The Return of the Dancing Master (57 page)

Johansson shook his head in bewilderment. Lindman understood. The man had never shot at a human being before. Now he had, and the woman he'd tried to hit in the leg was dead.

“It couldn't be helped,” Lindman said. “That's the way it goes sometimes. But it's over now. It's all over.”

The church door opened. A church official was staring at them in horror. Lindman patted Johansson on the shoulder, then went to the man to explain what had happened.

 

 

Half an hour later Lindman arrived at the Berggren house and found Rundström there. Larsson was on his way to hospital, but no Hereira. The ambulance man said Larsson had told him that Hereira had melted into thin air.

“We'll get him,” Rundström said.

“I wouldn't bet on it,” Lindman said. “We don't know his real name, he might have several different passports. He's been very good at hiding so far.”

“Wasn't he wounded?”

“Just a scratch on his forehead.”

A man in coveralls appeared. He was carrying a dripping wet shotgun that he put on the table. “I found it right away. Was there a shootout in the church?”

Rundström brushed aside the question. “I'll fill you in later,” he said. Rundström eyed the shotgun. “I wonder if the prosecutor will be able to nail Berggren for all the lies she's told us,” he said. “Even if it was this Holmström who killed Andersson and threw the shotgun into the river. He's obviously the arsonist as well. Molin's house has been totally and truly torched.”

“Hereira told me he had started the fire. To confuse the police,” Lindman said.

“So much has happened that's beyond me,” Rundström said. “Larsson's in the hospital, and Erik's in the church, having killed Molin's daughter. It seems to me that you, Stefan Lindman, the police officer from BorÃ¥s, are the only person who can fill me in on what's been happening on my turf this morning.”

 

 

Lindman spent the rest of the day in Johansson's office. The conversations he had with Rundström lasted for hours, thanks to the continual interruptions. At 1:45 Rundström received a call informing him that Holmström had been arrested in Arboga, still in the Ford Escort they had put a trace on. It was 5 P.M. by the time Rundström declared that he felt sufficiently informed. He accompanied Lindman to his hotel. They said their goodbyes in the lobby.

“When are you leaving?”

“Tomorrow. The morning flight to Landvetter.”

“I'll arrange for somebody to drive you to the airport.”

They shook hands.

“It's all been very peculiar,” Rundström said, “but I figure that one way or another I've come around to understanding most of what's been going on. Not everything. You never do understand everything. There are always gaps. But most of it. Enough to solve the murders.”

“Something tells me you'll have problems in catching Hereira,” Lindman said.

“He smoked French cigarettes,” Rundström said. “Do you remember the butts you found down by the lake, and gave to Larsson?”

Lindman remembered. “I agree,” he said. “There are always gaps. Not least this mysterious person named ‘M.' in Scotland.”

Rundström left. Lindman took it that Rundström hadn't read Molin's diary. The receptionist was ashen.

“Did I do the wrong thing?” she asked.

“Yes. But it's all finished now. I'm leaving tomorrow. I'll leave you to your test drivers and Baltic orienteering specialists.”

 

 

That evening he had dinner in the hotel, then called Elena and said he'd be coming home. He was on his way to bed when Rundström called to say that Larsson was doing pretty well under the circumstances. The
wound was serious, but not life-threatening. Johansson was in a much worse state. He'd had a nervous breakdown. Rundström ended by telling Lindman that Special Branch was now involved.

“This is going to be splashed all over the news,” he said. “We've turned over a very large rock. It's already obvious that this Nazi network is far more extensive than anybody ever dreamed of. Think of yourself as lucky that the reporters won't be gunning for you.”

Lindman lay awake for a long time after that. He wondered how the funeral had gone. Most of all it was memories of his father flooding through his mind. I'll never understand him, he thought. I won't ever be able to forgive him either, even if he is dead and buried. He never showed his true face to me and my sisters. I had a father who worshiped evil.

The following morning Lindman was taken to the airport in Frösön. Just before 11 A.M. his plane touched down at Landvetter. Elena was there to meet him, and he was extremely pleased to see her.

