The Return of the Dancing Master

by Henning Mankell

  Lindman could hardly keep his anger in check. He couldn’t imagine that Larsson or anybody else would see the message in the snow by the bridge. And now there was no-one waiting for them.

  The face disappeared again. Lindman said a silent prayer, hoping that Wigren would go back to the bridge. It might not be too late. But then the face appeared once more, this time in the window behind Hereira. Lindman thought there was a risk that Veronica might see him if she turned her head.

  A mobile phone rang. Lindman thought at first it was his, but the tone was different. Veronica picked up her handbag, which was on the floor beside her chair, took out the telephone and answered the call. Whoever it is phoning, it’s giving me more time, Lindman thought. And time is what I need most of all. Wigren hadn’t reappeared. Lindman dared to hope that he had gone back to the bridge after all.

  Veronica listened to what the caller was saying without speaking herself. Then she switched off and returned the phone to her handbag. When she took her hand out, it was holding a pistol.

  She stood up slowly and took two steps to one side. From there she could cover both Lindman and Hereira. Lindman held his breath. Hereira didn’t seem to grasp at first what she had in her hand. When it dawned on him that it was a gun, he also started to stand up, but he sat down again when she raised the pistol. Then she turned to Lindman.

  “That was stupid,” she said. “Of both of us.”

  She was pointing the gun at Lindman now. Holding it in both hands, steady as a rock.

  “That was the receptionist at the hotel. She phoned to tell me that you had taken my key and gone into my room. And of course, I know I didn’t switch off the computer.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” It was pointless trying to talk himself out of the situation, but he had to try. He glanced at the window. No sign of Wigren. He could only hope. This time she had noticed his glance. Without lowering the gun she edged closer to the nearest window, but evidently saw no-one outside.

  “So you didn’t come on your own?” she said.

  “Who did I have to bring with me?”

  She stayed by the window. It struck Lindman that the face he’d found so attractive before now seemed sunken and ugly.

  “There’s no point in telling lies,” she said. “Especially when you’re no good at it.”

  Hereira stared at the gun in her hand. “I don’t understand,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s just that Veronica is not what she pretends to be. She might devote part of her time to business deals, but she spends the rest of her life spreading the cause of Nazism throughout the world.”

  Hereira stared at him in astonishment. “Nazism?” he said. “She is a Nazi?”

  “She’s her father’s daughter.”

  “Perhaps it’s better if I explain it myself to the man who killed my father,” said Veronica.

  She spoke slowly and in perfect English, a person with no doubt as to the justice of her cause. To Lindman, what she said was just as frightening as it was clear. Molin had been his daughter’s hero, a man she’d always looked up to and in whose footsteps she had never hesitated to follow. But she wasn’t uncritical of her father: he had stood for political ideals that were now out of date. She belonged to a new era that adopted the ideals championing the absolute right of the stronger, and the concepts of supermen and sub-human creatures and adapted them to contemporary reality. She described raw and unlimited power, the right of the strong few to rule over the weak and the poor. She used words like “unfit”, “sub-humans”, “the poverty-stricken masses”, “the dregs”, “the rabble”. She described a world in which people in poor countries were doomed to extinction. She condemned the whole of Africa, with just a few exceptions where despotic dictators were still in charge. Africa was a continent that should be left to bleed to death, that should not be given aid, but isolated and allowed to die. The new age and new technology, the electronic networks, gave people like her the upper hand and the instruments they needed to consolidate their sovereignty over the world.

  Lindman listened to what she had to say, persuaded that she was mad. She really did believe what she was saying. Her conviction was ineradicable and she really did have no inkling of how lunatic she sounded, and that her dream could never come true.

  “You killed my father,” she said. “You killed him, and therefore I’m going to kill you. I know that you didn’t leave here because you wanted to know what had happened to Abraham Andersson. He was an insignificant person who had somehow found out about my father’s past. So he had to die.”

