The Return of the Dancing Master (9 page)

He looked around again, more slowly, as if every detail he saw might be crucial. At the back of his mind he kept thinking that what he was doing was pointless. But then again, he had nothing else to do at the moment. Nothing else to distract him.

He could find no trace of a fire, but that was irrelevant. People nowadays used camping gas stoves when they were in the forest. He examined the ground around the tree trunk one more time, but found nothing.

Then he went back down to the water's edge. There was a big stone on the waterline. He sat on it. Looked into the water, then felt at the back of the stone and the moss came loose. When he scraped it to one side he saw the remains of cigarette butts. The paper was brown, but they had certainly been cigarettes. They'd rotted away, but there were unmistakable flakes of tobacco. He explored further with his hands. There were cigarette butts everywhere. Whoever had sat here was a heavy smoker. He found a butt where the paper was discolored but still retained a bit of whiteness. He picked it up carefully and searched in his pockets for something to put it in. The only thing he could find was a receipt.
The Hospital Cafeteria, Borås.
He placed the cigarette butt carefully in the receipt, then folded it to form a parcel. He kept on searching and asked himself what he would have done if he'd pitched a tent here. You'd need a shithole, he thought. It was possible to clamber into the forest past the side of one of the biggest rocks. It looked as if the moss had been scraped from one side of the stone. He examined the ground behind the stone. Nothing. He worked his way into the forest, a meter at a time. He thought about the police dogs Andersson had told him about. If they hadn't found any tracks, they could not have come this far.

He stopped short. Next to the trunk of a pine tree was a pile that had clearly been made by a human. Feces and paper. His heart started beating faster. He was right. Somebody had camped by the side of the lake. A person who smoked cigarettes and didn't trouble to bury his excrement.

Even so, there was nothing to link the camper with Herbert Molin. He went back to where the tent must have been. There had to be some connection with the main road, or a forest road where the man in the tent might have left his car.

The shortcomings of his argument were immediately obvious to him. The camping site could well have been a meticulously arranged hiding place. The idea of a car parked near the main road didn't fit in with
that. What were the alternatives? A motorcycle or an ordinary bicycle would be easier to hide than a car. Or perhaps somebody else had driven the camper here.

He looked over the lake. There was another possibility, of course. The camper could have come that way. But where's the boat?

Larsson, he thought, is the man I have to talk to. There's no reason why I should be playing the private detective here. It's the police in Jamtland and Harjedalen that have to figure this out. He sat on the fallen tree again. It was colder. The sun was setting. There was a flapping noise in the trees. When he turned to look, the bird had already disappeared. He started retracing his steps. A brooding silence prevailed around Molin's house. The chill emanating from the events that had taken place here was getting to him.

He drove back to Sveg. He stopped at the store in Linsell and bought the local newspaper,
Härjedalen
, published every Thursday (except public holidays). The man behind the counter gave him a friendly smile. Lindman could see he was curious.

“We don't get very many visitors here in the autumn,” the man said. His nametag said that his name was Torbjörn Lundell. Lindman thought he might as well tell him the truth. “I knew Herbert Molin,” he said. “We worked together before he retired.”

Lundell looked doubtfully at him. “You're the police,” he said. “Can't our own force handle this?”

“I've got nothing to do with the investigation.”

“But even so, you've come here, from as far away as ... Halland, was it?”

“Vâstergötland. I'm on vacation. But Herbert told you that, did he? That he came from BorÃ¥s?”

Lundell shook his head. “It was the police who said that. But he used to shop here. Every other week. Always on a Thursday. Never said a word unless he had to. Always bought the same things. He was a bit choosy when it came to coffee, though. I had to order it specially for him. French coffee.”

“When did you last see him?”

“Thursday, the week before he died.”

“Did you notice anything unusual about him?”

“Such as what?”

“Was he different at all?”

“He was the same as ever. Didn't say a word more than he had to.”

Lindman hesitated. He shouldn't have lapsed so easily into his role as a police officer. Rumors would get around that there was a policeman
from some distant place, asking awkward questions. Nevertheless, there was one question he simply couldn't resist asking.

“Have you had any other customers lately? Ones you don't usually have?”

“That's what the fuzz from Ostersund asked me. And the officer from Sveg. I told 'em the way it was—apart from a few Norwegians and some berry pickers from Belgium last week, I haven't seen a soul here that I didn't know.”

Lindman thanked him, left the shop, and continued towards Sveg. It was dark by now. He was feeling distinctly hungry.

He'd gotten an answer to one of his questions, though. There was a police presence in Sveg. Even if the investigation was based in Östersund.

 

 

Shortly before he came to Glissjöberg an elk ran over the road into his headlights. He managed to brake in time. The animal disappeared into the trees at the side of the road. He waited to see if others would follow it, but none did.

He parked outside his hotel. There was a group of men in uniforms chatting away in the lobby. He went up to his room and sat on the bed. Before he knew where he was, he had visions of himself lying in bed with tubes attached to his body and face. Elena was in a chair at the side of his bed, crying.

He jumped up and slammed his fist hard into the wall. Before he knew where he was there came a knock at the door. Another of the test drivers.

“Did you want something?” the man said.

“What on earth would I want?”

“You knocked on the wall.”

“It must have been from somewhere else.”

Lindman slammed the door in the driver's face. I've made my first enemy in Harjedalen, he thought. Just when I should be concentrating on making friends. That set him thinking. Why did he have so few friends? Why didn't he move in with Elena and start living the life he really yearned for? Why did he lead a life that left him all on his own, now that he was faced with a serious illness? He had no answer to that.

