Henning Mankell - The Return of the Dancing Master

The alarm on his wristwatch was ringing. He switched it off, got out of the car, opened the trunk, and took out his newly acquired flashlight, then set off.

The last part of the way, he was guided by the beams from the spotlights mounted in the forest. The light shining up from the trees reminded him of the war. One of his earliest memories was peeping out through cracks in the blackout curtains, when nobody was around to see him, and watching the anti-aircraft defenses searching for enemy bombers flying over Berlin at night. He’d always been terrified that a bomb would fall on their house and kill his parents. In his imagination, he himself always survived, but that only made his fear more acute. How would he be able to go on living if his parents and brothers and sisters were no longer alive?

He banished any such thoughts and, being careful to shield the light, used his flashlight to locate his binoculars, which were in a plastic bag to protect them from the damp. He sat on the moss, leaning against a tree trunk, and focused on the house. There was light coming from all the windows on the ground floor. The door opened occasionally and someone went in or came out. There were only two cars parked outside now. Before long two men got into one of the cars and drove off. By then somebody had also turned off some of the lights in the forest. He continued scanning the house with his binoculars until he found what he was looking for. The dog was sitting quietly at the edge of the light coming from one of the windows. Somebody had placed a food bowl beside it.

He looked at his watch. 10:30. He should be on his way home from La Cãbana, where he’d dined with a customer. That is what Maria believed, at least. He made a face at the thought. Now that he was so far from home, it worried him that he lied so often to Maria. He had never dined with any of his customers at La Cãbana nor at any other restaurant. He didn’t dare tell her the truth: that he didn’t want to eat with her, answer her questions, listen to her voice. My life has slowly grown narrower and become a path strewn with lies. That is another price I’ve had to pay. The question is, will I be honest with Maria in the future, now that I’ve killed Molin? I love Maria, but at the same time, I recognize that I actually prefer to be on my own. There’s a split inside me between what I do and what I want to do. That split has been there since the catastrophe happened in Berlin. What can I do but accept that most things have already been lost and will never be recovered?

Time passed. A snowflake floated from the sky. He held his breath and waited. A snowfall was the last thing he wanted. It would make it impossible for him to carry out his plan. Luckily, there was only the occasional solitary snowflake.

At 11:15 one of the policemen came out onto the steps to pee. He whistled to the dog, but it didn’t react. Just as he was finishing another man came out with a cigarette in his hand. It dawned on him that there were only two officers in the house, two men keeping guard.

Still, he waited until it turned midnight. The house was quiet. Sometimes he thought he could hear the sound of a television or perhaps a radio, but he wasn’t sure. He shone his flashlight on the ground and made sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. Then he started making his way down the back of the hill. He really should carry out his plan now, but he couldn’t resist the temptation to see the place where Andersson had been murdered. There could be somebody there standing guard, somebody he hadn’t seen. It was a risk. But he felt he had to take it.

When he came close to the edge of the trees he turned off his flashlight. He moved very slowly, feeling his way forward on hands and knees, half-expecting the dog to bark at any moment. He went back into the trees at the other side of the house. Now he was assisted by the light from the spotlights.

There was no guard. There was nothing at all, in fact. Just a tree on which the police had attached various markers. He plucked up his courage and walked right up to the trunk. At about chest height some of the bark had been split open. He frowned. Had Andersson been standing by a tree trunk when he was murdered? In that case he must have been tied to it? And that meant it was an execution. He broke out into a cold sweat and swung around, but there was nobody there. I was after Molin, he thought. Then somebody appeared behind Andersson, and now I have the feeling there is somebody behind me as well. He moved out of the light and made himself invisible. Tried to think straight. Had he set in motion a struggle between different forces over which he had no control? Had he stumbled into something he knew nothing about when he decided to take his revenge? His head was filled with questions and fear. For several minutes he came very close to doing exactly the same thing the man who became Molin had done: running away, disappearing, hiding, and forgetting what had happened — not to some forest in his case, but to Buenos Aires. He should never have come back, but it was too late now. He wouldn’t go home until he’d found out what happened to Andersson. This is Molin’s revenge on me, he thought, and he felt furious. If it had been possible, he wouldn’t have hesitated to kill him all over again.