  “Was it you who killed him?”

  Hereira had understood now. The man standing alongside Lindman had just emerged from one lifelong nightmare only to land in a new one.

  “There’s an international network,” Veronica said. “The Strong Sweden foundation is a part of it. I’m one of the leaders, invisible in the background, but I’m also a member of the small group of people who run the National Socialist network on a global level. Executing Andersson to be certain that he could never reveal what he knew was not a problem. There are plenty of people who are always ready to carry out an order, without question, without hesitation.”

  “How did Andersson come to discover that your father was a Nazi?”

  “In fact it started with Elsa. An unfortunate coincidence. Elsa has a sister who was for many years a member of the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra. She mentioned to Andersson, when he decided to move up here, that Elsa lived in Sveg and was a National Socialist. He started spying on her, and eventually on my father as well. When he began blackmailing my father, he signed his own death warrant.”

  “Magnus Holmström,” Lindman said. “Is that his name, the man you ordered to kill Abraham Andersson? Was it you or him who threw the shotgun into the river after Andersson’s death? And forced Elsa Berggren to confess to the murder? Did you threaten to kill her as well?”

  “You know quite a lot,” she said. “But it won’t help you.”

  “What do you mean to do?”

  “Kill you,” she said calmly. “But first I shall put down the man who murdered my father.”

  “Put down.” She’s barking mad, Lindman thought. Stark raving lunatic. If Larsson didn’t turn up soon he’d have to try to disarm her. He couldn’t reckon with any help from Hereira, he’d had too much to drink. There was no hoping he might be able to persuade her to change her mind. He was certain he was dealing with a madwoman. She wouldn’t hesitate to use her weapon.

  Time, he thought. That’s all I need, time. “You’ll never get away,” he said.

  “Of course I shall,” she said. “Nobody knows where we are. I can shoot the man who killed my father, and then you. I’ll arrange it to look as if you shot him and then killed yourself. Nobody will think it strange that a policeman with cancer should commit suicide, especially after he’s just killed another human being. The weapon can’t be traced to me. I shall go from here to the church where my father will be buried a few hours from now. It will never occur to anybody that a daughter about to bury her father would that same morning be killing two other people. I will be standing by the coffin. The daughter in mourning. And I will be delighted about my father being avenged before he is buried.”

  Lindman heard the faintest of noises in the hall. He knew at once it was the front door being opened. He shifted in his chair, as if to stretch his back, and caught sight of Larsson. Their eyes met. Larsson was moving silently. He had a gun in his hand. I must tell him what’s happening, he thought.

  “So you shoot us both, one then the other,” he said. “With that notoriously inaccurate pistol. Forensic will smell you a mile off.”

  She stiffened. She was on her guard. “Why do you raise your voice?”

  She moved rapidly so that she could see into the hall. Larsson wasn’t there, but he can’t have missed what Lindman had said.

  Veronica stood motionless, listening. She seemed to Lindman like an animal in the night, a
lert for the slightest sound.

  Then everything happened very quickly. She started again, this time towards the doorway. Lindman knew she wouldn’t hesitate to shoot. She was too far from him that he could throw himself at her before she had time to turn and shoot at him. From that range she couldn’t miss. As she reached the door he grabbed the lamp on the table beside the chair and flung it at one of the windows with all the strength he could muster. The pane shattered. At the same time he threw himself at Hereira in such a way that both he and the sofa tumbled over backwards. As he fell down at the side of Hereira, he saw her turn. She had her gun raised. She fired. Lindman closed his eyes and had time to think that he was about to die before the bang came. Hereira’s body jerked. There was blood on his forehead. Then another bang. When Lindman realised he hadn’t been hit this time either, he looked up and saw Larsson lying on the floor. Veronica had disappeared. The front door was wide open. Hereira was moaning, but the bullet had only grazed his temple. Lindman jumped up, scrambled over the overturned sofa and rushed to Larsson who was lying on his back, clutching at a point between his neck and his right shoulder. Lindman knelt beside him.