He thought about calling Elena, but decided to eat first. He went down to the dining room and chose a window table. He was the only customer. He could hear the sound from a television set coming from the bar. To his surprise he found that the receptionist had been reincarnated as a
waitress. He ordered a steak and a beer. As he ate, he thumbed through the newspaper he'd bought in Linsell. He read all the way through the obituaries, and tried to imagine his own obituary. He ordered a coffee after the meal, and stared out into the darkness.

He left the dining room and paused in the lobby, wondering whether to go for a walk or return to his room. He chose the latter course. He dialed Elena's number. She picked up immediately. Lindman had the impression she'd been sitting by the phone, waiting for him to call.

“Where are you?”

“In Sveg.”

“What's it like there?” she asked, hesitantly.

“Cold, and I feel lonely.”

“I don't understand why you've gone there.”

“Neither do I.”

“Come back home, then.”

“If I could, I'd head back right away. But I'll be here for a few more days.”

“Can't you tell me you miss me, at least?”

“You know I do.”

He gave her the hotel telephone number, and hung up. Neither of them liked talking on the phone. Their conversations were often short. Even so, Lindman had the feeling she was close by his side.

He was tired. It had been a long day. He untied his laces and kicked his shoes away from the side of the bed. Then he lay down and stared at the ceiling. I must make up my mind what I'm doing here, he thought. I came here to try to understand what had happened, to understand what Molin had been so frightened of. Now I've seen the house where he was murdered, and I've found a camping site that might have been a hiding place.

He wondered what to do next. The obvious thing would be to drive up to Ostersund and meet this Larsson.

But then what?

Maybe the journey here was pointless. He should have gone to Mallorca. The Jämtland police would do what they had to do. One day he would find out what had happened. Somewhere out there was a murderer waiting to be arrested.

He lay on his side and looked at the blank television screen. He could hear some young people laughing in the street below. Had he laughed at all during the day that had just passed? He searched his
memory, but couldn't even remember a smile. Just at this moment I'm not the person I usually am, he thought. A man who's always laughing. At the moment I'm a man with a malignant lump on his tongue who's scared to death about what's going to happen next.

Then he looked at his shoes. Something had stuck to one of the soles, he discovered, trapped in the pattern of the rubber sole. A stone from the gravel path, he thought. He reached to extract it.

But it wasn't a stone. It was part of a jigsaw puzzle piece. He sat up and adjusted the bedside lamp. The piece was soft and discolored by soil. He was certain he hadn't stepped on any pieces inside the house. It might have been outside the house. Nevertheless, his intuition told him that the jigsaw piece had stuck to the sole of his shoe at the place where the tent had been pitched. Whoever killed Herbert Molin had been camping at the lakeside.

T
he discovery of the broken jigsaw puzzle piece livened him up somewhat. He sat at the table and started making notes about everything that had happened in the course of the day. It took the form of a letter. At first, he couldn't think to whom it should be addressed. It occurred to him that it should go to the doctor who was expecting to see him in Borås on the morning of November 19. Was there nobody else to write to? Perhaps it was that Elena wouldn't understand what he was talking about? At the top of the page he wrote:
The fear of Herbert Molin,
and underlined the words with forceful strokes of his pen. Then he noted one by one the observations he'd made in and around the house, and where the tent had been. He tried to draw some conclusions, but the only thing that seemed to him definite was that Molin's murder had long been planned.

It was 10 P.M. He hesitated, but decided to phone Larsson at home and tell him he would come and see him in Ostersund the following day. He looked for the number in the phone book. There were a lot of Larssons, but predictably only one Giuseppe, a police officer. His wife answered. Lindman explained who he was. She sounded friendly. While he was waiting, he wondered what Larsson's hobby might be. Why didn't he have a hobby himself, apart from football? He hadn't managed to find an answer before Larsson came to the phone.

“Stefan Lindman,” he said. “From BorÃ¥s. I hope this isn't too late.”

“Not quite. Another half hour and I'd have been asleep. Where are you?”

“In Sveg.”

“Just down the road, then.” Larsson roared with laughter. “A couple
of hundred kilometers is nothing to us up here. Where do you get to if you drive two hundred kilometres from BorÃ¥s?”

“Almost to Malmö.”

“There you go, you see.”

“I thought I might visit you in Ostersund tomorrow.”

“You're welcome to come. I'll be there quite early in the morning. The police station is behind the National Rural Agency building. It's a small town. You'll have no trouble in finding it. When had you thought of coming?”

“I can fit into your schedule. Whenever you've got time.”

“How about eleven? We have a nine o'clock meeting of our little murder squad.”

“Have you got a suspect?”

“We've got nothing at all,” said Larsson, cheerfully. “But we'll solve this one in the end, we hope. We'll be discussing tomorrow if we need any help from Stockholm. Somebody who can draw up a profile of the person we're looking for would be useful. Could be interesting. Up here, we've never been faced with anything like this before.”

“They're good at that,” Lindman said. “We've had some help from them in BorÃ¥s now and then.”

“See you tomorrow, then. Eleven o'clock.”

 

 

Then he went out. The driver next door was snoring. Lindman went down the stairs as quietly as he could. His room key also fitted the front door. The lights were out in the lobby, the door to the restaurant closed. It was 10:30. When he emerged onto the street he found that a wind had started up. He pulled his jacket tightly around him and started walking through the empty streets. He came to the train station, which was dark and locked. He read a sign and learned that trains no longer came here. The old “National Railway,” he thought. That's what the line used to be called, if I remember correctly. Nothing left but rusting rails. He continued on his nocturnal ramble, passed a park with swings and tennis courts, and came to the church. The main door was locked. In front of the school was a statue of a lumberjack. He tried to make out the features of the man. In the poor light of the streetlights they seemed to be expressionless.