The Return of the Dancing Master

by Henning Mankell

  It occurred to Lindman that only a few days earlier he’d heard another old man, Björn Wigren, say something similar about not wanting to travel. They kept on until they came to a room with no furniture at all. There was a curtain on one of the walls. Wetterstedt moved it to one side with his walking stick. Behind it were three oil paintings in oval, gilded frames. The one in the middle was of Hitler, in profile. On the left was a portrait of Goering, and on the right one of a woman.

  “This is where I keep my gods,” Wetterstedt said. “I painted this one of Hitler in 1944, when everybody, including his generals, had started to turn their backs on him. This is the only portrait I’ve ever painted exclusively from photographs.”

  “So you actually met Goering?”

  “In Sweden and in Berlin as well. For some time in the inter-war years he was married to a Swede by the name of Karin. I met him then. In May 1941 I was called by the German Legation in Stockholm. Goering wanted to have his portrait painted, and I’d been chosen to do it. That was a great honour. I’d painted Karin, and he’d been pleased with that. So I went to Berlin and did a portrait of him. He was very kind. On one occasion it was the intention that I should meet Hitler at some reception or other, but something cropped up and got in the way. That is the biggest regret of my life. I was so close, but in fact I never got near enough to shake his hand.”

  “Who’s the woman?”

  “My wife. Teresa. I painted her portrait the year we married, 1943. If you have eyes to see, you’ll appreciate that the picture is full of love. We had ten years together. She died of an inflamed heart muscle. If that had happened today, she’d have survived.”

  Wetterstedt signalled to the boy, who drew the curtain shut. They returned to the studio.

  “Now you know who I am,” Wetterstedt said, having settled in the armchair again, and had the blanket spread over his knees. The boy had resumed his position behind the old man.

  “You must have had some reaction to the news that Herbert Molin was dead. A retired police officer, murdered in the forests of Härjedalen. You must have wondered what happened?”

  “I thought it had to be the work of a madman, obviously. Perhaps one of the many criminals who enter Sweden and commit crimes they are never punished for.”

  Lindman was getting impatient with the views that Wetterstedt kept expressing.

  “It was no madman. The murder was carefully planned.”

  “Then I really don’t know.”

  The answer came quickly and firmly. A little too quickly, Lindman thought. Too quickly and too firmly. He continued his line of questioning, cautiously.

  “Something might have happened a long way in the past, something that took place during the war, for example.”

  “Such as?”

  “That’s what I’m asking.”

  “Herbert Molin was a soldier. Full stop. He would have told me if anything exceptional had happened. But he never did.”

  “Did you meet often?”

  “We haven’t met at all for the last 30 years. We kept in touch through letters. He wrote letters, and I replied with picture postcards. I’ve never liked letters. Neither receiving them nor writing them.”

  “Did he ever mention that he was scared?”

  Wetterstedt drummed his fingers in irritation on his armrest.

  “Of course he was scared. Just as I am scared. Scared at what’s happening to this country of ours.”

  “But there wasn’t anything else he was frightened of? Something to do with him, personally?”

  “What could that have been? He chose to conceal his political identity. I can understand that, but I don’t think he was afraid of being exposed. He wasn’t fearful of papers landing up in the wrong hands.”

  The boy coughed and Wetterstedt shut up immediately. He’s said too much, Lindman thought. The boy is his minder.

  “What papers are you referring to?”

  Wetterstedt shook his head in vexation. “There are so many papers in the world nowadays,” he said, avoiding the question. Lindman waited for more, but nothing came. Wetterstedt started drumming his fingers on the armrest again.

  “I’m an old man. Conversations tire me. I live in an extended twilight zone. I don’t expect anything. I’d like you to leave now, and leave me in peace.”

  The boy behind the chair grinned cheekily. It was clear to Lindman that most of the questions he had would be unanswered. The audience granted him by Wetterstedt was at an end.

  “Magnus will see you out,” Wetterstedt said. “You don’t need to shake hands. I’m more frightened of bacteria than I am of people.”

  The boy whose name was Magnus opened the front door. The thick layer of fog was still enveloping the landscape.