  “I don’t think it’s too bad,” Larsson said.

  He was white in the face, from pain and shock. Lindman fetched a towel from the cloakroom and pressed it against Larsson’s blood-covered shoulder.

  “Phone for help,” Larsson said. “Then go and look for her.”

  Lindman called the emergency number from the hall. He knew he was shouting down the line. As he spoke he could see Hereira get up from behind the sofa and slump down on a chair. The operator in Östersund said that reinforcements and an ambulance would be despatched without delay.

  “I’ll be all right,” Larsson said. “Don’t hang about. Go and find her. Is she mad?”

  “Completely off her head. She’s a Nazi, just as much as her father was, maybe even more fanatical.”

  “No doubt, that explains everything,” Larsson said. “At the moment I’m not really sure what, though.”

  “Don’t talk. Lie still.”

  “I wasn’t thinking straight,” Larsson said. “You’d better stay here until the reinforcements arrive. She’s too dangerous. You can’t go after her by yourself.”

  But Lindman had already picked up Larsson’s gun. He had no intention of waiting. She’d shot at him, tried to kill him. That made him furious. She had not only fooled him, she had tried to kill him, Hereira and Larsson. There could easily have been three dead bodies on Elsa Berggren’s floor instead of two people with slight wounds and one unscathed. As Lindman picked Larsson’s gun up, he made up his mind that he was a man with cancer who was determined not to miss the chance of undergoing treatment and being cured. As he left the house, Wigren was standing by the gate. When he saw Lindman he started running away. Lindman yelled at him to stop.

  Wigren’s jaw wouldn’t keep still and his eyes were staring. I ought to thump the bastard, Lindman thought. His insatiable nosiness very nearly killed the lot of us.

  “Where did she go?” he roared. “Which direction?”

  Wigren pointed to the road along the river to the new bridge.

  “Stay here,” Lindman said. “This time don’t move an inch. There are police and an ambulance on the way.”

  Wigren nodded. He asked no questions.

  Lindman started running. A face stared from one of the houses. He tried to make out Veronica’s footprints in the snow, but there had been too much traffic, too many walkers. He stopped to cock his gun, then ran on. It was still only half light. Heavy clouds were motionless in the sky. He stopped when he came to the bridge. There was no sign of Veronica. He tried to think. She didn’t have a car. Something unplanned had happened. She was on the run and forced to make impromptu decisions. What would she have done? A car, he decided. She would find herself a car. She would hardly dare go back to the hotel. She knows that I’ve seen what was on her computer screen, a swastika and underneath it a letter in which she discussed old Nazi ideals that would last for ever. She realises that what’s in the computer doesn’t matter any more. She’s shot three people, and she doesn’t know if any of them have survived. She has two possibilities: try to run away, or give herself up. And she won’t give up.

  He crossed the bridge. There were two petrol stations on the other side. Everything seemed calm. Some drivers were filling their tanks. Lindman paused and looked around. If somebody had produced a gun and tried to steal a car there would have been turmoil. He tried to put himself in her position. He still thought she would look for a car.

