The Return of the Dancing Master

by Henning Mankell

  “We gave it some food last night,” Näsblom said. “I keep dogs myself, so I brought some dog food from home.”

  “Obviously you can get a refund for that if you submit an invoice,” Larsson said. “But when did the dog disappear?”

  “It must have been after then.”

  “Even I can work that out. When did you realise it was no longer there?”

  “Just before I phoned you.”

  Larsson looked at his watch. “OK, you gave the dog some food last night. When?”

  “About 7.00.”

  “It’s now 1.30 in the afternoon. Don’t you feed dogs in the morning as well?”

  “I wasn’t here then. I went home this morning, and didn’t come back until this afternoon.”

  “But you must have seen if the dog was still there when you left?”

  “I’m afraid I didn’t.”

  “But you keep dogs yourself …”

  Näsblom looked at the empty running line. “Obviously, I ought to have noticed. But I didn’t. I suppose I thought it must have been in its kennel.”

  Larsson shook his head in resignation.

  “What’s easier to notice?” he said. “A dog that’s disappeared, or one that hasn’t?”

  He turned to Lindman. “What do you think?”

  “If a dog is there, maybe you don’t think about it, but if it isn’t there, I suppose you ought to notice.”

  “I’ll go along with that. What do you think?”

  The last question was directed at Näsblom.

  “I don’t know, but I think the dog had gone by this morning.”

  “But you’re not sure?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve talked to your colleagues, no doubt. None of them saw it disappear, or heard anything?”

  “Nobody noticed anything at all.”

  They walked over to the running line, with no dog attached.

  “How can you be certain that it didn’t just break loose?”

  “I looked at the lead and the way it was attached to the running line when I fed it. It was a very sophisticated system. It couldn’t possibly have broken loose.”

  Larsson studied the running line.

  “It was dark by 7.00 last night,” he said. “How come you could see anything at all?”

  “There was light enough from the kitchen window,” Näsblom said. “I could see.”

  Larsson turned his back firmly on Näsblom.

  “What have you to say about this?” he said to Lindman.

  “Somebody came here during the night and took the dog away.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I don’t know a lot about dogs, but if it didn’t start barking, it must have been somebody it recognised. Assuming it was a guard dog, that is.”

  Larsson nodded, absent-mindedly. He was studying the forest that surrounded the house.

  “It must have been important,” he said after a while. “Somebody comes here in the dark and fetches the dog. A murder has been committed here, the place is sealed off. Even so, somebody takes the dog away. Two questions occur to me straightaway.”

  “Who and why?”

  Larsson agreed.

  “I don’t like this,” he said. “Who apart from the killer could have taken the dog away? Andersson’s family lives in Helsingborg. His wife is in a state of shock and has said she isn’t going to come here. Have any of Andersson’s children been here? We’d have known if they had, surely. If it wasn’t a lunatic or a sick animal rights supporter or somebody who makes a living from selling dogs, it must have been the murderer. That means he’s still here somewhere. He stayed around after murdering Molin, and didn’t leave after killing Andersson. You could draw several conclusions from that.”

  “He might have come back, of course,” Lindman said.

  Larsson looked at him in surprise. “Why should he come back? Because he’d forgotten there was somebody else he needed to kill? Or because he’d forgotten the dog? It doesn’t add up. The man we’re dealing with – always assuming it is a man and that he’s operating on his own – plans what he does, detail by detail.”

  Lindman could see that Larsson was thinking along the right lines. Even so, there was something nagging away at him.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You always know what you’re thinking. It’s just that you’re sometimes too lazy to spell it out.”

  “I suppose the bottom line is that we don’t know for sure that the same person murdered Molin and Andersson,” Lindman said. “We think it was, but we don’t know.”

  “It goes against common sense and all my experience to think that two incidents like this would take place at almost the same time and in the same place without there being a common murderer and a common motive.”

  “I agree. But even so, the unexpected does happen occasionally.”

  “We’ll find out sooner or later,” Larsson said. “We’ll dig deep into the lives of both these men. We’ll eventually find a link between them.”

  While they were talking Näsblom had slunk away into the house. He came back now, and approached hesitantly. Lindman could see that he had great respect for Giuseppe Larsson.

  “I thought I might suggest that I could fetch one of my own dogs and put him on the scent.”

  “Is it a police dog?”

  “It’s a hunting dog. A mongrel. But it might be able to pick up a scent.”

  “Shouldn’t we rather bring in one of our own dogs from Östersund?”

  “They say not.”

  Larsson looked at Näsblom in astonishment.

  “Who says not?”

  “Chief Inspector Rundström. He thought it was unnecessary. ‘The bloody dog has run away, no doubt,’ he said.”

  “Go and fetch your Fido,” Larsson said. “It’s a good idea. But you ought to have had it the moment you noticed that Andersson’s dog had gone walkies.”

