The Return of the Dancing Master

by Henning Mankell

  “These last few months. Did anything unexpected happen? Did he behave in any way differently?”

  “He was just the same as he always was. I used to visit him once every week.”

  “He didn’t mention anything that was worrying him?”

  “No, nothing.”

  Larsson paused. It seemed to Lindman that Berggren was telling the truth.

  “What happened to Abraham Andersson?” she said.

  “He was shot. It seems to have been an execution. Did he belong to your organisation – which isn’t an organisation, of course?”

  “No. Herbert used to talk to him occasionally, but they never discussed politics. Herbert was very cautious. He had very few real friends.”

  “Have you any idea who might have killed Abraham Andersson?”

  “I didn’t know the man.”

  “Can you tell me who was closest to Molin?”

  “I suppose that must have been me. And his children. His daughter at least. His relationship with his son had been broken off.”

  “By the father or by the son?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Anybody else? Have you ever heard of anybody by the name of Wetterstedt, from Kalmar?”

  She hesitated before answering. Larsson and Lindman exchanged glances. She had been surprised to hear the name Wetterstedt.

  “He sometimes referred to a person of that name. Herbert was born and grew up in Kalmar. Wetterstedt was related to a former Minister of Justice, I believe, the one who was murdered some years ago. He may have been a portrait painter, but I’m not sure.”

  Larsson had taken out his notebook and written down what she said. “Is that all?”

  “Yes. But Herbert was not a man to say anything more than the bare essentials. People have their integrity, don’t you agree?”

  Larsson looked up at Lindman.

  Then he said: “I have one more question. Did you and Molin do an occasional twirl when you visited him?”

  “What on earth do you mean by that?”

  “I wondered if you used to dance together?”

  For the third time she looked startled. “We did, as a matter of fact.”

  “Tango?”

  “Not only that. But often, yes. We also did some of the old-fashioned dances, ones that are dying out. The ones that require some technique and a certain elegance. How do they dance nowadays? Like monkeys?”

  “I suppose you know that Molin had a sort of doll that he used to dance with?”

  “He was a passionate dancer. Very skilled. He practised a lot. When he was young, I believe he dreamed of becoming a professional dancer, but instead he did his duty and answered the call to arms.”

  Lindman was struck by her high-flown language. It was as if she were trying to make time go backwards, to the ’30s and ’40s.

  “May I take it that there were not many people who knew that Molin was a dancer?”

  “He did not have many friends. How many times do I need to tell you that?”

  “How far back do you remember his interest in dancing went?”

  “I think it was aroused during the war. Perhaps shortly before.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “He once said so.”

  “What did he say?”

  “What I’ve just told you. Nothing more. The war was harrowing, but he did have leave occasionally. The German armed forces took good care of their troops. They were granted leave whenever possible, and everything was paid for them.”

  “Did he often talk about the war?”

  “No. But my father did. They once had a week’s leave at the same time. They went to Berlin together. My father told me that Herbert wanted to go out dancing every evening. I believe that Herbert went to Berlin to go dancing whenever he was allowed to leave the front.”

  “Have you anything to say to us that you think could be of assistance in apprehending his murderer?”

  “No, I do not, but I want you to find the guilty person, even if they will not receive any punishment worthy of the name. In Sweden the powers that be protect the criminal, not the victim. Naturally, it will emerge that Herbert remained faithful to his old ideals, and he will be condemned, despite the fact that he is dead.”

  “That will be all for the time being. But you will be called for further talks.”

  “Am I suspected of some crime?”

  “No.”

  “Will you kindly tell me how you knew about my father’s uniform?”

  “Some other time,” Larsson said, getting up. “I have to say that your opinions verge on the unacceptable.”

  “Sweden is already beyond redemption,” she said. “When I was young one often came across police officers who were politically aware and who shared our beliefs. That is now a thing of the past.”

  She closed the door behind them. Larsson couldn’t get away from her house fast enough.

  “That’s what I call a really nasty person,” he said when they came to the gate. “I was sorely tempted to box her ears.”

  “There are more people than you would imagine who share her views,” Lindman said.

  They walked back to the hotel in silence. Larsson suddenly stopped short.

  “What did she actually say? About Molin?”

  “That he’d always been a Nazi.”

  “And what else?”

  Lindman shook his head.

  “What she actually said was that Molin remained a person with the same views until the day he died. I haven’t read his diary in detail, but you have. One might well ask what he actually got up to during the war. And one might well wonder if there are not a lot of people who would have been glad to see him dead.”

  “I doubt that,” Lindman said. “The war ended 54 years ago. That’s an awfully long time to wait.”

  “Maybe,” Larsson said. “Maybe.”

  They set off again. As they were passing the district court, Lindman said: “What happens if we turn the whole business upside down? We are assuming everything started with Molin, since he was murdered first. What if we approach it from the other side? If we started concentrating on Andersson?”

  “Not ‘we’,” Larsson said. “‘I’. Obviously I’ll keep that possibility open. But it’s most unlikely. Andersson moved here for reasons very different from Molin’s. He didn’t hide himself away. He mixed with his neighbours and was a completely different personality.”

