The Troubled Man (2011)

‘Not all the time. But I sometimes noticed that I was being followed.’

‘How long had that been going on?’

‘I don’t know. It might have been happening for a long time without my noticing. For many years.’

‘Let’s move on from that conservatory to the windowless room,’ Wallander said. ‘You wanted us to be away from the rest of the guests so that we could talk. But I don’t know why you picked me to be your confessor.’

‘It wasn’t planned at all; I acted on the spur of the moment. I sometimes surprise myself with the sudden decisions I make. I expect that happens to you as well. I thought the whole celebration was unpleasant. It was my seventy-fifth birthday, and I was throwing a party that I didn’t really want. I was pretty close to panic.’

‘It seemed to me afterwards that there was a hidden message in what you told me. Was I right to suspect that?’

‘No. I simply wanted to talk. I suppose I might have wanted to see if I could confide my secret in you later on - the probability that I was married to a traitor.’

‘Wasn’t there anybody else you could talk to? Sten Nordlander, for instance? Your best friend?’

‘I was ashamed at the mere thought of revealing my misery to him.’

‘What about Steven Atkins? You had told him about your daughter, after all.’

‘I was drunk at the time. We had drunk lots of whisky. I regretted saying anything afterwards. I thought he had forgotten about it. But evidently not.’

‘He assumed that I knew about her.’

‘What do my friends say about my disappearance?’

‘They’re worried. Shaken. The day they discover you’ve been hiding away, they will be very upset. I suspect you will lose them. Which leads me to the question of why you disappeared.’

‘I felt I was under threat. The man on the other side of that fence was just a sort of prologue. I suddenly began noticing shadows everywhere, no matter where I went. It wasn’t like that before. I received strange phone calls. It was as if they always knew where I was. One day when I was visiting the National Maritime Museum a guard came to tell me there was a phone call for me. A man speaking broken Swedish issued a warning. He didn’t say precisely what for, just that I should watch my step. It started to become intolerable. I had never been so scared in all my life. I came very close to approaching the police and reporting Louise. I considered sending an anonymous letter. In the end I couldn’t keep going any longer. I made arrangements to rent this hunting lodge. Eskil drove to Stockholm and picked me up when I was outside the stadium on my morning walk. Since then I’ve been here the whole time, apart from that trip to Copenhagen.’

‘It’s still incomprehensible to me that you never confronted Louise with your suspicions, which had become convictions. How could you live with somebody who was a spy?’

‘I did confront her. Twice. The first time was the year Palme was killed. That had nothing to do with it, of course, but they were unsettled times. I was sitting with my colleagues, drinking coffee and talking about my suspicions that there was a spy in our ranks. It was a terrible situation, nibbling on a biscuit and talking about a possible spy who I thought might well be my wife.’

Wallander had a sudden attack of sneezing. Von Enke waited until it had passed.

‘I confronted her in the summer of 1986,’ he said. ‘We had gone to the Riviera with some friends of ours, a Commander Friis and his wife - we used to play bridge with them. We were staying at a hotel in Menton. One evening Louise and I went for a walk through the town. Suddenly, I stopped dead in my tracks and asked her outright. I hadn’t planned to; I suppose you could say that something snapped inside me. I stood in front of her and asked her. Was she a spy or wasn’t she? She was upset, refused to answer at first, and raised a hand as if to hit me. Then she recovered her self-control and replied calmly that of course she wasn’t a spy. How on earth could such a ridiculous thought have entered my head? What did she have to say that could be of any interest to a foreign power? I remember her smiling. She didn’t take me seriously, and as a result I couldn’t do so either. I simply couldn’t believe that she was so convincing as a dissembler. I apologised, and made the excuse that I was tired. For the rest of that summer I was convinced I’d been wrong. But in the autumn my suspicions returned.’

‘What happened?’

‘The same thing again. Papers in the gun cupboard, a feeling that somebody had disturbed my briefcase.’

‘Did you notice any changes in her after you revealed your suspicions in Menton?’

He thought before answering.

‘I’ve asked myself the same question. I sometimes thought she was acting differently, but at other times not. I’m still not sure.’

‘What happened the second time you put her on the spot?’

‘It was the winter of 1996, exactly ten years later. We were at home. We were having breakfast, and it was snowing outside. She suddenly asked me about something I’d shouted at her during the night, while I was asleep. She claimed that I’d accused her of being a spy.’

‘Had you?’

‘I don’t know. I do sometimes talk in my sleep, but I never remember anything about it.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I turned her question on its head. I asked her if what I’d been dreaming was true.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She threw her napkin at me and stormed out of the kitchen. It was ten minutes before she came back. I remember checking the clock. Nine minutes and forty-five seconds, to be exact. She apologised and insisted, once and for all, as she put it, that she didn’t want to hear any more talk about my suspicions. They were absurd. If I ever repeated the accusations, she would be forced to conclude that I was either out of my mind or going senile.’

‘What happened then?’

‘Nothing. But my misgivings were not allayed. And rumours were still circulating about a spy in the Swedish military. Two years later things came to a point when I really did begin to think that I was going out of my mind.’

‘What happened?’

‘I was summoned to an interrogation by the military security services. They didn’t make any direct accusations, but it seems that for a while I was one of those suspected of being a spy. It was a grotesque situation. But I recall thinking that if Louise had sold military secrets to the Russians, she had found a perfect cover.’

‘You?’

‘Exactly. Me.’

‘So then what happened?’

‘Nothing. The rumours kept circulating, sometimes stronger than at others. Many of us were interrogated, even after we had retired. And as I said, I had the feeling I was being watched.’

Von Enke stood up, switched off the lamps that were still on, and opened some of the curtains. A grey dawn and an equally grey sea could be glimpsed through the trees. Wallander went over to one of the windows. A storm was brewing. He was worried about the boat. Von Enke accompanied him when he went to check that the painter was secure. A few eiders bobbed up and down on the choppy waves. The sun was beginning to disperse the night mist. The boat seemed safe enough, but the two men used their combined strength to drag it further up the pebbly beach.

‘Who killed Louise?’ Wallander asked when they had finished with the boat.

Von Enke turned to face him. It occurred to Wallander that he must have confronted Louise in Menton in more or less the same way.

‘Who killed her? You’re asking me? All I know is that it wasn’t me. But what do the police think? What do you think?’

‘The man in Stockholm who’s in charge of the case seems to be good. But he doesn’t know. Not yet, perhaps I should say. We tend not to jump to conclusions.’

They returned to the hunting lodge in silence, sat down at the kitchen table again, and continued their conversation.

‘We must begin at the beginning,’ said Wallander. ‘Why did she go missing? The obvious conclusion for third- party observers like me was that the two of you had a pact of some sort.’