  “How far is it to the sea?” Lindman said, as they walked to the car.

  “That’s not a question I’m required to answer, is it?”

  Lindman stopped in his tracks. He could feel the anger rising inside him.

  “I always thought that little Swedish Nazis had shaven heads and Doc Marten boots. I now realise they can look exactly like normal people. You, for example.”

  The boy smiled. “Emil has taught me how to deal with provocation.”

  “Just what are your fantasies? That there’s a future for Nazism in Sweden? Are you going to hunt down every immigrant that sets foot in Sweden? That would mean kicking out several million Swedes. Nazism is dead, it died with Hitler. Just what do you think you’re doing? Licking an old man’s arse? A man who had the doubtful privilege of shaking Goering by the hand? What do you think he can teach you?”

  They’d come to the car and the motorbike. Lindman was so angry, he’d broken out into a sweat.

  “What do you think he can teach you?” he asked again.

  “Not to make the same mistake as they made. Not to lose faith. Now clear off.”

  Lindman turned his car and drove away. In his rear-view mirror he saw the boy watching him.

  He drove slowly back to the bridge, thinking over what Wetterstedt had said. He could be dismissed as a political idiot. His views were not dangerous any more. They were but vague memories of a terrible time that was history. He was an old man who’d chosen never to understand, just like Molin and Berggren. The boy Magnus was another kettle of fish. He plainly believed that Nazi doctrines were still very much alive.

  Lindman reached the bridge. He was about to cross it when his mobile rang. He pulled into the side, switched on his warning lights, and answered.

  “Giuseppe here. Are you back in Borås yet?”

  Lindman wondered if he ought to say something about his meeting with Wetterstedt, but decided to say nothing for the time being.

  “I’m nearly there. The weather’s been pretty awful.”

  “I wanted to phone you to say that we’ve found the dog.”

  “Where?”

  “Somewhere we’d never have guessed.”

  “Where?”

  “Guess.”

  Lindman tried to think. But he couldn’t raise a thought.

  “I don’t know.”

  “In Molin’s dog pen.”

  “Are you saying it was dead?”

  “No, as lively as they come. A bit short of food, though.”

  Larsson laughed, merrily, at the other end of the line. “Somebody collects Andersson’s dog during the night, and our men on duty are so tired they don’t notice anything. Then whoever was responsible for kidnapping this dog dumps the animal in Molin’s pen. Mind you, it wasn’t tied to the line. What have you to say to that?”

  “That there is somebody not a thousand miles away from where you are who’s trying to tell you something.”

  “Quite right. The question is: what? The dog is a message. A sort of bottle thrown into the sea with a note inside it. But what? To whom? Think about that, and get back to me. I’m going home to Östersund now.”

  “It’s pretty remarkable.”

  “I’ll say it’s pretty remarkable. And frightening. Now I�
��m convinced that what we’ve got to so far is just the tip of an iceberg.”

  “And you still think you’re looking for the same murderer?”

  “Yes, that’s for sure. Keep in touch. And drive carefully!”

  There was a crackling noise in the telephone, then it went dead. A car passed. Then another. I’m going home now, he thought. Emil Wetterstedt had nothing new to tell me. But he did confirm what I already knew. Molin was a Nazi who never reformed. One of the incurables.

  He drove onto the bridge, intending to go back home to Borås, and before he reached the mainland, he had changed his mind.

  CHAPTER 19

  He dreamt that he was walking through the forest to Molin’s house. The wind was blowing so hard that he could scarcely keep his balance. He had an axe in his hand and was frightened of something behind him. When he came to the house he stopped at the dog pen. The strong wind had dropped altogether, as if somebody had snipped through a sound tape in his dream. In the pen were two dogs, both hurling themselves in a frenzy at the wire netting.

  He gave a start and was jerked out of his dream. It wasn’t the dogs breaking through the wire netting, but a woman standing in front of him, tapping him on the shoulder.

  “We don’t like people to be asleep in here,” she said sternly. “This is a library, not a sun lounge.”

  “I’m very sorry.”

