jussi raced off in a flash towards the trees, where little pools always seemed to have something interesting for a dog to sniff at.
‘There were times at the beginning of the seventies when we seriously thought the Russians were as strong from a military point of view as they appeared to be,’ Nordlander began. ‘Their October parades were telling the truth, or so it seemed. Thousands of military experts sat watching television images of armoured vehicles rolling past the Kremlin, and the most important question they were asking themselves was: What is it that we
They stopped at a ditch where an improvised footbridge had collapsed. Wallander found another plank that was less rotten, and put it in place so that they could continue on their way.
‘“The spell broke,”’ Wallander repeated. ‘My old colleague Rydberg used to say that when a line of inquiry turned out to be completely wrong.’
‘In this case it was our realisation that the Russian defence forces were not as strong as we’d thought. It was a worrying insight that gradually dawned on those whose job it was to solve jigsaw puzzles using all the pieces of information gathered from spies, U-2 planes, or even everyday television. The Russian military, at all levels, was worn out and in many cases nothing more than an impressive-looking but empty shell. Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying, there was a very real and powerful threat of a possible nuclear attack. But just as the whole economic set-up was rotting away, so was the incompetent bureaucracy. The party no longer believed in what it was doing, and the defence forces were also disintegrating. That naturally gave the top brass in the Pentagon and NATO, and even in Sweden, a lot to think about. What would happen if it became public knowledge that the Russian bear was in fact no more than an aggressive little polecat?’
‘Presumably the threat of doomsday would be reduced?’
Nordlander seemed almost impatient when he answered.
‘Military men have never been especially philosophical by nature. They are practical people. Hiding inside every competent general or admiral is nearly always a pretty good engineer. Doomsday wasn’t the most important question as far as they were concerned. What do you think it was?’
‘Defence expenditure?’
‘Right. Why should the Western world continue to be on a war footing if their main enemy was no longer a threat? You can’t find a new enemy of similar proportions just like that. China and to some extent India were next in line. But at that time China was still a non-starter in military terms. The core of their armed forces was still an
