in command of one of our most modern minesweepers. Louise was working as a teacher. She spent her free time coaching young divers, and once in a while visited Eastern Europe, mainly East Germany, which in those days was very successful in producing champions. Nowadays we know that this was due to a combination of fanatical, almost slavish training techniques and an advanced use of various drugs. At the end of the 1970s I was transferred to staff duties and promoted to the top operations command of the Swedish navy. That involved a lot of work, much of it done at home. Several evenings every week I used to take home secret documents. I had a gun cupboard because I occasionally used to go hunting, mainly for deer, but sometimes I used to take part in the annual elk hunt. I had my rifles and ammunition locked away in that cupboard, and I also used to put my secret documents in there overnight, or when Louise and I went out, either to the theatre or to some dinner party.’
He paused, carefully removed the tea bag from his cup and put it on a saucer, then continued.
‘When exactly do you notice that something is not as it should be? The almost invisible signs that suggest something has been changed, or moved? You are a police officer - I assume you must often find yourself in situations where you catch on to these vague signals. One morning, when I opened the gun cupboard, I noticed that something was wrong. I can still recall how I felt. I was just going to take out my briefcase when I paused. Had I really left it the way it was now? There was something about the lock, and the position of the handle. My doubts bothered me for about five seconds, no more. Then I dismissed them. I always used to check that all the documents were where they should be, and that morning was no exception. I didn’t think any more about it. I think I’m pretty observant and have a good memory. Or at least, that was the case when I was younger. As you grow older, all your faculties deteriorate bit by bit, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You are considerably younger than I am, but maybe you’ve noticed this?’
‘Eyesight,’ Wallander said. ‘I have to buy new reading glasses every couple of years. And I don’t think I hear as well as I used to.’
‘It’s your sense of smell that lasts best as you grow older. That’s the only one of my senses that I think is unaffected. The smell of flowers is just as clear and subtle as it ever was.’
They sat there in silence. Wallander noticed a rustling sound in the wall behind him.
‘Mice,’ said von Enke. ‘It was still cold when I first came here. At times there was a hellish rustling and rattling inside the walls. But one of these days I’ll no longer be able to hear the mice scampering around under the floorboards.’
‘I don’t want to interrupt your story,’ Wallander said. ‘But when you vanished that morning, did you come straight here?’
‘I was picked up.’
‘By whom?’
Von Enke shook his head, didn’t want to answer. Wallander didn’t press him.
‘Let me go back to the gun cupboard,’ von Enke continued. ‘A few months later I had the impression yet again that my briefcase had been moved. I decided I was imagining it. The documents inside the briefcase hadn’t been jumbled up or interfered with in any other way. But since this was the second occasion, I was worried. The keys to the gun cupboard were underneath some letter scales on my desk. The only person who knew where the keys were was Louise. So I did what you have to do when there’s something worrying you.’
‘What?’
‘I asked her outright. She was in the kitchen, having breakfast.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She said no. And asked the obvious question: why on earth would she be interested in what was in my gun cupboard? I don’t think she ever liked the idea of my keeping guns in the apartment, even if she never said anything about it. I remember feeling ashamed when I walked down the stairs to the car waiting to take me to general staff headquarters. The job I had then gave me the right to have a chauffeur.’
‘What happened next?’
Wallander noticed that his questions were disturbing von Enke, who wanted to dictate the pace of his revelations himself. He raised his hands as a sort of apology, indicating that he wouldn’t interrupt any more.
‘I’m convinced that Louise told me the truth. But even after that I still had the feeling that my briefcase and my documents had been interfered with. I started to set little traps: I purposely put some of the papers in the wrong order, I left a strand of hair over the lock of my briefcase, a blob of grease on the handle. What was hardest to grasp was why Louise would be interested in my papers. I couldn’t believe it had to do with pure curiosity or jealousy. She knew there was no reason at all to suspect anything like that. It was at least a year before I first began to wonder if the unthinkable really was a possibility.’
Von Enke paused briefly before continuing.
‘Could Louise be in touch with a foreign power? It seemed highly improbable for a very simple reason. The documents I took home with me were rarely anything that could be of the slightest interest to a foreign intelligence service. But I couldn’t help feeling worried. I was starting to distrust my wife, to suspect her of treachery for no reason other than a strand of hair that had been disturbed. In the end - and by then it was the late 1970s - I decided to establish once and for all whether or not my suspicions of Louise were justified.’
He stood up and rummaged around in a corner of the room full of maps. He came back with a scroll, which he spread out over the table - a sea chart of the central area of the Baltic Sea. He placed pebbles on the corners to weigh it down.
‘Autumn 1979,’ he said. ‘To be more precise, August and September. We were due for our usual autumn manoeuvres involving nearly all our naval vessels. There was nothing special about this particular exercise. It was while I was attached to the general staff, and my role was to be an observer. About a month before the manoeuvres were to take place, when all the plans and timetables were already drawn up, the navigation routes established and the vessels assigned to specific areas, I made my own plan. I created a document and labelled it “Secret”. It was even signed by the supreme commander - although he knew nothing about it, of course. I introduced into the exercise a top-secret element featuring one of our submarines being refuelled in very advanced fashion by a remotely controlled tanker. It was all a complete fabrication, but something that could just about be regarded as possible. I noted the exact location and the precise time when the exercise would take place. I knew that the destroyer
He pointed to a spot on the sea chart. Wallander leaned forward and saw that it was a point just north-east of Gotska Sandon.
‘This is where the alleged meeting between the submarine and the nonexistent tanker was supposed to happen. It was on the periphery of the area where the manoeuvres would be held. There was nothing unusual about the fact that Russian vessels were keeping track of us. We did the same when Warsaw Pact countries’ manoeuvres were under way. We used to keep at a discreet distance, avoiding provocation. I chose this location for the fictitious meeting because the supreme commander was due to be dropped off at Berga that same morning, so the destroyer would be in the right place, on its way to where the exercises were in full swing, when my fictional refuelling operation was to happen.’
‘I don’t want to interrupt,’ said Wallander, ‘but was it really possible to stick to such a tight schedule when so many vessels were involved?’
‘That was part of the point of the whole manoeuvre. What you need in wartime is not just a lot of money, but also a high degree of punctuality.’
Wallander gave a start when there was a loud thud on the roof of the lodge. Von Enke didn’t seem to react at all.
‘A branch,’ he said. ‘They sometimes fall down and hit the roof with quite a bang. I’ve offered to saw down the dried-out, dead oak tree, but nobody round here seems to have a chainsaw. The trunk is enormous. I would guess that the oak dates from the middle of the nineteenth century or thereabouts.’
He reverted to his account of what happened at the end of August 1979.
‘The autumn manoeuvres acquired some added spice that nobody had foreseen. The Baltic Sea south of
