The Return of the Dancing Master (15 page)

He realized that it was an idiotic answer. He'd been standing there for a long time.

“We'd better move on,” Johansson said. “Otherwise Elsa will start wondering.”

Johansson's car was parked in a nearby side street. It wasn't a blue-and-white police car, but a Toyota with a grill in front of the backseat.

“So you went out for a walk,” Johansson said again. “And just happened to wind up outside Elsa's house?”

“Yes.”

Johansson looked worried.

“It's probably best if we don't say anything about this to Giuseppe,” he said. “He would no doubt be a bit worried if we did. I don't think they're all that thrilled in Ostersund to have you spying on people.”

“I'm not spying.”

“No, you said that. But it's a little odd that you should be standing here at Elsa's house. Even if she was the one who bought Molin's cottage for him.”

“Do you know her?”

“She's always lived here. Nice and friendly. Takes an interest in children.”

“Meaning?”

“She runs dancing classes in the community center. Or used to. The children learned how to dance. I don't know if she still does it.”

Lindman nodded, but didn't ask any questions.

“Are you staying at the hotel? I can give you a lift.”

“I'd rather walk,” Lindman said. “But thanks for the offer. I haven't noticed a police station in Sveg.”

“We're in the community center.”

“Can I check in tomorrow morning? Just to see how things are here. And to have a talk.”

“Of course.”

Johansson opened his car door.

“I'd better give Elsa a call and tell her everything's okay.”

He got into the car, said goodbye, and closed the door. Lindman waited until the car was out of sight before walking away.

 

 

He stopped on the bridge for the fourth time. The link, he thought. It's not just that Berggren and Molin knew each other. There's more to it than that. But what? He started walking slowly, waiting for his thoughts to fall into a pattern. Molin had used Berggren to find a house for him. They already knew each other. Maybe Molin had moved to Harjedalen to be close to her?

At the end of the bridge he paused again. Another thought had struck him. He should have thought of it earlier. Berggren had noticed him in the street despite the fact that he'd avoided the light of the streetlights. That could only mean that she was keeping watch over the street. That she either expected or feared that somebody would come. He was certain of it. She couldn't possibly have seen him by chance.

He set off again, more quickly now. It seemed to him that the interest Berggren and Molin shared in dance could not have been a coincidence.

The reception desk was closed by the time he got back to the hotel.
As he walked up the stairs, he wondered if Veronica Molin was asleep. Assuming she was still called Molin.

He unlocked his door and switched on the light. On the floor, pushed under the door, was a message. He picked it up and read it. “Phone Giuseppe Larsson in Ostersund. Urgent.”

I
t was Larsson himself who answered.

“I couldn't find your cell phone number,” he said. “I must have left it at the office. I phoned the hotel, but they said you were out.”

Lindman wondered if Johansson had phoned Larsson after all to tell him about their meeting outside Berggren's house.

“I went for a walk. There's not much else to do here.”

Larsson chuckled.

“I think they show films sometimes at the community center.”

“I need to keep moving.”

Lindman could hear that Larsson was talking to somebody. The volume of the television set behind him was turned down.

“I thought I'd entertain you with something we heard from UmeÃ¥ today. A paper signed by Dr. Hollander. You might well ask why he didn't mention it in the first preliminary report he sent us, but these pathologists have their own way of doing things. Have you got a moment?”

“I have all the time in the world.”

“He says he's found three old entry wounds.”

“What does he mean by that?”

“That Molin had been shot at some time. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“Not just one bullet. Three. And Dr. Hollander takes the liberty of deviating from strict protocol. He thinks that Molin was fantastically lucky to have survived. He actually used that word: ‘fantastic good fortune.' Two of the bullets hit him in the chest just beneath his heart, and the third in his left arm. On the basis of the scars and other things
I don't understand, Hollander concludes that Molin received these wounds when he was a young man. He can't tell whether all three bullets came at the same time, but it seems likely.”

Larsson started sneezing. Lindman waited.

“Red wine always does that to me,” he said. “I'm sorry, but I couldn't resist the temptation tonight. I'm being punished for it.”

“There was nothing about bullet wounds in the files, was there?”

“No. But I phoned BorÃ¥s and spoke to a friendly man who laughed nearly all the time.”

“Inspector Olausson.”

“That's the one. I didn't mention that you were here; I simply asked if he knew that Molin had been shot. He didn't. Which enables us to draw a simple conclusion.”

“That it happened before he joined the police?”

“Even earlier than that. When the old regional council offices were reformed, the police took over their archives and personnel details. It would have been documented when the police force was nationalized and Molin became an employee of His Majesty the King.”

“So it must have happened while he was in the army.”

“That's more or less the conclusion I've come to. But it takes time to get into military archives. But what we should be asking ourselves even now is what might have happened if it turns out that he
wasn't
wounded while he was a soldier.”

Larsson paused.

“Does this change the picture?”

“It changes everything in the picture. Or rather, we don't have a picture any more. I don't think we're going to find out who did this for quite a long time. My experience tells me that it's going to take a long time, because we're going to have to dig deep. What does your experience tell you?”

“That you might be right.”

Larsson started sneezing again.

“I thought you'd want to know this,” Larsson said when he came back on the phone. “Incidentally, I shall be meeting Molin's daughter tomorrow.”

“She's staying here in the hotel.”

“I thought you might meet her. What's she like?”

“Reserved. But she's a very good-looking woman.”

“I have something to look forward to then. Have you spoken to her?”

“We had dinner together. She told me something I didn't know,
about those missing years in the mid-fifties. She says Molin owned a couple of music shops in the Stockholm area, but he went bankrupt.”

