The Return of the Dancing Master

by Henning Mankell

  Rundström produced a sheet of paper he’d been holding behind his back. “You asked quite a few more questions as well. Lundell read them to me over the phone.”

  This is lunacy, Lindman thought. He looked at Larsson, but he was staring down at his stomach.

  For the first time Rundström looked him in the eye. “What exactly do you want to know?” he asked.

  “Who killed my colleague.”

  “That’s what we want to know as well. Needless to say, we’ve given this investigation top priority. It’s a long time since we’ve set up such a broadly based investigative team as this one. We’ve had some pretty violent crimes up here over the years. We’re not exactly unused to it.”

  Rundström was making no attempt to disguise the fact that he resented his presence, but he could also see that Larsson was upset by the approach Rundström had adopted. That gave him an escape route.

  “It goes without saying that I’m not questioning the way you are working.”

  “Have you any information you can give us that would be of use to the investigation?”

  “No,” Lindman said. He didn’t want to tell Rundström about the tent site until he’d discussed it with Larsson. “I have no useful information to give you. I didn’t know Molin well enough to be able to tell you anything about the life he led in Borås, never mind here. No doubt there are others who would be better at that than I am. And in any case, I’ll be leaving soon.”

  Rundström nodded and opened the door. “Any news from Umeå yet?”

  “Nothing so far,” Larsson said.

  Rundström smiled curtly at Lindman and was gone. Larsson stretched out an arm apologetically.

  “Rundström can be a bit abrupt at times. But he means well.”

  “He’s within his rights to complain about my poking my nose in.”

  Larsson leaned back in his chair and eyed him speculatively. “Is that what you’re doing? Poking your nose in?”

  “Only in the sense that sometimes you can’t avoid stumbling over things.”

  Larsson looked at his watch. “How long are you thinking of staying in Östersund? Overnight?”

  “I haven’t decided anything.”

  “Stay overnight, then. I’ll be working here tonight as well. Come here some time after seven. With a bit of luck everything will be quiet here then. I have to be on call tonight, because so many officers are off sick. You can make yourself at home in my office.”

  Larsson pointed to some files on a shelf behind him. “You can look through the material we have. Then we can talk.”

  “And Rundström?”

  “He lives in Brunflo. You can bet your life he won’t be here tonight. Nobody will ask any questions.”

  Larsson rose from his chair. Lindman understood that the conversation was over.

  “The old theatre’s been converted into an hotel. A good hotel. There’s no question of their being full in October.”

  Lindman buttoned up his jacket.

  “Umeå?” he wondered.

  “That’s where we send our dead bodies.”

  “I thought that was Uppsala or Stockholm.”

  Larsson smiled. “You’re in Östersund now. Umeå’s a lot nearer.”

  Larsson accompanied him as far as reception. Lindman noticed that he was limping. Larsson saw that he’d noticed.

  “I slipped in the bathroom. Nothing serious.”

  Larsson opened the front door and went out into the street with him. “There’s winter in the air,” he said, looking up at the sky.

  “Herbert Molin must have bought the house from somebody,” said Lindman. “Privately, or through an estate agent.”

  “We’ve looked into that, of course,” Larsson said. “Molin bought the house from an independent estate agent. Not one of the big companies. A rural estate agent. His name’s Hans Marklund and he runs the business on his own.”

  “What did he have to say?”

  “Nothing yet. He’s been on holiday in Spain. He’s evidently got a second home down there. He’s on my list for tomorrow.”

  “He’s home, then?”

  “Yesterday.” Larsson thought for a moment. “I can tell my colleagues that I’ll take the responsibility for interviewing him. Which in turn means that there’s nothing to prevent you from talking to him.”

  “Hans Marklund?”

  “He works from his house in Krokom. Take the road north. In Krokom itself, you’ll see a sign saying ‘Rural Properties’. Ring the doorbell here at 7.15 p.m., and I’ll come and let you in.”

  Larsson went back inside. Rundström’s attitude had annoyed Lindman, but at the same time it had given him renewed energy. And Larsson wanted to help him by letting him go through the material they had so far accumulated. In doing so, Larsson was putting himself at risk, even if there were no real impropriety in allowing a colleague from another force to take part in the investigation. Lindman found the hotel Larsson had suggested. He got a room under the eaves. He left his case there and returned to his car. He phoned the hotel in Sveg and spoke to the girl in reception.

  “Nobody will take your room,” she assured him.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “You come when it suits you.”

  Lindman found his way out of Östersund. It was only 20 kilometres to Krokom, where he found the estate agent’s straightaway. It was a yellow-painted house with a large garden. A man was walking around the lawn vacuuming up dead leaves. He switched the machine off when he saw Lindman. The man was tanned and about Lindman’s age. He looked fit and trim, and had a tattoo on one of his wrists.

  “Are you looking for a house?” he said.

  “Not exactly. Are you Hans Marklund?”

  “That’s me.”

  Then he turned serious. “Are you from the Tax Authority?”

  “No. Giuseppe Larsson told me I’d find you here.”

