The Return of the Dancing Master (28 page)

He rang the bell and silently counted to twenty. Then he rang again. He couldn't hear any ringing noise inside the flat. He rang a third time. Still no reply. He knocked on the door, waited, then hammered on it really hard. The door behind him opened. In the doorway was an elderly man in a dressing gown.

“I'm looking for Mr. Wetterstedt,” Lindman said. “It seems he's not at home.”

“He spends the autumn at his summer place. That's when he takes his vacation.”

The man in the doorway looked at Lindman with an expression of utter contempt. As if it was the most natural thing in the world to take a vacation in November. And that an old man on a pension still had a job to take a vacation from.

“Where is his summer place?”

“Who are you? We like to keep an eye on people who come sauntering around this building. Are you going to commission a portrait?”

“I want to speak to him about an urgent matter.”

The man eyed Lindman up and down.

“Emil's summer place is on Oland. In the south of the island. When you've gone past Alvaret you see a sign that says Lavender. And another sign informing you that it's a private road. That's where he lives.”

“Is that the name of the house? Lavender?”

“Emil talks about a shade of blue tending towards lavender. In his opinion it's the most beautiful shade of blue there is. Impossible for a painter to reproduce. Only nature can create it.”

“Thank you for your help.”

“You're welcome.”

Lindman started for the stairs, but stopped.

“Just one more thing. How old is Mr. Wetterstedt?”

“He's eighty-eight, but he's pretty spry.”

The man closed his door. Lindman walked slowly down the stairs. So I have a reason to cross over the bridge into the fog, he thought. I too am on a sort of involuntary vacation, with no aim other than filling in time until November 19.

He went back the way he'd come. The shop selling cell phones was open. A young man yawned and diffidently produced a battery that fitted Lindman's cell phone. He paid, and even as he did so the phone beeped to indicate that he had messages. Before leaving Kalmar, he sat in his car and listened to them. Elena had called three times, sounding increasingly resigned and curt. There was a message from his dentist, reminding him it was time for his annual checkup. That was all. Larsson hadn't phoned. Lindman hadn't really expected him to, although he'd hoped he would. None of his colleagues had tried to contact him, but he hadn't expected that either. He had virtually no close friends.

He put the phone on the passenger seat, drove out of the parking lot, and started looking for a road leading to the bridge. The fog was thick as he drove over the water. Perhaps this is what it's like to die, he
thought. In the old days people imagined a ferryman coming with a boat to row you over the river Styx. Now it might be a bridge you have to cross, into the fog, and then oblivion.

He came to Öland, turned right, passed some sort of zoo, and continued southwards. He drove slowly. Very few cars were coming in the opposite direction. He could see no countryside, only fog. At one point he stopped in a rest area and got out. He heard a foghorn sounding in the distance and what may have been the sound of waves. Apart from that, it was silent. It felt as if the fog had seeped into his head and blanketed his mind. He held one hand in front of his face. It too was white.

He drove on, and almost missed the sign for “Lavender 2.” It reminded him of another sign he'd been looking for recently, “Dunkarret 2.” Sweden is a country where people live two kilometers from the main road, he thought.

The dirt road he turned onto was full of potholes and evidently little-used. It was absolutely straight, and disappeared into the fog. Eventually he came to a closed gate. On the other side was an ancient Volvo 444 and a motorcycle. Lindman switched off his engine and clambered out. The bike was a Harley-Davidson. Lindman knew a little about motorcycles, thanks to the time he'd chauffeured the motocross buff around Sweden. This wasn't one of the standard Harley-Davidson models. It was homemade and unique, a valuable specimen. But did a man aged eighty-eight really ride around on a Harley-Davidson? He'd have to be very fit to manage that. Lindman opened the gate and continued along the path. There was still no sign of a house. A figure emerged from the mist, walking towards him. A young man with closecropped hair, nattily dressed in a leather jacket and a light-blue opennecked shirt. Obviously he had been working out.

