The Return of the Dancing Master (40 page)

“You're involved in these murder investigations whether you or I like it or not. I've spoken to Rundström. He thinks you should be there. Not formally, of course. But we can forget the rule book, given the circumstances.”

“Any new clues?”

“The dog headed straight for the bridge. That's where he must have parked his car. The forensic boys think they got a pretty good print of his tires. We'll see if it matches any of the casts we made at the Molin and Andersson sites.”

“Have you had any sleep?”

“Too much to take care of. I've brought in four men from Ostersund, and we've called in a couple of Erik's boys who were off-duty. There are a lot of doors we have to knock on. Let's face it, somebody must have seen something. A swarthy man speaking broken English. It's impossible to live without talking to other people. You fill your tank with gas, you eat, you shop. Someone must have seen him. He must have spoken to someone, somewhere.”

Lindman said he would be there. He got out of bed, and felt the back of his neck. It was tender. He had taken a shower before going to bed. As he was getting dressed, he thought about his meeting with Veronica Molin a few hours before. They had eaten breakfast together since he was on his way into the hotel. Lindman had told her what had happened during the night. She had paid close attention without asking any questions. Then he had begun to feel sick and excused himself. They had agreed to meet later in the day, when he felt better. He had fallen asleep the moment he had crawled into bed.

When he was woken by Larsson's call, he felt fine. He examined his face in the bathroom mirror and was overcome by a feeling of unreality that he had no defense against. He burst into tears, threw a towel at the mirror, and staggered out of the bathroom. I'm dying, he thought. I have cancer. It's incurable, and I'm going to die.

His cell phone was ringing in the jacket he'd dropped on the floor. Elena. He could hear the buzz of voices behind her.

“Where are you?” she said.

“In my room. And you?”

“At school. I had the feeling I should call you.”

“Everything's okay here. I miss you.”

“You know where I am. When are you coming home?”

“I have to report to the hospital on the 19th. I'll be back some time before then.”

“I dreamed last night that we went to England. Can't we do that? I've always wanted to see London.”

“Do we have to schedule it now?”

“I'm just telling you about a dream I had. I thought it might be good to have something we could both look forward to.”

“Of course we'll go to London. If I live that long.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing. I'm just tired. I have to go to a meeting now.”

“I thought you were supposed to be on sick leave?”

“They asked me to stay.”

“There was something in the paper here yesterday about the murders. And a picture of Herbert Melin.”

“Molin. Herbert Molin.”

“I have to go now. Call me tonight.”

Lindman promised to call. He put the phone down. Where would I be without Elena? he thought. Nowhere.

 

 

When they met for the meeting Rundström surprised Lindman by giving him a friendly handshake. Johansson took off a pair of muddy rubber boots; a dog handler from Ostersund asked angrily if somebody by the name of Anders had been in touch. Larsson tapped the table with his pen and started the meeting. He made a brisk and clear summary of what had happened the night before.

“Berggren has asked us to wait until this evening before questioning her in any more detail,” he said. “That seems reasonable. In any case, we have lots of other things that are just as pressing.”

“We have some footprints,” Johansson said. “From inside Elsa's house, and from the garden. Whoever it was that broke in and then knocked Lindman on the head was rather careless. We have footprints from the Molin and Andersson murders. That will be a priority for the forensic boys now: establishing whether there's a match. That and the tire tracks.”

Larsson agreed. “The dogs picked up a scent,” he said. “It went as far as the bridge. Then what happened?”

The dog handler answered. He was middle-aged, and had a scar across his left cheek. “It went cold.”

“No finds?”

“Nothing.”

“There's a parking lot there,” Johansson said. “In fact, it's just a grass shoulder that's been concreted over. Anyway, the scent petered out. We can assume that his car was parked there. Especially if we bear in mind
that it's not easy to see anything there in the dark. The street lighting is pretty poor just there. It's by no means unheard of, especially in summer, for people to park there and do some making out in the backseat.” Chuckles from all round the table. “Occasionally we find ourselves facing more intricate problems based on happenings there,” he said. “The kind of thing that used to take place off remote forest roads and kept the magistrates busy with paternity suits.”

“Somebody must have seen this man,” Larsson said. “The name on his credit card was Fernando Hereira.”

“I've just been talking to Ostersund,” Rundström said, who'd been quiet until now and let Larsson chair the meeting. “They've triggered a computer search and come up with a Fernando Hereira in Vasteras. He was arrested for VAT evasion some years ago—but he's over seventy now, so we can probably take it that he's not the man we're after.”

“I don't know any Spanish,” Larsson said, “but I have an idea that Fernando Hereira would be quite a common name.”

“Like mine,” Johansson said. “Every other bastard's called Erik, up here in Norrland at least, and in my generation.”

“We don't know if it's his real name,” Larsson said.

“We can track him through Interpol,” Rundström said. “As soon as we have some fingerprints, that is.”

Several phones started ringing at once. Larsson proposed a ten-minute break and stood up. He also indicated to Lindman that they should go out into the corridor. They sat down in the reception area. Larsson eyed the stuffed bear up and down.

“I saw a bear once,” he said. “Not far from Krokom. I had been dealing with a few moonshiners and was driving back to Ostersund. I remember I was thinking about my father. I had always thought it was that Italian crooner, but when I was twelve my mom told me it was some con man from Ange, who disappeared the moment he heard Mom was pregnant. All of a sudden, there was this bear by the side of the road. I slammed on the brakes, and thought, ‘For Christ's sake! That can't be a bear. It's just a shadow. Or a big rock.' But it was a bear all right. A female. Her fur was very shiny. I watched her for a minute or so, then she lumbered off. I remember thinking: ‘This simply doesn't happen! And if it does, it's a once-in-a-lifetime event.' Kind of like getting a royal flush in poker. They say Erik was dealt one twenty-five years ago. The rest of the deal was worthless, there were only five kronor in the pot and everybody else discarded.”

