The Troubled Man (19 page)

I can’t go any farther
, he had written that last time.
But I’ve come far enough
. Those were his last words. Apart from one final word that had evidently been added later, written with a different pen.
Swamp
. That was all. Just one word.

That was probably the last word he ever wrote, Wallander thought. He couldn’t be sure, and for the moment he had no suspicion that it might be important. Other things he had found in the collection of documents said much more about the man behind the pen.

What impressed him most of all were the photocopies of Supreme Commander Lennart Ljung’s war diaries. It wasn’t the diary itself that was important, but von Enke’s margin notes. They were often written in red ink, sometimes crossed out or corrected, with additions sometimes many years after the first notes were written, containing completely new lines of thought. Sometimes he also drew little matchstick men between the lines, little devils with axes or red-hot pokers in their hands. At one point he had pasted in a reduced-size sea chart of Hårsfjärden. He had marked various points in red, sketched in the progress of unknown vessels, and then crossed everything out again and started from the beginning once more. He had also noted down the number of depth charges laid, various underwater minefields, and sonar contacts. At times everything merged to form an incomprehensible mush before Wallander’s weary eyes. So he would go into the kitchen, rinse his face in cold water, and start again.

Von Enke had often pressed so hard that he made holes in the paper. The notes suggested an entirely different temperament, almost an obsession, in the old submarine commander. There was none of the calm he had displayed in delivering his monologue in that windowless room.

Wallander remained at his post by the window, listening to a group of young men yelling out obscenities as they staggered home through the night. The ones shouting are the ones who failed to pick up a partner, he thought, the ones forced to go home alone. That’s what often happened to me forty years ago.

Wallander had read the extracts from the war diaries so carefully that he thought he could probably recite every sentence by heart.
Wednesday, September 24, 1980
. The supreme commander visited an air force regiment not far from Stockholm, noted that they were still having difficulty in recruiting officers despite the investment of large sums of money in refurbishing the barracks to make them more attractive. Von Enke hadn’t made a single margin note in this section. It wasn’t until much farther down on the page that his red pen leaped into action, a sort of bayonet charge on the document.
The question of foreign submarines in Swedish territorial waters has arisen once more today. Last week a submarine was discovered off Utö, well inside Swedish territory. Parts of the submarine were seen on the surface and identified it beyond doubt as a Misky class vessel. The Soviet Union and Poland have submarines of this type
.

The notes suddenly became difficult to read. Wallander borrowed a magnifying glass from von Enke’s desk and eventually managed to work out what the notes said. He wondered what “parts” they claimed had been seen. Periscope? Conning tower? How long had the submarine been visible? Who saw it? What was its course? He was irritated by the lack of detail in the diary. Von Enke had commented on the term “Misky class”:
NATO and whiskey. The West European designation of the submarine in question
. He had underlined in red the last few lines on the page.
Snap shots and depth charges were fired, but the submarine could not be forced to surface. It is assumed that it then left Swedish territorial waters
. Wallander sat for a while wondering what snap shots were, but he could find no explanation from either his own experience or the book he had in front of him. A margin note announced:
You don’t force a submarine up to the surface with warning shots, only with volleys for effect. Why did they let the submarine get away?

The notes continued until September 28. That was when Ljung had talks with the head of the navy, who had been on a visit to Yugoslavia. From then on Håkan von Enke was no longer interested. No more notes, no matchstick men, no exclamation points. But farther down the page Ljung is dissatisfied with a press release from the navy’s information service. He calls on the head of the navy to take whoever was responsible to task. The red pen comments in the margin:
It would be more appropriate to clamp down on other blunders
.

The submarine off Utö. Wallander recalled having heard about that during the party in Djursholm.
That was when it all began
, he seemed to remember
Håkan von Enke saying. Or something like that. He didn’t remember the exact words.

The other extract from the war diaries was significantly longer. It covered the period from October 5 to October 15, 1982. That was the big gala performance, Wallander thought. Sweden was at the center of the world’s attention. Everybody was watching as the Swedish navy and its helicopters tried to pin down the foreign submarines or possible submarines or nonsubmarines. And while all this was happening, there was a change of government in Sweden. The supreme commander had great difficulty keeping both the outgoing and incoming governments informed. At one point Thorbjörn Fälldin seemed to forget that he was on his way out, and Olof Palme angrily expressed his surprise that he had not been kept fully informed of what was happening out at Hårsfjärden. The supreme commander wasn’t allowed a moment’s rest. He was traveling back and forth like a yo-yo between Berga and the two governments that were treading on each other’s toes. And in addition, he had to answer sarcastic questions from the leader of the Swedish Conservative Party, Ulf Adelsohn, about why it had not been possible to make the intruding submarines surface. Håkan von Enke commented ironically that for once a politician was asking the same questions he was.

Wallander now started writing names and times in his battered notebook. He wasn’t sure why. Perhaps just to keep the mass of details in some sort of order so that he could try to begin to understand von Enke’s increasingly bitter notes more clearly.

He sometimes had the impression that von Enke was trying to rewrite history. He’s like that lunatic in the asylum who spent forty years reading the classics and changing the endings when he thought they were too tragic. Von Enke writes what he thinks
should
have happened. And in doing so asks the question: Why didn’t it happen?

Wallander had long since taken off his shirt and, sitting half-naked on the sofa, eventually began to wonder if Håkan von Enke was paranoid. But he soon dismissed the thought. The notes in the margins and between the lines were angry, but at the same time clear and logical, as far as Wallander could understand.

At one point a few simple words were inserted into the text, almost like a haiku.

Is that how it was? Wallander wondered. Had everything been a show? Had there never been any real desire to identify the submarine? But for Håkan von Enke there was another, more important question. He was involved in a different hunt, not for a submarine but for a person. It kept recurring in his notes, like a stubbornly repeated drumroll. Who makes the decisions? Who changes them? Who?

