The Troubled Man (21 page)

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 Malaren. But now he could see that he was looking out towards Uto and the Baltic Sea, as Nordlander pointed out their location on a sea chart. To the north-west were Mysingen and Harsfjarden, and the legendary Musko 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 Hakan 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 Hakan 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.’

‘Musko?’

‘Harsfjarden. 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 Uto.

‘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 Whisky 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 coastguard 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.

‘Hakan wasn’t the only one who was upset,’ he said. ‘A lot of us wondered what on earth was going on. It was several years after the Wennerstrom affair, but there were a lot of rumours going around.’

‘About what?’

Nordlander cocked his head, challenging Wallander to say what he should already know.

‘Spies?’

‘It simply wasn’t plausible for the submarines that were definitely present under the surface of Harsfjarden always to be one step ahead of us. They acted like they knew what tactics we were adopting, and where our mines were laid. It was as if they could hear all the discussions our superiors were having. There were rumours about a spy even better placed than Wennerstrom. Don’t forget that this was the time when a spy in Norway, Arne Treholt, was moving in Norwegian government circles, and Willy Brandt’s secretary was spying for East Germany. The suspicions didn’t lead anywhere. Nobody was exposed. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t somebody high up in the Swedish military who was spying.’

Wallander thought about the letters
X, Y
and
Z
in von Enke’s margin notes.

‘There must have been individuals you suspected?’

‘There were naval officers who thought a lot of facts suggested that Palme himself was a spy. I always thought that was nonsense. But the truth is, nobody was above suspicion. And we were being attacked in different ways.’

‘Attacked?’

‘Cutbacks. All the available money was being spent on guided missiles and on the air force. The navy was being squeezed more and more. Quite a few journalists at the time spoke dismissively about our “budget submarines”. They figured the alleged invaders had been invented as part of a plan for the navy to get more and better resources.’

‘Were you ever doubtful?’

‘What about?’

‘About the existence of the submarines.’

‘Never. Of course the Russian submarines existed.’

Wallander produced the black file from its plastic bag. He felt sure Sten Nordlander had never seen it before. His surprised expression didn’t seem put on. He dried his hands and placed the open file on his knee. There was hardly any wind, barely a ripple on the surface of the sea.

Nordlander leafed slowly through the pages. He occasionally looked up to check where the boat was drifting, then looked back down at the file. When he came to the end, he closed it, handed it back to Wallander and shook his head.

‘I’m astonished,’ he said. ‘But then, I knew Hakan was looking into these matters. I just didn’t realise he was doing it in so much detail. What would you call it? A diary? A private memoir?’

‘I think it can be read in two ways,’ said Wallander. ‘Partly just as it stands. But also as an incomplete investigation into what happened.’

‘Incomplete?’

He’s right, Wallander thought. Why did I say that? The book is presumably just the opposite. Something completed and closed.

‘You’re probably right,’ Wallander said. ‘He must have finished it. But what did he think he would achieve?’

‘It was a long time before I realised how much time he was spending in archives, reading reports, investigation accounts, books. And he spoke to everybody you could think of. Sometimes people would call me and ask what Hakan was up to. I just told them I thought he wanted to know the truth about what had happened.’

‘And what he was doing wasn’t popular, I gather? That’s what he told me.’

‘I think that in the end he was seen as unreliable. That was tragic. Nobody in the navy was more honest and conscientious than Hakan. He must have been deeply hurt, even if he never said anything.’

Nordlander lifted the hatch and took a look at the engine.

‘A real beauty, like a beating heart,’ he said as he closed the hatch again. ‘I once worked as chief engineer on one of our two Halland-class destroyers, the
Smaland
. Just being in her engine room was one of the greatest experiences of my life. There were two de Laval turbines that produced almost 60,000 horsepower. She was a 3,500-ton vessel, but we could shift her through the water at thirty-five knots max. That was something special. It was good to be alive.’

‘I have a question,’ Wallander said. ‘It’s extremely important. Is there anything in the stuff you’ve just looked through that shouldn’t be there?’

‘Something secret, you mean?’ said Nordlander, frowning. ‘Not that I could see.’

‘Did anything surprise you?’

‘I didn’t read in detail. I could barely decipher the margin comments. But nothing gave me pause.’

‘Then can you explain to me why he hid the stuff away?’

Nordlander hesitated before answering. He contemplated a sailing boat passing some distance away.

‘I don’t understand what could have been secret about it,’ he said eventually. ‘Who was he hiding it from?’

