The Return of the Dancing Master

by Henning Mankell

  “There are some snowmobile tracks marked,” he said, “but there’s no road that could take a car to that part of the shore. Whoever set up camp there must have walked for at least two kilometres over quite difficult ground. Unless he used the track to Molin’s house, and that seems unlikely.”

  “What about the lake?”

  “That’s a possibility. There are several forestry roads on the other side with turning places at the edge of the lake. It would obviously be possible to paddle over in a canoe or an inflatable.”

  He scrutinised the map for a few more minutes. Lindman waited.

  “You might be right,” Larsson said, pushing the map aside.

  “I wasn’t following a track. I just happened to land up there.”

  “It’s not often that police officers just happen to stumble onto something. You could have been searching for something without realising it,” Larsson said. He turned his attention to the bits of tobacco and the jigsaw puzzle piece.

  “I’ll take these and get forensic to give them the once-over,” he said. “Your campsite must also be examined, of course.”

  “What’s Rundström going to have to say about this?”

  Larsson smiled. “There’s nothing to stop me telling him that I was the one who found the place.”

  They both went for more coffee. Larsson was still limping.

  “What did the estate agent have to say?”

  Lindman told him. Again, Larsson was all attention.

  “Elsa Berggren?”

  “I’ve got her address and telephone number.”

  Larsson peered at him. “Have you spoken to her already?”

  “No.”

  “You’d better leave that to me.”

  “Of course.”

  “You’ve weighed in with some very useful observations,” Larsson said. “But Rundström’s right of course, when he says that this is something we have to sort out ourselves. I wanted to give you the opportunity of seeing how far we’ve got, but I can’t let you get further involved than that.”

  “I never expected you to.”

  Larsson slowly drained his coffee.

  “Tell me, why did you really come to Sveg?”

  “I’m on sick leave. I had nothing else to do. And, after all, I knew Molin quite well.”

  “Or you thought you did.”

  Lindman was aware that the man sitting opposite him was somebody he didn’t know at all. Even so, he had an urge to tell him about his illness. It was as if he could no longer bear the burden alone.

  “I came here from Borås because I’m ill,” he said. “I’ve got cancer, and I’m waiting for the treatment to start. I had to choose between Mallorca and Sveg. I chose Sveg because I wanted to know what had happened to Molin. Now I’m wondering if I did the right thing.”

  They sat in silence for a minute or so.

  “People always ask me where I got Giuseppe from,” Larsson said. “You haven’t asked. Because you’ve had something else on your mind, no doubt. I wondered what it was. Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Not really. But I wanted you to know.”

  “Then I shan’t ask any questions.”

  Larsson bent down and took a notepad out of his briefcase. He found the page he was looking for and passed the pad over to Lindman. On the page was a sketch of footsteps forming a pattern. Lindman saw that this was the pattern of the bloodstained footsteps in Molin’s house. He’d been reminded of them by the photograph in Larsson’s files. It also occurred to him that he hadn’t mentioned to Larsson that he’d been inside Molin’s house. It would be stupid to conceal it any longer. Andersson had seen him there, and he was bound to be questioned again by the police. So he told him exactly what had occurred. Larsson didn’t seem to be surprised, and pointed once more to his notepad.

  “This is a depiction of the basic steps for the fascinating dance known as the tango.”

  Lindman stared at him in surprise. “The tango?”

  “There’s no doubt about it. But this means that somebody carted Molin’s corpse around and made those bloody footprints. No doubt you read the provisional report from the pathologist? His back cut to bits by lashes from the skin of some animal we have yet to identify. And the soles of his feet lacerated in similar fashion.”

  Lindman had read the pathologist’s report with great distaste. The photographs had been horrific.

  “This gives us food for thought,” Larsson said. “Who would lead him round the floor like this? Why? And who is it that’s supposed to see these bloody footsteps?”

  “It could be a greeting to the police, of course.”

  “Correct. But the question remains: why?”

  “No doubt you’ve thought of the possibility that they were photographed or filmed?”

