The Dogs Of Riga Part 1

THE DOGS OF RIGA.

by Henning Mankell.

CHAPTER 1.

It started snowing shortly after 10 a.m.

The man in the wheelhouse of the fishing boat cursed. He'd heard the forecast, but hoped they might make the Swedish coast before the storm hit. If he hadn't been held up at Hiddensee the night before, he'd have been within sight of Ystad by now and could have changed course a few degrees eastwards. As it was, there were still 7 nautical miles to go and if the snow started coming down heavily, he'd be forced to heave to and wait until visibility improved.

He cursed again. It doesn't pay to be mean, he thought. I should have done what I'd meant to do last autumn, and bought a new radar. My old Decca can't be relied on any more. I should have got one of those new American models, but I was too mean. I didn't trust the East Germans, either. Didn't trust them not to cheat me.

He found it hard to grasp that there was no longer a country called East Germany, that a whole nation state had ceased to exist. History had tidied up its old borders overnight. Now there was just Germany, and n.o.body really knew what was going to happen when the two formerly separate peoples tried to work together. At first, when the Berlin Wall came down, he had felt uneasy. Would the enormous changes mean the carpet would be pulled from under his feet? His East German partners had rea.s.sured him. Nothing would change in the foreseeable future. Indeed, this upheaval might even create new opportunities.

The snow was falling more heavily and the wind was veering towards the south-west. He lit a cigarette and poured coffee into the mug in the special holder next to the compa.s.s. The heat in the wheelhouse was making him sweat, and the smell of diesel oil was getting up his nose. He glanced towards the engine room. He could see one of Jakobson's feet on the narrow bunk down there, his big toe sticking out through a hole in his sock. Might as well let him sleep on, he thought. If we have to heave to, he can take over the watch while I get a few hours' rest. He took a sip of the lukewarm coffee, and thought again of what had happened the night before.

He'd been forced to wait in the dilapidated little harbour to the west of Hiddensee for over five hours before the lorry appeared, rattling through the darkness to collect the goods. Weber had insisted that the delay was due to his lorry breaking down, and that could well have been true. The lorry was an ancient, rebuilt Russian military vehicle, and the man had often been astonished that it was still running. There again, he didn't trust Weber. Weber had never cheated him, but he'd made up his mind once and for all that he was not be trusted. It was a precautionary measure. After all, the stuff" he took to the East Germans was worth a lot. Each time, he took 20 or 30 computers, about 100 mobile phones and just as many car stereos -goods worth millions of kronor. If he got caught, he wouldn't be able to talk his way out of a long prison sentence. Nor would he be able to count on an ounce of help from Weber. In the world he lived in, everybody thought only about number one.

He checked the course on the compa.s.s, and adjusted it by two degrees to the north. The log indicated that he was holding to a steady eight knots. There were 6 6 nautical miles to go before he would see the coast and turn towards Brantevik. The greyish-blue waves were still visible ahead, but the snow seemed to be getting heavier. nautical miles to go before he would see the coast and turn towards Brantevik. The greyish-blue waves were still visible ahead, but the snow seemed to be getting heavier.

Five more trips, he thought, and that's it. 1*11 have made all the money I need and I'll be able to make my move. He lit another cigarette, smiling at the prospect. He would put all this behind him and set off on the journey to Porto Santos, where he'd open a bar. Soon, he'd no longer need to stand on watch in the leaky, draughty wheelhouse while Jakobson snored on his bunk down in the engine room. He couldn't be sure what his new life would hold, but he longed for it even so.

Abruptly as it had started, it stopped snowing. At first he didn't dare to believe his luck, but then it became clear that snowflakes were no longer swirling past his eyes. I might be able to make it after all, he thought. Maybe the storm is pa.s.sing and heading towards Denmark?

Whistling, he poured himself some more coffee. The bag containing the money was hanging on the wall. Another 30,000 kronor closer to Porto Santos, the little island just off Madeira. Paradise was waiting.

He was just about to take another sip of coffee when he caught sight of the dinghy. If the weather hadn't lifted, he'd never have noticed it. There it was, though, bobbing up and down on the waves, just 50 metres to port. A red rubber life-raft. He wiped the condensation off the gla.s.s and peered out at the dinghy. It's empty, he thought. It's fallen off a ship. He turned the wheel and slowed right down. Jakobson, woken by the change in speed, stuck his unshaven face up into the wheelhouse.

"Are we there?" he asked.

"There's a life-raft to port," said the man at the wheel, whose name was Holmgren. "We'll have it. It's worth a thousand or two. Take the wheel and I'll get the boat-hook."

Jakobson moved over to the wheel while Holmgren pulled the flaps of his cap down over his ears and left the wheel-house. The wind bit into his face and he clung to the rail. The dinghy came slowly nearer. He started to unfasten the boat-hook that was attached to the side of the wheelhouse. His fingers froze as he struggled with the catches, but eventually he released it and turned back to the water.