“I suppose there's no reason why she should lie about that?”

“Hardly. But you'll meet her tomorrow anyway.”

“I'll certainly ask her about the bullet wounds. Have you decided how long you're going to stay?”

“Perhaps tomorrow as well. Then I'm leaving. But I'll stay in touch.”

“Make sure you do.”

Lindman put the phone down and slumped onto the bed. He felt tired. Without even taking off his shoes, he stretched out and fell asleep.

 

 

He woke up with a start and checked his watch. 4:45. He'd been dreaming. Somebody was chasing him. Then he was surrounded by a pack of dogs that were tearing at his clothes and biting him all over his body. His father was there somewhere, and Elena. He went to the bathroom and rinsed his face in cold water. It wasn't difficult to interpret the dream. The illness I have, the cells multiplying out of control, they are like a pack of wild dogs careering around inside me. He undressed and burrowed into the sheets, but didn't manage to get back to sleep.

It was always in the early morning, before dawn, that he felt most defenseless. He was thirty-seven, a police officer trying to lead a decent life. Nothing remarkable, a life that was never more than ordinary. Then again, what was ordinary? He was rapidly approaching middle age and didn't have any children. Now he had to fight an illness that might overcome him. In which case the end of his life wouldn't even be ordinary. It would mean that he would never be able to demonstrate his true worth.

 

 

He got up at 6 A.M. They wouldn't start serving breakfast for another half-hour. He took some clean clothes from his suitcase. Thought that he should shave, but didn't bother. By 6:30 he was in the lobby. The dining room door was ajar. When he peeped in he was surprised to see that the receptionist was sitting on a chair, drying her eyes with a napkin. Hastily, he withdrew. She'd obviously been crying. He went back up the stairs and waited. The doors were opened. The girl was smiling.

“You're early,” she said.

As he ate his breakfast, he wondered why she'd been crying, but it was none of his business. We all have our private miseries, he thought. Our packs of dogs to battle.

By the time he'd finished, he'd made up his mind. He would go back to Molin's house. Not because he thought he might find anything new, but to go through again in his mind what he now knew. Or didn't know. Then he'd leave everything to figure itself out. He wouldn't stay in Sveg waiting for a funeral that he didn't want to go to anyway. Just now, this was the last thing he wanted to submit himself to. He would go back to Borås, repack his bag, and hope to find a cheap package trip to Mallorca. I need a plan, he thought. If I don't have a plan, I won't be able to cope with what's in store for me.

He left the hotel at 7:15. There had been no sign of Molin's daughter. The receptionist smiled as she always did when he handed in his room key. Something must have happened, but it wasn't likely that she'd been told she had cancer.

He drove west through the autumn and the silence. Occasionally a few drops of rain spattered against the windscreen. He switched on the radio and half-listened to the news. The New York Stock Exchange had gone up, or was it down? He couldn't hear. As he passed Linsell he saw some children with book bags waiting for the school bus. Most roofs there had satellite dishes. He thought back to his own childhood in Kinna. The past became almost tangible. He looked at the road and thought about all the boring journeys he'd made through central Sweden while he was assistant to the motocross rider who hardly ever won a race. He was so lost in thought that he missed the turn for Ratmyren. He went back, and parked in the same place as last time.

There were fresh tire marks in the gravel. Perhaps Veronica Molin had changed her mind? He got out of the car and filled his lungs with crisp, chilly air. A wind was gusting through the treetops. This is what Sweden's all about, he thought. Trees, wind, cold. Grass and moss. A lonely person in the middle of a forest. Only that person doesn't usually have cancer of the tongue.

 

 

He walked slowly around the house and made a list of all he now knew about the death of Herbert Molin. There was the campsite, the place to which somebody had rowed across the lake, pitched a tent, and then abandoned it. Larsson's news about the bullet wounds. Lindman stopped in his tracks. What had Larsson said? Two wounds in the chest
and one in the left arm. So Molin had been hit from the front. Three shots. He tried to imagine what could have happened but failed.

Then there was Berggren, an invisible shadow behind a curtain. If his suspicions were correct, she was on guard. Against what? Johansson had described her as a friendly person who gave dancing lessons for children. That was another link: dancing. But what did it mean? Did it mean anything at all? He continued his circuit around the smashedup house. Wondered why the police hadn't done a better job of boarding up the broken windows. Bits of torn plastic flapped in front of the gaping holes. Veronica Molin had turned up unexpectedly. A beautiful woman who'd heard the news of her father's death in a hotel room in Cologne, while on her travels around the world. Lindman, who had been all around the house by now, thought back to the time he'd been chasing, with Molin, the escaped murderer from Tidaholm. His fear. “I thought it was somebody else.” Lindman paused again. Unless Molin had been the victim of a madman, there must have been a crucial starting point. Fear. The flight to the forests of Härjedalen. A hiding place at the end of a side road that Lindman had great difficulty in finding.

That was as far as he got. Molin's death was a riddle: he'd managed to find a few loose threads that led to a center that was still a vacuum. He went back to his car. The wind was getting stronger. He was about to open his car door when he had the feeling he was being watched. He spun around. The forest was empty. The dog pen was abandoned. The torn plastic was flapping against the window frames. He got into his car and drove away, certain that he would never return.

 

 

He parked outside the community center and went in. The bear was still glaring at him. He found his way to the police office and bumped into Johansson, who was on his way out.

“I was going to have coffee with the library staff,” he said. “But that can wait. I have news for you.”

They went to his office. Lindman sat in the visitor's chair. Johansson had cheered up the decor with a devil mask hanging on the wall.