He flew to London the next afternoon. He took a taxi from Gatwick to the hotel where Elena was staying. They spent three more days in London before going home to Borås.
Stefan Lindman started work again on April 17, a Monday. The first thing he did was to go to the archive where the picture of the visiting group of British police officers in 1971 was hanging on the wall. He took it down and put it in a box with other photographs from that visit. Then he returned the box to its place, hidden away in a corner cupboard.
He took a deep breath, and resumed the work he’d been missing for so long.
AFTERWORD
This is a novel. In other words, I’m not describing events, people and places exactly as they are, or have been, in real life. I take liberties, move crossroads, repaint houses and most of all I construct fictional events where necessary. And it is sometimes necessary. The same applies to the people in this book. I very much doubt if there is a detective inspector in the Östersund police force called Giuseppe, to take one example. This means that nobody should think that any of my characters have been based on themselves. It is not possible altogether to avoid similarities with living people, however, and if there are any such similarities in this book, they are pure coincidences.
But the sun does rise at about 7.45 a.m. at the beginning of November in Härjedalen. In among all the fiction there may well be quite a number of other convincing truths.
Which was of course the intention.
H.M.
Göteborg, September 2000
The Return of the Dancing Master Page 45
