perfume was bothering him.
‘It will take a while,’ she said when the fit was over. ‘I need to do some searching. But obviously, Solve recorded the details of this and all other journeys made by Swedish military delegations.’
Wallander returned to the sofa from the
‘Mrs von Enke was there,’ she said. ‘She is specifically classified as “accompanying”, with some abbreviations that probably indicate that the armed forces were not paying her fare. If it’s important, I can look up the precise meaning of the abbreviations.’
Wallander took the sheet of paper. The delegation, led by Commander Karlen, comprised eight people. Among those ‘accompanying’ were Louise von Enke and Marta Auren, the wife of Lieutenant Commander Karl-Axel Auren.
‘Can one copy this?’ Wallander asked.
‘I don’t know what “one” can do, but I have a photocopier in the basement. How many copies do you need?’
‘One.’
‘I usually charge two kronor per copy.’
She headed for the basement. So the von Enkes had been in Washington for eight days. That meant that Louise could have been contacted by somebody. But was that really credible? he asked himself. So soon? Mind you, the Cold War was becoming more intense at the end of the fifties. It was a time when Americans saw Russian spies on every street corner. Did something significant happen during this journey?
Asta Hagberg returned with a copy of the document. Wallander placed two one-krona coins on the table.
‘I suppose I haven’t been as much help as you’d hoped,’ said Hagberg.
‘Looking for missing persons is usually a tedious and very slow process. You progress one step at a time.’
She accompanied him to the gate. He was relieved to breathe in unper-fumed air.
‘Feel free to get in touch again,’ she said. ‘I’m always here, if I can be of any help to you.’
Wallander nodded, and walked to his car. He was just about to leave Limhamn when he decided to make one more visit. He had often thought about investigating whether a mark he had made nearly fifty years ago was still there. He parked outside the churchyard, made his way to the western corner of the surrounding wall and bent down. Had he been ten or eleven at the time? He couldn’t remember, but he’d been old enough to have discovered one of life’s great secrets: that he was who he was, a person with an identity all his own. That discovery had sparked a temptation inside him. He would make his mark in a place where it would never disappear. The low churchyard wall topped by iron railings was the sacred place he had chosen. He had sneaked out one autumn evening, with a strong nail and a hammer hidden under his jacket. Limhamn was deserted. He had selected the spot earlier: the stones in the section of wall close to the western corner were unusually smooth. Cold rain had started to fall as he carved his initials,
Wallander found those initials without difficulty. The letters had faded and were not as clear now, after all those years. But he had dug deep into the stone, and his mark was still there. I’ll bring Klara here sometime, he thought. I’ll tell her about the day when I decided to change the world. Even if it was only by carving my initials into a stone wall.
He went into the churchyard and sat down on a bench in the shade of a tree. He closed his eyes and thought he could hear his own childhood voice echoing inside his head, sounding like it did when it was cracking and he was troubled by everything the adult world stood for. Maybe this is where I should be buried when the time comes, he thought. Return to the beginning, be laid to rest in this same soil. I’ve already carved my epitaph into the wall.
He left the churchyard and went back to his car. Before starting the engine he thought about his meeting with Asta Hagberg. What had it accomplished?
The answer was simple. He had not progressed a single step forward. Louise was just as big a mystery as she had been before. The wife of an officer, not present in any photographs.
But the unease he had felt ever since meeting Hakan von Enke on his island was still there.
I can’t see it, he thought. Whatever it is that I should have discovered by now.
34
Wallander drove home. He could cope with the fact that his visit to Asta Hagberg had not produced results, but his sorrow following the death of Baiba weighed heavily on him. It came in waves, the memory of her sudden visit and then her equally sudden departure. But there was nothing he could do about it; in her death he also envisaged his own.
When he had parked the car, released Jussi and allowed him to run off, he poured himself a large glass of vodka and drank it in one swig, standing by the kitchen table. He filled his glass again and took it with him into the bedroom. He pulled down the blinds on the two windows, undressed and lay down naked on top of the bed. He balanced the glass on his wobbly stomach. I can take one more step, he thought. If that doesn’t lead me anywhere, I’ll drop the whole thing. I’ll inform Hakan that I’m going to tell Linda and Hans where he is. If that means he chooses to remain missing and find himself a new hideout, that’s up to him. I’ll talk to Ytterberg, Nordlander and Atkins. Then it’s no longer my business - not that it ever was. Summer is almost over, my holiday has been ruined, and I’ll find myself wondering yet again where all the time has gone.
He emptied the glass and felt the warmth and the sensation of being pleasantly drunk kick in. One more step, he thought again. But what would it be? He put the glass on the bedside table and soon fell asleep. When he woke up an hour later, he knew what he was going to do. While he was asleep, his brain had formulated an answer. He could see it clearly, the only thing that was important now. Who other than Hans could provide him with information? He was an intelligent young man, if not especially sensitive. But people always know more than they think they know, observations they’ve made in their subconscious.
He gathered his dirty laundry and started the washing machine. Then he went out and shouted for Jussi. There was a sound of barking from far away, in one of the neighbours’ newly mown fields. Jussi eventually came bounding up. He had been rolling in something that smelled foul. Wallander shut him in his kennel, got the garden hose and washed him off. Jussi stood there with his tail between his legs, looking pleadingly at Wallander.
‘You smell like shit,’ Wallander told him. ‘I’m not having a stinky dog in my house.’
Wallander went into the kitchen and sat at the table. He wrote down the most important questions he could think of, then looked up Hans’s phone number at work in Copenhagen. When he was told that Hans was busy for the rest of the day with important meetings, he became impatient. He told the girl on the switchboard to inform Hans that he should call Detective Chief Inspector Wallander in Ystad within the next hour. Wallander had just opened the washing machine and realised that he’d forgotten to put in any detergent when the phone rang. He made no attempt to conceal his irritation.
‘What are you doing tomorrow?’
‘I’m working. Why do you sound so angry?’
‘It’s nothing. When do you have time to see me?’
‘It’ll have to be in the evening. I have meetings and appointments all day.’
‘Reschedule them. I’ll be arriving in Copenhagen at two o’clock. I need an hour. No more, but no less.’
‘Did something happen?’
‘Something’s happening all the time. If it was important, I’d have told you already. I just want answers to a few questions. Some new ones, a few old ones.’
‘I’d be grateful if it could wait until the evening. The financial markets are in turmoil.’
‘I’ll be there at two,’ said Wallander.
He replaced the receiver and restarted the washing machine after putting in far too much detergent, though he knew it was childish to punish the washing machine for his own forgetfulness.
He mowed the lawn, raked the gravel paths, lay down in the garden hammock and read a book about Verdi that he’d bought for himself as a Christmas present. When he emptied the washing machine he discovered that a