Larsson stretched and yawned. Then he was serious again.

“I've been thinking about our talk,” he said. “That stuff about having to think again. I have a problem with the fact that we might be looking for two different killers. It seems so unlikely. Such a metropolitan way of looking at things, if you get my meaning. Out here in the wild, things generally happen in accordance with a simpler pattern. Then again, I can see that a lot of the evidence suggests you might be right. I talked to Rundström about it before the meeting.”

“What did he say?”

“He's a proper bastard with both feet on the ground, never believes anything, never guesses, always sticks to the facts. He shouldn't be underestimated. He catches on fast, possibilities and pitfalls.”

Larsson watched a group of children.

“I've tried to map things out in my head,” he said when the last of the children had filed into the library. “A man speaking broken English shows up here and kills Molin. That nonsense his daughter goes on about—owing money to some woman in the UK—I don't believe that for a moment. What you suggest could be right, especially if you read that awful diary—that the motive can have its source a long time ago, during the war. The brutality, the fury we've witnessed might suggest revenge. So far so good. That means we are after a killer who was very clear about what he was undertaking. But then he hangs around. That's what I can't work out. He should be running away as fast as he can.”

“Have you uncovered any links at all with Andersson?”

“Nothing. Our colleagues in Helsingborg have talked to his wife. She claims that Abraham told her everything. He had mentioned Molin now and then. They were worlds apart. One played classical music and wrote pop songs as a hobby. The other was a retired police officer. I don't think we're going to work out how all this fits together until we find the bastard who knocked you out. How's your head, by the way?”

“It's okay, thanks.”

Larsson stood up. “Andersson wrote a song called ‘Believe Me, I'm a Girl.' Erik remembers it. That pseudonym, Siv Nilsson. He had a record by some dance band or other—Fabians, or something like that. All very odd. He played Mozart one day, made up pop music the next. Erik figures the pop songs were utter crap. I suppose that's life. Mozart on Monday, drivel on Tuesday.”

They went back to the conference room where the rest of them were assembled, but the meeting never got going again. Rundström's cell phone rang. He answered, then raised his hand.

“They've found a rental car in the Funasdalen mountains,” he said.

They gathered around the wall map. Rundström pointed to the spot.

“There. The car was abandoned.”

“Who found it?” It was Larsson who asked.

“A man called Elmberg, he has a summer place there. He went to check that his cottage was okay. Somebody had been there, and he thought it was a bit strange at this time of year. Then he found the car. He suspects the chalet where the car's parked has been broken into too.”

“Did he see anybody?”

“No. He didn't hang around. I suppose he was thinking of Molin and Andersson. But he did notice a few other things. The car had an Ostersund license plate. Plus he saw a foreign newspaper on the backseat.”

“Let's go,” Larsson said, putting on his jacket.

Rundström turned to Lindman.

“You'd better come too. I mean, you more or less saw him. Assuming it was him.”

Larsson asked Lindman to drive because he had calls to make from his cell phone.

“Forget the speed limit,” Larsson said. “As long as you keep us on the road.”

Lindman listened to what Larsson was saying on the phone. A helicopter was on its way. And dogs. They were about to drive through Linsell when Rundström called: a salesperson in Sveg had told the police that she'd sold a knitted woolen hat the previous day.

“Unfortunately the girl can't remember what he looked like, nor does she know if he said anything,” Larsson said, with a sigh. “She can't even remember if it was a man or a woman. All she knows is that she sold a stupid woolen hat. Come on! Some people keep their eyes up their asses.”

There was a man waiting for them just north of Funasdalen. Elmberg, he said he was. They hung around until Rundström and another car arrived. Then they continued a couple of kilometers along the main road before turning off.

It was a red Toyota. None of the police officers there could distinguish between Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian. Lindman thought the newspaper on the back seat,
El País,
was Italian. Then he looked at the price and realized that “ptas” meant “pesetas,” hence Spain. They continued on foot. The mountain towered above them. There was a chalet where the final steep ascent started. It looked like an old shepherd's hut that
had been modernized. Rundström and Larsson reconnoitered, and decided there was nobody there. Both were armed, however, and they approached the front door with care. Rundström shouted a warning. No reply. He shouted again. His words died away with a ghostly echo. Larsson flung the door open. They ran in. A minute later Larsson emerged to say that the chalet was empty, but that somebody had been there. They would now wait for the helicopter with the dog team. The forensic unit that had been sifting through the evidence at Berggren's house had broken off and were on their way.

The helicopter came in from the northeast and landed on a field above the chalet. The dogs and dog handlers disembarked. The handlers let the dogs sniff at an unwashed glass Larsson had found. Then they set off into the mountains.

L
arsson called off the search at around 5 P.M. Mist had come rolling in from the west, and that together with the gathering darkness made it pointless to go on.

They had started walking toward the mountain at 1 P.M. All approaching roads were being watched. The dogs kept losing the scent, then finding it again. They started out heading due north, then branched off along a ridge heading west before turning north again. They were on a sort of plateau when Larsson called off the operation, after consulting Rundström. They had set off in a line, then spread out as they walked along the ridge. It had been easy going to start with, not too steep. Even so, Lindman soon noticed that he was out of shape, but he didn't want to give up, certainly not be the first to do so.

But there was something else about this walk up the mountain. At first it was just a vague, imprecise feeling, but eventually it turned into a memory and became steadily clearer. He had been up this mountain before. It happened when he was seven or eight, but he had repressed it.