The Return of the Dancing Master (5 page)

Then he would go home, call Elena, and tell her he was going away for a few days. Maybe to Helsinki to see his sister. He'd done that before. That wouldn't arouse her suspicions. Next, he would go to the wine shop and buy a few bottles. During the course of the evening and the night, he would make all the other necessary decisions, the main one being whether or not he thought he could cope with fighting a cancer that might turn out to be life-threatening. Or whether he should simply give up.

He put the magazine back on its shelf, continued through the reading room, and paused at a shelf with medical reference books. He took down one about cancer. Then he put it back again without opening it.

 

 

Superintendent Olausson of the Borås police was a man who laughed his way through life. His door was always open. It was midday when Lindman entered his office. He was just finishing a telephone call, and Lindman waited. Olausson slammed down the receiver, produced a handkerchief, and blew his nose.

“They want me to give a lecture,” he said, with a laugh. “Rotary. They wanted me to talk about the Russian Mafia, but there is no Russian Mafia in BorÃ¥s. We don't have any Mafia at all. So I turned 'em down.” He gestured to Lindman that he should sit down.

“I just wanted to let you know that my doctor's certificate has been extended.”

Olausson stared at him in surprise. “But you're never sick?”

“I am now. I have pains in my throat. I'll be out for another month. At least.”

Olausson leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach. “A month sounds like a long time for a sore throat, don't you think?”

“It was the doctor who signed the certificate, not me.”

Olausson nodded. “Police officers do catch cold in the autumn,” he said. “But I get the impression that the criminal classes never get the flu. Why do you think that is?”

“Maybe they have better immune systems?”

“That could be. Perhaps that's something we should let the commissioner know about.”

Olausson didn't like the national commissioner. Nor did he think much of the justice minister. He didn't like any superiors, for that matter. It was a standing joke in the Borås police force that some years ago a Social Democratic justice minister had visited the town to open the
new district court, and at the dinner afterwards had gotten so drunk that Olausson had to carry him up to his hotel room.

Lindman stood up to leave. “I read that Herbert Molin was murdered the other day.”

Olausson stared at him in surprise. “Molin? Murdered?”

“In Harjedalen. He lived up there, it seems. I saw it in one of the evening papers.”

“Which one?”

“I don't remember which one.”

Olausson accompanied him out into the corridor. The evening papers were piled up in reception. Olausson found the article and read what they'd written.

“I wonder what happened,” Lindman said.

“I'll find out. I'll call our colleagues in Ostersund.”

 

 

Lindman left the police station. The drizzle seemed determined to keep falling forever. He waited in line at the wine shop and eventually took home two bottles of an expensive Italian wine. Before he'd even taken off his jacket he opened one of the bottles and filled a glass that he proceeded to empty in one gulp. He kicked off his shoes and threw his jacket over a kitchen chair. The telephone answering machine in the hall was blinking. It was Elena, wondering if he would like to come by for dinner. He took his glass and the bottle of wine with him into the bedroom. The traffic outside was reduced to a faint buzz. He lay down on the bed with the bottle in his hand. There was a stain on the ceiling. He'd lain in bed the night before staring at it. It looked different by day. After another glass of wine he rolled over onto his side and fell asleep without further ado.

It was nearly midnight when he woke up. He'd slept for nearly eleven hours. His shirt was soaked in sweat. He stared into the darkness. The curtains kept out any light there was in the street.

His first thought was that he was going to die.

Then he decided that he would fight it. After the next set of tests he would have three weeks in which to do whatever he liked. He'd spend that time finding out all there was to find out about cancer. And he'd prepare for the fight he was going to put up.

He got out of bed, took off his shirt, and tossed it into the laundry basket in the bathroom. Then he stood at the window overlooking Allégatan. Outside the Varvaren Hotel garage a few drunken men were
arguing. The street was shiny with rain. He thought about Molin. A vague thought had been nagging at him since he'd read the report in the paper at the hospital. Now it came back to him.

Once they had been chasing an escaped murderer through the woods north of Borås. It was late autumn, like now. Lindman and Molin had somehow become separated among the trees, and when Lindman eventually found him he'd approached so quietly that he surprised Molin, who turned to stare at him with terror-stricken eyes.