“What are you doing here?” The voice was shrill, almost a shriek.

“I'm looking for Emil Wetterstedt.”

“Why?”

“I want to talk to him.”

“Who are you? What makes you think he wants to talk to you?”

Lindman bristled at the cross-examination. The youth's voice was hurting his eardrums.

“I want to talk to him about Herbert Molin. Perhaps I should mention that I'm a police officer.”

The boy stared at him. His jaws worked away at a wad of chewing gum. “Wait here,” he said. “Don't move from this spot.”

He was swallowed up by the fog. Lindman followed him, slowly. After
only a few meters a house came into view. The boy disappeared through the front door. It was a whitewashed house, long and narrow, with a wing jutting out from one of the gable ends. Lindman waited. He wondered what the countryside was like here, how far it was from the sea. The door opened again and the boy approached.

“I thought I told you to stay put!” he shrieked in that shrill voice of his.

“You can't always have what you want, sonny,” Lindman said. “Is he going to receive me or isn't he?”

The boy gestured to Lindman that he should follow him. There was a smell of paint in the house. All the lights were on. Lindman had to bow his head when he entered through the door. The boy showed him into a room at the back of the house. One of the long walls was a picture window.

Emil Wetterstedt was sitting in an armchair in a corner. He had a blanket over his knees, and on a table next to his chair was a pile of books and a pair of glasses. The boy positioned himself behind the armchair. The old man had thin white hair and a wrinkled face, but the eyes he directed at Lindman were very bright.

“I don't like being disturbed when I'm on vacation,” he said.

His voice was the very opposite of the boy's. Wetterstedt spoke very softly.

“I won't take much of your time.”

“I don't accept commissions for portraits anymore. In any case, your face is too round to inspire me. I prefer longer, thinner faces.”

“I haven't come here to ask you to paint my portrait.”

Wetterstedt shifted his position. The blanket over his legs fell to the floor. The boy darted forward to put it back.

“Why have you come, then?”

“My name's Stefan Lindman. I'm a police officer. I spent some years working alongside Herbert Molin in BorÃ¥s. I don't know if you've been informed that he's dead.”

“I have been told that he's dead. Do you know who did it?”

“Not yet.”

Wetterstedt gestured towards a chair. Somewhat reluctantly, the boy moved it into place.

“Who told you that Molin was dead?”

“Does it matter?”

“No.”

“Is this an interrogation?”

“No. Just a talk.”

“I'm too old for talks. I gave that up when I turned sixty. I'd done enough talking in my life by then. Nowadays I neither speak nor listen to what anybody else has to say. Apart from my doctor. And a few young people.”

He smiled and nodded at the boy standing guard behind his chair. Lindman started to wonder what was going on. Who was this boy whose assignment seemed to be to guard over the old man?

“You say you've come here to talk to me about Herbert Molin. What do you want to know? And as for that, what really happened? Was Herbert murdered, can that be right?”

Lindman decided not to beat around the bush. As far as Wetterstedt was concerned, it didn't matter that Lindman was not officially connected to the murder investigation.

“We don't have any specific clues pointing either to a motive or to a killer,” he said. “That means we have to dig deep. Who was Herbert Molin? Can we find a motive hidden in his past? Those are the sort of questions we're asking ourselves, and others. People who knew him.”

Wetterstedt did not react. The boy made no secret of his dislike of Lindman.

“It was actually Herbert's father I knew. I was younger than he was, but older than Herbert.”

“And Axel Molin was a captain in the cavalry?”

“An honorable rank that ran in the family. One of his ancestors fought in the battle of Narva. The Swedes won, but the forefather fell. That tragedy gave rise to a family tradition. Every year, they celebrated the victory at Narva. I remember the family had a big bust of King Karl XII on a table. There were always fresh flowers in a vase next to it. I still remember that clearly.”

“You were not related?”

“Not directly. But I did have a brother who also got into hot water because of all this.”

