The Return of the Dancing Master

by Henning Mankell

  There were two forensic officers, both of them young. Larsson liked working with them. They were full of energy, meticulous and efficient. Larsson watched them enter the house they were destined to investigate, and try to take in the blood splattered over the walls and floor. As the young men donned their overalls, Larsson began once more to think about what had happened.

  He was clear about the main outline. It started with the death of the dog. Then the windows had been smashed, and tear gas canisters shot in. It wasn’t the tear gas canisters that had broken the windows. They’d found some cartridges from a hunting rifle outside the house. The man who’d carried out the attack had been methodical. Molin was asleep when it all started – at least, it looked as if he’d been in bed at the time. He was naked when his body was found at the edge of the forest, but his jumper and trousers were found soaked in blood at the bottom of the steps leading down from the front door. From the remnants they’d found of the tear gas canisters it would seem that the place must have been filled with the gas. Molin had run out of the house with his shotgun. He’d also managed to fire a few shots. Then he’d been stopped in his tracks. The gun was discarded on the ground. Larsson knew that Molin must have been more or less blind when he left the house. He’d also have had great difficulty in breathing. So Molin had been hounded out of his house, and had been incapable of defending himself as he staggered from the door.

  Larsson picked his way carefully into the room leading off the living room. It contained the biggest riddle of all. In a bed a bloodstained doll, life size. He thought at first it was some kind of sex aid used by lonely Molin, but the doll had no orifices. The loops on its feet suggested that it was used as a dancing partner. The big question was: why was it covered in blood? Had Molin moved into this room before the tear gas made it impossible for him to stay in the house? Even so, that wouldn’t have explained the blood. Larsson and the other detectives who had spent six days going through the house with a fine-tooth comb still hadn’t come up with a plausible reason. Larsson was going to spend this day trying to work out once and for all why the doll was covered in blood. There was something about the doll that worried him. It concealed a secret and he wanted to know what it was.

  He left the house to get some fresh air. His mobile rang. It was the chief of police in Östersund. Larsson told him the current state of affairs, that they were hard at work, but they’d not yet found anything new at the scene of the crime. Fru Tunberg was in Östersund, talking to Artur Nyman who was a detective sergeant and Larsson’s closest colleague. The chief of police was able to inform Larsson that Molin’s daughter, who was in Germany, would soon be on her way to Sweden. They’d also been in touch with Molin’s son, who worked as a steward on a cruise ship in the Caribbean.

  “Any news about his second wife?” Larsson wondered.

  The first wife, the mother of his two children, had died some years ago. Larsson had spent several hours looking into her death, but she’d died of natural causes. Moreover Molin and his first wife had got divorced 19 years ago. His second wife, a woman Molin had been married to in Borås, had proved difficult to trace.

  Larsson went back into the house. He stood just inside the door and scrutinised the stains of dried blood on the floor. Then he took a couple of paces sideways and looked hard at them again. He frowned. There was something about the marks that puzzled him. He took out his notebook, borrowed a pencil from one of the forensic officers, and made a sketch. There were 19 footprints in all, ten made by a right foot and nine by a left foot.

  He went outside. A crow was disturbed and flew off. Larsson studied his sketch. Then he fetched a rake he knew was in the shed, and smoothed out the gravel in front of the house. He pressed his feet down into the gravel to reproduce the pattern he’d sketched in his notebook. Stepped to one side and studied the result. Walked all the way round, examining the marks from different angles. Then he carefully stepped into the footprints, one after the other, moving slowly. He did it again, faster now, with his knees slightly bent. The penny dropped.

  One of the forensic officers came out onto the steps and lit a cigarette. He stared at the footprints in the gravel. “What are you doing?”

  “Testing a theory. What can you see here?”

  “Footprints in the gravel. A replica of the ones we have inside the house.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “No.”

  The other officer came out. He had a thermos flask in his hand.

  “Wasn’t there a disc in the CD player?” Larsson asked.

  “That’s right,” said the man with the flask.

  “What kind of music was it?”

  The technician handed the flask to his colleague and went inside. He was back in a flash.

  “Argentinian stuff. An orchestra. I can’t pronounce the name.”

  Larsson walked round the footprints in the gravel once again. The two forensic officers watched him as they smoked and drank their coffee.

  “Does either of you dance the tango?” he said.

  “Not normally. Why?”

  It was the man with the thermos flask who answered.

  “Because what we have here are tango steps. It’s a bit like when you were little and went to dancing classes. The teacher used to tape footprints onto the floor, and you had to follow them. The steps are tango steps.”

  To prove his theory Larsson started to hum a tango tune that he didn’t know the name of. At the same time he followed the footprints in the gravel. The steps fitted.

  “What we have on the floor in there is a set of tango steps. Somebody dragged Molin round and placed his blood-soaked feet on the floor as if he’d been attending a dancing class.”

  The forensic officers stared at him incredulously, but knew he was right. They all went back into the house.

  “Tango,” said Larsson. “That’s all it is. Whoever killed Molin invited him to dance a tango.”

  They contemplated the footprints in silence.

  “The question,” Larsson said, when he spoke again, “is who? Who invites a dead man to dance with him?”