  Larsson returned the pad to his briefcase.

  “It also leads us to draw the conclusion that this is no ordinary little bloody murder. There are other factors at work here.”

  “A madman?”

  “A sadist. Look at what Molin was subjected to.”

  “Torture.”

  Larsson nodded. “There’s no other word for it. But it worries me.”

  He closed his briefcase. “Did Molin use to dance the tango while he was in Borås?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “We’ll find out sooner or later, no doubt.”

  A child started screaming somewhere in the breakfast room.

  “This used to be the theatre foyer,” Larsson said. “Over there, behind the bar, was the auditorium.”

  “There was a beautiful old wooden theatre in Borås once upon a time,” Lindman said. “But they didn’t convert it into a hotel. They pulled it down, upsetting a lot of people at the time.”

  The child was crying still. Lindman went out with Larsson into reception.

  “Maybe you ought to go to Mallorca after all,” Larsson said. “I can keep you posted as the case develops.”

  Lindman didn’t answer. Larsson was right, of course. There was no reason for him to stay in Härjedalen any longer.

  They said their goodbyes in the street. Lindman went up to his room, collected his things, paid his bill, and left Östersund. He drove too fast along the straight road to Svenstavik. Then he slowed down. He tried to make a decision. If he returned to Borås now, today, he would still have time to go to the Mediterranean. To Mallorca or wherever. He could be away for two weeks. If he stayed in Sveg, he’d only get more and more restless. Besides, he’d told Larsson that he wouldn’t interfere in the case more than he’d already done. Larsson had let him examine the investigation files. He couldn’t go on intruding on scenes of crime. It was up to the Östersund police to find the motive for the murder. Up to them to track down the murderer.

  The decision made itself. He’d go back to Borås the very next day. The excursion to Sveg was at an end.

  He was driving slowly. Just under 60 kilometres per hour. Again and again he was passed by vehicles whose drivers eyed him with interest. He was churning over in his mind what he’d read in Larsson’s files the night before. The investigation appeared to be being conducted meticulously and efficiently. When the call came, those on duty had reacted by the book. The first officers had been very quickly on the spot, the scene of the crime had been cordoned off exactly as it should have been, three dog patrols had arrived by helicopter from Östersund, and the forensic work seemed to have been performed with all thoroughness. Lindman’s discovery of the site where a tent had been pitched was pure coincidence. One of the local police would have made the same discovery sooner or later. The interview with Hanna Tunberg had confirmed the picture of Molin as a recluse. The house-to-house operation had produced one clear result: nobody had noticed any suspicious movements of vehicles or people in the area. Torbjörn Lundell in the Spar shop in Linsell had noticed no sign of Molin being nervous, or anything out of his normal routine.

  Everything was as usual, thought Lindman.

  Nevertheless, the placid
scene is interrupted by the arrival of somebody, possibly paddling over the lake, who puts up his tent and then some time later attacks the retired police officer. He kills the dog and uses tear gas. He drags the dead or dying man around the floor and makes carefully mapped-out footprints. Steps describing the basic pattern of a tango. Then he paddles back over the lake again, and silence descends once more on the forest.

  It seemed to Lindman that he could legitimately draw two conclusions. The first was that his original reaction had been correct: Molin had been afraid, and his fear had driven him to his hideaway in the forest.

  The second conclusion was logical. Somebody had traced him to his refuge. But why?

  Something must have happened in the early 1950s, he thought. August Mattson-Herzén abandons his military career and hides behind a new name. He marries and has two children, but there is a gap: how does he earn his living, until he turns up in the local council offices in Alingsås in 1957?

  Could the events of nearly 50 years ago have caught up with him?

