The Return of the Dancing Master

by Henning Mankell

  The silence wafted to and fro between them. Lindman looked at the carpet where Hanna Tunberg had died. Her knitting was on a table next to the chair, the needles sticking out at an angle. Larsson’s mobile rang. Both of them gave a start. Larsson answered. The rain started pelting against the window panes. He finished the call without having said much.

  “That was the ambulance. They’d met Hanna’s husband. He went with them in the ambulance. We don’t need to stay here any longer.”

  Neither of them moved.

  “We’ll never know,” Larsson said. “A witness steps forward, crossing the threshold that usually holds people back from saying anything. The question remaining is: was she telling the truth?”

  “Why shouldn’t she have been?”

  Larsson was by the window, looking out at the rain. “I know nothing about Borås,” he said, “other than that it’s a decent-sized town. Sveg is not much more than a village with only a few thousand inhabitants. Fewer people live in the whole of Härjedalen than in a Stockholm suburb. That means that it’s harder to keep secrets here.”

  Larsson left the window and sat down in the chair where Hanna Tunberg had died. Then he sprang to his feet and remained standing.

  “I ought to have mentioned this before we got here. I suppose I simply forgot that you are not from these parts. It’s a bit like the angels with their halos. Everybody up here is surrounded by little rings of rumour, and Hanna Tunberg was no exception.”

  “I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

  Larsson stared gloomily down at the carpet where Hanna had been lying.

  “One shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. What’s so wrong about being nosy? Most people are. Police work is based on facts and curiosity.”

  “You mean she was a gossip monger?”

  “Erik told me she was. And he always knows what he’s talking about. I had that in mind all the time she was speaking. If she’d lived for another five minutes I’d have been able to ask her. Now that’s not possible.” Larsson went back to the window. “We should be able to conduct an experiment,” he said. “We’ll put a car where she said she’d parked. Then we’ll ask somebody to look in the rear-view mirror while somebody else comes out of Andersson’s front door, counts to three and then goes in again. I can guarantee that either the person in the car will see whoever it is at the door perfectly clearly, or not at all.”

  “So she was lying?”

  “Yes and no. She wasn’t actually telling a lie, but I suspect that she had either spotted something behind Andersson when he answered the door, or that she peeped in through a window. We’ll never know which.”

  “But you think the gist of what she said was right?”

  “That’s what I think. She wanted to tell us something that might be important, but she didn’t want to tell us how she’d found out about it.” Larsson sighed. “I can feel a cold coming on,” he said. “I’ve got a sore throat. No. Not yet. But it’s starting to get sore. I’ll have a headache a couple of hours from now. Shall we go?”

  “Just one question,” Lindman said. “Or two, rather. What are the implications if it really was Berggren, as Hanna suggested? And if it wasn’t her, who was it? And what does it all mean?”

  “I make that three questions,” Larsson said. “And they’re all important. We can’t answer any of them, though. Not yet, at least.”

  They hurried through the rain to the car. The dog had retired to its kennel and watched their departure in silence. That was the second melancholy dog Lindman had come across in the space of a few days. He wondered how much of what had happened they’d understood.

  They were on the point of joining the main road when Larsson pulled into the side and stopped.

  “I must phone Rundström. I guess that the mist is as bad as ever. And to make things worse, I heard on the radio this morning that a storm’s brewing.”

  He dialled the number. Lindman tried to think about Elena, but all he could picture was Hanna Tunberg. Gasping for breath, then dying with a rattling sound.

  Larsson told Rundström about Hanna Tunberg’s death. Then he asked questions – about the mist, the dog, the man on the mountain. It was a short call. Larsson put the phone down and felt his throat.

  “Every time I catch a cold I think I’m going to die. It’s not an hour since Hanna Tunberg died before our very eyes, and here I am complaining because I think I can feel a cold coming on.”

  “Why worry about somebody who’s dead?”

