The Return of the Dancing Master (54 page)

Hereira paused again. It was as if he needed to gather strength to tell his story to the end.

“Sometime long after the war Hollner and Stuckford met at a conference for people trying to trace war criminals. They talked about the missing Waldemar Lehmann. During the conversation Hollner heard about the murder of a dancing master in Berlin, and he also heard that the man responsible was a Swede called Mattson-Herzén. Another Nazi had passed the information to Stuckford while being interrogated, hoping for clemency in return. Höllner told me all this. He also said that Stuckford occasionally visited Buenos Aires.”

Lindman heard Hereira reach for the bottle and put it down again without drinking.

“The next time Stuckford was in Buenos Aires I met him at his hotel. I introduced myself and explained that I was the son of the dancing master. About a year after that meeting I got a letter from England. In it Stuckford wrote that the soldier who'd killed my father, Mattson-Herzén, had changed his name to Molin after the war and was still alive. I'll never forget that letter. Now I knew who had murdered my father. A man who used to give us a friendly smile when he arrived for his lessons. Stuckford's contacts were eventually able to trace Mattson-Herzén to these forests.”

He paused again. There is no more, Lindman thought. No more is needed. I've heard the story. Sitting in front of me is a man who has avenged the murder of his father. We were right in thinking that Molin's murder had its origin in something that happened in a war that ended many years ago. It seemed to Lindman that Hereira had completed for him a puzzle that he'd been working on. There was an
irony in the fact that Molin had also spent his old age solving puzzles, in the constant company of his fear.

“Have you understood what I've told you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any questions?”

“Not about that, but I would like to know why you moved the dog.”

Hereira didn't understand the question. Lindman rephrased it. “You killed Molin's dog. When Andersson was dead, you took his dog.”

“I wanted to tell you that you were wrong about what happened. You thought I had killed the other man as well.”

“Why should we know that we were wrong because of the dog?”

His reply was simple and convincing. “I was drunk when I made up my mind what to do. I still don't understand why nobody saw me. I moved the dog to create confusion. Confusion in the way you were thinking. I still don't know if I was successful.”

“We did start asking different questions.”

“Then I achieved my aim.”

“When you first came, did you live in a tent by the lake?”

“Yes.”

Lindman could hear that Hereira's impatience had melted away. He was calm now. There were no more clinking noises from the bottle. Hereira stood up, the floor vibrated. He was behind Lindman's chair now. The fear that had subsided now revived. Lindman remembered the fingers around his neck. This time he was tied up. If the man tried to strangle him, he wouldn't be able to resist.

When Hereira next spoke his voice came from the left. The chair creaked.

“I thought it would die away,” the voice said. “All those terrible things that happened so many years ago. But the thoughts that were born in Hitler's twisted mind are still alive. They have other names now, but they are the same thoughts, the same disgusting conviction that a whole people can be killed off if another people or race ordains it. The new technology, computers, the international networks, they all help these groups to cooperate. Everything's in computers these days.” Lindman remembered that he'd heard more or less the same phrase from Veronica Molin. Everything's in computers these days.

“They are still ruining lives,” the voice said. “They'll go on cultivating their hatred. Hatred of people whose skin is a different color, who have different customs, different gods.”

Lindman realized that Hereira's calm was skin-deep. He was close
to the breaking point, a collapse that could result in his resorting to violence again. He killed Molin, Lindman thought, and he tried to strangle me. He knocked me out, and now I'm sitting here tied to a chair. Unless I'm attacked from behind I'm stronger than he is. I'm thirty-seven and he's nearly seventy. He can't let me go because in that case I'd arrest him. He knows that he's captured a police officer. That's the worst thing you can do, whether you're in Sweden or Argentina. Lindman had no doubt that the man in this room with him could kill him if he wanted to. He'd just finished telling his story of what happened, he'd made a confession, so what options were open to him? Running away, nothing else. And in that case, what would he do with the police officer he'd captured?

I haven't seen his face, Lindman thought. As long as I haven't seen his face he can go away and leave me here. I must make sure he doesn't take off this blindfold.

“Who was the man in the road who tried to shoot me?”

The man seemed impatient again.

“A young neo-Nazi. His name's Magnus Holmström.”

“Is he Swedish?”

“Yes.”

“I thought this was a decent country. Without Nazis. Apart from the old ones from Hitler's generation who aren't dead yet. Who are still hiding away in their lairs.”

“There's a new generation. Not many of them, but they do exist.”

“I'm not talking about the young men with shaven heads. I'm talking about the ones who dream in blood, plan genocide, see the world as a feudal empire ruled by white men.”

“Magnus Holmström's like that.”

“Has he been arrested?”

“Not yet.”

Silence. The bottle clinked.

“Was it her who asked him to come?”

Who did he mean, Lindman wondered. Then he realized that there was only one possibility. Elsa Berggren.

“We don't know.”

“Who else could it have been?”

“We don't know.”

“But there must have been a motive, surely?”

Be careful now, Lindman thought. Don't say too much. Not too little either, make sure you get it right. But what is right? He wants to know
if he's to blame. Which he is, of course. When he killed Molin, it was like turning over a rock: the woodlice scattered in all directions. Now they want to get back under the rock, they want somebody to put it back where it was before all this trouble started in the forest.

There were still a lot of things he didn't understand. He had the feeling that a link was missing, some thread holding everything together that he hadn't found yet. Nor had Larsson; nobody had.

He thought about Molin's house, burning down in the forest. That seemed a question it wasn't too dangerous to ask.

“Was it you who set fire to Molin's house?”