“I didn't mean to scare you,” Lindman said.

Molin just shrugged.

“I thought it was somebody else,” he said.

That was all.
I thought it was somebody else.

 

 

Lindman remained standing at the window. The drunks had dispersed. He ran his tongue over his top teeth. There was death in that tongue of his, but somewhere there was also Herbert Molin.
I thought it was somebody else.

It dawned on Lindman that he'd known all the time. Molin had been scared stiff. All those years they had worked together his fear had always been there. Molin had usually managed to hide it, but not always.

Lindman frowned.

Molin had been murdered in the depths of the northern forests, having always been frightened. The question was: of whom?

G
iuseppe Larsson was a man who had learned from experience never to take anything for granted. He woke up on October 26 when his backup alarm clock rang. He looked at his frontline clock on the bedside table and noted that it had stopped at 3:04. So you couldn't even rely on alarm clocks. That's why he always used two. He got out of bed and opened the blinds with a snap. The television weather forecast the night before had said there would be a light snowfall over the province of Jämtland, but Larsson could see no sign of snow. The sky was dark, but full of stars.

Larsson had a quick breakfast made for him by his wife. Their nineteen-year-old daughter, who still hadn't left the nest, was fast asleep. She had a job at the hospital and was due to start on a weeklong night shift that evening. Shortly after seven Larsson forced his feet into a pair of Wellington boots, pulled his hat down over his eyes, stroked his wife's cheek, and set off for work. He was faced with a drive of a couple of hundred kilometers. This last week he'd made it there and back several times, apart from one occasion when he was so tired, he'd felt obliged to check into a hotel in Sveg.

Now he had to drive there yet again. On the way he had to keep an eye out for elks while also trying to summarize the murder investigation he was involved in. He left Ostersund behind, headed for Stenstavik, and set his cruise control to 85 kilometers per hour. He couldn't be sure that he'd be able to stay under the speed limit of 90 kilometers per hour if he didn't. An average of 85 would get him there in good time for the meeting with the forensic unit arranged for 10 A.M.

He seemed to be driving through tightly-packed darkness. The
northern winter was at hand. Larsson was born in Ostersund forty-three years ago, and couldn't understand people who complained about the darkness and the cold. As far as he was concerned, the half of the year usually described as winter was a time when everything settled down and became uneventful. Needless to say, there was always somebody now and then who couldn't stand the winter any longer and committed suicide or beat some other person to death—but that was the way it had always been. Not even the police could do anything about that.

However, what had happened not far from Sveg was hardly an everyday occurrence. Larsson found himself having to rehearse all the details one more time.

 

 

The emergency call reached the Ostersund police station late in the afternoon of October 19. Seven days ago now. Larsson was on the point of leaving for a haircut when somebody thrust a telephone into his hand. The woman at the other end was shouting. He was forced to hold the receiver away from his ear to grasp what she was saying. Two things were clear from the start: the woman was very upset, and she was sober. He sat down at his desk and fumbled for a notepad. After a few minutes he made enough notes to give him a good picture of what he thought she was trying to make him understand. The woman's name was Hanna Tunberg. Twice a month she used to clean for a man called Herbert Molin, who lived some miles outside Sveg in a house called Ratmyren. When she arrived that day she found a dog lying dead in its pen, and seen that all the windows in the house were broken. She didn't dare stay as she thought the man who lived there must have gone insane. She drove back to Sveg and got her husband, who was retired for health reasons. They went back to the house together. It was about four in the afternoon by then. They considered phoning the police right away, but decided to wait until they had established what had actually happened—a decision they both bitterly regretted. Her husband entered the house but emerged immediately and shouted to his wife, who'd stayed in the car, that the place was full of blood. Then he thought he saw something at the edge of the forest. He went to investigate, took a step back, then sprinted to the car, and started vomiting into the grass. When he recovered sufficiently, they drove straight to Sveg. Since her husband had a weak heart, he lay down on the sofa while she called the police in Sveg, and they passed the call on to
Ostersund. Larsson noted down the woman's name and telephone number. After they finished talking he called her back in order to check that the number was correct. He also made sure he'd gotten the name of the dead man right. Herbert Molin. When he put the receiver down for the second time, he abandoned any thought of having his hair cut.

