Authors: Henning Mankell
“A man by the name of William comes to see me now and again,” said Ytterberg. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know if that’s his first or last name. And I can’t say I’m all that interested. The last time he was here I had a sudden urge to throttle him. I asked if they had any information they could give me that might make things a bit easier for us. A helping hand from one professional to another, which you might think is a matter of common courtesy in a democratic country like Sweden. But needless to say, they didn’t. Or at least, that’s what William said. You can never know if people in his trade are telling the truth. Their whole way of operating is a sort of game based on lies and deception. Obviously, ordinary police officers like you and me occasionally pull the wool over people’s eyes, but it’s not what you’d call the cornerstone of our professional operations.”
After the call Wallander returned to the file of interrogation notes lying open on the desk in front of him. Next to the file was a photograph of a badly injured woman’s face. That’s why I do what I do, he told himself. Because her face looks like that, because somebody nearly beat her to death.
When Wallander came home that evening, he found that Jussi was ill. He was lying in his kennel, didn’t want to eat or drink. Wallander broke into a cold sweat and immediately called a veterinary surgeon he knew who had once helped him nail a man who had been attacking young horses grazing in their paddocks around Ystad. He lived in Kåseberga and promised to come. His examination suggested that Jussi had eaten something that disagreed with him, and that he would soon be well again. Jussi spent that night on a mat in front of the open fire, and Wallander kept checking to make sure he was all right. The next morning Jussi was back on his feet, albeit unsteadily.
Wallander was relieved. When he arrived at his office and switched on his
computer, it occurred to him in passing that he hadn’t heard from Steven Atkins in five days. Perhaps there was nothing else to say, no more photographs to send. But shortly before noon, just as Wallander was starting to think about whether to go home for lunch or to eat somewhere in town, he had a call from reception. He had a visitor.
“Who is it?” Wallander asked. “What does he want?”
“He’s a foreigner,” said the receptionist. “He seems to be a police officer.”
Wallander went down to the front desk. He realized immediately who his visitor was. He wasn’t wearing a police uniform, but that of the U.S. Navy. It was Steven Atkins standing there with his cap under his arm.
“I didn’t mean to turn up without warning,” he said. “But I got the arrival time in Copenhagen wrong. I called you at home and on your cell phone and didn’t get a reply, so I came here.”
“This is a surprise,” said Wallander. “But you are most welcome, of course. Am I right in thinking that this is your first visit to Sweden?”
“Yes. My dear friend Håkan was always inviting me to come visit, but I never got around to it.”
They had lunch at the restaurant in town that Wallander considered to be the best. Atkins was a friendly man who took an interest in his surroundings. He asked questions that were genuine and not just polite, and he listened carefully to the answers. At first Wallander found it hard to imagine that Atkins had been in command of a submarine, especially one of the biggest nuclear-powered types in the U.S. Navy. He seemed much too jovial. But of course, Wallander had no idea what kind of person made a good submarine commander.
What motivated Atkins to travel to Sweden was purely and simply his concern about what had happened to his friend. Wallander was touched when he saw how worried Atkins was. An old man missing another old man—a friendship that was obviously very close.
Atkins had checked in to the Hilton at Kastrup Airport, then rented a car and driven to Ystad.
“I had to see what it was like, driving over that incredibly long bridge,” he said with a laugh.
Wallander was jealous of the man’s glistening white teeth. After the meal he called the police station and informed them that he wouldn’t be in for the rest of the day. Then they drove out to Wallander’s house. Atkins turned out to be very fond of dogs, and got on with Jussi like a house on fire. They went for a long walk with Jussi on his leash, following paths around the fields with occasional stops to admire the sea views and the undulating countryside. Atkins suddenly turned to face Wallander, and bit his lip.
“Is Håkan dead?”
Wallander understood his intention. Atkins had fired off his question so that Wallander wouldn’t be able to hide behind an evasive or not fully truthful response. He wanted a clear and definite answer. He was the submarine commander demanding to know whether a ship had been lost.
“We don’t know. He vanished without a trace.”