“I assumed the police would go there, but perhaps not you. I didn't know for sure, but it seemed to be a possibility. I was right. You stayed in the hotel.”

“Why me? Why not one of the other officers?”

The man didn't answer. Lindman wondered if he'd overstepped his mark. He waited. All the time he was searching for a chance to get away, to get out of this room where he was tied to a chair. To do that he must first establish were he was.

The bottle clinked again. Then the man stood up. Lindman listened. He couldn't feel any vibrations in the floor. Everything was still. Had the man left the room? Lindman strained all his senses. The man didn't seem to be there. Then a clock started striking. Lindman knew where he was. In Berggren's house, it was her clock.

The blindfold was suddenly ripped off. It happened so quickly that he didn't have time to react. He was in Berggren's living room, on the very chair he had sat on when he first went there. The man was behind him. Lindman slowly turned his head.

Fernando Hereira was very pale. Unshaven and with dark shadows under his eyes. His hair was gray and unkempt. He was thin. His clothes, dark trousers and a blue jacket, were dirty. The jacket was torn near the collar. He was wearing sneakers. So this was the man who had lived in a tent by the lake, killed Molin so brutally, then dragged him around in a bloodstained tango. It was also the man who had attacked him twice, the first time almost strangling him, the second time only an hour or so ago, by hitting him hard on the back of the head.

The clock had struck the half-hour, 5:30 A.M. Lindman had been unconscious for longer than he'd thought. On the table in front of the man was a bottle of brandy. No glass. The man took a swig, then turned to face Lindman.

“What punishment will I get?”

“I can't tell you that. It's up to the court.”

Hereira shook his head sadly. “Nobody will understand. Is there a death penalty in your country?”

“No.”

Hereira took another swig from the bottle. He fumbled as he put it down on the table. He's drunk, Lindman thought. He's losing control of his movements.

“There's somebody I want to talk to,” Hereira said. “I want to explain to Molin's daughter why I killed her father. Stuckford told me in a letter that Molin had a daughter. Perhaps he had other children as well? Anyway, I want to talk to the daughter. Veronica. She must be here.”

“Molin will be buried today.”

Hereira gave a start. “Today?”

“His son, too, has arrived. The funeral's at 11.”

Hereira stared at his hands. “I can only handle talking to her,” he said after a while. “Then she can explain it to whoever she likes. I want to tell her why I did it.”

Lindman had been given the opportunity he'd been hoping for.

“Veronica didn't know her father was a Nazi. She's very upset now that she does know. I think she'll understand, if you tell her what you've told me.”

“Everything I've said is true.” Hereira took another drink from the bottle. “The question is, will you allow me the time I need? If I let you go and ask you to contact the girl on my behalf, will I have the time I need before you arrest me?”

“How do I know that you won't treat Veronica the way you treated her father?”

“You can't know that. But why should I? She didn't kill my father.”

“You attacked me.”

“It was necessary. I regret it, of course. I'll let you go. I'll stay here. It's nearly 6 A.M. You talk to the girl, tell her where I am. Once she's left me, you and the rest of the police can come and get me. I know I'll never return home. I'll die here, in prison.”

Hereira was lost in thought. Was he telling the truth? Lindman knew that it wasn't something he could take for granted.

“Needless to say, I won't let Veronica come to you on her own,” he said.

“Why not?”

“You've already shown that you do not hesitate to use violence.”

“I want to see her on her own. I will not lay a finger on her.”

Hereira slammed his fist down on the table. Lindman could feel his misgivings rising.

“What if I don't go along with what you are asking?”

Hereira looked hard at him before answering. “I'm a peaceful man, though it's true that I've used violence on others. I don't know what I'd do. I might kill you, I might not.”

“I can give you the time you need,” Lindman said, “and you can talk to her on the telephone.”

He could see the positive glint in Hereira's eye. He was tired, but far from resigned.

“I'm already committing myself to more than I should,” Lindman said. “I'll guarantee you the time you need, and you can talk to her on the telephone. I'm sure you realize that, as a police officer, I shouldn't be doing this.”

“Can I trust you?”

“You don't really have a choice.”

Hereira hesitated. Then he stood up and cut the tape tying Lindman to the chair.

“We have to trust each other. There's no other possibility.”

Lindman felt dizzy as he walked to the door. His legs were stiff, and the back of his neck was extremely sore.

“I'll wait for her to call,” Hereira said. “I'll probably talk to her for about an hour. Then you can tell your colleagues where I am.”

Lindman crossed the bridge. Before leaving the house he made a note of Berggren's telephone number. He paused at the place where a police diver would start looking for a shotgun on the riverbed an hour or two from now. He was exhausted, but he tried to think clearly. Hereira had committed murder, but there was something appealing about him, something genuine, when he'd tried to convince Lindman that he wanted to talk to Molin's daughter, try to make her understand, hope that she would forgive him. He wondered again if Veronica and her brother had spent the night in Ostersund. If so, he'd have to call all the hotels to find her.

 

 

It was 6:30 when he got back to the hotel. He knocked on her door. She opened it so quickly that he almost recoiled. She was already dressed. Her computer was shimmering in the background.

“I have to talk to you. I know it's early. I thought you might have stayed in Ostersund for the night, because of the snow.”

“My brother never showed up.”

“Why not?”

“He had changed his mind. He called. He didn't want to go to the funeral. I got back here late last night. What is so urgent?”

Lindman headed back to the lobby. She followed him. They sat down and without more ado he told her what had happened during the night and about her father's murderer, Fernando Hereira, who was waiting in Berggren's house for her to call him, and possibly even forgive him.

“He wanted to meet you,” Lindman said. “I didn't agree to that, of course.”