Then he forced himself to be calm. He took a few deep breaths and imagined waves breaking on a beach. After a while he checked his watch. 1:15 A.M. It was time now. He went back towards the house. He could hear music coming from inside, and the sound of voices conducting a quiet conversation. Presumably the radio was on, and two weary police officers were talking to stay awake. He walked towards the dog and called to it in a low voice. It growled but wagged its tail. He stopped short of the light coming from the window. The dog came up to him in the shadows. He stroked it. It seemed worried, but was still wagging its tail.

Then he released the leash from the running line and led the dog away. They left no tracks in the darkness.

Lindman had seen it many times before. A police officer receives some unexpected information and reacts instinctively by reaching for the telephone. But Larsson was already holding a telephone, and it wasn’t necessary to call anybody in any case. Both of them realized that the first thing to do was to work out the significance of the dog. It could lead to some kind of breakthrough in the investigation, but it could also be a red herring — the most likely explanation.

“I suppose there’s no chance that it simply ran away?” Lindman said.

“Evidently not.”

“Isn’t it possible that somebody stole it?”

Larsson shook his head doubtfully. “From under the noses of several police officers? I don’t think that’s what happened.”

“It’s hardly likely that the murderer has returned to get the dog.”

“Unless we’re dealing with a lunatic. Let’s face it, we can’t rule that out.”

They sat quietly, exploring the various possibilities.

“We’ll have to wait,” Larsson said eventually. “We must be careful not to get carried away by this dog business. In any case, it might turn up again before long. Dogs usually do.”

Larsson put his cell phone back in his jacket pocket and started walking to Molin’s house. Lindman stayed where he was. It was several hours since he’d last thought about his illness, felt the creeping terror about when the severe pains might return. As he watched Larsson walking away, he felt as if he’d been abandoned.

Once when he was very young he’d been taken by his father to a football match at Ryavallen in Borås. It was a Swedish Premier League match, very important in one way or another, maybe crucial for the championship. He remembered that the opposition was IFK Göteborg. His father had said, “We’ve got to win this one,” and as they drove from Kinna to Borås he kept repeating the mantra, “We’ve got to win this one.” When they parked outside the ground, his father bought him a yellow-and-black scarf. It sometimes seemed to Stefan that his interest in football had been awoken by that yellow-and-black scarf rather than by the match itself. The teeming mass of people had frightened him, and he’d clung onto his father’s hand as they walked towards the turnstiles. In the middle of that seething crowd, he’d concentrated on just one thing: holding his father’s hand tightly. That was the difference between life and death. If he let go, he’d be hopelessly lost among all these expectant would-be spectators lining up to get in. And then, just before they came to the turnstiles, he’d glanced up at his father and seen a face he didn’t recognize. He didn’t recognize the hand either, now that he looked closely. Without realizing, he’d let go of his father’s hand for a couple of seconds and taken hold of the wrong one. He was panic-stricken, and burst into tears. People looked around to see what had happened. The stranger didn’t seem to have noticed that a boy in a yellow-and-black scarf had taken hold of his hand, and now snatched it away, as if the boy were about to pick his pocket. At the same moment, his father appeared again. The panic subsided, and they passed through the turnstile. They had seats at the top of the stand on one of the long sides, giving an overall view of the playing field, and they watched the yellow-and-blacks battling with the blue-and-whites over the light brown ball. He couldn’t remember the result. IFK Göteborg had probably won, in view of his father’s silence all the way home to Kinna. But Stefan had never forgotten that brief moment when he’d let go of his father’s hand and felt utterly lost.