Henning Mankell: The Troubled Man

He had just began to advance toward the door of the hunting lodge when another shot rang out. He flung himself down onto the ground, his face pressed against the damp soil. He dropped the shotgun and protected his head with his hands. He expected to be shot dead at any moment.

But nothing happened. Eventually he dared to sit up and pick up his shotgun. He checked to make sure there was no soil in the two barrels. He stood up slowly, then ducked down and headed for the front door. Still nothing happened. He shouted, but Sten Nordlander didn’t respond. Two shots, he thought frantically, and tried to work out what that implied.

He could still see Sten Nordlander’s face when he asked his question. So there’s no doubt?

Wallander opened the door and went in.

Håkan von Enke was dead. Sten Nordlander had shot him in the forehead. He had then turned the gun on himself, and was lying dead on the floor next to the man who had been his friend and colleague. Wallander was upset; he should have foreseen this. Sten Nordlander had been standing out there in the darkness and heard how Håkan von Enke had betrayed everyone — perhaps most of all the ones who had trusted him and seen him not so much as a fellow officer, but as a friend.

Wallander avoided treading in the blood that had run all over the floor. He flopped down onto the chair where he had been sitting not so long ago, listening to what von Enke had to say. Weariness seemed to explode inside him. The older he became, the more difficult it seemed to be for him to cope with the truth. Nevertheless, that is what he always strove for.

How far had they come since that birthday party in Djursholm? he wondered. If I assume that his conversation with me was part of a plan to persuade me to believe that his wife was a spy, and thus divert any possible suspicions away from himself, it follows that the most important decisions had already been made. Perhaps it was Håkan von Enke himself who had the idea of exploiting me. Making the most of the fact that his son was living with a woman whose father was a stupid provincial police officer.

He felt both sorrow and anger as he sat there with the two dead men in front of him. But what upset him most was the thought that Klara would never get to know her paternal grandparents. She would have to make do with a grandmother on her mother’s side who was fighting a losing battle with alcohol, and a grandfather who was becoming older and more decrepit by the day.

He sat there for half an hour, possibly longer, before forcing himself to become a police officer again. He worked out a simple idea based on leaving everything untouched. He took the car keys out of Sten Nordlander’s pocket, then left the hunting lodge and headed for the boat.

But before pushing it into the water again, he paused on the beach and closed his eyes. It was as if the past had come rushing toward him. The big wide world that he had always known so little about. Now he had become a minor player on the big stage. What did he know now that he hadn’t known before? Not much at all, he thought. I’m still that same bewildered character on the periphery of all the major political and military developments. I’m still the same unhappy and insecure individual on the sidelines, just as I’ve always been.

He pushed the boat out and despite the darkness managed to steer it in to the dock. He left the boat where he had picked it up. The harbor was deserted. It was 2:00 a.m. by the time he sat in Sten Nordlander’s car and drove off. He parked it outside the railway station, having carefully wiped clean the steering wheel and stick shift and door handle. Then he waited for the first early-morning train south. He spent several hours on a park bench. He thought how odd it was, sitting on a bench in this unfamiliar town with his father’s old shotgun in his bag.

It had started drizzling as dawn broke, and he found a café that was already open. He ordered coffee and leafed through some old newspapers before returning to the railway station and catching a train. He would never go to Blue Island again.

He looked out of the train window and saw Sten Nordlander’s car in the station’s parking lot. Sooner or later somebody would start to take an interest in it. One thing would lead to another. One question would be how he had gotten to the docks and then sailed out to Blue Island. But the man who rented the boat would not necessarily associate Wallander with the tragedy that had taken place in that isolated hunting lodge. Besides, all details would no doubt be classified.

Wallander arrived in Malmö shortly after midday, picked up his car, and headed for Ystad. As he came to the exit, he found himself at a police checkpoint. He showed his ID and blew into the Breathalyzer.

“How’s it going?” he asked, in an attempt to cheer up his colleague. “Are people sober?”

“On the whole, yes. But we just started. No doubt we’ll nail one or two victims. How are things in Ystad?”

“Pretty quiet at the moment. But August usually produces more work than July.”

Wallander wished him good luck, then rolled up his window and drove on. Only a few hours ago I was sitting with two dead men at my feet, he thought. But that’s not something that anybody else can see. Our memories don’t pop up next to us in Technicolor.

He went to the store to buy a few groceries, collected Jussi, and eventually pulled into the parking area outside his house.

After putting his purchases in the fridge, he sat down at his kitchen table. Everything was quiet and calm.

He tried to figure out what he would tell Linda.

But he didn’t call her that day, not even in the evening.

He simply had no idea what to say to her.

One night in May 2009 Wallander woke up from a dream. That was happening more and more often. All the memories of the night lived on when he opened his eyes. Until recently he rarely remembered his dreams. Jussi, who had been ill, was asleep on the floor by his bed. The clock on the bedside table said four-fifteen. Perhaps it wasn’t just the dream that had woken him up. Perhaps the calling of an owl had drifted in through the open window and into his consciousness — it wouldn’t be the first time.

But now there was no owl calling. He had dreamed about Linda and the conversation they should have had the day he returned from Blue Island. In his dream he had in fact called her and told her what had happened. She had listened without saying anything. And that was all. The dream had broken off abruptly, like a rotten branch.

He woke up feeling very uncomfortable. He hadn’t called her at all, in fact. He hadn’t had the strength to do it. His excuse was simple. He hadn’t played a part in the tragedy, and calling her would only have led to an unbearable situation as far as he was concerned; if he gave her an exact version of events, he would be suspected of having been involved. Only when the tragedy became public knowledge would she and Hans discover what had happened. And with a bit of luck, he would be able to stay out of it.

Wallander thought that this case was among the worst experiences of his life. The only thing he could compare it to was the incident many years ago when he killed a man for the first time in the line of duty, and seriously wondered if he could continue as a police officer. He considered doing what Martinsson had now done: throw in the towel as a policeman and devote himself to something entirely different.

Wallander leaned carefully over the side of the bed and checked on his dog. Jussi was asleep. He was also dreaming, scratching in the air with his front paws. Wallander leaned back in bed again. The air drifting in through the window was refreshing. He kicked off the duvet. His thoughts wandered to the bundle of papers lying on the kitchen table. He had started writing a report last September, noting down everything that had happened and culminating in the tragedy in the hunting lodge on Blue Island.