He gave a start. The dinghy was only a few metres away from the boat's hull, and he realised his mistake. There were two people inside. Dead people. Jakobson shouted something unintelligible from the wheelhouse: he too had seen what was in the life-raft.

It wasn't the first time Holmgren had seen dead bodies. As a young man doing his military service, a gun had exploded on a manoeuvre, and four of his friends had been blown to bits. Later, during his many years as a professional fisherman, he had seen bodies washed up on beaches or floating in the water.

It struck Holmgren immediately that they were oddly dressed. The two men weren't fishermen or sailors - they were wearing suits. And they were hugging, as if they'd been trying to protect each other from the inevitable. He tried to imagine what had happened. Who could they be?

Jakobson emerged from the wheelhouse and stood by his side.

"Oh, s.h.i.t!" he said. "Oh, s.h.i.t! What are we going to do?"

Holmgren thought for a moment.

"Nothing," he said. "If we take them on board we'll only end up with difficult questions to answer. We haven't seen them, simple as that. It is snowing, after all."

"Shall we just let 'em drift?" Jakobson asked.

"Yes," Holmgren answered. "They're dead after all.

There's nothing we can do. Besides, I don't want to have to explain where this boat has come from. Do you?"

Jakobson shook his head doubtfully. They stared at the two dead men in silence. Holmgren thought they looked young, hardly more than 30. Their faces were stiff and white. Holmgren shivered.

"Odd that there's no name on the life-raft," Jakobson said. "What ship can it have come from?"

Holmgren took the boat-hook and moved the dinghy round, looking at its sides. Jakobson was right: there was no name.

"What the h.e.l.l can have happened?" he muttered. "Who are they? How long have they been adrift, wearing suits and ties?"

"How far is it to Ystad?" asked Jakobson. "Just over 6 nautical miles."

"We could tow them a bit nearer the coast," said Jakobson, "so that they can drift ash.o.r.e where they'll be found."

Holmgren thought again, weighing up the pros and cons. The idea of leaving them there was repugnant, he couldn't deny that. At the same time, towing the dinghy would be risky - they might be seen by a ferry or some other vessel.

He made up his mind quickly. He unfastened a painter, leant over the rail and tied it to the life-raft. Jakobson changed course for Ystad, and Holmgren secured the line when the dinghy was about 10 metres behind the boat and free of its wake.

When the Swedish coast came into sight, Holmgren cut the rope and the life-raft with the two dead men inside disappeared far behind. Jakobson changed course to the east, and a few hours later they chugged into the harbour at Brantevik. Jakobson collected his pay, got into his Volvo and drove off towards Svarte.

The harbour was deserted. Holmgren locked the wheel-house and spread a tarpaulin over the cargo hatch. He checked the hawsers slowly and methodically. Then he picked up the bag containing the money, walked over to his old Ford, and coaxed the reluctant engine to life.

Ordinarily he would have allowed himself to dream of Porto Santos, but today all he could picture in his mind's eye was the red life-raft. He tried to work out where it would eventually be washed up. The currents in that area were erratic, the wind gusted and shifted direction constantly. The dinghy could wash up anywhere along the coast. Even so, he guessed that it would be somewhere not far from Ystad, if it hadn't already been spotted by someone on one of the ferries to or from Poland.

It was already starting to get dark as he drove into Ystad. Two men wearing suits, he thought, as he stopped at a red light. In a life-raft. There was something that didn't add up. Something he'd seen without quite registering it. Just as the lights changed to green, he realised what it was. The two men weren't in the dinghy as a result of a ship going down. He couldn't prove it, but he was certain. The two men were already dead when they'd been placed in the dinghy.

On the spur of the moment, he turned right and stopped at one of the phone boxes opposite the bookshop in the square. He rehea.r.s.ed what he was going to say carefully. Then he dialled 999 and asked for the police. As he waited for them to answer, he watched the snow begin to fall again through the dirty gla.s.s of the phone box.

It was 12 February 1991.

CHAPTER 2.

Inspector Kurt Wallander sat in his office at the police station in Ystad and yawned. It was such a huge yawn that one of the muscles under his chin locked. The pain was excruciating. Wallander punched at the underside of his jaw with his right hand to free the muscle. Just as he was doing so, Martinsson, one of the younger officers, walked in. He paused in the doorway, puzzled. Wallander continued to ma.s.sage his jaw until the pain subsided. Martinsson turned to leave.

"Come on in," Wallander said. "Haven't you ever yawned so wide that your jaw muscles locked?"

Martinsson shook his head.

"No," he said. "I must admit I wondered what you were doing."

"Now you know," Wallander said. "What do you want?"

Martinsson made a face and sat down. He had a notebook in his hand.

