The Return of the Dancing Master (43 page)

He smiled and got out of the car.

Larsson introduced Hanna Tunberg to Lindman. He found it hard to say how old she was. Sixty, perhaps, or maybe only just over fifty.

“I've made some coffee. My husband's gone out.”

“Not because we were coming, I hope,” Larsson said.

“He's a bit strange. He's not overfond of the police. Even though he's an honest man.”

“I'm sure he is,” Larsson said. “Shall we go in?”

The house smelled of tobacco, dog, and lingonberries. The living room walls were decorated with elk antlers, tapestries, and some paintings with woodland motifs. Hanna Tunberg moved some knitting out of the way, lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and started coughing. There was a rattling noise in her lungs. Lindman noticed that the tips of her fingers were yellow. She had brought the coffee and filled the cups. There was a plate of buns on the table.

“Now we can talk at our leisure,” Larsson said. “You said you'd been thinking. And that there was something you wanted to tell me.”

“I don't know if it's important or not, of course.”

“Nobody ever knows that beforehand. But we're all ears.”

“It's about that woman who used to visit Mr. Molin.”

“You mean Mrs. Berggren?”

“She was sometimes there when I went to clean. She always left as soon as she saw me. I thought she was strange.”

“How exactly?”

“Impolite. I have no time for people who give themselves airs. Mr. Molin was the same.”

“Was there something particular she did to make you think she was impolite?”

“It was just a feeling I had. That she was looking down on me.”

“Because you were a cleaning woman?”

“Yes.”

Larsson smiled. “Very nice buns,” he said. “We're listening.”

Hanna Tunberg was still smoking and didn't seem to notice that she was spilling ash on her skirt.

“It was last spring,” she said. “Towards the end of April. I went to the house to do the cleaning, but he wasn't there. I thought it was strange, because we'd agreed on the time.”

Larsson raised his hand to interrupt her.

“Did you always do that? Did you always schedule a time in advance when you were going to arrive?”

“Always. He wanted to know. Anyway, he wasn't there. I didn't know what to do. I was quite certain that I hadn't gotten the wrong day or the wrong time, though. I always wrote it down.”

“What happened next, then?”

“I waited. But he didn't come. I stood on a sled so that I could see in through the window. I thought he might be sick, you see. The house was empty. Then I thought about Abraham Andersson. I knew they were in touch with each other.”

Larsson raised his hand again.

“How did you know that?”

“Mr. Molin told me once. ‘I don't know anybody around here apart from Elsa,' he said. ‘And Abraham.' ”

“What happened?”

“I thought maybe I'd drive to Abraham's place. I knew where he lived. My husband fixed a bow for him once. He's a jack-of-all-trades, my husband. Anyway, I went there and knocked on the door. There was a long pause before Abraham answered.”

She stubbed out her cigarette and immediately lit another. All the smoke was making Lindman feel sick.

“It was in the afternoon,” she said. “It must have been about three. And he wasn't dressed yet.”

“Was he naked?” Larsson asked.

“I said he wasn't dressed. Not that he was naked. I'd have said if he had been. Do you want me to tell you what happened, or are you going to interrupt all the time?”

“I'll take another bun and keep quiet,” Larsson said. “Continue.”

“He was wearing pants, but no shirt. And barefoot. I asked him if he knew where Mr. Molin was. He said he didn't. Then he shut the door. He didn't want to let me in. And I knew why, of course.”

“He wasn't alone?”

“Exactly.”

“How did you know? Did you see anybody?”

“Not then. But I realized even so. I went back to the car. I had parked some way before the driveway. I was just about to leave when I noticed a car parked behind the garage. It wasn't Abraham's.”

“How did you know that?”

“I don't know. I just get the feeling sometimes. Doesn't it happen to you too?”

“What did you do next?”

“I was going to start the engine and drive away when I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw somebody coming out of the house. It was a woman. When she realized that I was still there she went back inside.”

Larsson picked up the plastic bag with the photograph of Katrin Andersson. He handed it over. She spilled ash on it.

“No,” she said. “That wasn't her. I was quite a long way away, and it's not easy to remember somebody you've only seen in the rearview mirror. But I'm sure it wasn't her.”

“Who do you think it was, then?”

She hesitated. Larsson repeated his question.

“Who do you think it was?”

“Mrs. Berggren. But I can't be sure.”

“Why not?”

“It all happened so quickly.”

“But you had seen her before, hadn't you? And yet you couldn't identify her for sure?”

“I'm telling you the truth. It happened so quickly. I only saw her for a few seconds. She came out, saw the car, and went back inside.”

“So she didn't want anybody to see her?”

Hanna Tunberg looked at him in surprise.

“Is that so strange? If she'd come out of a house where there was a half-naked man who wasn't her husband?”

“The memory works like a camera.” Larsson said. “You see something and the image is stored inside your head. You don't need to see a thing for long in order to remember it clearly.”

“Some photographs are blurred, though, aren't they?”

“Why are you only telling us this now?”

“I didn't remember until today. My memory's not very good. I thought it might be important. If it was Elsa Berggren. I mean, she had contact with both Herbert and Abraham. Anyway, if it wasn't her, it was certainly not his wife.”

“You're not sure that it was Elsa Berggren, but you are sure that it wasn't Katrin Andersson?”

“Yes.”

Hanna Tunberg started coughing again, that rattling, scraping cough. She stubbed out her cigarette in irritation. Then she gasped for breath, stood halfway up, and slumped forward over the table. The coffeepot fell over. Larsson stood up as she fell. He turned her over onto her back.

“She's not breathing,” he said. “Call for an ambulance.”

Larsson started giving her CPR as Lindman took out his cell phone.

