The Return of the Dancing Master (39 page)

“I'm suggesting that this question leads us to another question, the crucial one, the one he didn't ask.”

The penny dropped. It was as if Larsson started breathing again.

“Who murdered Molin?”

“Exactly. Shall I go on?”

Larsson nodded.

“You could draw various conclusions. The most likely is that he didn't ask the question about Molin because he already knew the answer. It means that, in all probability, he was the one who killed Molin.”

Larsson raised both arms. “Hang on, you're going much too fast. We need some time to figure things out up here in Jamtland. So we're looking for two murderers. We've already reached that conclusion. The question is: are we looking for two different motives?”

“Maybe.”

“It's just that I find it difficult to take all this in. We're in a place where crime of this kind is rare. Now we have two cases, one on top of the other, but not committed by the same man. You have to accept that all my experience rebels against such a conclusion.”

“There always has to be a first time. I think it's time you started thinking new thoughts.”

“Let's hear them!”

“Somebody makes his way here to the forest and kills Molin. It's carefully planned. A few days later Andersson dies as well. He's killed by somebody else. For some reason we don't know, the man who killed Molin wants to know what happened. He'd been camping beside the lake, but he left after dragging Molin's dead body to the edge of the forest. He comes back, because he needs to know what happened to Andersson. Why was he murdered? He picks up a scrap of paper left on a restaurant table by a police officer. What does he find there? Not two names, but three.”

“Berggren?”

“It seems to him that she must know the answer, so he tries to put pressure on her. She attacks him when he gets threatening. He runs away, but I happen to be there. You know the rest.”

Larsson opened a window and left it ajar.

“Who is this man?”

“I don't know. But we can make another assumption. And it could prove that I'm right.”

Larsson said nothing, but waited for what was coming next.

“We think we know the murderer camped by the lake. Once he's killed Molin, he goes away. But then he comes back again. He's not going to put up his tent in the same place. So the question is: where's he living?”

Larsson looked doubtful.

“You mean he might have checked into a hotel?”

“That possibility could be worth following up.”

Larsson checked his watch. “When's breakfast?”

“They start serving at 6:30.”

“That means we might be in luck. Let's go.”

 

 

A few minutes later they were in the hotel lobby. The girl at the desk looked at them in surprise.

“Two early birds looking for breakfast?”

“Breakfast can wait,” Larsson said. “Do you have a guest list for last week? Do you have your customer records in a ledger, or on loose sheets of paper?”

The girl looked worried. “Has something happened?”

“This is a routine inquiry,” Lindman said. “Nothing to worry about. Have you had any foreigners staying here in the last week or so?”

She thought for a moment. “There were four Finns here for two nights last week, Wednesday and Thursday.”

“Nobody else?”

“No.”

“He might have checked in somewhere else, of course,” Larsson said. “This isn't the only place to stay in Sveg.”

He turned to the girl. “When we had dinner here, quite late, you may remember another customer in the dining room. What language did he speak?”

“English. But he came from Argentina.”

“How do you know?”

“He paid by credit card. He showed me his passport.”

She went into a back room and eventually came back with a Visa receipt. They read the name. Fernando Hereira. Legible even in the signature.

Larsson grunted with pleasure. “We've got him,” he said. “Always assuming it is him.”

“Has he been here before?” Lindman said.

“No.”

“Did you see what kind of car he had?”

“No.”

“Did he say where he'd come from? Or where he was going to?”

“No. He didn't say much at all. He was friendly, though.”

“Could you describe him?”

The girl thought for a moment. Lindman could see she was trying hard.

“I have such an awful memory for faces.”

“But you must have seen something. Did he look like one of us?”

“Not at all.”

“How old was he?”

“Sixty, perhaps.”

“Hair?”

“Gray hair.”

“Eyes?”

“I wouldn't remember that.”

“Was he fat or thin?”

“I don't think he was fat.”

“What was he wearing?”

“A blue shirt, I think. And a blazer—I'm not sure.”

“Can you remember anything else?”

“No.”

Larsson shook his head and sat down on one of the brown sofas in the lobby with the Visa slip in his hand. Lindman joined him. By now it was 6:25 A.M. on November 11. Eight days to go before Lindman was due to report to the hospital in Borås. Larsson yawned and rubbed his eyes. Neither of them spoke.

A door leading to the bedrooms opened. Lindman looked up and saw Veronica Molin.

S
ilberstein watched the dawn approaching. For a while it was like being at home. The light was the same as what he had often seen while the sun rose over the horizon and spread its rays over the plains to the west of Buenos Aires, but after a few minutes, the feeling had gone. He was in the Swedish mountains, not far from the Norwegian border. He had gone straight back to Frostengren's chalet after the botched visit to the Berggren woman. The man he'd seen behind the house and had no choice but to knock down and frighten with a pretended attempt to strangle him was one of the police officers he'd seen at the hotel when he was having dinner. He couldn't understand what the man was doing there at night. Was the woman's house being guarded after all? He had kept a careful watch on it before knocking on the door and pushing his way in.

He forced himself to consider the possibility that he had squeezed too hard and that the policeman was dead.

He had driven fast through the night, not because he was afraid somebody might be chasing him, but because he could no longer control his craving for alcohol. He had bought both wine and hard liquor in Sveg, as if anticipating a disaster. Now he accepted that he could no longer survive without alcohol. The only restriction he would apply was that he would not open any of the bottles until he got back to the chalet.