  CHAPTER 4

  Lindman began to have the feeling that his body was being drained completely of blood. Even though the laboratory assistants were very gentle with him, he felt increasingly weary. He spent many hours at the hospital every day, having blood taken for testing. He also talked to the doctor on two more occasions. Each time he had lots of questions, but never got round to asking any of them. In fact, there was only one question he really wanted answering: was he going to survive? And if that question couldn’t be answered with any degree of certainty, how much time did he, for sure, have left? He’d read somewhere that death was a tailor who measured people for their final suit, invisibly and in silence. Even if he did survive, he had the feeling that his span had already been measured out. It was much too early for that.

  The second night he went to Elena’s in Dalbogatan. He hadn’t phoned in advance, as he usually did. The moment she saw him in the doorway, she knew something was wrong. Lindman had tried to make up his mind whether or not to tell her, but he was unsure right up to the moment he rang the doorbell. He’d barely had time to hang up his jacket before she asked him what was wrong.

  “I’m ill,” he’d said.

  “Ill?”

  “I’ve got cancer.”

  That left him with no more defences. He might as well tell the truth now. He needed somebody to confide in, and Elena was his only choice. They sat up far into the night, and she was sensible enough not to try to console him. What he needed was courage. She brought him a mirror and said look, the man on her sofa was very much alive, not a corpse, that was how he ought to approach the situation. He stayed the night, and lay awake long after she had gone to sleep.

  He got up at dawn, quietly, so as not to wake her, and left the building as discreetly as possible. But he didn’t go straight back to Allégatan: instead he made a long detour round Lake Ramna and turned for home only after he’d got to
Druvefors. The doctor had said that they’d finish all the necessary tests today. He’d asked if he could go away, possibly abroad, before the treatment started, and she said he could do whatever took his fancy. He had a cup of coffee when he got home, and played back his answering machine. Elena had been worried when she woke up and found that he’d gone.

  Shortly after ten he went to the travel agent’s in Västerlanggatan. He sat down and started going through the brochures. He’d more or less made up his mind that it would be Mallorca when the thought of Herbert Molin came to him. He knew there and then what he was going to do. He wasn’t going to fly to Mallorca. If he did, all he’d do was to wander around a place where he knew no-one, worrying about what had happened and what was going to happen. If he went to Härjedalen, he would be no less alone, as he didn’t know anybody up there either; but he’d be able to devote his attention to something other than himself and his problems. What he might be able to do, he wasn’t sure. Nevertheless he left the travel agent’s, went to the bookshop in the square and bought a map of the neighbouring provinces of Jämtland and Härjedalen. When he got home he spread it out over the kitchen table. He reckoned it would take him 12-15 hours to drive there. If he got too tired, he could always spend the night somewhere on the way.

  In the afternoon he went to the hospital for the final tests. The doctor had already given him an appointment for when he should return for the start of the treatment. He’d noted it in his diary, in his usual sprawling handwriting, as if he’d been recording some holiday date, or somebody’s birthday. On Friday, November 19, 8.15 a.m.

  When he returned home he packed his suitcase. He looked up the weather on teletext and saw that the temperature in Östersund was forecast at between 5° and 10°C. He assumed there would be no significant difference between Östersund and Sveg. Before going to bed it occurred to him that he ought to tell Elena that he was leaving. She’d be worried if he simply disappeared. But he put it off. He had his mobile, and she had the number. Perhaps he wanted her to worry? Maybe he wanted to hurt an innocent party to make up for his being the one who was ill?

  The following day, Friday, October 29, he left Borås before 8 a.m. Previously he’d driven to Brämhultsvägen and taken a good look at the house where Molin had lived. That had been his home as a married man, for a time on his own, and that was the place he’d left when he moved north on his retirement.

  Lindman recalled the farewell party for Molin in the canteen on the top floor of the station. Molin hadn’t drunk very much – he’d probably been the most sober of all present. Detective Chief Inspector Nylund, who retired the year after Molin, had given a speech: Lindman couldn’t remember a word of it. It had been a pretty insipid affair, and had ended early. It was the practice for newly retired officers to invite their colleagues round, as a sort of thank you: Molin had not done so. He’d simply walked out of the police station, and a few weeks later left Borås altogether.

  Now Lindman was about to make the same journey. He was following in Molin’s tracks, without understanding why Molin had moved – or perhaps fled – to Norrland.

  By nightfall Lindman had come as far as Orsa. He stopped for an evening meal, a greasy steak in a roadside café, then settled down on the back seat of his car. He was tired out, and fell asleep at once. The plasters on his arm were itching. In his dreams, he was running through an endless succession of dark rooms.

  He woke up while it was still dark, feeling stiff and with a splitting headache. He wriggled his way out of the car, and as he was having a pee he noticed that his breath was coming out like steam. The gravel crunched under his feet. It was obvious that the temperature was around or even below zero. The previous evening he’d filled a thermos flask with hot coffee. He sat behind the wheel and drank a cup. A lorry parked beside him started up and drove off. He switched on the radio and listened to the early news. He felt uneasy. Being dead would mean he could no longer listen to the radio. Death meant many different things. Even the radio would fall silent.