  That was as far as he got. He ran out of ideas. He stopped in Ytterhogdal and filled up with petrol before driving on to Sveg and parking outside the hotel. There was a man he’d never seen before in reception, who gave him a friendly nod and handed over the key. Lindman went up to his room, took off his shoes and stretched out on the bed. He could hear a vacuum cleaner in the room next door. He sat up. Why not leave straightaway, today? He wouldn’t get all the way to Borås, but he could stop somewhere en route. Then he lay down again. He didn’t have the energy to organise a trip to Mallorca. The idea of going back to his flat in Allégatan depressed him. He’d only sit there, on edge, worrying about what was in store.

  He couldn’t make up his mind. The vacuum cleaner went quiet. At 1 p.m. he thought he’d better have some lunch, even though he didn’t feel hungry. There must be a library somewhere in Sveg. He’d be able to sit there and study everything he could lay his hands on about radiotherapy. The doctor in Borås had explained it to him, but he seemed to have forgotten everything. Or maybe he hadn’t been listening? Or couldn’t bring himself to think about what it involved?

  He put his shoes on again, and looked for a clean shirt. He opened the top of his suitcase that was perched on the rickety table next to the bathroom. He wasn’t sure why, but something was different. He told himself he was imagining things, but he knew that wasn’t true. He’d learnt from his mother how to pack a suitcase. He could fold up shirts so that they wouldn’t crease, and he’d become fussy about planning his packing in minute detail.

  He told himself again that he was imagining things. But no! Somebody had disturbed the contents of his case. Not much, but enough for him to notice it.

  He went through all that was in it. Nothing was missing. Nevertheless, he was certain: somebody had been through his case while he’d been in Östersund. It could have been a chambermaid with itchy fingers, of course. But he didn’t believe that. Somebody had been in his room and searched his case.

  CHAPTER 8

  Lindman stormed down to reception. When the usual girl, now back on duty, smiled at him, his anger fizzled away. It must have been the chambermaid. She had probably bumped into the case, and it had fallen. The rest was his imagination. After all, nothing was missing. He just smiled, put his key on the desk and went out. He paused on the steps, and wondered what he should do. It seemed that he was incapable of making the simplest of decisions. He ran his tongue over his teeth. The lump was still there. I’m carrying death in my mouth, he thought. If I survive this, I swear that I shall always keep a close watch on my tongue. He shook his head at such an idiotic idea, and decided to find out where Elsa Berggren lived. True, he’d promised Larsson that he wouldn’t talk to her, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t find out where she lived. He went back into reception. The girl was on the phone, and he scrutinised the wall map of the town. He found the street on the other side of the river, in an area called Ulvkälla. There was another bridge, an old railway bridge: that was the one to use for crossing the river.

  As he left the hotel, there was a thick layer of cloud over Sveg. He crossed the street and stopped at the window of the local newspaper. He read the pages they had displayed about the murder. A few hundred metres along Fjällvägen, he came to the old railway bridge. It was an arched bridge, and he stopped in the middle and looked down into the brown water. When he got to the other side, he turned left for Elsa Berggren’s house. It was a white-painted wooden house in a well-tended garden. There was a free-standing garage in the grounds. The doors were wide open, but there was no car inside. As he walked past, he thought he saw a twitch in one of the curtains on the ground floor of the two-storey house. He kept on walking. A man was standing in the middle of the road, staring at the sky.

  “Is it going to snow?” he said.

  Lindman liked the dialect. There was something friendly about it, almost innocent. “Could be,” he said. “But isn’t it a bit early? It’s only just turned November.”

  The man shook his head. “It can snow here in September, June even.” The man was quite old. His face was wrinkled and he could have done with a shave. “Are you looking for somebody?” he said, making no attempt to conceal his curiosity.

  “I’m just visiting. And thought I’d take a walk.”

  Lindman made up his mind on the spot. He’d told Larsson he wouldn’t talk to Berggren, but he hadn’t promised not to talk about her. “A nice house,” he said, pointing to the house he’d just passed.

  The man nodded. “Elsa takes good care of her house. The garden too. Do you know her?”

  “No.”

