The Dogs of Riga

"Call me Kurt," he had said, but she shook her head and continued to keep him at the distance she'd settled on from the start. He would continue to be Mr Wallander.

He had asked her where they were.

"In a flat belonging to a friend," she told him. "To endure, and to survive, we have to share everything – the more so as we are living in a country and at a time when everyone is being urged to think only of themselves."

"As far as I can see, communism is the opposite of that," Wallander said. "I thought it claimed that only things thought and carried out collectively were acceptable."

"That's the way it used to be," she said. "But everything was different in those days. It might be possible to recreate that dream some time in the future, perhaps it's impossible to resurrect dead dreams? Just as once you're dead, you're dead forever."

"What exactly happened?" he asked.

At first she seemed not to understand what he meant, but then she understood that he was asking about her husband.

"Karlis was betrayed and murdered," she said. "He had penetrated too far under the surface of a crime too massive, that involved too many important people, for him to be allowed to go on living. He knew he was living dangerously, but he hadn't yet been exposed as a defector. A traitor inside the nomenklatura."

"He came back from Sweden," Wallander said. "He went straight to police headquarters to deliver his report. Did you meet him at the airport?"

"I didn't even know he was coming home," she answered. "Perhaps he'd tried to phone, I'll never know. Maybe he'd sent a telegram to the police headquarters and asked them to inform me. I'll never know that either. He didn't call me until he was in Riga. I didn't even have the right food in to celebrate his return. One of my friends gave me a chicken. I'd only just finished preparing the meal when he turned up with that beautiful book."

Wallander felt a little guilty. The book he had bought, in great haste and without much thought, was lacking in emotional significance. Now, when he heard her speaking of it like this, he felt as if he had deceived her.

"He must have said something when he came home" Wallander said, painfully aware of the limitations of his English vocabulary.

"He was elated," she said. "Naturally, he was also worried and furious; but what I shall remember above all is how elated he was."

"What had happened?"

"He said something had become clear at last. 'Now I'm sure I'm on the right track,' he said, again and again. Since he suspected our flat was bugged, he took me out into the kitchen, turned on the taps, and whispered in my ear. He said he had exposed a conspiracy that was so gross and so barbaric that you people in the West would finally be forced to recognise what was happening in the Baltic countries."

"Is that what he said? A conspiracy in the Baltic states? Not just in Latvia?"

"I'm quite certain of it. He often grew irritated because the three Baltic countries tend to be regarded as one entity, despite the big differences between them, but this time he wasn't only talking about Latvia."

"He actually used the word 'conspiracy'?"

"Yes."

"Did you realise what was implied?"

"Like everybody else, he'd known for a long time that there were direct links between certain criminals, politicians and even police officers. They protected each other in order to facilitate all kinds of criminal activity, and then shared the proceeds. Karlis himself had been offered bribes on many occasions, but he had too much self-respect to consider accepting any. For a long time he'd been working undercover, trying to track down what was happening and who was involved. I knew all about it, of course. I knew we lived in a society that was fundamentally nothing but a conspiracy. A collective philosophy of life had turned into a monster, and in the end the conspiracy was the only valid ideology."

"How long had he been investigating this conspiracy?"

"We were married for eight years, but he'd started those investigations long before we met." "What did he think he was going to achieve?" "At first, nothing more than the truth." "The truth?"

"For posterity. For a time he was certain would eventually come. A time when it would be possible to reveal what had really being going on during the occupation."

"So he was an opponent of the communist regime? In that case, how could he become a high-ranking police officer?"

Her response was angry, as if he were guilty of serious slander of her husband.

"But don't you understand? A communist is precisely what he was! What made him so disappointed was the massive betrayal! The corruption and indifference. The dream of a new kind of society that had been turned into a lie."

"So he led a double life?"

"You can hardly be expected to understand what that involves, year after year being forced to pretend you are somebody you are not, professing beliefs you abominate, defending a regime you hate. It didn't only affect Karlis, though. It affected me as well, and everybody else in this country who refused to give up the hope of a new world."

"What had he discovered that made him so elated?"

"I don't know. We didn't have time to talk about it. We had our most intimate conversations under the bedclothes, where no one could hear us."

"He said nothing at all?"

"He was hungry. He wanted to eat and drink wine. I think he felt that at long last, he could relax for a few hours. Give in to his feelings of elation. If the phone hadn't rung, I believe he'd have burst into song with his wine glass in his hand."

She broke off, and Wallander waited. It occurred to him that he didn't even know whether Major Liepa had been buried yet.

"Think back," he said gently. "He might have hinted at something. People who've made an important breakthrough can sometimes let slip something they don't intend to say."

She shook her head. "I have thought," she said. "And I'm quite certain he didn't. Maybe it was something he'd learnt in Sweden? Maybe he'd worked out in his head the solution to a crucial problem?"

"Did he leave any papers at home?"

"I have looked. He was very careful, though. The written word could be far too dangerous."

"Did he give anything to his friends? Upitis?"

"No. I'd have known if he had."

"Did he confide in you?"

"We confided in each other."

"Did he confide in anyone else?"

"Obviously he trusted his friends; but we have to understand that every secret we confide in another person can be a burden to them. I'm quite sure nobody else knew as much as I did."

"I must know everything," Wallander said. "Every little detail you know about this conspiracy is important."

She sat in silence for a while before she spoke. Wallander realised he'd been concentrating so hard that he'd broken into a sweat.

"Some years before we met, at the end of the 1970s, something happened that really opened his eyes to what was going on in this country. He often spoke of it, saying that every person's eyes need to be opened in an individual way. He used a metaphor I didn't understand at first. 'Some people are woken up by cocks crowing, others because the silence is too great.' Now I know what he meant. What happened, more than ten years ago, was that he'd been involved in a long and meticulous investigation that eventually led to his arrest of the culprit. It was a man who had stolen many icons from our churches, irreplaceable works of art that had been smuggled out of the country and sold for huge sums of money. Karlis had no doubt the man would be found guilty. But he wasn't." "Why not?"

"He wasn't even taken to court. The case was abandoned. Karlis couldn't understand what was going on, of course, and demanded a trial – but without warning the man was released and all the documents on the case declared secret. Karlis was ordered to forget the whole business. The man who issued that order was his superior. I can still remember his name, Amtmanis. Karlis was convinced that Amtmanis was himself protecting the criminal, and may even have been sharing the spoils. That incident hit him very hard."