“The minister of justice?”

“Exactly right. I always advised him against going into politics. Especially since his views were way out there.”

“He was a Social Democrat.”

Wetterstedt looked Lindman in the eye. “I said his views were way out there. Perhaps you know that he was murdered by a madman. They found his body on a beach somewhere near Ystad. I never had any truck with him. We had no contact at all for the last twenty years of his life.”

“Was there any other bust on that table? Alongside the one of Karl XII?”

“What do you mean? Who?”

“Hitler.”

The boy standing behind the chair came to life. It was a momentary reaction, but Lindman noticed. Wetterstedt remained calm.

“What are you trying to suggest?”

“Molin volunteered to fight in Hitler's army during the war. We've also discovered that his family were Nazis. Is that right?”

Wetterstedt responded without hesitation. “Of course it's right. I too was a Nazi,” he said. “We don't need to play games, Mr. Policeman. How much do you know about my past?”

“Only that you were a portrait painter, and were in contact with Molin.”

“I was very fond of him. He displayed great courage during the war. Everybody with a grain of common sense sided with Hitler. The choice was between watching the relentless advance of Communism or putting up some resistance. We had a government in Sweden we could trust only so far. Everything was set up.”

“Set up for what?”

“For a German invasion.” It was the boy who answered. Lindman looked at him in astonishment.

“But not everything was in vain,” Wetterstedt said. “I'll soon paint my last portrait and be gone, but there's a younger generation that applies common sense to what is going on in Sweden, in Europe, indeed in the world at large. We can be happy that Eastern Europe has collapsed. Not a pretty sight, but uplifting even so. On the other hand, the situation here in Sweden is worse than ever. Everything going to the dogs. No discipline. We don't have borders anymore. Anybody can get in wherever they like, whenever they like, no matter what their motives. I fear the national character of Sweden has been lost forever. Nevertheless, one has to keep plugging away.”

Wetterstedt paused and turned to Lindman with a smile.

“As you have seen, I stand up for my opinions. I've never attempted to conceal them, nor have I ever had any regrets. Obviously, there have been folks who've preferred not to acknowledge me in the street, and some who have even spat at me. But they were insignificant beings. My brother, for instance. I've never been short of commissions for portraits. More to the contrary, in fact.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“That there has never been a shortage of people in this country of ours who have respected me for standing up for my opinions. People with the same views as mine, but who have preferred not to make their opinions public, for various reasons. I could understand them, at times. At others, I've thought they were cowards. But I've painted their portraits, even so.”

Wetterstedt indicated that he wanted to stand up. The boy moved smartly to assist him, and gave him a walking stick. Lindman wondered how Wetterstedt coped with the stairs at his apartment in Kalmar.

“There's something I'd like to show you.”

They went out into the corridor, paved with stone flags. Wetterstedt paused and looked at Lindman.

“Did you say your name was Lindman?”

“Stefan Lindman.”

“If I'm not mistaken, your accent suggests you come from Västergötland?”

“I was born in Kinna, not far from BorÃ¥s.”

Wetterstedt nodded thoughtfully. “I've never been to Kinna,” he said. “I've been through BorÃ¥s. But I feel most at home on Öland or in Kalmar. I've never understood why folks want to travel around so much.” Wetterstedt tapped his walking stick hard on the floor.

It occurred to Lindman that only a few days earlier he'd heard another old man, Björn Wigren, say something similar about not wanting to travel. They kept walking until they came to a room with no furniture at all. There was a curtain on one of the walls. Wetterstedt moved it to one side with his walking stick. Behind it were three oil paintings in gilded oval frames. The one in the middle was of Hitler, in profile. On the left was a portrait of Goering, and on the right one of a woman.

“This is where I keep my gods,” Wetterstedt said. “I painted this one of Hitler in 1944, when everybody, including his generals, had started to turn their backs on him. This is the only portrait I've ever painted exclusively from photographs.”