  The dog Näsblom fetched picked up a scent immediately. It set off at full speed from the running line between the house wall and the tree, dragging Näsblom along behind it, and the two of them disappeared into the forest.

  Larsson was discussing the house-to-house operation currently being undertaken in the district with one of the officers whose name Lindman didn’t know. Lindman listened at first, but then moved away. He could see it was time for him to leave. His trip to Härjedalen was over. It started when he opened a newspaper in the hospital café in Borås and saw the photograph of Herbert Molin. Now he’d been in Sveg for a week. Neither he nor anybody else knew yet who had killed Molin and probably also Andersson. Perhaps Larsson was right in thinking there was a link between the two murders? Lindman wasn’t convinced. On the other hand he knew now that at one time in his life Molin had fought for the Germans on the Eastern Front, that he had been a Nazi, maybe was to the very last moment of his life, and that there was a woman who shared his opinions, Berggren, who had helped him to find the house in the forest.

  Molin had been on the run. He had retired from his post in Borås and crept into a lair where someone had finally found him. Lindman was certain that Molin knew somebody was looking for him. Something happened in Germany during the war, he was sure of that. Something not recorded in the diary. Or it could be in a code that I can’t read. Then there’s the week in Scotland and the long walks with “M.”. Somehow or other this must all be linked with what happened in Germany.

  But now I’m going to leave Sveg. Giuseppe Larsson is a very experienced police officer. He and his team will solve the case eventually. He wondered if he would live long enough to learn the solution. He found this hard to cope with now. The treatment he would start receiving in a week or so might not suffice. The doctor had said they could try cytoxins if radiotherapy and operative treatment didn’t achieve the desired result. There were lots of other drugs they could try. Having cancer was no longer a death sentence, she insisted. OK, he thought, but it’s not the same as being cured. I might be d
ead a year from now. I have to cope with that, no matter how hard it might be.

  He was overwhelmed by fear. If only he could, he’d run away.

  Larsson came over to him.

  “I’m leaving now,” Lindman said.

  Larsson looked hard at him. “You’ve been a big help,” he said. “And obviously, I wonder how you feel.”

  Lindman shrugged, but said nothing. Larsson held out his hand.

  “Would you like me to keep in touch and let you know how things are progressing?” he said.

  What did he really want? Apart from getting well again? “I think it’s better if I get in touch with you,” he said. “I don’t know how I’ll feel once the radiotherapy starts.”

  They shook hands. It seemed to Lindman that Giuseppe Larsson was a very likeable man. Although he didn’t really know anything about him.

  Then it dawned on him that his car was in Sveg.

  “Obviously, it ought to be me driving you to your hotel,” Larsson said. “But I feel I ought to hang around here for a while and wait for Näsblom to come back. I’ll ask Persson to stand in for me.”

  Persson didn’t have much to say for himself. Lindman contemplated the trees through the car windows, and thought that he would have quite liked to meet Veronica Molin one more time. He’d have liked to ask her some questions about her father’s diary. What had she known about her father’s past? And where was Molin’s son? Why hadn’t he put in an appearance?

  Persson dropped him off outside the hotel. The girl in reception smiled when he walked in.

  “I’m leaving now.”

  “It can get cold as evening draws in,” she said. “Cold, and quite slippery.”

  “I’ll drive carefully.”

  He went up to his room and packed his things. The moment he closed the door, he couldn’t remember what the room looked like. He paid his bill without checking the details.

  “How’s it going?” she said when he’d handed over the money. “Are you going to catch the murderer?”

  “I certainly hope so.”

  Lindman left the hotel. He put his case in the boot and was just about to get behind the wheel when he saw Veronica Molin come out of the hotel entrance. She walked up to him.

  “I heard you were about to leave.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “The girl in reception.”

  “That must mean you asked after me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to hear how things were going, of course.”

  “I’m not the one to ask about that.”

  “Inspector Larsson thought you were. I spoke to him on the phone a few minutes ago. He said you might still be around. I guess I got lucky.”

  Lindman locked the car door and accompanied her back to the hotel. They sat down in the dining room, which was empty.

  “Inspector Larsson said he’d found a diary. Is that right?”

  “That’s correct,” Lindman said. “I’ve glanced through it. But it belongs to you and your brother, of course. Once they release it. At the moment it’s an important piece of evidence.”

  “I didn’t know my father kept a diary. It surprises me.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “He wasn’t the type to write anything when it wasn’t strictly necessary.”

  “Lots of people keep a secret diary. I bet practically everybody has done so at some stage in their lives.”

  He watched her taking out a packet of cigarettes. She lit one, then looked him in the eye.

  “Inspector Larsson said the police are still struggling to find any leads. They haven’t found anything specific. Everything seems to suggest that the man who killed my father also murdered the other man.”

  “Who you didn’t know?”

  She looked up at him. “How could I have known him? You’re forgetting that I hardly even knew my father.”

