The Return of the Dancing Master (45 page)

Larsson shook his head doubtfully. “Does that really add up? If Andersson had been killed before Molin, I could have understood it. But not afterwards. When Molin was already dead?”

“Maybe it was Andersson who helped the murderer to find Molin? But something went wrong. There's another possibility, of course. Berggren could have realized, or assumed, that Andersson was somehow responsible for what happened to Molin, and took revenge.”

Johansson protested. “That can't be right. Are you suggesting that Elsa, a woman in her seventies, dragged Andersson into the forest, tied him to a tree, and shot him? That can't be right. Besides, she didn't have a gun.”

“Guns can be stolen, as we know,” Larsson said, icily.

“I can't see Elsa as a murderer.”

“None of us can, but we both know that people who are as gentle as lambs on the surface can commit violent crimes.”

Johansson made no comment.

“What Stefan says is worth bearing in mind, of course,” Larsson said. “But let's not sit around here speculating. We should be gathering more facts. For instance, we have to find out how much you can see in the rearview mirror of a car parked in the place described by Hanna Tunberg. Obviously, we should then concentrate on Berggren. Without dropping everything else, of course. Everybody in this room knows that it could take a long time to work out what happened in the forest, but that doesn't mean we should let it take any longer than necessary. We might have some luck and catch that man on the mountain, and find out that he killed Andersson as well as Molin.”

Before the meeting closed they called Rundström again, and the mist was as thick as ever.

 

 

4 P.M. Those present at the meeting went their various ways, leaving only Larsson and Lindman in the office. The sun had gone. Larsson yawned. Then he smiled broadly.

“I don't suppose you've discovered a bowling alley on your rambles through Sveg? That's what you and I need right now.”

“I haven't even found a cinema.”

Larsson pointed at the window. “They show films at the community center. Fucking A
mÃ¥l is showing now. It's good. My daughter forced me to see it.”

Larsson sat at the desk. “Erik's upset,” he said. “I'm not surprised. It doesn't look good for a police officer to have his guns stolen. I suspect that he forgot to lock his front door. It happens easily when you live out in the country. Maybe he left a window open. He's keeping very quiet about how the thief got in.”

“Didn't he say something about a broken window?”

“He could have broken it himself. Nor is it absolutely certain that he followed the regulations when he bought the rifle. There are lots of guns in this country that are not kept locked away as the law requires, especially hunting rifles.”

Lindman opened a bottle of mineral water. He could see that Larsson was eyeing him keenly.

“How are you feeling?”

“I don't know. I suppose I'm a lot more frightened than I care to admit.” He put the bottle back on the table. “I'd rather not talk about it,” he said. “I'm more interested in what's happening in the case.”

“I'm thinking of spending this evening here in the office. Going
through some papers again. I think our discussion today has given us a few new leads. Berggren worries me. I can't figure her out. If Hanna Tunberg really did see what she said she saw, what does it mean? Erik is right to soft-pedal a bit. It's hard to imagine a woman in her seventies dragging a man into the forest, tying him to a tree, and then executing him.”

“There was an old detective in the BorÃ¥s force called Fredlund,” Lindman said. “He was abrupt, sullen, and slow, but a brilliant investigator. Once when he was in an unusually good mood he said something I've never forgotten. ‘You work with a flashlight in your hand. You point it straight in front of you so that you can see where you're putting your feet, but you should occasionally point it to each side as well, so that you can see where you're not putting your feet.' If I understand him correctly he was maintaining that you should always keep checking on what's central. Which of the people involved is the most important?”

“What happens if you apply that to our situation? I've been talking too much today. I need to do some listening.”

“Could there be a link between the man on the mountain and Berggren? What she said about being attacked doesn't have to be true. It strikes me now that it could have been my showing up there that triggered that situation. That's the first question: is there a link between her and Hereira? The second question, leading me in a different direction, is: is there somebody else involved in all of this, somebody lurking in the shadows whom we haven't yet identified?”

“Someone who may share the political views of Berggren and Molin? Are you thinking of some kind of neo-Nazi network?”

“We know they exist.”

“So, Hereira turns up to dance the tango with Molin. That sparks off a series of incidents. One important consequence is that Berggren decides that Andersson has to be killed. So she sends for somebody suitable from her brownshirted brotherhood to take care of it. Is that what you're saying?”

“I can hear how crazy it sounds.”

“Not that crazy,” Larsson said. “I'll keep it in mind as I chew my way through the files tonight.”

 

 

Lindman walked back to the hotel. There was no light in Veronica Molin's room. The receptionist was peering at her new computer.

“How long are you staying?” she said.

“Until Wednesday, if that's all right.”

“We won't be full until the weekend.”

“Test drivers?”

“A group of orienteers from Lithuania are coming to set up a training camp.”

Lindman took his key.

“Is there a bowling alley in Sveg?”

“No,” she said, surprised.

“Just wondering!”