  Larsson looked at him. “I’m not thinking about her,” he said. “I’m thinking about my own death. That’s all I care about.”

  Lindman punched the roof of the car. He couldn’t control his violent outburst. “You sit here complaining about the beginnings of a cold. At the same time, I could really be dying.”

  He flung the car door open and stormed out into the rain.

  Larsson opened his door. “That was thoughtless of me.”

  Lindman pulled a face. “What difference does it make? Cancer or a sore throat.”

  He got back into the car. Larsson stayed out in the rain.

  Lindman stared through the windscreen, past the raindrops. The trees were swaying gently. He had tears in his eyes. The mist was in his eyes, not on the windscreen.

  They drove back to Sveg. Lindman leaned his head against the side window, thinking about where his life was going. He gave up and started again. Elena was there. And Veronica. He wasn’t sure where he fitted in.

  It was 12.30 when they arrived at the hotel. Larsson said he was hungry. The rain was still pattering on the car roof. They hurried into reception with their jackets pulled up over their heads.

  The girl in reception stood up.

  “Can you phone Erik Johansson,” she said. “He’s been trying to get in touch with you. It’s urgent.”

  Larsson took his mobile out of his jacket pocket and cursed. It was switched off. He switched it on and sat on the sofa. Lindman thumbed through a brochure lying on the reception desk. Old Mountain Pastures in Härjedalen. Hanna Tunberg was still dying before his eyes. The girl in reception was searching through a file. Larsson was speaking to Johansson.

  What Lindman would have liked to do most of all just now was to go to his room and masturbate. That would be the only way of fulfilling last night. And his betrayal of Elena.

  Larsson stood up. Lindman could see that the phone call had worried him.

  “Is something wrong?”

  The girl in reception eyed them inquisitively. Lindman noticed that she’d been working at a computer identical to the one Veronica Molin had in her room. Larsson beckoned Lindman to follow him into the empty dining room.

  “It looks as if the man on the mountain may have found a road through the fog that wasn’t being watched, and then stolen another car. Erik had just gone home for a meal,” Larsson said, “and he saw that he’d been burgled. A pistol and a rifle had been taken. Plus some ammo and a detachable telescopic sight. It must have happened today, early in the morning.” He felt his throat again. “It could have been somebody else, of course. But our man is still in the area, he threatens Berggren, he wants something although we don’t know what. A man like that may have realised that he needed another gun – no doubt he’s got rid of the others, if he’s got any sense. And who would have a gun in his house? A policeman, of course.”

  “He would have to have known Johansson’s name, and that he was a police officer. And where he lives. How could he have found that out? And when?”

  “I don’t know. But I think it’s time to work backwards. We must have seen something at some point without realising its significance.” Larsson bit his lip. “We started looking for a murderer who tried to make us think there were actually two of them. Now I’m starting to wonder if there isn’t only one after all, but he’s let loose his shadow to put us off the scent.”

  CHAPTER 28

  They had gathered in Johansson’s office at 2.15. Lindman had been hesitant about joining them, but La
rsson insisted. Johansson was tired and irritable, but most of all he was worried. Lindman sat next to the wall, behind the others. The rain had passed over and the sun, already quite low in the sky, shone in through the open window. Johansson switched his mobile telephone to loudspeaker mode, and Rundström’s voice could be heard despite a poor connection. The mist in the mountains of north-west Härjedalen was still there.

  “We’re marking time here,” he said.

  “And the roadblocks?” Johansson said.

  “They’re still in place. A Norwegian drunk drove straight into the ditch from shock when he saw police standing in the road. He had a zebra skin in his car, incidentally.”

  “Why?”

  “How should I know? If it had been a bear skin you could have understood it, but I didn’t know there were any zebras in Härjedalen.”

  The connection was lost, then it came back.

  “I have a question about the weapons that were stolen,” Rundström said. “I know what make of guns and how many, but what about ammunition?”

  “Two magazines for the pistol and twelve cartridges for the Mauser.”