  It seemed to Lindman that he might as well not beat about the bush. He should ask her the questions he’d already formulated.

  “Did you know your father was a Nazi?”

  He couldn’t tell if the question had come as a surprise or not.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Can that mean so very many different things? I read in his diary that as a young man he left Kalmar and crossed the border into Norway in 1942 to enlist with the German army. He fought for Hitler until the end of the war in 1945. Then he returned to Sweden. Married, then your brother and you were born. He changed his name, divorced, remarried and then divorced again: but all the time he was a Nazi. If I’m not much mistaken, he remained a convinced Nazi until his dying day.”

  “Is that what he wrote in his diary?”

  “There were some letters as well. And photographs. Your father in uniform.”

  She shook her head. “This comes as a hideous shock.”

  “He never spoke about the war?”

  “Never.”

  “Nor about his political views?”

  “I didn’t even know he had any. There was never any talk of politics when I was growing up.”

  “You can express your views even when you’re not discussing specific political questions.”

  “How?”

  “You can reveal your view of the world and your fellow men in a lot of different ways.”

  She thought for a while, then shook her head. “I can remember from when I was a child that he said several times that he wasn’t interested in politics. I had no idea he held extremist views. He concealed them pretty well, if what you say is right, that is.”

  “It’s all crystal clear in his diary.”

  “Is that all it’s about? Didn’t he write anything about his family?”

  “Very little.”

  “That doesn’t really surprise me. I grew up with the impression that we children were nothing more than a nuisance as far as Father was concerned. He never really bothered about us, he just pretended to.”

  “By the way, your father had a woman friend here in Sveg. I don’t know if she was his mistress. I don’t know what people do to keep themselves occupied when they’ve turned 70.”

  “A woman here in Sveg?”

  He regretted having mentioned that. It was information she ought to have had from Larsson, not from him, but it was too late now.

  “Her name is Elsa Berggren and she lives on the south bank of the river. She was the one who found his house for him. She shares his political views too. If you can call Nazi views political, that is.”

  “What else could they be?”

  “Criminal.”

  It seemed as if it had suddenly dawned on her why he was asking these questions.

  “Do you think my father’s opinions might have had something to do with his death?”

  “I don’t think anything. But the police have to keep all options open.”

  She lit another cigarette. Her hand was shaking.

  “I don’t understand why nobody’s told me this before now,” she said. “Why haven’t I heard that my father was a Nazi, nor about that woman?”

  “They’d have told you sooner or later. A murder investigation can sometimes take a long time. Now they have two dead men for whom they have to find a murderer. Plus a vanished dog.”

  “I was told the dog was dead?”

  “That was your father’s dog, but now Abraham Andersson’s dog has gone missing.”

  She gave a shudder, as if she were starting to feel cold.

  “I want to get away from here,” she said. “Even more than before. I’ll get round to reading that diary eventually, but first I must see to the funeral. Then I’ll be off. And I’ll have to get used to the idea that not only did my father merely pretend to care about me, he was also a Nazi.”

  “What’ll happen to the house?”

  “I’ve spoken to an estate agent. Once the estate inventory has been drawn up it will be sold. That’s if anybody will have it.”

  “Have you been there?”

&
nbsp; She nodded. “I went there, in spite of everything. It was worse than I could ever have imagined. Most especially those footprints.”

  Lindman looked at his watch. He ought to leave now, before it was too late.

  “I’m sorry you’re leaving.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not used to being all by myself in a little hotel in the back of beyond. I wonder what it’s like to live here.”

  “Your father chose to do so.”

  She accompanied him out into reception.

  “Thank you for making the effort,” she said.

  Before leaving, Lindman phoned Larsson to hear whether they’d found the dog. He heard that Näsblom had tagged on behind the excited dog for half an hour through the forest, but the trail had disappeared on a dirt track somewhere in the middle.

  “Somebody will have picked it up in a car that was waiting there,” Larsson said. “But who? And where did they go?”

  He drove south, over the river and into the forest. Occasionally he would ease back on the accelerator when he realised he was driving too fast. His head was empty. The only thought that arose sporadically in his mind was what had happened to Andersson’s dog. Shortly after midnight he stopped at a hot dog stall in Mora that was just shutting up shop. When he’d finished eating, he felt too tired to go any further. He drove into the nearby car park and curled up on the back seat. When he woke up his watch said 3 a.m. He went out into the dark for a pee. Then he continued driving south through the night. After a few hours he stopped again to sleep.

  By the time he woke up it was 9 a.m. He walked round and round the car to stretch his legs. He would be home in Borås by nightfall. When he’d come as far as Jönköping, he would phone Elena and give her a surprise. An hour or so later, he’d be pulling up outside her house.

  But after passing Örebro, he turned off again. His mind was clearer now, and he’d started thinking back to his conversation with Veronica Molin the night before. She hadn’t been telling the truth.