When he got to his room he lay on the bed. It was something about Hanna Tunberg, he thought. Something about her death. He started remembering. The images in his head were elusive. It took time for him to sort them out, to make them fit together.

 

 

He was five or six years old. He didn't
know
where his sisters and mother were. He was at home
with
his father. He remembered that it was evening. He was on the floor playing
with
a car behind the red sofa in the living room. The car was made of wood, yellow and blue
with
a red stripe. His eyes were concentrating on the invisible road he'd mapped out on the carpet. He could hear the rustling of newspaper pages. A friendly noise, but not completely without menace. His
father sometimes used to read things that annoyed him. That could result in the newspaper being ripped to shreds. “These damned socialists, ” he would say. It was like leaves on a tree. They could rustle like newspaper pages. Suddenly a gale would start blowing and the tree would disintegrate. He drove the car down a road winding along the brink of a precipice. Things could go wrong. He knew his father was in the dark green armchair next to the open fire. Before long he would lower his newspaper and ask Stefan what he was doing. Not in a friendly way, not even because he was interested. Just a question to check that everything was in order.

What he remembered now with crystal clarity was the words his father had said to him. “I want to die upright, like a man.
”

Like a soldier in Hitler's army, Lindman thought. Marching for a Fourth Reich that wouldn't be crushed like the Third.

He took his jacket and left the room. Somewhere among all those memories he had dozed off for a while. It was 9 P.M. already. He didn't want to eat in the hotel and made his way to a hot dog stand he'd noticed by the bridge, next to one of the gas stations. He ate some mashed potatoes and two half-grilled sausages while listening to some teenage boys discussing a car parked a few meters away. Then he kept walking, wondering what Larsson was doing. Was he still poring over his files? And what about Elena? He'd left his cell phone in his room.

He walked through the dark streets. The church, the scattered shops, empty premises waiting for someone to make something of them.

When he returned to the hotel, he stopped outside the entrance. He could see the receptionist preparing to go home. He walked down the street, to the front side of the hotel. There was a light in Veronica Molin's room. The curtains were drawn, but there was a narrow gap in the middle. He slunk into the shadows as the receptionist walked down the street. He wondered again why she'd been crying that time. A car went past. Then he stood on tiptoe to look through the window. She was wearing dark blue. Silk pajamas, perhaps? She was sitting at her
computer, with her back to him. He couldn't see what she was doing. He was about to move on when she got up and moved out of view. He ducked down, then slowly stood up again to look through the window. The computer screen was shimmering. There was some kind of pattern on it, a logo probably. At first he couldn't make out what it was. Then he recognized it. The screen was filled by a swastika.

I
t was like receiving a powerful electric shock. He was almost knocked backwards. A car came around the corner, and Lindman turned to walk away, ducking into the courtyard of the building next door, which housed the newspaper offices. Only a week ago he'd opened a wardrobe and found an SS uniform. Then he'd discovered that behind a respectable façade, his own father had been a Nazi and even now, after his death, was paying blood money to keep afloat an organization that might look harmless but nevertheless had murderous intentions. And now came Veronica Molin's computer screen with its shimmering swastika. His first impulse was to go to her room and take her to task. But for what? Because she had lied to him. Not only had she known that her father was a Nazi, but she was one herself.

He forced himself to remain calm, to act like a police officer, to see clearly, analytically, to distinguish between what was fact and what wasn't. In the darkness behind the blacked-out editorial offices of the Härjedalen, it was as if everything that had happened since the time he'd been sitting in the hospital cafeteria in Boras and stumbled upon a newspaper report saying that Molin had been murdered finally fell into its logical place. Molin had spent his old age solving jigsaw puzzles, when he wasn't dancing with a doll or dreaming about some absurd Fourth Reich. Now it seemed that the puzzle in which Molin had been one of the crucial pieces was finally finished. The last piece in place, the picture clear at last. Thoughts were racing through his head. It was as if a series of floodgates had been opened and he was now hastily directing all the masses of water into the correct channels. He was forced to hold on tight so as not to be swept off his feet and away with the current.

He stood quite still. Something moved at his feet. He jumped. A cat. It scuttled away through the light from a streetlamp.

What is this that I can see? A pattern, absolutely clear. Possibly more than a pattern, possibly a conspiracy. He started walking, as he thought more clearly when on the move. He headed for the railroad bridge. The district courthouse on the left, all the windows in darkness. He came upon three women, all humming a tune. They laughed, said “Good night” as he passed, and he recognized the tune as something by ABBA, “Crying over You.” He turned off, following the railroad tracks to the bridge. The railroad tracks, now only used by occasional peat trains and the so-called National Railway during the summer, looked like neglected cracks in a bronze-colored wooden floor. On the other side of the river—Berggren's side—he could hear a dog barking. He stopped in the middle of the bridge. The sky was full of stars now; it was colder. He picked up a stone and dropped it into the water.