  Marklund frowned. Then he remembered who that was. “The policeman. I’ve just got back from Spain. There are quite a lot of Larssons there. Or something of that kind. In Östersund there’s only one. Are you a police officer as well?”

  Lindman hesitated. “Yes,” he said. “I’m a police officer. You once sold a house to a man called Herbert Molin. As you know, he’s dead now.”

  “Come inside,” Marklund said. “They phoned me in Spain and told me he’d been murdered. I didn’t expect to hear from them until tomorrow.”

  “You will.”

  One of the rooms on the ground floor had been fitted out as an office. There were maps on the walls, and coloured photographs of houses up for sale. Lindman noticed that the prices were significantly lower than in Borås.

  “I’m on my own at the moment,” Marklund said. “My wife and children are staying on in Spain for another week. We’ve got a little house in Marbella. I inherited it from my parents. The kids have their autumn half-term holiday, or whatever it’s called.”

  Marklund made some coffee and they sat down at a table strewn with files.

  “I had some problems with the tax people last year,” Marklund said apologetically. “That’s why I asked. As the local authority is hard up, I suppose they have to squeeze out every krona they can.”

  “Eleven years ago, or so, you sold the house near Linsell to Herbert Molin. I used to work with him in Borås. He retired and moved up here. And now he’s dead.”

  “What happened?”

  “He was murdered.”

  “Why? By whom?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  Marklund shook his head.

  “It sounds nasty. We like to think that we live in a pretty peaceful area up here – but maybe there aren’t any of those any more?”

  “Maybe not. What can you tell me about that sale eleven years ago?”

  Marklund disappeared into an adjoining room. He came back with a file in his hand. He soon found what he was looking for.

  “March 18, 1988,” he said. “The deal was signed and sealed here in this office. The se
ller was an old forester. The price was 198,000 kronor. No mortgage. The transaction was paid for by cheque.”

  “What do you remember about Molin?”

  The reply surprised Lindman.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “I never met him.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “It’s very simple. Somebody else looked after the matter for him. Got in touch with me, took a look at a few houses and eventually made the decision. As far as I know, Molin was never here.”

  “Who was the middleman?”

  “A woman by the name of Elsa Berggren. With an address in Sveg.” Marklund passed the file over. “Here’s the authorisation. She had the right to make decisions and sign the deal on Molin’s behalf.”

  Lindman examined the signature. He remembered it from the Borås days. It was Molin’s signature.

  “So you never met Herbert Molin?”

  “I never even spoke to him on the phone.”

  “How did you come into contact with this woman?”

  “The usual way. She phoned me.”

  Marklund leafed through the file, then pointed.

  “Here’s her address and telephone number,” he said. “She’s no doubt the person you should talk to. Not me. That’s what I’ll tell Giuseppe Larsson. Incidentally I wonder if I’ll be able to resist the temptation to ask him how he came by his name. Do you happen to know?”

  “No.”

  Marklund closed the file.

  “Isn’t it a bit unusual? Not meeting the person with whom you were doing business?”

  “I was doing business with Elsa Berggren, and I did meet her. But I never met Molin. It’s not all that unusual. I sell quite a lot of holiday cottages in the mountains to Germans and Dutchmen. They have people who sort out the details for them.”

  “So there was nothing unusual about this transaction.”

  “Nothing at all.”

  Marklund accompanied him as far as the front gate.

  “Maybe there was, though,” he said, as Lindman was walking through the gate.

  “Maybe there was what?”

  “I remember Elsa Berggren saying on one occasion that her client didn’t want to use any of the big firms of estate agents. I recall thinking that was a bit odd.”

  “Why?”

  “If you’re looking for a house you wouldn’t as a rule start off with a small firm.”

  “How do you interpret that?”

  Hans Marklund smiled. “I don’t interpret it at all. I’m merely telling you what I remember.”

  Lindman drove back towards Östersund. After ten kilometres or so he turned off onto a forest track and switched off the engine.

  The Berggren woman, whoever she might be, had been asked by Molin to avoid the big estate agents. Why? Lindman could only think of one reason. Molin had wanted to buy his house as discreetly as possible.

  The impression he’d had from the very start had turned out to be correct. The house in which Molin had spent the last years of his life wasn’t really a house at all. It was a hiding place.

  CHAPTER 7

  That evening Lindman wandered through the life of Herbert Molin. Reading between the lines of all the notes and reports, statements and forensic details that had already been collected in Larsson’s files, despite the fact that the investigation hadn’t been going for very long, Lindman was able to compile a picture of Molin that was new to him. He discovered circumstances that sometimes made him thoughtful and at others surprised. The man he thought he’d known turned out to be a quite different person, a complete stranger.

  It had turned midnight when he closed the last of the files. Larsson had occasionally called in during the course of the evening. You could hardly say they indulged in conversation; they drank coffee and exchanged a few words about how the evening was going for the police emergency service in Östersund. Everything had been quiet for the first few hours, but soon after 9 p.m. Larsson had to sort out a burglary in Häggenås. When, eventually, he returned, Lindman had just reached the end of the last of the files.

  What had he found? A map, it seemed to him, with large, blank patches. A man with a history with large gaps. A man who sometimes strayed from the marked path and disappeared, only to turn up again when least expected. Molin was a man whose past was elusive and in places very difficult to follow.