At another point von Enke makes a comment:
In order to identify the person or persons who actually made these decisions, I have to answer the question why. Assuming it hasn’t been answered already
. He didn’t sound angry, or agitated, but totally calm. He hadn’t made any holes in the paper here.

By this stage Wallander no longer found it difficult to understand Håkan von Enke’s version of what had happened. Orders had been given, the chain of command had been followed—but suddenly somebody had intervened, changed course, and before anybody realized what was happening, the submarines had vanished. Von Enke mentioned no names, or at least didn’t point an accusing finger at anybody. But sometimes he referred to people as
X
or
Y
or
Z
. He’s hiding them, Wallander thought. And then he hides his diary among Signe’s Babar books. And disappears. And now Louise has disappeared as well.

Studying the photocopies of the war diaries took up most of Wallander’s time that night; but he also examined the rest of the material in great detail. There was an overview of Håkan von Enke’s life, from the day he first decided to become a naval officer. Photographs, souvenirs, picture postcards. School reports, military examination results, appointments. There were also wedding photographs of him and Louise, and pictures of Hans at various ages. When Wallander finally stood up and gazed out the window into the summer night and the drizzle, he thought: I know more than I did; but I can’t say that anything has become any clearer. Not why he’s been missing for nearly two months now, or why Louise has vanished as well. But I know more about who Håkan von Enke is.

Those were his final thoughts before he lay down on the sofa at last, pulled the blanket over himself, and fell asleep.

When he woke up the next morning he had a slight headache. It was eight o’clock; his mouth was as dry as if he’d been boozing the night before. But as
soon as he opened his eyes he knew what he was going to do. He made the phone call before he’d even tasted his coffee. Sten Nordlander answered after the second ring.

“I’m back in Stockholm,” said Wallander. “I need to see you.”

“I was just about to go out for a little trip in my boat—if you’d called a couple of minutes later you would have missed me. If you want to, you can come with me. We could chat to our hearts’ content.”

“I don’t have much in the way of boating gear with me.”

“I can supply everything. Where are you?”

“In Grevgatan.”

“I’ll pick you up in half an hour.”

Sten Nordlander was wearing shabby gray overalls with the Swedish navy emblem when he met Wallander. On the backseat of his car was a large basket with food and thermoses. They drove out toward Farsta, then turned off onto small roads and eventually came to the little marina where Nordlander kept his boat. Nordlander had noticed the plastic bag and the file with the black covers, but he made no comment. And Wallander preferred to wait until they were in the boat.

They stood on the dock admiring the gleaming, newly varnished wooden boat.

“A genuine Pettersson,” said Nordlander. “Authentic through and through. They don’t make boats like this anymore. Plastic means less work when you need to make your boat ready for launching in the spring, but it’s impossible to fall in love with a plastic boat the way you can a wooden boat. One like this smells like a bouquet of flowers. Anyway, let’s go take a look at Hårsfjärden.”

Wallander was surprised. He had lost his sense of direction once they had left town, and assumed that the boat was moored by an inland lake, or perhaps Lake Mälaren. But now he could see that he was looking out toward Utö and the Baltic Sea, as Nordlander pointed out their location on a sea chart. To the northwest were Mysingen and Hårsfjärden, and the legendary Muskö naval base.

Sten Nordlander gave Wallander a pair of overalls similar to the ones he was wearing, and also a dark blue peaked cap.

“Now you look presentable,” Nordlander said when Wallander had changed into the borrowed gear.

The boat had a diesel engine. Wallander started it like a pro. He hoped there wouldn’t be too much of a wind once they came out into the navigable channels.

Nordlander concentrated on the route ahead, one hand on the attractively carved wooden steering wheel.

“Ten knots,” he said. “That’s about right. Gives you the opportunity to enjoy the sea rather than race off as if you were in a hurry to reach the horizon. What was it you wanted to talk about?”

“I went to see Signe yesterday,” Wallander said. “In her nursing home. She was lying curled up in bed, like a little child, even though she’s forty years old.”

Sten Nordlander raised a hand demonstratively.

“I don’t want to hear. If Håkan or Louise had wanted to tell me about her, they would have.”

“I won’t say another word about her.”

“Is that why you called me? To tell me about her? I find that hard to believe.”

“I found something. Something I’d like you to take a closer look at when we get a chance.”

Wallander described the folder, without going into detail about the contents. He wanted Nordlander to discover that for himself.

“That sounds remarkable,” he said when Wallander had finished.

“Why? What surprises you about it?”

“That Håkan kept a diary. He wasn’t the writing type. We went on a trip to England once, and he didn’t send any postcards—he said he had no idea what to write. His logbooks weren’t exactly compelling reading either.”

“He even seems to have written what look like poems.”

“I find that very hard to believe.”

“You’ll see for yourself.”

“What’s it all about?”

“Most of it is about the place we’re heading for.”

“Muskö?”

“Hårsfjärden. The submarines. He seems to have been obsessed with all those events at the beginning of the eighties.”

Nordlander stretched out an arm and pointed in the direction of Utö.

“That’s where they were searching for submarines in 1980,” he said.

“In September,” Wallander elaborated. “They thought it was one of the so-called Whiskey class, as NATO calls them. Probably Russian, but it could also have been Polish.”

Nordlander gave him an appraising look.

“You’ve been doing your homework, haven’t you?”

Nordlander gave Wallander control of the wheel and produced coffee cups and a thermos. Wallander maintained their course by aiming at a spot on the horizon that the skipper had pointed out to him. A coast guard ship heading in the opposite direction caused a swell as it passed by. Nordlander switched off the engine and allowed the boat to drift while they drank coffee and ate sandwiches.