He immediately went to Rundström, who was in charge of emergencies, and explained the situation. Just twenty minutes later he was on his way to Sveg in a police car with blue lights flashing. The forensic boys were making preparations to follow as soon as possible.

They reached the house some time after 7:30. Hanna Tunberg was waiting for them at the turnoff, along with Inspector Erik Johansson, who was stationed in Sveg and had just returned from another call, a truck laden with timber that had overturned outside Ytterhögdal. It was already dark by then. Larsson could see from the woman's eyes that the sight awaiting them would not be a pretty one. They went first to the spot on the edge of the forest that Hanna Tunberg had described to them. They found themselves gasping for breath when they shone their flashlights on the dead body. Larsson understood the woman's horror. He thought he'd seen everything. He had several times seen suicides who'd fired shotguns straight into their faces, but the man on the ground in front of them was worse than anything he'd been obliged to look at before. It wasn't really a man at all, just a bloody bundle. The face had been scraped away, the feet were no more than blood-soaked lumps, and his back had been beaten so badly that bones were exposed.

They then approached the house with guns drawn. They established that there was indeed a Norwegian elkhound dead in the pen. When they entered the house they found that Hanna's description of what her husband had told her was in no way exaggerated. The floor was covered in bloody footprints and broken glass. They closed the door to make sure that nothing was disturbed before the forensic team arrived.

Hanna was in the car the whole time, her hands clutching the steering wheel. Larsson felt sorry for her. He knew that what she'd been through today would stay with her for the rest of her life, a constant source of fear or a never-ending nightmare.

Larsson sent Johansson in Hanna's car to the junction with the main road to wait for the forensic team. He also told him to write down in detail everything the woman had to say. Precise times especially.

Then Larsson was on his own. He suspected he was faced with something he wasn't really up to dealing with, but he also knew that there
was nobody else in the entire Jamtland police force who was better equipped than he was to lead the investigation. He decided to tell the chief of police immediately that reinforcements would have to be called in from outside.

 

 

He was approaching Stenstavik. It was still dark. Several days had passed, but they were no closer to solving the mystery of the murdered man in the forest.

There was another major problem. It had transpired that the dead man was a retired police officer who had moved up to Harjedalen after working for many years as a detective in Borås. Larsson had spent the previous evening at home, reading through documents faxed to him from Borås. He was now familiar with all the basic information that forms an individual's profile. Nevertheless, he had the impression he was staring into a vacuum. There was no motive, no clues, no witnesses. It was as if some mysterious evil force had been let loose, emerged from the forest to attack Molin with all its might, and then disappeared without trace.

He passed through Stenstavik and continued towards Sveg. It was getting light now, and the wooded ridges surrounding him on all sides were acquiring a shade of blue. His mind turned to the preliminary report he'd received from the coroner's office in Umea where pathologists had been examining the body. It explained how the wounds had been inflicted, of course, but hadn't provided Larsson with any clues as to where this savage attack might have come from, nor why. The pathologist described in detail the violence inflicted on Molin. The wounds on his back appeared to have been caused by whiplashes. Because there was no skin left on his back, it was only when they discovered a fragment of the lash that they realized what had happened. A microscopic examination revealed that the whip had been made from the hide of an animal. Just what animal they were unable to say, as it did not correspond with any animal in Sweden. It was highly probable that the injuries to the soles of Molin's feet had been caused by the same instrument. He had not been beaten in the face: the scrape marks indicated that he had been dragged facedown over the ground. The wounds were full of soil. The doctor was able to state that on the basis of bruises on the victim's neck, it was clear that an attempt had been made to strangle him.
An attempt
was a wording that should be taken literally, the report stressed. Molin had not been choked to
death. Nor did he die from the residue of tear gas found in his eyes, throat, and lungs. Molin had died from exhaustion. He had, literally, had the life whipped out of him.