  They returned to the hotel. Lindman had been annoyed by Larsson’s remark. He was excluded again.

  “What are you going to do now?” Larsson said.

  Lindman shrugged. “I have to get out of here.”

  Larsson hesitated before asking, “How are you?”

  “I was in pain one day, but I’m OK now.”

  “I try to imagine what it must be like, but I can’t.”

  They were standing outside the hotel entrance. Lindman watched a house sparrow pecking away at a dead worm. I can’t imagine it myself either, he thought. I still think the whole business is a nightmare, and that I won’t in fact have to turn up at the hospital in Borås on November 19 to start the radiotherapy.

  “Before you leave, I’d like you to show me that place where the tent was pitched.”

  Lindman thought that he’d prefer to leave Sveg as soon as possible, but he could hardly say no.

  “When?” he asked.

  “How about now?”

  They got into Larsson’s car and set off in the direction of Linsell.

  “There’s no end to the forests in this part of the country,” Larsson said, suddenly breaking the silence. “If you stop here and walk ten metres into the trees, you’re in a different world. Perhaps you know that already?”

  “I’ve tried it.”

  “Somebody like Molin would find it easier to live with his memories in the forest,” Larsson said. “Where there’s nothing to disturb him. Where time stands still, if you like. Was there really no uniform where you found that diary? He might have got kitted up
and gone into the depths of the forest to make the Hitler salute, then goose-stepped along the paths.”

  “He wrote in his diary that he deserted. Exchanged his uniform for civvies that he took off a corpse, with Berlin in flames all around him. If I understand his diary correctly, he became a deserter the day Hitler committed suicide in his bunker. But we can assume that Molin didn’t know anything about that.”

  “I think they withheld news of his suicide for some days,” Larsson said. “Then somebody gave it out on the radio that the Führer had fallen in action. Mind you, it could be that my memory is a bit hazy.”

  They turned on to the road to Molin’s house. Bits of the police tape used to cordon off the scene of crime were fluttering from low branches.

  “We ought to clean up when we leave a place,” Larsson said, not pleased by what he saw. “We’ve handed the house over to Molin’s daughter now. Have you met her?”

  “Not since we spoke at the hotel the other evening.”

  “A very self-confident young lady,” Larsson said, disapprovingly. “I wonder how much she really knows about her father’s past. That’s something I intend discussing with her, in any case.”

  “Surely she can’t not know.”

  “I expect she’s ashamed of it. Who wouldn’t be if their father was a Nazi?”

  They got out of the car. Listened to the rustling of the trees. Then Lindman led the way down to the lake and along the shore to the campsite. He saw straightaway that somebody had been there. He stopped in his tracks. Larsson stared at him in surprise.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I think somebody’s been here since I was here last.”

  “Has something changed?”

  “I can’t tell yet.”

  Lindman studied the place where the tent had been pitched. Superficially, everything seemed the same. Even so, he was certain somebody had been there since. Something was different. Larsson said nothing. Lindman walked around the clearing in the trees, examining the site from different angles. He walked round a second time. Then the penny dropped. He had sat on the fallen tree trunk. As he looked round, he’d had a broken twig in his hand. He’d left it on the ground in front of him when he’d stood up to leave, but it wasn’t there any more. It was lying by the side of the path down to the water.

  “Somebody has been here,” Lindman said. “Somebody has been sitting on this log.” He pointed to the twig. “Can you take finger prints from a twig?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Larsson said, taking a plastic bag from his pocket. “We can always try. Are you sure?”

  Lindman was certain. He remembered where he’d left the twig. It had definitely been moved. He could picture somebody sitting there on the log, just as he’d done, bending down to pick up the twig, then tossing it away.

  “In that case we’ll call in a dog team,” Larsson said, taking out his mobile.

  Lindman turned to look into the forest. He had the feeling that there might be somebody there, very close. Somebody keeping an eye on them. He also had the nagging feeling that there was something he ought to remember. Something to do with Larsson. But what? He couldn’t put a finger on it.

  Larsson was listening to what they were saying on the phone. Asking questions, asking for a dog team to be mobilised, and then finishing the call.

  “Very odd,” Larsson said.

  “What is?”

  “Andersson’s dog has disappeared.”

  “What do you mean disappeared?”

  “What I say. Vanished. There’s no sign of it. And the place is crawling with police.”

  They looked at each other, amazed. A bird clattered up from a branch and flew off over the lake. They watched it until it was gone from view.

  CHAPTER 16

  Silberstein lay on top of a hill with a view of Abraham Andersson’s house, aiming his binoculars down at the surrounding area. He counted three police cars, two vans and three private cars. From time to time, somebody wearing overalls would come out of the forest. He gathered that it was there, among the trees, that Andersson had been killed; but he hadn’t been able to go there yet. He would make that excursion after nightfall, if possible.

  He scanned the house and cars again. A dog, of the same race as the one he’d been forced to kill at Molin’s place, was tied to a line running between the house and a tree at the edge of the forest. He wondered if the dogs might have come from the same litter, or at least have the same parents. Thinking of the dog whose throat he’d slit made him feel sick. He put the binoculars down, lay on his back and breathed deeply. He could smell the damp moss. Clouds sailed overhead.