  Lindman looked dozily round the reading room. An elderly man with a turned-up moustache was reading Punch. He looked like a caricature of a British gentleman. He was glaring disapprovingly at Lindman. Lindman pulled towards him the book he had fallen asleep over, and checked his watch. 6.15. How long had he been asleep? Ten minutes, perhaps, surely not more. He shook his head, forced the dogs out of his mind and pored over the book again.

  He had made up his mind coming back over the bridge. He would make a nocturnal visit to Wetterstedt’s flat. He couldn’t bear the thought of another night at the hotel, though. He would simply wait until night fell, then go into the flat. Until then, all he could do was wait. He parked his car within walking distance of Lagmansgatan, and found an ironmonger’s, where he’d bought a screwdriver and the smallest jemmy he could find. Then he’d picked out a cheap pair of gloves at a gents’ outfitters. He wandered around the town until he felt hungry, ate at a pizzeria and read the local newspaper, the Barometer. After two cups of coffee he’d tried to make up his mind whether to go back to his car and sleep for an hour or two, or to continue his walk. Then it occurred to him that he would do well to go to the local library. He’d asked for assistance, and in the section devoted to history he’d found what he was looking for. A fat volume on the history of German Nazism, and a thinner book on the Hitler period in Sweden. He soon discarded the big tome, but the smaller one had captured his attention.

  It was lucidly written, and after less than an hour’s reading he realised something that he hadn’t grasped before. Something Wetterstedt had said, and maybe also Berggren: that in the ’30s and up to around 1943 or 1944, Nazism had been much more widespread in Sweden than most people nowadays were aware of. There had been various branches of Nazi parties that squabbled between themselves, but behind the men and women in the parades there had been a grey mass of anonymous people who had admired Hitler and would have liked nothing more than a German invasion and the setting up of a Nazi regime in Sweden. He found astonishing information about the government’s concessions to the Germans, and how exports of iron ore from Sweden had been crucial in enabling the German munitions industry to satisfy Hitler’s constant demand for more tanks and other war materials. He wondered what had happened to all that history when he was a schoolboy. What he vaguely remembered from his history classes was a very different picture: a Sweden that had succeeded – by means of extremely clever policies and by skilfully walking the tightrope – in staying out of the war. The Swedish government had remained strictly neutral and thus saved the country from being crushed by the German military machine. He’d heard nothing about quantities of home-grown Nazis. What he was now discovering was an entirely different picture, one which explained Molin’s actions, his delight at crossing the border into Norway and looking forward to going on to Germany. He could envisage young Mattson-Herzén, his father and mother, and Wetterstedt and the grey mass of people hovering between the lines of the text, or in the blurred background of the photographs of demonstrations by Nazis in Swedish streets.

  That was when he must have fallen asleep and started dreaming about the frenzied dogs.

  The Punch man stood up and left the reading room. Two girls, heads almost touching, sat whispering and giggling. Lindman guessed that they probably came from the Middle East. That made him think about what he’d been reading: about how Uppsala students had protested against Jewish doctors who’d been persecuted in Germany seeking asylum in Sweden. They had been refused entry.

  He went downstairs to the issuing counter. There was no sign of the woman who’d woken him up. He found a toilet, and washed his face in cold water. Then he returned to the reading room. The giggling girls had left. There was a newspaper lying on the table where they’d been sitting. He went to investigate what they’d been reading. It was in Arabic script. They’d left behind a faint perfume. It reminded him that he ought to phone Elena. Then he sat down to read the last chapter, “Nazism in Sweden after the war”. He read about all the factions and various more or less clumsily organised attempts to set up a Swedish Nazi party that would carry real political weight. Behind all those small groups and local organisations that kept coming and going, changing their names and symbolically scratching one another’s eyes out, he could still sense the grey mass assembling at the blurred periphery. They had nothing to do with the little neo-Nazi boys with shaven heads. They were not the ones who robbed banks, murdered police officers or beat up innocent immigrants. He was clear about the difference between them and the weirdos who demonstrated in the streets and shouted the praises of Karl XII.