  “I don’t like this at all,” Rundström said. “Did he leave any clues?”

  His voice was coming and going in waves.

  “The house was empty,” Johansson said. “My wife is in Järvsö visiting our daughter. I don’t have any neighbours. The gun cupboard had been broken into.”

  “No footprints? Did anybody see a car?”

  “No.”

  “The mist will start clearing soon, according to the weather people. But the sun will have set before long. We’re wondering what to do. If he’s the one who stole the guns there’s not much point in our staying here. It would mean he’d already passed through our cordon.”

  Larsson leaned towards the telephone. “Larsson here. I think it’s too soon to withdraw from up there. It might not have been him who broke into Erik’s house. But I have a question. Do we know anything about what this Hereira might have in the way of food?”

  “Frostman claimed he didn’t have anything in his pantry. Maybe some jam. He wasn’t sure. On the other hand, the freezer was full. It was worth leaving it on to store all the berries and elk meat he’d been given by friends.”

  “It’s hardly possible to prepare an elk steak on a camping gas stove. Sooner or later he’ll have to find a shop and buy some food. Assuming he’s not the one who broke into Erik’s place.”

  “We’ve been checking the houses up here. There’s just one solitary old fellow who lives here all the year round. Hudin, he’s called, in a place called Högvreten. We’ve got a couple of officers there. Apparently he’s 95 and not exactly a shrinking violet. Apart from him, there are only holiday cottages in the area. You can’t say it’s over-populated round here.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “OK, thanks. We’ll talk again later.”

  Rundström’s voice faded away in a buzz of interference. Johansson switched the telephone off.

  “Frostengren,” said one of the officers. “Wasn’t that his name? Not Frostman?”

  “Rundström’s not very good at names,” Larsson said. “Let’s have a run-through now. Is there anybody here who hasn’t met Stefan Lindman? A colleague from Borås who used to work with Herbert Molin.”

  Lindman recognised all the faces. He wondered what they would say if he stood up and told them that in a few days’ time he would be starting a course of radiation treatment for cancer.

  There was a mass of detail and reports to sort out. Larsson urged them to be brief. They couldn’t waste time dwelling unnecessarily on minor details. At the same time, he had to make decisions about what was important and what could wait. Lindman tried to listen, but found that his head was full of images of women. Hanna Tunberg getting up from her chair and falling dead on the floor. Veronica Molin, her hand and her back as she lay asleep. And Elena was there as well. Especially Elena. He was ashamed of having told Veronica Molin that there was no-one in his life.

  He forced such thoughts out of his mind and tried to concentrate on what was being said round the table. They talked about the weapons used when Molin was murdered. They must have come from somewhere. It could be assumed that Hereira had entered Sweden from abroad, and so it followed that he had acquired them in Sweden. Larsson had a list of guns reported stolen in Sweden in recent months. He glanced through them, then put it on one side. No Swedish border control post had any information about a man called Fernando Hereira from Argentina passing through.

  “Interpol are looking into that right now,” Larsson said. “I know that South American countries can be hard to deal with. A girl from Järpen disappeared in Rio de Janeiro a few years ago. It was sheer hell trying to get anything out of the police there. She turned up eventually, thank God. She’d fallen in love with an Indian and lived with him for a while in Amazonas. But it didn’t last. Now she’s a primary school teacher and married to a man who works for a travel agent in Östersund. Rumour has it that her house is full of parrots.”

  Laughter ran through the room.

  “Let’s just hope that a suitable Fernando Hereira turns up,” Larsson said.

  Some more papers were put to one side. There was a preliminary summary of Abraham Andersson’s life, but it was far from complete. So far, they’d found nothing at all to link him with Molin. Everybody agreed that in view of what Hanna Tunberg had said, they ought immediately to put more resources into digging up Andersson’s past. Lindman could see that Larsson was trying to keep his impatience under control. He knows he’ll become a bad police officer if he loses his cool, Lindman thought.

