‘I thought you should know. My son and your daughter, our only children, will spend the rest of their lives together, we hope.’
‘No,’ said Wallander. There was some other reason, I’m sure. And I have to say that I was very upset to discover you haven’t been telling me the whole truth.’
Von Enke looked at him in incomprehension.
‘You and Louise have a daughter,’ Wallander said. ‘Signe, who leads a sort of life at Niklasgarden. So you see, I even know where she is. You’ve never said anything about her. Not even to your son.’
Hakan von Enke was staring at him. He had stiffened in his armchair. This is a man who is not often caught off guard, Wallander thought. But right now he is really on the spot.
‘I’ve been there,’ Wallander went on. ‘I’ve seen her. I also know that you visited her regularly. You were even there the day before you disappeared. We can choose to keep on not telling the truth, to turn this conversation into something that doesn’t clarify but merely makes what is unclear even more obscure. It’s our choice. Or rather, your choice. I’ve already made mine.’
Wallander eyed von Enke, wondering why he seemed to be hesitating.
‘You’re right, of course,’ said von Enke eventually. ‘It’s just that I’m so used to denying Signe’s existence.’
‘Why?’
‘It was for Louise’s sake. She always felt strangely guilty about Signe. Despite the fact that Signe’s handicaps weren’t caused by something that went wrong during childbirth, or by something Louise had done or eaten or drunk while she was pregnant. We never spoke about Signe. As far as Louise was concerned, she simply didn’t exist. But she existed for me. I was always tormented by not being able to say anything to Hans.’
Wallander said nothing. It suddenly dawned on von Enke why.
‘You told him? Was that necessary?’
‘I would have regarded it as shameful if I hadn’t told him he had a sister.’
‘How did he take it?’
‘He was upset, which is understandable. He felt cheated.’
Von Enke shook his head slowly.
‘I’d made a promise to Louise, and I couldn’t break that promise.’
‘That’s something you have to talk to him about yourself. Or not. Which leads me to an entirely different question. What were you doing in Copenhagen a few days ago?’
Von Enke’s surprise was genuine. Wallander felt that he now had the upper hand; the key was how to exploit that in order to make the man on the other side of the table tell the truth. There were still a lot of questions to be asked.
‘How do you know I’ve been in Copenhagen?’
‘I’m not going to answer that question at the moment.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because the answer is of no significance. Besides, I’m the one asking the questions now.’
‘Am I suppose to interpret that to mean I’m now being subjected to a police interrogation?’
‘No. But don’t forget that you have subjected your son and my daughter to incredible stress and strain since you went missing. To tell you the truth, I’m furious when I think about how you’ve behaved. The only way you can keep me calm is to give honest answers to my questions.’
‘I’ll try.’
‘Did you make contact with Hans?’
‘No.’
‘Did you intend to?’
‘No.’
‘What were you doing there?’
‘I went to withdraw some money.’
‘But you said just now that you hadn’t been in touch with Hans. As far as I’m aware, he oversaw your and Louise’s savings.’
‘We had an account with Danske Bank that we kept control of ourselves. After I retired I did some consultancy work for the manufacturers of a weapons system for naval vessels. They paid in US dollars. Obviously, some tax evasion was involved.’
‘What kind of sums are we talking about?’
‘I can’t see how that could be of any relevance. Unless you intend to report me for tax evasion?’
‘You’re suspected of more important things. But answer the question!’
‘About half a million Swedish kronor.’
‘Why did you choose to have an account in a Danish bank?’
‘The Danish krone seemed stable.’
‘And there was no other reason for going to Copenhagen?’
‘No.’
‘How did you get there?’
‘By train from Norrkoping. I went there by taxi. Eskil, whom you’ve met, took me to Fyrudden. And he picked me up when I came back.’
Wallander found no reason to doubt what he had heard, at least for the time being.
‘And Louise knew all about your undeclared money?’
‘She had the same access to the account as I did. Neither of us had a bad conscience. We both thought that Swedish taxation rates were disgracefully high.’
‘Why did you need the money now?’
‘Because I’d run out of cash. Even if you live frugally, you’re always spending money.’
Wallander left Copenhagen for the time being and returned to Djursholm.
‘There’s one thing I’ve been wondering about that only you can answer. When we were standing in the conservatory, you noticed a man in the street, behind my back. I’ll admit that I’ve spent ages wondering about this. Who was it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But you seemed worried when you noticed him.’
‘I was scared.’
The admission came out like a roar. Wallander was on his guard. Perhaps being on the run for such a long time had, after all, taken its toll on the man sitting opposite him. He decided to tread carefully.
‘Who do you think it was?’
‘I’ve already said I don’t know. And it’s not important. He was there to remind me. That’s what I think, at least.’
‘Remind you of what? Don’t make me drag every answer out of you.’
‘Somehow or other Louise’s contacts must have realised that I suspected her. Maybe it was she herself who told them I’d discovered her. It wasn’t the first time I’d had the feeling I was being watched. But the other occasions were not as clear-cut as that one at Djursholm.’
‘Are you saying that somebody was shadowing you?’
‘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.