The Return of the Dancing Master (24 page)

She closed the door behind them. Larsson couldn't get away from her house fast enough.

“That's what I call a really nasty person,” he said when they came to the gate. “I was sorely tempted to slap her.”

“There are more people than you would imagine who share her views,” Lindman said.

They walked back to the hotel in silence. Larsson suddenly stopped short.

“What did she actually say? About Molin?”

“That he'd always been a Nazi.”

“And what else?”

Lindman shook his head.

“What she actually said was that Molin remained a person with the same views until the day he died. I haven't read his diary in detail, but
you have. One might well ask what he actually did during the war. And one might well wonder if there are not a lot of people who would have been glad to see him dead.”

“I doubt that,” Lindman said. “The war ended fifty-four years ago. That's an awful long time to wait.”

“Maybe,” Larsson said. “Maybe.”

They set off again. As they were passing the district court, Lindman said, “What happens if we turn the whole business upside down? We are assuming everything started with Molin since he was murdered first. What if we approach it from the other side? If we started concentrating on Andersson?”

“Not ‘we,'” Larsson said. “‘I.' Obviously I'll keep that possibility open. But it's very unlikely. Andersson moved here for reasons very different from Molin's. He didn't hide himself away. He mixed with his neighbors and was a completely different personality.”

They returned to the hotel. Lindman had been annoyed by Larsson's remark. He was excluded again.

“What are you going to do now?” Larsson said.

Lindman shrugged. “I have to get out of here.”

Larsson hesitated before asking, “How are you?”

“I was in pain one day, but I'm okay now.”

“I try to imagine what it must be like, but I can't.”

They were standing outside the hotel entrance. Lindman watched a house sparrow pecking away at a dead worm. I can't imagine it myself either, he thought. I still think the whole business is a nightmare, and that I won't in fact have to show up at the hospital in Boras on November 19 to start radiation therapy.

“Before you leave, I'd like you to show me that place where the tent was pitched.”

Lindman thought that he would prefer to leave Sveg as soon as possible, but he could hardly say no.

“When?” he asked.

“How about now?”

They got into Larsson's car and set off in the direction of Linsell.

“There's no end to the forests in this part of the country,” Larsson said, suddenly breaking the silence. “If you stop here and walk ten meters into the trees, you're in a different world. Perhaps you know that already?”

“I've tried it.”

“Somebody like Molin would find it easier to live with his memories
in the forest,” Larsson said. “Where there's nothing to disturb him. Where time stands still, if you like. Was there really no uniform where you found that diary? He might have gotten all dressed up and gone into the depths of the forest to make the Hitler salute, then goose-stepped along the paths.”

“He wrote in his diary that he deserted. Exchanged his uniform for civvies that he took off a corpse, with Berlin in flames all around him. If I understand his diary correctly, he became a deserter the day Hitler committed suicide in his bunker. But we can assume that Molin didn't know anything about that.”

“I think they withheld news of his suicide for some days,” Larsson said. “Then somebody broke the news on the radio that the Fuhrer had fallen in action. But it could be that my memory is a bit hazy.”

They turned onto the road to Molin's house. Pieces of the police tape used to cordon off the scene of crime were fluttering from low branches.

“We ought to clean up when we leave a place,” Larsson said, not pleased by what he saw. “We've handed the house over to Molin's daughter now. Have you met her?”

“Not since we spoke at the hotel the other evening.”

“A very self-confident young lady,” Larsson said, disapprovingly. “I wonder how much she really knows about her father's past. That's something I intend on discussing with her, in any case.”

“Surely she can't not know.”

“I expect she's ashamed of it. Who wouldn't be if their father was a Nazi?”

They got out of the car. Listened to the rustling of the trees. Then Lindman led the way down to the lake and along the shore to the campsite. He saw right away that somebody had been there. He stopped in his tracks. Larsson stared at him in surprise.

“What's the matter?”

“I think somebody's been here since I was here last.”

“Has something changed?”

“I can't tell yet.”

Lindman studied the place where the tent had been pitched. Superficially, everything seemed the same. Even so, he was certain somebody had been there since. Something was different. Larsson said nothing. Lindman walked around the clearing in the trees, examining the site from different angles. He walked around a second time. Then the penny dropped. He had sat on the fallen tree trunk. As he looked
around, he'd had a broken twig in his hand. He'd left it on the ground in front of him when he'd stood up to leave, but it wasn't there anymore. It was lying by the side of the path down to the water.

“Somebody has been here,” Lindman said. “Somebody has been sitting on this log.” He pointed to the twig. “Can you take fingerprints from a twig?”

“I wouldn't be surprised,” Larsson said, taking a plastic bag from his pocket. “We can always try. Are you sure?”

Lindman was certain. He remembered where he'd left the twig. It had definitely been moved. He could picture somebody sitting there on the log, just as he'd done, bending down to pick up the twig, then tossing it away.

“In that case we'll call in a dog team,” Larsson said, taking out his cell phone.

Lindman turned to look into the forest. He had the feeling that there might be somebody there, very close. Somebody keeping an eye on them. He also had the nagging feeling that there was something he should remember. Something to do with Larsson. But what? He couldn't put a finger on it.

Larsson was listening to what they were saying on the phone. Asking questions, asking for a dog team to be mobilized, and then finishing the call.

“Very odd,” Larsson said.

“What is?”

“Andersson's dog has disappeared.”

“What do you mean disappeared?”

“What I say. Vanished. There's no sign of it. And the place is crawling with police.”

They looked at each other, amazed. A bird clattered up from a branch and flew off over the lake. They watched it until it was gone from view.

