The Dogs of Riga

It was still where he had left it. Without a pause for thought he climbed in behind the wheel, noticing again the smell of fish, joined the electric cables, this time remembering to put the gear lever in neutral first. He pulled up outside the cafe***and left the engine ru

"How did you manage to get the car?" she asked.

"I'll explain another time," he said. "For the moment just tell me how to get out of Riga."

"Where are we going?"

"I don't know yet. To start with, just let's get out into the country."

There was more traffic on the roads now, and Wallander moaned and groaned about the lack of power in the engine, but at last they reached the outskirts of the city and were in flat countryside with farms here and there among the fields.

"Where does this lead to?" Wallander asked. "Estonia. It ends up in Talli

The pointer on the petrol gauge had started jerking up and down, and he turned into a petrol station. An old man, blind in one eye, filled the tank, and when Wallander came to pay, he found he didn't have enough money. Baiba was able to make up the difference, and they drove off. Wallander had been keeping his eye on the road, and noticed a black car of a make he didn't recognise pass by, followed closely by another. As they emerged from the petrol station, he had glanced in the rear-view mirror and seen another car parked on the hard shoulder behind them. So, three of them, he thought. At least three cars, maybe more.

They came to a town whose name Wallander never discovered. He stopped the car in a square where a group of people were gathered round a stall selling fish. He was very tired. If he didn't get some sleep soon, his brain would no longer function. He noticed a hotel sign on the far side of the square, and made up his mind on the spot.

"I have to get some sleep," he said to Baiba. "How much money have you got on you? Enough for a room?"

She nodded. They left the car where it was, crossed the square and checked into the little hotel. Baiba said something in Latvian that made the girl at the reception desk blush, but she didn't ask them to fill in any registration forms.

"What did you tell her?" Wallander asked when they were safely inside their room overlooking a courtyard.

"The truth," she said. "That we are not married and are only going to stay for a few hours."

"She blushed, didn't she? Did you see her blush?"

"I would have done as well."

Just for a moment the tension was relieved. Wallander burst out laughing and Baiba blushed. Then he turned serious again.

"I don't know if you realise, but this is the maddest escapade I've ever been involved in," he said. "Nor do I know if you realise I'm at least as scared as you are. Unlike your husband I'm a police officer who has spent the whole of his life working in a town not much bigger than the one we're in now. I have no experience of complicated criminal networks and police massacres. Now and then I have to solve a murder, of course, but I spend most of my time chasing drunken burglars and escaped bulls."

She sat beside him on the edge of the bed.

"Karlis said you were a good police officer," she said. "He said you had made a careless mistake, but nevertheless you were a good police officer."

Wallander reluctantly recalled the life-raft.

"Our two countries are so different," he said. "Karlis and I had completely different starting points for the work we had to do. He would no doubt have been able to operate in Sweden as well, but I could never be a police officer in Latvia."

"That's exactly what you are now," she said.

"No," he objected. "I'm here because you asked me to come. Maybe I'm here because Karlis was who he was. I don't actually know what I'm doing here in Latvia. There's only one thing I do know for certain, and that's that I want you to come back to Sweden with me. When all this is over."

She looked at him in astonishment. "Why?" she asked.

He realised he wouldn't be able to explain it to her, as his own feelings were so contradictory and uncertain.

"Never mind," he said. "Forget it. I have to get some sleep now if I'm going to be able to think clearly. You also need some rest. Maybe it's best if you ask the receptionist to knock on the door in three hours."

"The girl will start blushing again," Baiba said as she got up from the bed.

Wallander curled up under the quilt. He was already asleep when Baiba came back from reception.

When he woke up three hours later, it felt as if he'd only been asleep for a couple of minutes. The knocking on the door had not disturbed Baiba, who was still sleeping. Wallander forced himself to take a cold shower in order to drive the tiredness from his body. When he'd finished dressing, he thought he'd let her go on sleeping until he had worked out what they were going to do next. He wrote her a message, saying that she should wait for him to come back, that he wouldn't be long.

The girl in reception smiled hesitantly at him, and Wallander thought that there was a trace of sensuousness in her eye. She turned out to understand a little English, and when he asked where he could get a bite to eat she pointed to the door of a little dining room that formed part of the hotel. He sat down at a table with a view of the square. People were still crowded around the fish stall, bundled up against the cold morning. The car was where Wallander had left it.

On the other side of the square was one of the black cars he had seen pass by the petrol station. He hoped the dogs were freezing as they sat on guard in their cars. The girl in reception also acted as waitress, and came in with a plate of sandwiches and a pot of coffee. He kept glancing out at the square as he ate, and all the time he was working out a plan of action. It was so outrageous, it might just have a chance of succeeding.

When he had finished eating he felt better. He returned to the room and found Baiba awake. He sat down on the bed and began to explain what he had decided to do.

"Karlis must have had somebody he trusted among his colleagues," he said.

"We never socialised with other police officers," she said. "We had friends from different circles."

"Think hard," he urged her. "There must have been somebody he had coffee with now and then. It doesn't need to have been a friend. It'll be enough if you can remember somebody who wasn't his enemy."

She tried to think, and he gave her time. His plan depended on the major having had somebody he might not have trusted, exactly, but didn't distrust.

"He sometimes mentioned Mikelis," she said, still thinking hard. "A young sergeant who wasn't like the rest of them. But I don't know anything about him."

"You must know something, surely? Why did Karlis talk about him?"

She had propped the pillow up against the wall, and he could see she was doing her best to remember.

"Karlis used to go on about how horrified he was by his colleagues' nonchalance," she began. "Their cold-blooded reaction to any kind of suffering. Mikelis was an exception. I think he and Karlis had once been delegated to arrest a poor man with a large family, and afterwards, he'd said to Karlis that he thought it was awful. Maybe Karlis mentioned him in some other context as well, but I don't remember."

"When was that?"

"Quite recently."

"Try and be more precise. A year ago? More?" "Less. It can't have been as long as a year ago." "Mikelis must have been working with the serious crimes squad if he was working together with Karlis?" "I've no idea."

"He must have been. You must phone Mikelis and tell him you need to talk to him."