 

 

Two days later, on November 19, sleet was falling on Borås as Lindman walked up the hill to the hospital. He felt calm, and was confident he could handle whatever was in store for him.

He had coffee in the cafeteria. Copies of yesterday's evening papers were piled up on a chair. The front pages were full of what had been going on in Harjedalen, and about the Swedish branch of a worldwide network of Nazi organizations. The head of Special Branch had made a statement. “This is a shocking exposure of something that goes much deeper and is much more dangerous than the neo-Nazis, all those tiny groups dominated by skinheads that have been associated with Fascist aspirations.”

Lindman put the newspapers down. It was 8:10 A.M. Time for him to go to the people who were waiting for him.

Hereira was still at large. Lindman wondered where he had disappeared, and hoped the man would get back to Buenos Aires. Smoke a few more French cigarettes in peace and quiet. The crime he'd commit ted had been atoned for long ago.

Inverness April 2000

O
n Sunday, April 9, Lindman picked up Elena early in the morning. On the way from Allégatan to Norrby he'd started humming. He couldn't remember the last time he'd done that. Nor did he know at first what it was he was humming. A song of somewhere far from Sweden, he seemed to recall as he drove through the empty streets. Then it dawned on him that it was something his father used to play on the banjo. “Beale Street Blues.” Lindman also remembered his father saying that it was a street that really did exist, possibly in several North American cities, but certainly in Memphis.

I remember his music, Lindman thought, but my father, his face, his lunatic political opinions, have all started to fade into oblivion. He emerged from the shadows to tell me who he really was. Now I've kicked him back. The only way I'm going to remember him now and in the future is by the fragments of songs that have stuck in my head. Maybe that provides him with a redeeming feature. As far as Nazis were concerned, black people, their music, their traditions, their way of life—everything was barbaric. Blacks were subhuman creatures. Although the African American athlete Jesse Owens was the star of the 1936 Olympics, Hitler refused to shake his hand. But my father loved the music of black men, the blues. He made no attempt to hide it either. Perhaps that's where I can find a crack in his defenses, a reason for thinking that he hadn't given himself entirely to evil and to contempt for his fellowman. I'll never know if I'm right, but I have the right to believe what I want to believe.

Elena was waiting for him at her front door. On the way to the airport they talked about which of them was looking forward to the trip
more. Elena, who had seldom been even a few kilometers from Boras, or Lindman, whose doctor had given him hope that he'd overcome his cancer, thanks to the radiation therapy and the subsequent operation. They didn't agree on the answer, but it was only a game.

They left for London Gatwick on a British Airways flight at 7:35 A.M. Elena was afraid of flying and clutched Lindman's hand as the airplane took off and flew out to sea north of Kungsbacka. As they carved their way through the clouds, Lindman experienced a feeling of liberation. For six months he'd lived with a fear that hardly left him. Now it had gone. It wasn't absolutely certain that he was or would ever be fully cured—his doctor had told him he would have to have tests for five years—but he could lead a normal life again, not be forever on the lookout for symptoms, not nourish the fear he had harbored for so long. Now that he was in the airplane, he felt that at last he'd really taken that vital step away from the fear, and back to something he'd long been waiting for.

Elena looked at him.

“A penny for your thoughts.”

“What I haven't dared to think for half a year.”

She said nothing, but took hold of his hand. He thought he would burst into tears, but he managed to keep control of himself.

They landed at Gatwick, and after passing through customs they went their different ways. Elena was going to spend two days in London visiting a distant relative from Krakow who had a grocery store in one of London's suburbs. Lindman would be continuing his journey on a domestic flight.

“I still don't understand why you have to make this extra trip,” Elena said.

“Don't forget that I'm a police officer. I want to follow things through to the bitter end.”

“But you've arrested the murderer, haven't you? Or one of them, at least. And the woman is dead. You know why it all happened. What more is there to find out?”

“There are always gaps. Perhaps it's only curiosity, something only indirectly linked.”

She eyed him severely. “It said in the newspapers that an officer had been wounded and another one had been in extreme danger. I wonder when you're going to admit to me that you were the one in danger? How long do I have to wait?”

Lindman said nothing, merely flung out his arms.