  Lindman had made notes as the evening progressed. When he’d finished the last file and put it on one side, he looked through his notebook and summarised what he’d discovered.

  The most surprising thing as far as Lindman was concerned was that according to the documents the Östersund police had requested from the tax authorities, Herbert Molin had been born with a different name. On March 10, 1923 he had come into this world at the hospital in Kalmar and been baptised August Gustaf Herbert. His parents were the cavalry officer Axel Mattson-Herzén and his wife Marianne. That name had disappeared in June 1951 when he’d been allowed by the Swedish Patent and Registration Office to change his surname to Molin. At the same time he had changed his Christian name from August Gustaf Herbert to Herbert.

  Lindman had sat staring at the name. Two questions occurred to him immediately. Why had Mattson-Herzén changed his surname and his Christian names? And why Molin, which must be about as common as Mattson? So many people in Sweden had the same surname that changing it was not unusual. But most people who changed their surname did so to escape from a common one so as to acquire one that nobody else had, or at least one that was not forever being mixed up with somebody else’s.

  August Mattson-Herzén was 28 years old in 1951. At the time he’d been serving in the regular army, a lieutenant of infantry in Boden. It seemed to Lindman that something must have happened then, that the early 1950s were important years in Molin’s life. There was a series of significant changes. In 1951 he changed his name. The following year, in March 1952, he applied for a discharge from the army. He received a positive testimonial. He married when he left the army, and had children in 1953 and 1955, first a son christened Herman, and then a daughter Veronica. He and his wife Jeanette moved from Boden in 1952, to an address in Solna outside Stockholm, Råsundavägen 132. Nowhere could Lindman find any information about what Molin did to earn a living. Five years passed before he appeared again as an employee, in October 1957, in the local authority offices in Alingsås. He was posted from there to Borås, and after the police force was nationalised in the 1960s he became a police officer. In 1981 his wife filed for divorce. The following year he remarried, but wife number two, Kristina Cedergren, divorced him in 1986.

  Lindman studied his notes. Between March 1952 and October 1957, Herbert Molin earned his living in some way unexplained in the files. That is a relatively long time, more than five years. And he had changed his name. Why?

  When Larsson returned from the break-in in Häggenås, he found Lindman standing by the window looking at the deserted street below. Larsson explained briefly about the burglary, no big deal in fact: somebody had stolen two power saws from a garage.

  “We’ll get them,” he said. “We have a pair of brothers in Järpen who specialise in jobs of that kind. We’ll nail them. What about you? What have you found out?”

  “It’s quite remarkable,” Lindman said. “I find a man I thought I knew, but he turns out to be somebody else altogether.”

  “How so?”

  “The change of name. And the strange gap between 1952 and 1957.”

  “Obviously. I’ve thought about that name change as well,” Larsson said. “But we haven’t really got that far in the investigation as yet, if you see what I mean.”

  Lindman understood. Murder investigations followed a certain pattern. In the beginning there was always the hope that they would catch the murderer at an early stage. If that didn’t happen, they would set out on the long and often tedious gathering and then sorting of the material.

  Larsson yawned. “It’s been a long day,” he said. “I need to get some sleep.
Tomorrow is going to be just as long. When are you thinking of going back to Västergötland?”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  Larsson yawned again. “I gathered that you had something to tell me. It was obvious from what you said and how you reacted when Rundström was here. The question is: can it wait until tomorrow?”

  “It can wait.”

  “You can’t produce a murderer from out of a hat, then?”

  “No.”

  Larsson got to his feet. “I’ll come to your hotel tomorrow morning. Perhaps we can have breakfast together? 7.30?”

  Lindman agreed. They put the files back on a shelf and switched off the desk lamp. They walked together through the dimly lit reception area. An officer was sitting in an inside room, taking a call.

  “It always boils down to motive,” Larsson said. “Somebody wanted to murder Molin. That’s for sure. He was a specifically targeted victim. Somebody saw in him a motive to commit murder.” He yawned again. “But we can talk about that tomorrow.”

  Larsson walked to his car, which was parked down the street. Lindman waved to him as he drove off and walked up the hill to the hotel. The town was deserted. He felt cold. He thought about his illness.

  When Lindman came down to breakfast at precisely 7.30 a.m., Larsson was already waiting for him. He’d picked a corner table where they would be undisturbed. As they ate, Lindman told him about meeting Abraham Andersson and his walk along the shore of the lake that led him to the site where the tent had been. At that point Larsson pushed his half-eaten omelette to one side. Lindman produced the little parcel with the cigarette end and the piece of the jigsaw puzzle.

  “I can only assume the dogs didn’t get that far,” he said. “I don’t know whether it might still be worth sending a handler there now.”

  “There was nothing to go on,” Larsson said. “We brought in three dogs by helicopter the day after we found him, but they didn’t find a single scent.”

  He picked up his briefcase from the floor and produced a xerox of a map of the area around Molin’s house. Lindman took a toothpick and indicated the spot where the tent had been pitched. Larsson put on his reading glasses and examined the map.