S
ilberstein lay on top of a hill with a view of Abraham Andersson's house, aiming his binoculars down at the surrounding area. He counted three police cars, two vans, and three private cars. From time to time, somebody wearing a uniform would come out of the forest. He gathered that it was there, among the trees, that Andersson had been killed; but he hadn't been able to go there yet. He would make that excursion after nightfall, if possible.

He scanned the house and cars again. A dog, of the same breed as the one he'd been forced to kill at Molin's place, was tied to a line running between the house and a tree at the edge of the forest. He wondered if the dogs might have come from the same litter, or at least have the same parents. Thinking of the dog whose throat he'd slit made him feel sick. He put the binoculars down, lay on his back, and breathed deeply. He could smell the damp moss. Clouds sailed overhead.

I'm insane, he thought. I could have been in Buenos Aires instead of here in the Swedish wilderness. Maria would have been glad to see me. We might even have made love? In any case, I'd have slept soundly that night, and the following morning I'd have been able to open my workshop again. No doubt Don Antonio has been phoning, getting more annoyed by the day that the chair he sent me three months ago still isn't ready.

If he hadn't happened to sit down at a table with a Swedish sailor in a restaurant in Malmö, a sailor who understood and could speak Spanish, and if that damned television set hadn't been on and shown the face of an old man who'd been murdered, he wouldn't have needed to
abandon his plan. He would have been looking forward to an evening at La Cabana.

Above all, he wouldn't have needed to be reminded of what had happened. He'd thought it was all over, at long last, the business that had dogged him all his life. When he'd returned to his hotel room he'd sat on the edge of the bed until he'd reached a decision. He didn't drink a drop that night. At dawn he took a taxi to the airport some way out of town, where a friendly woman had helped him buy a ticket to Ostersund. A rental car was waiting for him. He drove into town and once again bought a tent and a sleeping bag, a camping stove and the other things he needed for making meals, some more warm clothes, and a flashlight. At the System wine shop he bought enough wine and brandy to last him a week. Finally he went to the bookstore in the square and bought a map—he'd thrown away the one he'd had before, just as he'd dumped his pans, stove, tent, and sleeping bag. It was as if the nightmare were starting over. In Dante's purgatory there was a level where men were tortured by everything repeating itself. He tried to remember what sins they had committed, but he couldn't.

Then he drove out of town and stopped at a gas station where he bought every local paper he could find. He sat in the car and looked for everything they'd written about the dead man. It was front-page news in all the local papers. He didn't understand the words, but there was a name mentioned after a reference to Abraham Andersson. Glöte. He guessed that must be the place where Andersson had lived, and where he'd been murdered. There was another name, Dunkarret, but that wasn't on the map. He got out of the car and spread the unwieldy map over the hood and set about making a plan. He didn't want to get too close. There was also a risk that the police might have set up roadblocks.

He decided on a place called Idre. He judged it to be far enough from Andersson's house. He was tired when he arrived, and pitched his tent at the end of a forest road where he felt safe. He left the tent, after covering it with leaves and branches he'd laboriously gathered. Then he drove north toward Sörvattnet, turned off for Linsell, and had no difficulty in finding the road marked by a sign saying “Dunkarret 2.” But he didn't take that road; instead, he continued towards Sveg.

Just before the road leading to Molin's house he'd passed a police car. About a kilometer further on he drove into the trees along a road that was almost completely overgrown. He'd surveyed the area thoroughly during the three weeks he'd spent observing Molin. He had compared himself to an animal that needed many exits from its den.

Now he parked his car and walked along the familiar track. He didn't think the place would be guarded, but even so he kept stopping and listening. Eventually, he could glimpse the house through the trees. He waited for twenty minutes. Then he walked up to the house and the spot where he'd left Molin's dead body. The forest floor was trodden down. The remains of red-and-white police tape hung from trees. He wondered if the man he'd killed had been buried yet. Perhaps the pathologists were still examining the body? He wondered if they would realize that the lashes on Molin's back had been made by a bullwhip used by cowboys on the Pampas. He approached the house and heaved himself up until he could see into the living room. The bloodstained footsteps had dried onto the floor but could still be made out. The woman who came to clean for Molin had obviously not been back.

He took his usual path to the lake. That was the path he'd used the night he decided he'd been waiting long enough. The other woman, the one who used to visit Molin and dance with him, had been there the previous day. If they followed their usual custom, it would be a week more before she came again. Moreover, the other man, the one called Andersson, had also been there the day before. He'd followed Andersson home, and had watched from behind some trees as he closed all the shutters and locked the shed and gave every sign of preparing to go away. He could still remember the feeling of having decided that the time had come. It had been raining that day. The clouds had dispersed by evening and he'd gone to the lake for a swim in the cold water, so that his head would be clear when he made the fateful decision. Afterwards he'd snuggled up in his sleeping bag in order to restore his body heat. All the weapons he'd acquired when he'd made his break-in on the way to Harjedalen were spread out on a plastic sheet beside him.

The time had come. Even so he was held back by a strange reluctance. It was as if he'd been waiting so long, he didn't know what would happen when the waiting was over. As so often before, his mind went back to the events of the last year of the war, when his life fell to pieces and could never wholly be restored. He'd often thought of himself as a sailboat with a broken mast and shredded sails. That was how his life had been, and nothing would be fundamentally changed by what he was about to do. He'd harbored the thought of revenge all his adult life, and he sometimes hated that feeling more than he hated the man responsible. Still, it was too late now. He couldn't return to Buenos
Aires without doing what he'd come here to do. He made up his mind after swimming in the dark lake. That night he launched his attack, carried out his plan.