“You don't know why you have to make this extra journey,” Elena said. “Is that it? Or is there something you don't want to tell me? Why can't you just tell me the truth?”

“I'm trying to learn how to do that. But I have told you the truth. It's just that there's one last door I want to open, and find out what's behind it.”

He watched her melt into the crowd making their way to the exit, then headed for the transit desk. The song he'd had in his head earlier came back to him.

If he'd managed to understand correctly what they said over the loudspeakers, the flight would take an hour. He fell asleep and didn't wake up until they landed at Inverness Airport. He walked towards the ancient terminal and registered that the air was fresh and clear—just as he remembered it from Harjedalen. In Sveg, the wooded hillsides surrounding the little town had been a dark, threatening circle. The countryside was different here. High, sharply outlined mountains in the distance to the north, elsewhere fields and heaths, and the sky seemed to be low, almost touchable. He got the key to his rented car, and felt a vague worry about having to drive on the left-hand side of the road. The road was narrow. He was annoyed by the sluggishness of the transmission. He wondered if he should go back and upgrade, but soon gave up on that thought. He wasn't going far, only to Inverness and back, with perhaps the occasional excursion.

The travel agent had booked him into a hotel called Old Blend for two nights, in the town center. It took him a while to find it. He caused chaos at two rotaries, but could breathe a sigh of relief when he eventually parked outside the hotel, a three-story, dark red brick building. Yet another hotel, but the last one in his quest to find out why Herbert Molin had been murdered. He now knew the circumstances, and he'd met the man who killed him. He didn't know the whereabouts of the presumed murderer, Fernando Hereira.

Larsson had phoned from Ostersund a few days ago and told him that the Swedish police and Interpol had drawn a blank. Presumably he was back in South America by now, using a different name—his real one. Larsson didn't think they would ever find him. Even if they did, the Swedish authorities would never manage to have him extradited. Larsson promised to keep Lindman informed. He'd also asked about Lindman's state of health, and been pleased about the latest diagnosis.

“What did I tell you?” he said with a laugh. “You were succumbing to doom and gloom—I've never met anybody as depressed as you were.”

“Perhaps you haven't met many people with a death sentence hanging over their head. Or inside their head, to be more precise. But you had a bullet in your shoulder.”

Larsson turned serious. “I keep wondering if she shot to kill me. I remember the look on her face. I'd like to think that she shot to wound me, but I don't really believe it.”

“How are you now?”

“A bit stiff in the shoulder, but much better.”

“What about Johansson?”

“I've heard that he's thinking of applying for early retirement. This whole business has hit him hard. I saw him the other day. He looked very thin.” Larsson sighed. “I suppose things could have been much worse.”

“One of these days I'll take Elena to a bowling alley. I'll knock over a few pins and think of you.”

“When Molin was killed, we had no idea what we were letting ourselves in for,” Larsson said. “But what we stumbled upon is something very big. It's more than a network of Nazi organizations. It's grounds for facing up to the fact that Fascism is alive and kicking, albeit in a dif ferent guise.”

Larsson said that Magnus Holmström's case would go to trial the following week. He had asserted his right to remain silent, but even so there was enough evidence to convict him and earn him a long jail sentence.

 

 

It was over—but there was one connection that Lindman still wanted to look into. He hadn't mentioned it to Larsson. It was to be found in Inverness. Even if Veronica Molin's attempt to invent an explanation for her father's death had failed—the only weak move she'd made during those dramatic weeks—there had in fact been a real person hidden behind the letter “M” in Molin's diary. Lindman had been helped by a clerical assistant called Evelyn who had worked for the police in BorÃ¥s for many years. Together they had searched for and eventually found the report on the visit to BorÃ¥s by a party of British police officers in November 1971, with a list of names. They had even found a photograph on the wall of an archive room. The picture was taken outside the police station. Olausson was there, posing with four British policemen, two of them women. One of the women, the older one, was called Margaret Simmons. Lindman sometimes wondered how much Veronica knew about her father's visit to Scotland. She hadn't used the name
Margaret when she had tried sending them down a false trail: she'd said the woman's name was Monica.