Henning Mankell - The Dogs of Riga

The man pointing his pistol at him was still shouting questions. Wallander was growing more and more terrified, realising he was going to be shot here in the corridor, and could think of nothing better than to reply in English.

"It is a mistake," he said in a shrill voice. "It is a mistake. I am a police officer, too."

But it wasn't a mistake, of course. The officer ordered him to stand up with his hands over his head, then told him to start moving. He kept jabbing Wallander in the back with the barrel of his pistol.

It was when they came to a lift that the opportunity presented itself. Wallander had given up hope, convinced he was well and truly caught. There was no point in resisting. The man wouldn't hesitate to shoot him. However, while they were waiting for the lift his captor turned away slightly to light a cigarette, and in a split second Wallander realised that this was his only opportunity of getting away. He threw down the blue file at the man's feet, and simultaneously hit him in the back of the neck as hard as he could. He felt his knuckles crunching, and the pain was agonising, but his captor fell headlong to the floor, the pistol sliding away over the stone flags. Wallander didn't know if the man was dead or just unconscious, but his hand was stiff with pain. He picked up the file, stuffed the pistol into his pocket, and decided the stupidest thing for him to do would be to use the lift. He tried to work out where he was by looking out of a window facing the courtyard, and after a few seconds realised he must be on the opposite side from the colonels' corridor. The man on the floor started groaning, and Wallander knew he wouldn't be able to knock him out a second time. He hurried down the corridor to the left leading away from the lift, and hoped he would come to an exit.

He was lucky. The corridor led to one of the canteens, and he managed to open a carelessly bolted door in the kitchen that was obviously a goods entrance. He came out into the street. His hand was hurting badly and had started to swell.

The first rendezvous that he had agreed with Baiba was at 12.30 p.m. Wallander stood in the shadows by the old church in Esplanade Park that had been turned into a planetarium. All around him were tall, bare, motionless lime trees. There was no sign of her. The pain in his hand was now almost unbearable. When it reached 1.15 p.m., he was forced to accept that something must have happened. She wasn't going to come. He was extremely worried. Inese's blood-covered face hovered in his mind's eye, and he tried to work out what might have gone wrong. Had the dogs and their handlers realised that Wallander had managed to slip out of the university building unseen, despite their best efforts? In which case, what would they have done with Baiba? He did not dare to even think about that. He left the park, not knowing where to go next. What made him keep walking along the dark, deserted streets was really the pain in his hand. A military jeep with sirens blaring forced him to leap headfirst into a dark entrance, and not long afterwards a police car came racing down the street he was walking along, forcing him once more to withdraw into the shadows. He had put the file containing the major's testimony down the front of his shirt, and the edges were scratching against his ribs. He wondered where he was going to spend the night. The temperature had dropped, and he was trembling with cold. The alternative rendezvous he and Baiba had agreed on was the fourth floor of the central department store, but that wasn't until 10 a.m. the next morning, so he had nine hours to fill and couldn't possibly spend them walking the streets. He was convinced he had broken his hand, and knew he should go to a doctor, he daren't go to a casualty department. Not now that he had the testimony with him. He wondered whether he ought to try and find shelter for the night at the Swedish Embassy, assuming there was one, but he didn't like that option either. What if the law said that a Swedish police officer who had entered the country illegally should be sent home immediately under guard? He daren't take the risk.

Uneasily, he decided to go to the car that had served him well for two whole days now, but when he got to where he'd left it, it had gone. He thought for a moment that he was so disorientated by the pain in his hand that he had remembered wrongly. Was this really the place where he'd parked the car? Yes, it definitely was – no doubt the car had been dismanded and quartered like a farm animal by now. Whichever one of the colonels was pursuing him had doubdess made certain the major's testimony wasn't hidden somewhere in the car.

Where was he going to spend the night? He suddenly felt totally helpless, deep inside enemy territory, at the mercy of a pack of dogs managed by somebody who wouldn't hesitate to butcher him and sling him into the frozen harbour or bury him in a remote wood. His homesickness was primitive but tangible. The reason why he was now stranded in Latvia in the middle of the night – a life-raft containing two dead men, washed up on the Swedish coast – seemed vague and distant, like it had never really happened.

For want of an alternative he made his way back through the empty streets to the hotel where he had earlier spent the night, but the door was locked and no lights went on upstairs when he rang the night bell. The pain in his hand was making him confused, and he was beginning to worry about whether he would lose his ability to think rationally altogether if he didn't get indoors soon, and thaw out. He went on to the next hotel, but once again he was unable to get any response when he rang the night bell. At the third hotel, though, which was even more decrepit and unappealing than the others, the outer door was not locked and he went in to find a man asleep behind the reception desk, his head resting on a table, a half-empty bottle of vodka at his feet. Wallander shook the man to wake him up, flourished the passport he'd been given by Preuss, and was handed a room key. He pointed at the vodka bottle, put a Swedish hundred-krona note on the desk, and took it with him.

The room was small, with an acrid smell of musty furniture and nicotine-stained wallpaper. He flopped down on to the edge of the bed, took a couple of long swigs from the bottle, and could feel his body warmth slowly starting to return. Then he took off his jacket, filled the basin with cold water, and immersed his swollen, throbbing hand. The pain began to ease, and he reconciled himself to having to sit like this all night. Occasionally he took another swig from the bottle, and wondered anxiously what could have happened to Baiba.

He took the blue file from inside his shirt and opened it with his free hand. It contained about 50 typewritten pages, plus some blurred photocopies, but no photographs, which was what he had hoped for. The major's text was in Latvian, and Wallander couldn't understand a word. He noted that from page nine onwards the names Murniers and Putnis kept recurring at regular intervals: sometimes they were together in the same sentence. He couldn't work out what that meant, whether both colonels were being accused or whether the major's accusing finger had been pointed at just one of them. He gave up the attempt to decipher the secret document, put the file down on the floor, refilled the hand basin with water, and leaned his head back against the edge of the table. It was 4 a.m., and he dozed off. When he woke up with a start, he found he'd been asleep for 10 minutes. His hand had started hurting again, and the cold water was no longer easing the pain. He finished off what was left in the vodka bottle, wrapped a damp towel round his hand, and lay down on the bed.

Wallander had no idea what to do if Baiba failed to keep their rendezvous at the department store. He was beginning to have the feeling he had been defeated. He lay awake until dawn.