‘So Hakan von Enke spoke up for peace?’
‘As I recall, yes. But it was a long time ago.’
Wallander could see that she really was doing her best. He sipped at his coffee, trying to avoid actually drinking any, and nibbled on a biscuit. And then he lost a filling. The tooth started hurting immediately. He wrapped the filling in a paper napkin and put it in his pocket. It was the middle of summer; his dentist would no doubt be on holiday and Wallander would be referred to some emergency centre. He was irritated by the thought that his body was starting to fall to pieces. Once the most important parts stopped working, it would all be over.
‘America.’ Fanny Klarstrom interrupted his train of thought. ‘I knew there was something else.’
There was an incident that had stuck in her memory and made a deep impression; that was why she remembered it so clearly.
‘It was one of the last times I worked at those banquets. There was evidently a request to see young ladies in short skirts rather than old ones with swollen legs. It didn’t bother me because I couldn’t have coped much longer with serving drinks and meals to those people. They used to have their meetings on the first Tuesday of every month. It must have been 1987, in March. I remember that because I’d broken the little finger of my left hand and wasn’t able to work for quite a while. I started again that very evening. They always used to finish up with coffee and brandy or whatever in a drab little room with leather chairs and dark bookcases. I remember because I’ve always enjoyed reading. Sometimes when I arrived early for one of the banquets, before starting to set the tables I would go to that room and look at the books. I soon discovered to my surprise that they were fakes - just covers with nothing inside. The owner or maybe the interior designer he’d hired had evidently bought them from some stage props supplier. I remember that my respect for those people suffered another significant blow.’
She sat up straight in the armchair, as if in an attempt to prevent herself from losing the thread again.
‘Suddenly one of the officers started talking about spies,’ she continued. ‘I was going around with a bottle of very expensive cognac at the time, filling their glasses. It wasn’t unusual for them to talk about spies. Wennerstrom was a popular topic. Several of them announced that they would willingly kill him with their own hands, once the drink got them talking. I recall an admiral, von Hartman I think his name was, suggesting that Wennerstrom be throttled slowly with a balalaika string. Then Hakan von Enke started talking. He asked why nobody seemed to be worried that spies for the USA might be active in Sweden. That aroused a furious reaction. It deteriorated into a very unpleasant argument, during which several of the officers called his loyalty into question. Of course they were all drunk, with the possible exception of von Enke. In any case, he was so angry that he stood up and stormed out of the room. That had never happened before, during all the years I had been serving them. I don’t know if he ever came back, because the young, attractive waitresses took over. I remember the incident well because my friends and I had always thought the same. If the Russians had spies in Sweden, which they doubtless did, you could be sure that the Americans were active as well. But these officers refused to believe that. Or at least, if they did, they preferred not to say so.’
She stood up in order to serve him more coffee. Wallander smiled and placed his hand over his cup. When she sat down again, he couldn’t help seeing her swollen legs and varicose veins. He could just imagine her, serving the officers in the banqueting hall.
‘Anyway, that’s what I remember,’ she said. ‘Could it be of some use?’
‘Definitely,’ said Wallander. ‘Every piece of information increases the possibility of our being able to work out what happened.’
She took off her glasses and studied him.
‘Is he dead as well?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘Could he be the one who killed her?’
‘We don’t know that either. But of course, anything is possible.’
‘That’s what usually happens,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Men kill their wives. They sometimes claim they intended to kill themselves as well, but there are a lot who don’t have the courage.’
‘Yes,’ said Wallander. ‘That often happens. Men can prove to be very cowardly when the chips are down.’
She suddenly started crying again, a trickle of almost invisible tears running down her cheeks. Wallander felt a lump in his throat once again. Loneliness is not a pretty thing, he thought. She sits here among all her silent photos, and her only company is her memories.
‘It’s never happened before, me crying like this,’ she said, drying her cheeks. ‘But he keeps coming back to me, my husband, more and more often, the older I get. I think he’s waiting for me down there in the depths; he’s tugging at me. I’ll soon be going to accompany him. I get the feeling that I’ve lived my life now. But it keeps going nevertheless. A tired old heart, still beating away; but my dark night is somebody’s day.’
‘That rhymes,’ said Wallander.
‘I know,’ she said, then burst out laughing. ‘An old woman thinking poetic thoughts in her hours of loneliness.’
Wallander stood up and thanked her for her hospitality. She insisted on accompanying him to his car, despite the fact that he could see her legs were hurting. The man with the lawnmower was no longer there.
‘Summer brings longing,’ she said as they shook hands. ‘My husband has been gone for over sixty years, but I can still feel an intense longing for him, just like when we first met. Can a policeman experience anything like that?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Wallander. ‘He most certainly can.’
She waved as he drove away. That’s a person I will never see again, he thought. He left the village and shook off the melancholy of his visit to Fanny Klarstrom, but he couldn’t stop thinking about her comment that men kill their wives and then are too cowardly to kill themselves. That Hakan von Enke might have killed Louise was one of the first thoughts Wallander had had after his meeting with Hermann Eber. There was no obvious motive, no proof, no clues. It was just a possibility among many others. But he had the feeling that, having heard Fanny Klarstrom say what she did, he should take another look at that fragile hypothesis. As he drove through the Smaland forests, he tried to think of a series of events that would lead to Louise’s being killed by her husband.
He arrived home without having made any real progress.
But that night he lay awake for a long time thinking about Fanny Klarstrom before finally falling asleep.
26
Wallander was still asleep when the phone rang. It was his father’s old phone that he had rescued for sentimental reasons when the old man’s house in Loderup had been cleared out before being sold. He considered letting it ring and ring, but eventually he got up and answered. It was one of the new women in the police station reception; Ebba, who had been there since time immemorial, had now retired and moved with her husband to an apartment in central Malmo, where their children lived. Wallander couldn’t recall the new receptionist’s name - maybe it was Anna, but he wasn’t sure.
‘There’s a woman here asking for your address,’ she said. ‘I only let people have it with your permission. She’s from abroad.’
‘Of course,’ said Wallander. ‘All the women I know are from abroad.’
He stayed at the phone, and on his third attempt managed to pin down a dentist who could treat him an hour later.
It was almost noon when he got back home from the dentist’s. He had started thinking about lunch when there was a knock on the door. When he answered it, he knew immediately who it was, even though she had changed. Baiba Liepa from Riga, Latvia. There was no doubt she was the one standing on his doorstep, older and paler.
‘Good God!’ he said. ‘So you were the lady asking for my address?’
‘I didn’t want to disturb you.’
‘How could you ever disturb me?’
He embraced her, and could feel that she had become very thin. It had been over fifteen years since their brief but torrid love affair. And it must have been ten years since they were last in touch. Wallander had been drunk and called her in the middle of the night. Needless to say, he regretted it later, and resolved never to contact her again. But now, with her standing there in front of him, he could feel his emotions bubbling over. Their affair had