It was 3 A.M. by the time he drove the last difficult stretch up to Frostengren's chalet. It was pitch-black on all sides as he made his way to the door. The moment he was inside, he opened a bottle of wine and downed half of it. Calm gradually settled in him. He sat at the table
next to the window, without moving a muscle, without a thought in his head, and steadily drank. Then he drew the telephone towards him and dialed Maria's number. There was a buzzing and scraping on the line, but her voice sounded very close even so. He could almost smell her breath through the receiver.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“I'm still here.”

“What can you see through your window?”

“Darkness.”

“Is what I'm afraid of true?”

“What are you afraid of?”

“That you'll never come back?”

The question worried him. He took another drink of wine before answering.

“Why shouldn't I come back?”

“I don't know. You are the only one who knows what you're doing and why you aren't here. You're lying to me, Aron. You're not telling me the truth.”

“Why should I lie to you?”

“You haven't made this journey to look at furniture. There's some other reason. I don't know what it is. Perhaps you've met another woman. I don't know. The only one who knows is you. And God.”

He realized that what he'd told her before hadn't sunk in—that he had killed a man.

“I'll be home soon.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“I still don't know where you are.”

“I'm high up in the mountains. It's cold.”

“Have you started drinking again?”

“Not very much. Just so that I can sleep.”

The connection was cut off. When Silberstein dialed the number again, he couldn't get through. He tried several times without success. Then he prepared to wait for the dawn. Things had now entered the crucial stage, that was clear. The Berggren woman had seen his face when she pulled the hood off. He hadn't expected that, and he had panicked. He should have stayed there, put the hood on again, and forced her to tell him what he was certain she knew. Instead he had fled and run into the policeman.

Although he was filling his body with alcohol, he was still able to
think during the long wait for the dawn. He always experienced a moment of great insight before he became intoxicated. He had learned how much he could drink, and how quickly, while still being in control of his thoughts, and he needed to think clearly now. The endgame was starting. Nothing had turned out as he had thought it would. Despite all his planning, all his meticulous preparations. It was all Andersson's fault. Or rather, it was because somebody had killed him. It had to be the woman. The question was: why? What forces had he set in motion when he killed Molin?

He continued drinking, but held his intoxication in check. He found it hard to accept that a woman in her seventies could have murdered Andersson. She must have had an accomplice. In which case, who? And if the police thought she was the murderer, why hadn't they arrested her? He couldn't find any answers, and started all over again. The woman had said that she didn't know who killed Andersson. He was sure from the start that she wasn't telling the truth. When she heard that Molin was dead, she drove through the night to Andersson's house and killed him. Was it revenge? Did she think Andersson had killed Molin? What was between these people that he couldn't work out? The police must have seen that there was a link. He still had the crumpled restaurant bill with the three names on the back of it.

He was beginning to think that revenge was a sort of boomerang that was now on its way back and would soon hit his own head. It was a matter of guilt. He was indifferent with regard to Molin. Killing him had been necessary, something he owed to his father. But Andersson wouldn't have died if he hadn't whipped Molin to death. The question now was: did he have an obligation to avenge the death of Abraham Andersson? Thoughts buzzed around in his head all night. Occasionally he went outside and gazed at the starry sky. He wrapped himself in a blanket while he waited. Waited for what? He didn't know. For something to go away. His face was known now. The woman had seen it. The police would start putting two and two together and work out where he was. Sooner or later they would find his name on the credit card receipt at the hotel. That had been the one thing that had ruined his careful planning: running out of ready cash. The police would come looking for him, and they would assume he'd killed Andersson. And now that he might have killed a police officer—even by accident—they would commit all their resources to hunting him down.

He kept coming back to that chance encounter. Had he squeezed the policeman's neck too hard? When he let go and walked away, he was
convinced that he hadn't overdone it. Now he wasn't so sure. He should get away, as far away as possible, but he knew he wouldn't do that, not until he found out what had happened to Andersson. He could not go back to Buenos Aires until he had the answers to his questions.

 

 

Dawn broke. He was tired. From time to time he nodded off as he sat looking at the mountains. He couldn't stay here: he had to move on, or they'd find him soon enough. He stood up and started wandering round the house. Where should he go? He went outside to urinate. It was slowly getting light—the thin gray mist he was familiar with from Argentina. Only it wasn't so cold there. He went back inside.

He'd made up his mind. He gathered together his belongings, the bottles of wine, the canned food, the crispbread. He didn't bother about the car. That could stay where it was. Perhaps somebody would find it tomorrow, perhaps he would get a head start. He left the house at about 9 A.M. and headed straight up the mountain. He stopped after only a hundred meters and off-loaded some of his luggage. Then he set off again, uphill all the time. He was drunk, and kept stumbling, falling over, and scratching his face on the rough ground. Even so, he kept on until he could no longer see the chalet.

By noon he didn't have the strength to go any further. He pitched his tent in the grass next to a large rock, took off his shoes, unrolled his sleeping bag, and lay down with a bottle of wine in his hand.

The light seeping through the canvas turned the interior of the tent into something resembling a sunset. He thought about Maria as he emptied the bottle, how much she meant to him. Then he snuggled down and fell asleep.

When he woke up, he knew he had one more decision to make.

 

 

At 10 A.M. there was to be a meeting in Johansson's office. The forensic unit was already in Berggren's house, and a dog team was trying to sniff out traces of the man who had attacked both Berggren and Lindman. Lindman had slept for a couple of hours at the hotel, but Larsson woke him soon after 9 A.M., telling him he must attend the meeting.