  The man looked at him, as if he were waiting for the next step. “The name’s Björn Wigren,” he said eventually. “The longest trip I’ve ever made was to Hede, once upon a time. Everybody travels the world nowadays. Not me. I lived on the other side of the river when I was a boy. I suppose I’ll have to go back over the river one of these days. To the cemetery.”

  “My name’s Stefan. Stefan Lindman.”

  “Just visiting, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have relatives here?”

  “No. I’m just passing through.”

  “And you’ve come out for a walk?”

  “That’s right.”

  The conversation petered out. Wigren’s curiosity was natural, not aggressive at all. Lindman tried to think of a way of leading the conversation towards Elsa Berggren.

  “I’ve lived here in my house since 1959,” the man said. “But I’ve never known a stranger to take a walk here. Not at this time of year.”

  “There’s always a first time.”

  “I could offer you a coffee,” said Wigren. “If you’d like one? My wife’s dead. The young have flown the nest.”

  “A coffee would be nice.”

  They went in through the gate. Had Wigren been standing in the street specifically to catch somebody who could share his loneliness?

  His house was a bungalow. On a wall in the entrance hall was The Gypsy Woman, her breast bared. There were also several trophies, including a pair of elk antlers. Lindman counted 14 points, and wondered whether that was a lot or something less impressive. On the kitchen table was a thermos flask, and a plate covered by a napkin. Wigren produced a second cup, and invited Lindman to sit.

  “We don’t need to talk,” he said, surprisingly. “You can drink coffee with a stranger and not say a word.”

  They drank a cup of coffee and each of them ate a cinnamon bun. A clock on the kitchen wall sounded at the quarter hour. Lindman asked himself how people had managed to communicate with each other before coffee had penetrated as far as Sweden.

  “I gather you’re retired,” Lindman said – and realised at once what a stupid thing that was to say.

  “I’ve worked in the forest for 30 years,” Wigren said. “Sometimes I think about how hard we worked – not that anybody has the slightest idea about that nowadays. We loggers were slaves under the thumb of the big
forestry companies. I don’t think people realise what a blessing it was when the power saw was invented. But then I got back ache and packed it in. I spent my last few years making roads. I don’t know if I was any use to them. I spent most of my time minding a machine and sharpening skates for schoolchildren. I did do one useful thing while I was allegedly helping to build roads. I learnt English. Sat there night after night, wrestling with books and tapes. I was on the point of giving up several times, but I stuck at it. Then I retired, and two days after my final working day, my wife died on me. I woke up in the morning, but she was already cold. That was 17 years ago. I was 82 last August.”

  Lindman raised an eyebrow. He found it hard to believe.

  “I’m not having you on,” Wigren said, seeing Lindman’s surprise. “I am 82 years old, and I’m in such good health that I’m counting on scoring 90 at least, and maybe more. Whatever difference that will make.”

  “I’ve got cancer,” Lindman said. “I don’t know if I’ll even make 40.” The words came out of the blue.

  Wigren raised an eyebrow. “It’s a bit unusual to tell somebody that you’ve got cancer, when you don’t know each other.”

  “I’ve no idea why I said that.”

  Wigren produced the plate with buns. “You said it because you needed to say it. If you want to say more, I’m all ears.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “OK, we’ll draw a line under that. If you want to say anything, OK. If you don’t, that’s also OK.”

  Lindman saw how he could turn the conversation in the direction he wanted.

  “If somebody wanted to buy a house around here like the one we mentioned before, for example, how much would it cost?”

  “Elsa’s house, you mean? Houses are cheap around here. I keep my eye on the adverts. Not in the papers, on the Internet. I reckoned I ought to find out how to sort that out. It took time, but I think I got there in the end. I’ve got plenty of time, after all. I have a daughter who works for the council in Gävle. She came here and brought her computer with her, and showed me what to do. Now I chat with a fellow in Canada, called Jim – he’s 96 and also worked in the forests. There’s no limit to what those computer things can do. We’re busy trying to set up a site where old loggers and lumberjacks can chat to each other when they feel like it. What are your favourite web addresses?”