  He put the thermos on the back seat and started the engine. It was another 100 kilometres or so to Sveg. He drove out into the main road, and reminded himself that he must be on the lookout for elks. It grew gradually lighter. Lindman was thinking about Molin. He tried to sift through what he could remember about him, every conversation, all those meetings, all that time when nothing special had happened. What were Molin’s habits? Had he had any habits at all? When had he laughed? When had he been angry? He had difficulty in remembering. The image was elusive. The only thing he was sure about was that Molin had that time been frightened.

  The forest came to an end, and after crossing the River Ljusnan Lindman found himself driving into Sveg. The place was so small that he nearly drove out of it on the other side before realising that he’d reached his destination. He turned left at the church and saw a hotel sign. He’d assumed it wouldn’t be necessary to book a room, but when he went to reception the girl behind the desk told him that he’d had a stroke of luck. They had one room, thanks to a cancellation.

  “Who wants to stay in a hotel in Sveg?” he said, in surprise.

  “Test drivers,” the girl told him. “They book in up here and test new models. And then there are the computer people.”

  “Computer people?”

  “There’s lots of that sort of thing just now,” the girl said. “New firms setting up. And there aren’t enough houses. The council is talking about building hostels.”

  She asked him how long he intended staying.

  “A week,” he said. “Maybe longer. Is that possible?”

  She checked in the ledger.

  “Well, I think so, but I can’t promise,” she said. “We’re full up more or less all the time.”

  Lindman left his case in his room and went downstairs to the dining room, where the breakfast buffet was open. Young people were sitting at all the tables, many of them dressed in what looked like flying suits. When he’d eaten he went back to his room, stripped down, removed the plasters from his arm and took a shower. Then he crept between the sheets. What am I doing here? he wondered. I could have gone to Mallorca. But I’m in Sveg. Instead of walking along a beach and looking at a blue sea, I’m surrounded by endless trees.

  When he woke, he didn’t know at first where he was. He lay in bed and tried to construct some sort of plan. But first he’d have to see the place where Molin had died. The simplest thing of course would be to talk to the detective in charge of the case in Östersund, Giuseppe Larsson; but something told him it would be better to take a look at the scene of the crime without anybody knowing about it. He could talk to Larsson later, maybe even drive to Östersund. On the way north he’d wondered if there were any police stationed in Sveg, or did the police have to drive nearly 200 kilometres from Östersund to investigate petty crimes? Eventually, he got up. He had no end of questions, but the crucial thing was to see the scene of the crime.

  He dressed and went down to reception. The girl who’d checked him in was on the phone. Lindman spread out his map and waited. He could hear that she was talking to a child, no doubt her own, something about coming to the end of her shift shortly and being relieved, so that she could go home.

  “Everything OK with the room?” she asked as she put the receiver down.

  “All in order,” Lindman said. “I have a question, though. I haven’t come here to see if cars can cope with extreme conditions. Nor am I a tourist, or a fisherman. I’m here because a good friend of mine was murdered not far from here last week.”

  Her face turned serious.

  “The bloke who lived out at Linsell? The retired policeman?”

  “That’s the one.” He showed her his police ID, then pointed to his map. “Can you show me where he lived?”

  She turned the map round and took a good look at it. Then she pointed to the spot.

  “You have to head for Linsell,” she said. “Then turn off towards Lofsdalen, cross the River Ljusnan, and you’ll come to a signpost dire
cting you to Linkvarnen. Carry on past there, for another ten kilometres or so. His house is off to the right, but the track isn’t marked on this map.”

  She looked at him.

  “I’m not really nosy,” she said. “I know lots of people have come here just to gape. But we’ve had some police from Östersund staying here, and I heard them describing how to get there over the telephone. Somebody was supposed to be coming here by helicopter.”

  “I don’t suppose you get much of that sort of thing here,” Lindman said.

  “I’ve never heard of anything of the kind, and I was born in Sveg. When there was still a maternity hospital here.”

  Lindman tried to fold his map together, but made a mess of it.

  “Let me help you,” she said, flattening it out before folding it neatly.

  When Lindman left the hotel he could see that the weather had changed. There was a clear sky, the morning clouds had dispersed. He breathed in the fresh air.

  Suddenly he had the feeling that he was dead, and he wondered who would come to his funeral.

  He reached Linsell at around two in the afternoon. To his surprise, he saw a sign advertising an Internet café. The village also boasted a petrol station and a general store. He turned left across the bridge and kept going. Between Sveg and Linsell he’d seen a grand total of three cars going in the opposite direction. There was no hurry. About ten kilometres, she’d said. After seven kilometres he came to an almost invisible side turning into a dirt road that disappeared into the forest on his right. He followed the badly potholed track for about 500 metres, at which point it petered out. A few home-made signposts indicated that various tracks going off in all directions were snowmobile tracks for the winter months. He turned round and returned to the main road. After another kilometre he came to the next turning. It was practically impassable, and after two kilometres came to a stop at a log pile. He’d scratched the bottom of his car several times on stones projecting from the badly maintained track.