  I’m mad, he thought. I could have been in Buenos Aires, instead of here in the Swedish wilderness. Maria would have been glad to see me. We might even have made love? In any case, I’d have slept soundly, and the following morning I’d have been able to open my workshop again. No doubt Don Antonio has been phoning, getting crosser by the day, that the chair he sent me three months ago still isn’t ready.

  If he hadn’t happened to sit down at a table with a Swedish sailor in a restaurant in Malmö, a sailor who understood and could speak Spanish, and if that damned television set hadn’t been on and shown the face of an old man who’d been murdered, he wouldn’t have needed to abandon his plan. He would have been looking forward to an evening at La Cãbana.

  Above all, he wouldn’t have needed to be reminded of what had happened. He’d thought it was all over, at long last, the business that had dogged him all his life. When he’d returned to his hotel room he’d sat on the edge of the bed until he’d reached a decision. He didn’t drink a drop that night. At dawn he took a taxi to the airport some way out of town, where a friendly woman had helped him to buy a ticket to Östersund. A hire car was waiting for him. He drove into town and once again bought a tent and a sleeping bag, a camping stove and the other things he needed for making meals, some more warm clothes and a torch. At the System wine shop he bought enough wine and brandy to last him a week. Finally he went to the bookshop in the square and bought a map – he’d thrown away the one he’d had before, just as he’d dumped his pans, stove, tent and sleeping bag. It was as if the nightmare was starting over. In Dante’s purgatory there was a level where men were tortured by everything repeating itself. He tried to remember what sins they’d committed, but he couldn’t.

  Then he drove out of town and stopped at a petrol station where he bought every local paper he could find. He sat in the car and looked for everything they’d written about the dead man. It was front-page news in all the local papers. He didn’t understand the words, but there was a name mentioned after a reference to Abraham Andersson. Glöte. He guessed that must be the place where Andersson had lived, and where he’d been murdered. There was another name, Dunkärret, but that wasn’t on the map. He got out of the car and spread the unwieldy map over the bonnet and set about making a plan. He didn’t want to get too close. There was also a risk that the police might have set up roadblocks.

  He decided on a place called Idre. He judged it to be far enough from Andersson’s house. He was tired when he arrived, and pitched his tent at the end of a forest track where he felt safe. He left the tent, after covering it with leaves and branches he’d laboriously gathered. Then he drove north towards Sörvattnet, turned off for Linsell, and had no difficulty in finding the road marked by a sign saying “Dunkärret 2”. But he didn’t take that road; instead he continued towards Sveg.

  Just before the road leading to Molin’s house he’d passed a police car. About a kilometre further on he’d driven into the trees along a track that was almost completely overgrown. He’d surveyed the area thoroughly during the three weeks he’d spent observing Molin. He had compared himself to an animal that needed many exits from its den.

  Now he parked his car and walked along the familiar track. He didn’t think the place would be guarded, but even so he kept stopping and listening. Eventually, he could glimpse the house through the trees. He waited for
20 minutes. Then he walked up to the house and the spot where he’d left Molin’s dead body. The forest floor was trodden down. The remains of red and white police tape hung from trees. He wondered if the man he’d killed had been buried yet. Perhaps the police doctors were still examining the body? He wondered if they’d realise that the lashes on Molin’s back had been made by a bull-whip used by cowboys on the Pampas. He approached the house and heaved himself up until he could see into the living room. The bloodstained footsteps had dried into the floor, but could still be made out. The woman who came to clean for Molin had obviously not been back.

  He took his usual path to the lake. That was the path he’d used the night he decided he’d been waiting long enough. The other woman, the one who used to visit Molin and dance with him, had been there the previous day. If they followed their usual custom, it would be a week more before she came again. Moreover, the other man, the one called Andersson, had also been there the day before. He’d followed Andersson home, and from behind some trees had watched as he closed all the shutters and locked the shed and gave every sign of being about to go away. He could still remember the feeling of having decided that the time had come. It had been raining that day. The clouds had dispersed by evening and he’d gone to the lake for a swim in the cold water, so that his head would be clear when he made the fateful decision. Afterwards he’d snuggled up in his sleeping bag, in order to restore his body heat. All the weapons he’d acquired when he’d made his break-in on the way to Härjedalen were spread out on a plastic sheet beside him.

  The time had come. Even so he was held back by a strange reluctance. It was as if he’d been waiting so long, he didn’t know what would happen when the waiting was over. As so often before, his mind went back to the events of the last year of the war, when his life fell to pieces and could never wholly be restored. He’d often thought of himself as a sailing ship with a broken mast and shredded sails. That was how his life had been, and nothing would be fundamentally changed by what he was about to do. He’d harboured the thought of revenge all his adult life, and he’d sometimes hated that feeling more than he hated the man responsible. Still, it was too late now. He couldn’t return to Buenos Aires without doing what he’d come here to do. He made up his mind after swimming in the dark lake. That night he launched his attack, carried out his plan.