Atkins stared at him for quite a while, then nodded slowly. They resumed walking and were back at the house half an hour later. Wallander made coffee. They sat down at the kitchen table.
“You told me about the last phone conversation you and Håkan had,” said Wallander. “Why would anyone say he had reached a conclusion if the person he was talking to had no idea what he was talking about?”
“Sometimes people believe that others know what they’re thinking,” said Atkins. “Perhaps Håkan thought I knew what he meant.”
“You must have had a lot of conversations. Was there a theme that kept cropping up? Something more important than the rest?”
Wallander hadn’t prepared his questions. They simply tumbled out on their own, as if they were inevitable.
“We were roughly the same age,” said Atkins, “both children of the Cold War. I was twenty-three when the Russians launched their
Sputnik
. I remember I was scared to death, frightened they were going to aim it at us. Håkan told me once that he’d had similar thoughts, but more innocent, not so hair-raising. The Russians were there all right, but they weren’t quite the monsters for him that they were for me. We were affected by all kinds of things in those days. I remember Håkan was worried because Sweden wasn’t a member of NATO. He saw that as a catastrophic error of judgment. In his opinion, neutrality wasn’t only wrong and dangerous, but outright hypocrisy. We were on the same side. Sweden wasn’t in some sort of neutral no-man’s-land, no matter what the politicians maintained. When Wennerström was unmasked, Håkan called me—I can still remember it clearly. It was June 1963. I was second-in-command on a submarine that was about to be deployed in the Pacific Ocean. He wasn’t indignant at the fact that Wennerström was guilty of treason and had been spying for the Russians. He was exultant about that! At long last the Swedish people would realize what had been going on. The Russians had infiltrated the whole Swedish defense system. There were defectors wherever you looked, and when the day came for Russia to move in and occupy his country, the only thing that could save Sweden would be NATO membership. You asked if there was a theme that kept cropping up in our conversations. Yes, we always talked about politics. Including about how politicians reduced the possibility of maintaining the balance of power between us and the Russians. I can’t recall a single conversation we had that didn’t contain some kind of political discussion.”
“If your conversations were always dominated by politics,” Wallander wondered, “what could have been the conclusion he reached? Were there any previous occasions when he reached a conclusion that made him exultant?”
“Not as far as I can recall. But we’ve known each other for nearly fifty years. A lot of memories have faded away.”
“How did you meet?”
“In the way that all important meetings take place. By pure and peculiar coincidence.”
It had started raining when Atkins told the story of his first meeting with Håkan von Enke. He was a much better storyteller than the man Wallander had listened to in the windowless room in Djursholm during the birthday party. But perhaps it has to do with the language, Wallander thought. I’m used to thinking that stories in English are so much richer or more important than stories I hear in my own language.
“It was nearly fifty years ago,” said Atkins in his low voice. “August 1961, to be precise. In a place where you might least expect to find two young naval officers. I had flown to Europe with my father, who was a colonel in the U.S. Army. He wanted to show me Berlin, that little isolated fortress in the middle of the Russian Zone. We flew Pan Am from Hamburg, I recall; the plane was full of military servicemen—there were hardly any civilians on board, apart from some priests dressed in black. The situation was tense, but at least there were no lines of tanks from east and west, confronting each other like deer in heat. But one evening, not far from Friedrichstrasse, my father and I suddenly found ourselves in a crowd of people. Across from us a group of East German soldiers was busy setting up a barbed-wire fence that would eventually become a wall built of cinder blocks and cement. Standing next to me was a man of about my own age, dressed in a uniform. I asked where he was from, and he said he was Swedish. Of course it was Håkan. That was our first meeting. We stood there watching Berlin be divided by a wall—a world was amputated, you might say. Ulbricht, the East German leader, claimed that it was a measure ‘to protect freedom and lay the foundation of the socialist state that would continue to flourish.’ But that day, as the Berlin Wall began to be built, we saw an old woman standing on the other side, weeping. She was shabbily dressed and had a big scar on her face; she might have had some kind of false plastic ear, but neither of us was sure. But what we both saw, and would never forget, was that she stretched out a hand in a sort of helpless gesture toward those soldiers who were building a wall before her very eyes. That poor woman was not nailed to a cross, but she was reaching out
toward us
. I think that was the moment when we both realized
what our duty was: to keep the free world free, and to make sure that no other countries ended up within prison-like walls. We became even more convinced a few weeks later when the Russians resumed nuclear weapons testing. By then I had returned to Groton, where I was stationed, and Håkan was on a train back to Sweden. But we had each other’s addresses in our pockets, and that was the beginning of a friendship that still continues. Håkan was twenty-eight at the time, and I had just celebrated my twenty-seventh birthday. Forty-seven years is a very long time.”