"We received a strange phone call a few minutes ago," he said. "I thought I'd better check it with you."

"We get strange phone calls every day," Wallander said, wondering why he was being consulted.

"I don't know what to think," Martinsson said. "Some man called from a phone box. He claimed that a rubber life-raft containing two dead bodies would be washed up near here. He hung up without giving his name, or saying who'd been killed or why."

Wallander looked at him in surprise. "Is that all?" he asked. "Who took the call?" "I did," Martinsson said. "He said exactly what I've just told you. Somehow or other, he sounded convincing." "Convincing?"

"You get to know after a while," Martinsson replied hesitantly. "Sometimes you can hear straight away that it's a hoax. This time whoever rang seemed very definite."

"Two dead men in a rubber life-raft that's going to be washed up on the coast near here?"

Martinsson nodded.

Wallander stifled another yawn and leaned back in his chair.

"Have we had any reports about a boat sinking or anything like that?" he asked.

"None at all," Martinsson replied.

"Inform all the other police districts along the coast" Wallander said. "Talk to the coastguards. But we can't start a search based on nothing more than an anonymous telephone call. We'll just have to wait and see what happens."

Martinsson nodded and stood up.

"I agree," he said. "We'll have to wait and see."

"It could get pretty h.e.l.lish tonight," Wallander said, nodding towards the window. "Snow."

"I'm going home now anyway," Martinsson said, looking at his watch. "Snow or no snow."

Martinsson left, and Wallander stretched out in his chair. He could feel how tired he was. He'd been forced to answer emergency calls two nights in a row. The first night he'd led the hunt for a suspected rapist who'd barricaded himself in an empty summer cottage at Sandskogen. The man was drugged to the eyeb.a.l.l.s and there was reason to think he could be armed, so they'd surrounded the place until 5 a.m., when he'd given himself up. The following night Wallander had been called out to a murder in the town centre. A birthday party had got out of hand, and the man whose birthday it was had been stabbed in the temple with a carving knife.

He got up from his chair and put on his fleece jacket. I've got to get some sleep, he thought. Somebody else can look after the snowstorm. When he left the station, the gusts of wind forced him to bend double. He unlocked his Peugeot and scrambled in. The snow that had settled on the windows gave him the feeling of being in a warm, cosy room. He started the engine, inserted a tape, and closed his eyes.

Immediately his thoughts turned to Rydberg. It was less than a month since his old friend and colleague had died of cancer. Wallander had known about the illness the year before, when they were struggling together to solve the murder of an old couple at Lenarp. During the last months of his life, when it was obvious to everybody and not least to Rydberg himself that the end was nigh, Wallander had tried to imagine going to the station knowing that Rydberg wouldn't be there. How would he manage without the advice and judgement of old Rydberg, who had so much experience? It was still too soon to answer that question. He hadn't had any difficult cases since Rydberg had gone on sick leave for the last time, and then pa.s.sed away. But the sense of pain and loss was still very real.

He switched on the windscreen wipers and drove slowly home. The town was deserted, as if people were preparing to be besieged by the approaching snowstorm. He stopped at a petrol station off Osterleden, and bought an evening paper. Then he parked outside his flat in Mariagatan and went upstairs. He would take a bath and make something to eat. Before going to bed, he'd phone his father, who lived in a little house near Loderup. Ever since his father had become confused and gone wandering through the night in his pyjamas the year before, Wallander had made a habit of ringing him every day. He knew it was as much for his own sake as for his father's -he always felt guilty about not visiting him more often. Still, after that incident the year before, his father had a home helper who visited him regularly. This had improved the old man's moods, which were sometimes unbearable. Even so, Wallander's conscience p.r.i.c.ked him: he felt he didn't devote enough time to his father.

Wallander had his bath, made an omelette, phoned his father and then went to bed. Before pulling down the roller blinds at his bedroom window, he looked out into the street. A solitary streetlight was swaying in the gusty wind. Snowflakes danced before his eyes. The thermometer read -3 -3C. Maybe the storm had blown over? He lowered the blinds with a clatter, and crept into bed, falling asleep almost straight away.

The next morning, he was at the station by 7.15 a.m. Apart from a few minor road accidents, the night had been surprisingly quiet The snowstorm had faded away before it had really got going. He went over to the canteen, greeted a few colleagues on traffic duty who were dozing over their coffee, then took a plastic cup for himself. The moment he'd woken, he'd decided to devote his day to writing up reports from the paperwork piling up on his desk - above all on the a.s.sault case involving a gang of Poles. Needless to say, everybody accused everybody else. There were no reliable witnesses to provide an objective version of what had happened, but even so a report had to be written, although he had no illusions about someone being found guilty of breaking someone's jaw.