 

 

Looking back, he would remember the events as if in slow motion. Larsson trying to breathe some life back into the woman lying on the floor, and the thin wisp of smoke rising up to the ceiling from the ashtray.

It took the ambulance half an hour to get there. Larsson had given up by then. Hanna Tunberg was dead. He went to the kitchen and rinsed his mouth. Lindman had seen a lot of dead people—after road accidents, suicides, murders—but only now did he grasp how close death actually is. One moment she'd had a cigarette in her hand and answered “yes” to a question, the next she was dead.

Larsson went out to meet the ambulance.

“It was all over in a second,” he said to the man who examined Hanna Tunberg to make sure she was dead.

“We're not really supposed to put dead bodies in an ambulance, but we can't really leave her here.”

“Two police officers are witnesses to the fact that she died a natural death. I'll make sure that goes into the report.”

The ambulance left. Larsson looked at Lindman and shook his head.

“It's hard to believe that it can all be over so quickly. Still, it's the best kind of death you can possibly wish for.”

“As long as it doesn't come too soon.”

They went outside. The dog barked. It had started raining.

“What did she say? That her husband had gone out?”

Lindman looked around. There was no sign of a car. The garage doors were open. Nothing inside.

“He seems to have gone for a drive.”

“We'd better wait. Let's go in.”

They sat without speaking. The dog barked again. Then it, too, fell silent.

“What do you do when you have to inform a relative that somebody's died?” Larsson said.

“I've never had to do that. I've been present, but it was always somebody else who had to do the talking.”

“There was only one occasion when I thought seriously about resigning from the force,” Larsson said. “Two sisters, aged four and five, had been playing by a pond. Seven years ago. Their father had left them by themselves for a few minutes. We never managed to find out what actually happened, but they both drowned. I was the one who had to go and tell their mother about it, taking a priest with me. Their father had broken down. He'd gone out with the children so their mother could be left in peace to prepare for the five-year-old's party. That drove me close to giving up. It hadn't happened before, and it hasn't happened since.”

The silence wafted to and fro between them. Lindman looked at the carpet where Hanna Tunberg had died. Her knitting was on a table next to the chair, the needles sticking out at an angle. Larsson's cell phone rang. Both of them jumped. Larsson answered. The rain started pelting against the windowpanes. He finished the call without having said much.

“That was the ambulance. They met Hanna's husband. He went with them in the ambulance. We don't need to stay here any longer.”

Neither of them moved.

“We'll never know,” Larsson said. “A witness steps forward, crossing the threshold that usually holds people back from saying anything. The question remaining is: was she telling the truth?”

“Why wouldn't she have been?”

Larsson was by the window, looking out at the rain. “I know nothing about BorÃ¥s,” he said, “other than that it's a decent-sized town. Sveg is not much more than a village with only a few thousand inhabitants. Fewer people live in Harjedalen as a whole than in a Stockholm suburb. That means that it's harder to keep secrets here.”

Larsson left the window and sat down in the chair where Hanna Tunberg had died. Then he sprang to his feet and remained standing.

“I ought to have mentioned this before we got here. I suppose I simply forgot that you are not from these parts. It's sort of like the angels with their halos. Everybody up here is surrounded by little rings of rumor, and Hanna Tunberg was no exception.”

“I don't see what you're getting at.”

Larsson stared gloomily down at the carpet where Hanna had been lying.

“One shouldn't speak ill of the dead. What's so wrong about being nosy? Most people are. Police work is based on facts and curiosity.”

“You mean she was a gossip?”

“Erik told me she was. And he always knows what he's talking about. I had that in mind all the time she was speaking. If she'd lived for another five minutes I'd have been able to ask her. Now that's not possible.” Larsson went back to the window. “We should be able to conduct an experiment,” he said. “We'll put a car where she said she parked. Then we'll ask somebody to look in the rearview mirror while somebody else comes out of Andersson's front door, counts to three, and then goes in again. I can guarantee that either the person in the car will see whoever is at the door perfectly clearly, or not at all.”

“So she was lying?”

“Yes and no. She wasn't actually telling a lie, but I suspect that she had either spotted something behind Andersson when he answered the door, or that she peeped in through a window. We'll never know which.”

“But you think the gist of what she said was right?”

“That's what I think. She wanted to tell us something that might be important, but she didn't want to tell us how she'd found out about it.” Larsson sighed. “I can feel a cold coming on,” he said. “I've got a sore throat. No. Not yet. But it's starting to get sore. I'll have a headache a couple of hours from now. Shall we go?”

“Just one question,” Lindman said. “Or two, rather. What are the implications if it really was Berggren, as Hanna suggested? And if it wasn't her, who was it? And what does it all mean?”

“I'd make that three questions,” Larsson said. “And they're all important. We can't answer any of them, though. Not yet, at least.”

They hurried through the rain to the car. The dog had retired to its kennel and watched their departure in silence. That was the second melancholy dog Lindman had come across in the space of a few days. He wondered how much of what had happened the dogs had understood.

They were on the point of joining the main road when Larsson pulled onto the side and stopped.

“I must call Rundström. I guess that the mist is as bad as ever. And to make things worse, I heard on the radio this morning that a storm's brewing.”

He dialed the number. Lindman tried to think about Elena, but all he could picture was Hanna Tunberg. Gasping for breath, then dying with a rattling sound.

Larsson told Rundström about Hanna Tunberg's death. Then he asked questions—about the mist, the dog, the man on the mountain. It was a short call. Larsson put the phone down and felt his throat.

“Every time I catch a cold I think I'm going to die. It hasn't even been an hour since Hanna Tunberg died before our very eyes, and here I am complaining because I think I can feel a cold coming on.”