“Did he ever visit you in America?”
“Oh yes, often. He must have come over fifteen times, maybe more.”
The reply surprised Wallander. He had been under the impression that Håkan von Enke made only the occasional visit to the U.S.A. Wasn’t that what Linda said? Or did he misremember?
“That’s about one trip every three years,” said Wallander.
“He was a big fan of America.”
“Did he usually stay long?”
“Rarely less than three weeks. Louise was always with him. She and my wife got along well. We looked forward to their visits.”
“Perhaps you know that their son, Hans, works in Copenhagen?”
“I’ve arranged to meet him this evening.”
“I take it you know that he lives with my daughter?”
“Yes, I know. But I’ll have to meet her another time. Hans is very busy. We’re going to meet after ten this evening in my hotel. I’m flying to Stockholm tomorrow to see Louise.”
It had stopped raining. An airplane on its descent into Sturup flew low over the house, making the windows rattle.
“What do you think happened?” Wallander asked. “You knew him better than I did.”
“I don’t know,” said Atkins. “I don’t like saying that. I’m not the kind of person who avoids giving a straight answer. But I can’t believe he would leave of his own free will, abandoning his wife and son, and now even a grandchild, leaving them to fret and worry. I have to throw up my hands, even though I don’t want to.”
Atkins emptied his cup and stood. It was time for him to return to Copenhagen. Wallander explained the best way of getting to the main road into Ystad and then to Malmö. Just as Atkins was about to leave, he took a little stone out of his pocket and handed it to Wallander.
“A present,” he said. “An old Indian once told me about a tradition in his tribe; I think it was the Kiowa. If a person has a problem, he carries a stone—preferably a heavy one—in his clothes, and lugs it around until he has solved
his difficulties. Then he can get rid of the stone and continue on his way through life more easily. Pop this stone in your pocket. Leave it there until we know what has happened to Håkan.”
It’s just an ordinary granite pebble, Wallander thought after he had waved good-bye to Atkins as he drove away down the hill. He also remembered the stone that had disappeared from the desk in the apartment in Grevgatan. He thought about what Atkins had said about his first meeting with Håkan von Enke. Wallander couldn’t remember anything about those days in August 1961. That was the year he celebrated his thirteenth birthday, and all he could recall was the battering he received from his hormones, which resulted in his life consisting of dreams—dreams about women, real or imagined.
Wallander belonged to the generation that grew up in the 1960s. But he had never been involved in any of the political movements, had never joined any of the protest rallies in Malmö, never really understood what the Vietnam war was all about or had any interest in freedom movements in countries he had barely heard of. Linda often reminded him how poorly informed he was. He usually dismissed politics as a higher authority that restricted the ability of the police to enforce law and order, and that was it. He generally voted in elections but was never sure about whom to vote for. His father had been a dyed-in-the-wool Social Democrat, and that was the party he usually supported. But rarely with any real conviction.
The meeting with Atkins had unsettled him. He searched for a Berlin Wall inside himself, but failed to find one. Was his life really so restricted that major events taking place in the outside world never had much effect on him? What aspects of life had upset him? Pictures of children who had been badly treated, of course—but he had never been sufficiently moved to do anything about it. His excuse was always that he was too busy with work. I sometimes manage to help people by making sure that criminals are removed from the streets, he thought. But aside from that? He gazed out over the fields where nothing was yet growing, but he failed to find what he was looking for.