thought one of the best things in life was settling down among the sand dunes and having a nap in the sunshine after eating the meal he’d brought with him from home. He started packing a basket, which was a souvenir from his childhood home. His mother used to use it for keeping balls of wool, knitting needles and half-finished sweaters. Now he filled it with sandwiches, a Thermos, two apples and a few copies of the
He woke up feeling cold. The sun had gone behind a cloud, the air was chilly and he had cast off the blanket. He rolled himself up inside it again, and folded his jacket to serve as a pillow. The sun soon re-emerged, and he remembered a dream he had had many years ago, a recurring dream that always vanished just as quickly as it had appeared. He was involved in some erotic game with a faceless black woman. He had never had a relationship with a dark-skinned woman, apart from an incident during a visit to the West Indies when he had drunk himself silly one evening and taken a prostitute back to his hotel room. Nor had he particularly lusted after any such relationship. But then that black woman had turned up in his dreams, only to vanish again after a few months.
A storm was brewing on the horizon. He packed everything into the basket and went back to the car. When he came to Kaseberga he drove down to the harbour and bought some smoked fish. He had just got back home when his mobile phone started ringing again. It was the same woman as before, but this time the reception was much better and he could hear right away that it wasn’t Baiba. The woman was speaking broken English.
‘Kurt Wallander?’
‘Speaking.’
‘My name is Lilja. You know who I am?’
‘No.’
The woman suddenly burst out crying. She screamed into his ear. He was scared stiff.
‘Baiba,’ she yelled. ‘Baiba.’
‘What about her? I know her.’
‘She dead.’
Wallander was standing with the bag of fish from Kaseberga in his hand. He dropped it.
‘She’s dead? She was here only a couple of days ago!’
‘I know. She was my friend. But now she dead.’
Wallander could feel his heart pounding. He sat down on the stool just inside the front door. He eventually managed to piece together the confused and anguished message that Lilja was trying to convey. Baiba had been only a few miles outside Riga when she drove off the road at high speed and crashed into a stone wall, wrecking the car and killing herself. She had died on the spot; that was something Lilja repeated over and over again, as if it might prevent Wallander from sinking into a bottomless pit of sorrow. But it was in vain, of course. The despair welling up inside him was something he had never experienced before.
They were suddenly cut off, without warning, before Wallander could get Lilja’s phone number. He waited for her to call him again, still sitting on the stool in the hall. Only when it became clear that she was unable to get through did he move into the kitchen. He left the bag with the smoked fish lying on the floor. He had no idea what to do next. He lit a candle and placed it on the table. She must have been driving non-stop, he thought. From the ferry when it docked in Poland, through Poland, through Lithuania, and then almost all the way to Riga. Had she fallen asleep at the wheel? Or had she driven into the wall on purpose, intending to kill herself? Wallander knew that fatal car accidents involving nobody but the driver were often suicides. A former secretary who used to work in the Ystad police station, a divorcee with a drinking problem, had chosen that way out only a few years ago. But he didn’t think Baiba would do anything like that. Somebody who decides to travel around to say goodbye to her friends and lovers would hardly be likely to set up a car crash to bring her life to a close. She must have been tired and lost control; that was the only explanation he could think of.
He picked up his mobile phone to call Linda - he didn’t feel capable of coping with what had happened on his own. There were times when he needed to have other people on hand. He dialled the number, but then hung up when her phone started ringing. It was too soon; he didn’t have anything to say to her. He threw his phone onto the sofa and went out to Jussi, let him out of his kennel, sat down on the ground and started stroking him. The phone rang. He rushed indoors. It was Lilja. She was calmer now. He asked her questions and got a clearer picture of what had happened. There was also something else he wanted to ask about.
‘Why are you calling me? How did you know that I exist?’
‘Baiba asked me to.’
‘Asked you to do what?’
‘To call you when she was dead. But I didn’t think it would be quickly like this. Baiba thought she would live until Christmas.’
‘She told me she hoped to live until the autumn.’
‘She said different things to different people. I think she wanted us to have the same uncertainty that she had.’
Lilja explained who she was, an old friend and colleague who had known Baiba since they were teenagers.
‘I knew about you,’ she said. ‘One day Baiba rings and she says: “Now he is here in Riga, my Swedish friend. I take him to the cafe in Hotel Latvia this afternoon. Go there and you will see him.” I went there, and I saw you.’
‘Perhaps Baiba mentioned your name. I think so. But we never met, is that right?’
‘Never. But I saw you. Baiba always thought much of you. She loved you.’
She burst out crying again. Wallander waited. Thunder was rumbling in the distance. He could hear her coughing, and blowing her nose.
‘What happens now?’ he asked when she picked up the phone again.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Who are her closest relations?’
‘Her mother, and brothers and sisters.’
‘If her mother is still alive she must be very old. I don’t remember Baiba ever talking about her.’
‘She is ninety-five years. But she is clear in the head. She knows her daughter is dead. They had hard relations since Baiba was child.’
‘I want to know when the funeral will take place,’ Wallander said.
‘I promise to call you.’
‘What did she say about me?’ Wallander asked in the end.
‘Not much.’
‘But she must have said something?’
‘Yes. But not much. We were friends, but Baiba never allowed anybody very close.’
‘I know,’ he said.
When the call was over, he lay down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling where a patch of damp had appeared a couple of months ago. He lay there for quite a while before returning to the kitchen table.
Shortly after eight he called Linda and told her what had happened. He found it very difficult, and could feel a sense of mounting desperation.
29
On 14 July, at eleven o’clock in the morning, Baiba Liepa’s funeral took place at a chapel in central Riga. Wallander had arrived the previous day on a flight from Copenhagen. When he disembarked he recognised the airport immediately, even though the terminal had been rebuilt. The Soviet military planes that had been visible all over the place at the beginning of the 1990s were no longer there, and from the windows of the taxi taking him into Riga he noted that there had been a lot of changes. The hoardings were different; the facades had been newly painted; the pavements had been repaired. But pigs were still rooting around in dunghills next to tumbledown farmhouses, and in the centre of town the old buildings were still standing. The main difference was the large number of people in the streets, their clothes, and the cars lining up at red lights and at turn-offs to centrally
