Henning Mankell - The Return of the Dancing Master

He sat down on the fallen trunk and fiddled with a pine twig. Had the hatred left him now? Would he be in peace for the years he had left to live? He had no way of knowing, but that was his hope. He would even light a candle for August Mattson-Herzén in the little church he passed every time he went to his workshop. Might he even drink a toast to him now that he was dead?

He stayed in the forest until the light faded. A thought he’d had when living in his tent here, that the forest was a cathedral and the trees were columns supporting an invisible roof, had returned. He felt cold, but he felt serenely calm. If he’d had a towel with him, no doubt he’d have jumped into the cold water and swum out until he could no longer touch the bottom.

He walked back to his car through the gloaming and drove into Sveg. Something remarkable happened then: he had dinner in a hotel dining room, and at another table were two men talking about Molin and Andersson. At first he thought he was imagining things. He couldn’t understand Swedish, but the names had cropped up over and over again. After a while he went out to the lobby and, because there was nobody around, he looked in the hotel ledger and found that two of the hotel guests were described as “CID Inspectors.” He returned to the dining room, but neither of them evidenced the slightest interest in him. He listened intently and picked up some other names, including “Elsa Bergén” or something like that. Then he watched one of the policemen write something on the back of his bill; when they left, he crumpled the bill up and dropped it in the ashtray. Silberstein waited until the waitress was in the kitchen, then picked up the crumpled bill and left the hotel. In the light of his flashlight, he tried to decipher what was written on the back of the bill. The most important thing was the name of the third person, Berggren, called Elsa, obviously a woman. Linking the three names — Molin, Andersson and Berggren — were arrows forming a triangle. Next to Andersson’s name was a swastika and a large question mark.

He drove to Linsell and then continued as far as Glöte. He parked the car behind some stacks of logs and picked his way through the trees until he came to the vicinity of Andersson’s house, then climbed up the hill where he was now lying. He had no idea what he thought he might discover, but he realized that he had to be very close to the place where it had happened if he were ever going to get an answer to the question he kept asking himself: who killed Andersson? And was it indirectly his fault because he’d killed Molin? He needed the answers to those questions before he could return to Buenos Aires. If he didn’t have them, he would be haunted by the anxiety for the rest of his life. Molin would have had the last laugh after all. His mission to cleanse himself from all hatred would have turned back on him with full force.

He used his binoculars to watch the police officers coming and going between the edge of the forest and the house. They would assume that it was the same person who had killed both Molin and Andersson. There are only two people who know that is not true, he thought. One of them is me, and the other is whoever killed Andersson. They are looking for one person when they should be looking for two.

He realized now he’d come back to make clear, somehow, that he wasn’t the one who had killed Andersson. The police officers he’d been observing through his binoculars were following a trail that would lead them astray. Of course, he couldn’t be certain what the men around the edge of the forest were thinking, but there is always a certain logic to fall back on, it seemed to him. I don’t know, but I suspect there aren’t very many violent crimes up here. People are few and far between, they don’t say much, and they seem to get along well with one another. Like Molin and Andersson, for instance: they appeared to have gotten along okay. Now they were both dead. He had killed Molin. But who killed Andersson? And why? The man who was his closest neighbor?

He put down his binoculars and rubbed his eyes. The effects of the alcohol had started to leave his body now. His mouth was still dry, and his throat hurt every time he swallowed, but he seemed to be able to think clearly again. He stretched out in the damp moss. His back ached. Clouds sailed over his head. A car engine came to life below, and he heard it reverse, turn, then drive away.

He relived again what had happened. Could there be a connection between Molin and Andersson that he didn’t know about? There were a lot of unanswered questions. Was it a coincidence that Molin had chosen to live in the vicinity of Andersson? Who had arrived there first? Did Andersson come from those parts? Had Andersson too fought for Hitler? Was he too one of those people who had done terrible things and escaped punishment? The thought struck him as very unlikely, but not impossible.

He heard a car approaching, and sat up. Through his binoculars he watched a man emerge from a car that wasn’t painted blue and white and didn’t have POLICE written on its sides. He tried to hold the binoculars steady. It was the policeman he’d seen in the restaurant, the one who’d written on the back of the bill. So he was right so far. This man was involved in both cases — he wasn’t looking only for the killer of Abraham Andersson, he was hunting the man who’d killed Herbert Molin.

It was a strange experience, using his binoculars to observe a police officer who was trying to find him. He felt an impulse to run away, but his desire to find out what had happened to Andersson was stronger than the urge to save his own skin. He couldn’t leave until he knew if he was indirectly responsible for the murder.

He put down the binoculars and rubbed the back of his neck, which was feeling stiff. This was a very strange situation, it seemed to him. No matter who had killed Andersson, the murderer must have had a motive that had nothing to do with him. If he’d gone to a different restaurant, if there hadn’t been a television set or a sailor who spoke Spanish, he wouldn’t have made this long journey back to where — a few kilometers down the road — he himself had committed murder. He raised his binoculars again and watched the man walk over to the dog and pat it on the head. Then he disappeared into the forest.

Silberstein focused on the dog. A thought started to evolve in his mind. He put down the binoculars and lay on his back. I must tell them they are on the wrong track, he thought. I can only do that by announcing that I’m still here. Not tell them who I am, nor that I killed Molin, nor why. I have to indicate only that it was somebody else who killed Andersson. My only chance is to throw a wrench in their works, to make them stop and think about what actually happened.

The dog. The dog can help me, he thought.

He stood up, did some exercises to ease the stiffness in his body, then set off into the forest. He had always lived in cities, but even so, he had a good sense of direction and was good at finding his way in the countryside. It took him less than an hour to find his way back to his car. He had taken with him some food and some bottles of water. He was tempted by the thought of a glass of wine or brandy, but he knew he was capable of resisting the temptation. There was a job to be done. He couldn’t put that at risk by getting drunk. He ate enough to satisfy his hunger, then curled up in the backseat of the car. He could rest for an hour before going back and still get there before midnight. To ensure that he woke up in time, he set the alarm on his watch.

He closed his eyes and immediately he was back in Buenos Aires. He wondered whether to choose the bed in which Maria was already asleep or the mattress at the back of his workshop. He chose the latter. The sounds that filled his ears were no longer those from the trees. Now he was hearing the noise from the streets of Buenos Aires.