  They turned their attention to Hanna Tunberg for a while. Johansson said that she’d been one of the leading lights when the Sveg curling club was formed, and that now it had an international reputation.

  “They used to play in the park near the railway station,” he said. “I can remember her sweeping the ice clear as soon as it was cold enough in the autumn.”

  “And now she’s dead,” Larsson said. “That was a horrific experience, believe you me.”

  “What caused it?” It was one of the officers who hadn’t said anything so far. Lindman seemed to recall that he was from Hede.

  Larsson shrugged. “A stroke, maybe a blood clot on the brain. Or a heart attack. She was a chain-smoker. Anyway, the last thing she did before she died was to tell us about Berggren. She thought she’d seen her in Andersson’s house some time last spring. Hanna was honest enough to admit that she wasn’t sure. If she was right, it could mean at least two things. Firstly, that we’ve established a link between Andersson and Molin. A woman. And we must also bear in mind that so far, Berggren has denied anything more than a fleeting acquaintance with Andersson.”

  Larsson reached for a file and picked out a piece of paper.

  “Katrin Andersson, Abraham’s widow, told the Helsingborg police that she’d never heard the name Elsa Berggren. She claims to have a good memory for names, and that her husband never – I’m quoting here – ‘kept any secrets from me’.” Larsson snapped the file shut. “That could be a claim that proves to be untrue, of course. We’ve all heard that phrase before.”

  “I think we ought to be a bit cautious,” Johansson said. “Hanna had a lot of good points, but she also had a reputation for being a nosy parker. People like that sometimes have trouble distinguishing between what’s fact and what they’ve made up.”

  “What do you mean?” Larsson said, irritated. “Should we take what she said seriously, or should we not?”

  “Perhaps we shouldn’t be 100 per cent certain that the woman outside Andersson’s house really was Berggren.”

  “If the woman actually was outside the door,” Larsson said. “I suspect that Hanna peered in through a window.”

  “Surely the dog would have barked in that case?”

  Larsson reached impatiently for another file. He leafed through it without finding what he was
looking for. “I know I’ve read somewhere that after the murder of Molin, Andersson said that he sometimes had the dog inside the house. This could have been one of those occasions. Mind you, some guard dogs bark even when they’re in the house if they hear a noise outside, I’ll grant you that.”

  “It didn’t seem all that alert for a guard dog when I was there,” Lindman said. “It appeared to be more of a hunting dog.”

  Johansson was still sceptical. “Is there anything else that links them? We know that Elsa and Molin were Nazis. If we can believe everything that has emerged so far, that’s what they had in common. Two lunatics, in other words, but harmless. Was Andersson a Nazi?”

  “He was a paid-up member of the Centre Party,” Larsson said grimly. “For a while he was even an elected member of the Helsingborg Town Council. He resigned over a split to do with funding for the local symphony orchestra, but he didn’t leave the Party. We can assume that not only was Andersson a man with no links to the unpleasant political movement known as neo-Nazism, but also that he took great exception to it. It would be interesting to know how he’d have reacted if he’d realised that he had a former Waffen-SS officer for a neighbour.”

  “Maybe he did know,” Lindman heard himself saying.

  Larsson looked at him. It was quiet in the room. “Say that again.”

  “I’m just suggesting that we could turn the way we’ve been thinking on its head. If Andersson had discovered that his neighbour, Molin, was a Nazi, and perhaps Berggren as well, that could indicate that there was in fact a link.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “I don’t know. But Molin had hidden himself away in the forest. He wanted to keep his past a secret, no matter what the cost.”

  “You mean that Andersson might have threatened to expose him?”

  “It could even have been blackmail. Molin had done everything he could to disappear from view, to hide his past. He was scared of something. Presumably of a person, but possibly several. If Andersson discovered his secret, the whole of Molin’s existence would be under threat. Berggren had bought the house on Molin’s behalf. Suddenly some new circumstances arise in which he needs her help again.”