At 10.30 a.m. he disposed of the last of the reports, and went for another cup of coffee. On the way back to his office, he heard his telephone ringing. It was Martinsson.

"Remember that life-raft?" he asked.

Wallander had to think for a moment before the penny dropped.

"The man who rang knew what he was talking about. A rubber life-raft with two bodies in it has washed up on the beach at Mossby Strand. It was discovered by a woman walking her dog; she called the station, as hysterical as they come."

"When did she phone?"

"Just now," Martinsson said.

Two minutes later Wallander was on his way along the coast road. Peters and Nor6n were ahead of him in a patrol car, sirens blaring. Wallander shuddered as he saw the freezing breakers slamming onto the beach. He could see an ambulance in his rear-view mirror, and Martinsson in a second police car.

Mossby Strand was deserted. As he clambered out of his car, the icy wind met him head-on. The beach shop was boarded up, and the shutters were creaking and groaning in the wind. High up on the path that sloped down to the beach was a woman waving her arms about agitatedly, the dog beside her tugging at its lead. Wallander strode out, fearful as usual about what was in store for him - he would never be able to reconcile himself to the sight of dead bodies. Dead people were just like the living. Always different.

"Over there" screeched the woman hysterically. Wallander looked in the direction she was pointing. A red life-raft was bobbing up and down at the water's edge, where it had become stuck among some rocks by the bathing jetty.

"Wait here," Wallander told the woman.

He scrambled down the slope and ran over the sand, then walked out along the jetty and looked down into the rubber boat. There were two men, lying with their arms wrapped round each other, their faces ashen. He tried to capture what he saw in a mental photograph. His many years as a police officer had taught him that the first impression was always important. A dead body was generally the end of a long and complicated chain of events, and sometimes it was possible to get an idea of that chain right from the start.

Martinsson waded out into the water to pull the life-raft ash.o.r.e, wearing gumboots. Wallander squatted down to examine the bodies. He could see Peters trying to calm the woman. It struck him how fortunate they were that the boat hadn't come ash.o.r.e in the summer, when there would have been hundreds of children playing and swimming on the beach. What he was looking at was not a pretty sight, and there was the unmistakable stench of rotting flesh despite the fierce wind.

He took a pair of rubber gloves from his jacket and searched the men's pockets carefully. He found nothing at all. When he opened the jacket of one of the men he could see a liver-coloured stain on the chest of the white shirt. He looked at Martinsson.

"This is no accident," he said. "It's murder. This man has been shot straight through the heart."

He stood up and moved to one side so that Noren could photograph the life-raft.

"What do you reckon?" he asked Martinsson. Martinsson shook his head. "I don't know."

Wallander walked slowly round the boat without taking his eyes off the two dead men. Both were fair-haired, probably in their early 30s. Judging by their hands and clothes, they were not manual labourers. Who were they? Why was there nothing in their pockets? He continued walking round and round the boat, occasionally exchanging a few words with Martinsson. After half an hour he decided that there was nothing more for him to discover. By then the forensic team had begun their methodical examination. A plastic tent had been put up over the rubber boat. Noren had finished taking photographs, everybody was bitterly cold and couldn't wait to get away. Wallander wondered what Rydberg would have said. What would Rydberg have seen that he'd missed? He sat in his car with the engine running to keep warm. The sea was grey and his head felt empty. Who were these men?

It was several hours before Wallander was able to give the ambulance men the nod, and they moved forward with their stretchers. By then, Wallander was so cold that he couldn't stop shivering. They had no choice but to break a few bones to release the men from their embrace. When the bodies had been removed, Wallander gave the boat another thorough investigation, but found nothing, not even a paddle. He gazed out to sea, as if the solution was to be found somewhere on the horizon.

"You'd better have a talk with the woman who discovered the life-raft," he said to Martinsson.

"I've done that already," Martinsson said, surprised.

"A serious talk," Wallander said. "You can't talk seriously in this wind. Take her down to the station. Noren must make sure this boat arrives there in the same state it's in now. Tell him that." Then he returned to his car.

This is when I could have done with Rydberg, he said to himself. What is it that I can't see? What would he have been thinking now?

When he got back to the station in Ystad, he went straight to see Bjork, the chief of police, and reported briefly on what he'd seen out at Mossby Strand. Bjork listened anxiously. He often seemed to Wallander to consider himself to have been attacked personally whenever a violent crime was committed in his district. At the same time, Wallander respected his boss. He never interfered in the investigations being carried out by his officers, and he was generous with his encouragement when a case seemed to be running out of steam. Sometimes he could be a bit temperamental, but Wallander was used to that.

"I want you to take charge," Bjork said when Wallander had finished. "Martinsson and Hansson can give you some help. I think we can a.s.sign several men to this case."

"Hansson's busy with that rapist we arrested the other night," Wallander pointed out. "Wouldn't it be better to use Svedberg?"