  Then he heard an alarm bell in his mind. Was he thinking along the wrong lines? Behind her cool, calm exterior he’d seen a confused, fanatical person. Maybe she would react differently? He looked at the church to his left. What had she said? My father will be avenged before he is buried. He continued staring at the church. Was it possible? He didn’t know, but he had nothing to lose. He could hear sirens in the distance. He ran to the church. When he saw that the main door was ajar he was immediately on his guard. He only opened it wide enough for him to slip inside. It creaked slightly. He stood close to the wall of the porch. The sirens were no longer audible. The walls were thick. Slowly he opened one of the doors into the church. There was a coffin at the far end, in front of the altar. Molin’s coffin. He squatted down, aiming Larsson’s gun with both hands. There was nobody there. He crept inside, ducking down behind the back pew. Everything was quiet. He peered cautiously over the back of the pew. There was no sign of her. He must have been wrong, and thought he might as well leave the church when he heard a sound coming from the choir. He wasn’t sure what it was, but there was somebody in the vestry, behind the altar. He listened. He heard nothing. Perhaps he was mistaken. Nevertheless, he didn’t want to leave until he was certain that the church was empty. He walked down the centre aisle, still crouching, his gun at the ready. When he reached the coffin he stopped and listened. He looked up at the altar-piece. Jesus was on the cross, with a Roman soldier kneeling in the foreground. There was no sound from the vestry. At the altar rail he stopped again to listen. Still no sound. Then he raised his gun and entered the vestry. It was too late by the time he saw her. She was standing beside a tall cupboard, next to the wall at the side of the door. Motionless, with the gun pointing straight at his chest.

  “Drop the gun,” she said.

  Her voice was low, almost a whisper. He bent down and put Larsson’s pistol on the stone floor.

  “You won’t even leave me in peace inside a church,” she said. “Not even on the day my father’s going to be buried. You should think about your own father. I never met him, but from what I’ve heard he was a good man. True to his ideals. It’s a pity he wasn’t able to pass them on to you.”

  “Was it Emil Wetterstedt who told you?”

  “Perhaps, but that hardly matters now.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Kill you.”

  For the second time that morning he heard her say it, that she was going to kill him. This time, though, he hadn’t the strength to feel afraid. He could only convince her that she should give up, or hope that circumstances would arise enabling him to disarm her. Then it occurred to him that there was a third possibility. He was still in the doorway. If she let her attention wander he would be able to throw himself backwards into the main part of the church. Once there he could hide among the pews, and possibly even escape outside.

  “How did you know I was here?”

  She still spoke in the same low voice. Lindman could see that she was holding the gun just as steadily as before. It was aimed now at his legs, not his chest. She’s going to pieces, he thought. He shifted his weight onto his right leg.

  “Why don’t you give up?” he said.

  She didn’t answer, simply shook her head.

  Then came the moment he was waiting for. The hand holding the gun dropped down as she turned to look out of the window. He flung himself backwards as fast as he could, then star
ted running down the centre aisle. He expected the shot to come from behind at any second, and kill him.

  All of a sudden he fell headlong. He hadn’t seen a corner of the carpet sticking up. As he fell, he hit his shoulder against one of the pews.

  Then came the shot. It smashed into the pew beside him. Another shot. The echo sounded like a thunderclap. Silence. He heard a thud behind him. When he looked round, he could see her, just in front of her father’s coffin. His heart was pounding. What had happened? Had she shot herself? Then he heard Johansson’s agitated, shrill voice from the organ loft.

  “Lie still. Don’t move. Veronica Molin, can you hear me? Lie still.”

  “She’s not moving,” Lindman shouted.

  “Did she hit you?”

  “No.”

  Johansson shouted again. His voice echoed round the church. “Veronica Molin. Lie still. Keep your arms out-stretched.”

  Still she didn’t move. There was a clattering on the stairs from the organ loft and Johansson appeared in the centre aisle. Lindman scrambled to his feet. They approached the motionless body with trepidation, Johansson with his pistol held in both hands before him. Lindman raised his hand.

  “She’s dead.” He pointed. “You hit her in the eye.”

  Johansson gulped and shook his head. “I aimed for her legs. I’m not that bad a shot.”

  They walked up to her. Lindman was right. The bullet had entered her left eye. Right next to her, on the lower edge of the stone underhang of the pulpit was an obvious bullet mark.

  “A ricochet,” he said. “You simply missed her, but the bullet bounced off the pulpit and killed her.”

  Johansson shook his head in bewilderment. Lindman understood. The man had never shot at a human being before. Now he had, and the woman he’d tried to hit in the leg was dead.