Wallander pricked up his ears. Something the man sitting beside him had said was important. But he couldn’t pin it down. He memorised both sentences.

Nordlander started the engine again and revved up to ten knots, heading for Mysingen and Harsfjarden. Wallander stood beside him. Over the next few hours Sten Nordlander took him on a guided tour of Musko and Harsfjarden. He pointed out where the depth charges had been sunk, and where the submarines might have been able to escape through minefields that had not been activated. The whole time, Wallander was following their route on a sea chart, noting all the deep and hidden depressions. He understood that only a very well-trained crew could negotiate Harsfjarden under the surface.

When Nordlander decided they had seen enough, he changed course and headed for a cluster of islets and skerries in the narrows between Orno and Uto. Beyond was the open sea. He skilfully guided the boat into an inlet in one of the skerries, and moored at the bottom of a cliff.

‘Not many people know about this inlet,’ he said as he shut down the engine. ‘So I always have it to myself. Enjoy!’

Wallander jumped ashore and secured the mooring rope, then collected the basket and placed it on a convenient rock. It smelled like the sea and the vegetation that filled the crevices. He felt like a child again, on a journey of exploration on an unknown island.

‘What’s the island called?’ he asked.

‘It’s not much more than a rocky outcrop. It doesn’t have a name.’

Without further ado Nordlander undressed and jumped into the water. Wallander watched his head bobbing up before disappearing again under the surface. He’s like a submarine, Wallander thought. Practising diving and surfacing. He’s not worried about how cold the water is.

Nordlander clambered back up onto the rocks and took a large red towel from the picnic basket.

‘You should give it a try,’ he said. ‘It’s cold, but it does you good.’

‘Some other time perhaps. What’s the water temperature?’

‘There’s a thermometer behind the compass. You can take a measurement while I get dried off and serve up the food.’

Wallander found the thermometer attached to a little rubber ball. He let the ball float in the water, then pulled it out and took the reading.

‘Eleven degrees,’ he said when he came back to where Nordlander was laying out the food. ‘Too cold for me. Do you go swimming in the winter as well?’

‘No. But I’ve thought about it. We can eat in ten minutes. Go for a walk around the little island. You might find a message in a bottle from a capsised Russian submarine.’

Wallander wondered if there was something behind Nordlander’s words, but he didn’t think so. Sten Nordlander wasn’t a man who dealt in obscure subtexts.

He sat down on a large flat rock with an unobstructed view of the horizon, picked up a few stones and threw them into the water. When had he last played ducks and drakes? He recalled a visit to Stenshuvud with Linda when she was a teenager and reluctant to take trips with him. They had played ducks and drakes then, and she was much better at it than he was. And now she’s as good as married, he thought. She found the right man. If she hadn’t, I wouldn’t be standing here on this rocky outcrop, staring out to sea and wondering about his vanished parents.

One day he would teach Klara to skim flat stones over the water and watch them jump along like frogs before sinking.

He was just about to stand up and go - Sten Nordlander had shouted for him - but he remained seated with the last stone in his hand. Small, grey, a fragment of Swedish rock. A thought struck him, vague at first, but becoming clearer all the time.

He remained seated for so long that Nordlander had to shout for him again. Then he stood up and walked over to the picnic, but with the thought firmly lodged in his mind.

After he had been dropped off back at Grevgatan that evening by Sten Nordlander and watched him drive away, he hurried up the stairs to the apartment.

His suspicion was confirmed. The little grey stone that had been lying on Hakan von Enke’s desk was missing.

The sea trip had tired Wallander out. It had also stimulated many thoughts. Not just about why the stone was missing. Something inside him had clicked when Sten Nordlander said: ‘Who was he hiding it from?’ Hakan von Enke could have had only one reason for hiding his book.
There was still something going on
. He wasn’t simply rooting around in the past; he wasn’t trying to bring a sleeping or mummified truth to life. What had happened in the 1980s was linked to what was happening today.

It must have something to do with people. People who were still alive. At one point in the book von Enke had written a list of names that had meant nothing to Wallander - with one exception, that of a man who often appeared in the media during the hunt for the submarines, a man highly placed in the Swedish navy: Sven-Erik Hakansson. Beside that name von Enke had written a cross, an exclamation mark, and a question mark. What could that mean? The notes were not haphazard; everything was calculated, even if much of it was in a secret language that Wallander had only partially been able to interpret.