  He put the book to one side, and wondered where the boy who kept watch over Wetterstedt fitted in. Was there in fact some kind of organisation that nobody knew about, where the likes of Molin, Berggren and Wetterstedt could make propaganda for their views? A secret room where a new generation, to which the boy standing behind Wetterstedt’s chair belonged, could be admitted? He thought about what Wetterstedt had said, about “papers landing up in the wrong hands”. The boy had reacted, and Wetterstedt had clammed up immediately.

  He returned the books to their places on the shelves. It was dark when he left the library. He went to his car and phoned Elena. He couldn’t put it off any longer. She sounded pleased when she heard his voice, but also cautious.

  “Where are you?” she said.

  “I’m on my way.”

  “Why is it taking so long?”

  “Troubles with the car.”

  “What kind of troubles?”

  “Something to do with the gear box. I’ll be back by tomorrow.”

  “Why do you sound so irritable?”

  “I’m tired.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “I haven’t the strength to go into that now. I just wanted to ring and tell you that I was on my way.”

  “You must realise that I am worried.”

  “I’ll be in Borås tomorrow, I promise.”

  “Can’t you tell me why you sound so irritable?”

  “I’ve already said that I’m tired.”

  “Don’t drive too fast.”

  “I never do.”

  “You always do.”

  The connection was cut off. Lindman sighed, but made no attempt to phone again. He switched his mobile off. The clock on the dashboard suggested it was 7.25 p.m. He wouldn’t dare to break into Wetterstedt’s flat before midnight. I ought to go home, he thought. What will happen if I’m caught? I’ll be sacked and disgraced. A police officer breaking into a property is not something a prosecutor would turn a blind eye to. I wouldn’t only be putting my own future on the l
ine, I’d be creating trouble for all my colleagues. Larsson would think he’d been visited by a lunatic. Olausson in Borås would never be able to laugh again.

  He wondered if what he really wanted was to be caught. If he was intent on an act of self-destruction. He had cancer, and so he had nothing to lose. Was that the way it was? He didn’t know. He drew his jacket closer around him, and closed his eyes.

  When he woke up it was 8.30. He hadn’t dreamt about the dogs again. Again he tried to convince himself that he should get out of Kalmar as quickly as possible. But in vain.

  The last lights in the windows of the flats in Lagmansgatan went out. Lindman stood in the shadows under a tree, looking up at the façade of the block of flats. It had started raining and a wind was getting up. He hurried across the street and tried the front door. To his surprise, it was still open. He slipped into the dark entrance hall and listened. He had his tools in his pocket. He switched on his torch and crept up the stairs to the top floor. He shone his torch onto the door of Wetterstedt’s flat. He’d remembered correctly. Earlier in the day when he’d been waiting for somebody to answer the door, he’d noticed the locks. There were two, but neither of them was a safety lock. That surprised him. Shouldn’t a man like Wetterstedt take as many safety precautions as possible? If Lindman’s luck was out, it would be fitted with an alarm, but that was a risk he would have to take.

  He pushed the letter box open and listened. He couldn’t be absolutely certain that there was nobody in the flat. It was all quiet. He took out the jemmy. The torch was small enough for him to hold in his teeth. He knew he could only make one attempt. If he didn’t manage to open the door straightaway he would have to leave. In the first few months of his police career he had learnt the basic techniques used by burglars to force open a door. Just one try, no more. One single unexpected noise would generally pass unnoticed, but if it happened again there was a serious risk that somebody would hear and become suspicious. He crouched down, put the jemmy on the floor and pushed the screwdriver as far into the crack between the door and the frame as it would go. He prised it back and forth, and the crack widened. He pressed the screwdriver further in, then pulled it up as far as the lower of the two locks. He picked up the jemmy and forced it in at a point between the two locks, and pressed his knee against the screwdriver to widen the opening as far as possible. He was starting to sweat from the effort. He still wasn’t satisfied. If he forced it now there was a risk that only the frame would split and the locks would hold fast. He pressed hard against the screwdriver once more and this time managed to push the jemmy further in between the door and the frame. He got his breath back before testing the jemmy again. It was impossible to push it any further in.