Henning Mankell - The Return of the Dancing Master

She gave a shudder, as if she were starting to feel cold.

“I want to get away from here,” she said. “Even more than before. I’ll get around to reading that diary eventually, but first I must take care of the funeral. Then I’ll leave. And I’ll have to get used to the idea that not only did my father only pretend to care about me, he was also a Nazi.”

“What’ll happen to the house?”

“I’ve spoken to a real estate agent. Once the estate inventory has been drawn up it will be sold. That’s if anybody will have it.”

“Have you been there?”

She nodded. “I went there, in spite of everything. It was worse than I could ever have imagined. Most especially those footprints.”

Lindman looked at his watch. He ought to leave now, before it was too late.

“I’m sorry you’re leaving.”

“Why?”

“I’m not used to being all by myself in a little hotel in the middle of nowhere. I wonder what it’s like to live here.”

“Your father chose to do so.”

She accompanied him out into the lobby.

“Thank you for making the effort,” she said.

Before leaving Lindman called Larsson to ask whether they’d found the dog. He heard that Näsblom had tagged behind the excited dog for half an hour through the forest, but the trail had disappeared on a dirt track in the middle of the forest.

“Somebody will have picked it up in a car that was waiting there,” Larsson said. “But who? And where did they go?”

He drove south, over the river and into the forest. Occasionally he would ease back on the accelerator when he realized he was driving too fast. His head was empty. The only thought that arose sporadically in his mind was what had happened to Andersson’s dog. Shortly after midnight he stopped at a hot dog stand in Mora that was just about to close. When he’d finished eating, he felt too tired to go any further. He drove into a nearby parking lot and curled up on the backseat. When he woke up his watch said 3 A.M. He went out into the dark to urinate. Then he continued driving south through the night. After a few hours he stopped again to sleep.

By the time he woke up it was 9 A.M. He walked around and around the car to stretch his legs. He would be home in Borås by nightfall. When he’d gotten as far as Jönköping, he would phone Elena and give her a surprise. An hour or so later, he’d be pulling up outside her house.

But after passing Örebro, he turned off again. He was thinking straight now, and he’d started thinking back to his conversation with Veronica Molin the night before. She hadn’t been telling the truth.

There was that business about her father. Whether she’d known he was a Nazi or not. She had only pretended to be surprised. She’d known, but tried to hide the fact. He couldn’t put his finger on how he knew she wasn’t telling the truth. And there was another question he couldn’t answer either: had she known about Berggren, for all that she claimed she hadn’t?

Lindman pulled up and got out of the car. This has nothing to do with me, he thought: I have my illness to worry about. I’ll go back to Borås and admit that I’ve been missing Elena all the time I’ve been away. Then, when I feel like it, I’ll call Larsson and ask how the case is going. That’s all.

Then he made up his mind to go to Kalmar. Where Molin had been born, under the name of Mattson-Herzén. That’s where it had all begun, in a family that had been adherents of Hitler and National Socialism. There should be a man there by the name of Wetterstedt. A portrait painter. Who knew Molin.

He rummaged around in the trunk and came up with a tattered map of Sweden. This is madness, he thought; even so, he worked out the best route to Kalmar. I’m supposed to be going to Borås. But he knew he couldn’t let go now. He wanted to know what had happened to Molin. And Andersson. Perhaps also what lay behind the disappearance of the dog.

He reached Kalmar by evening. It was November 6. Two weeks from today he would start his radiation therapy. It had started raining a few miles north of Västervik. The water glistened in the beams from his headlights as he drove into the town and looked around for somewhere to stay.

Early the following day Lindman walked down to the sea. He could just make out the Öland Bridge through the fog that had settled over the Kalmarsund. He went to the water’s edge and stood contemplating the sea as it lapped against the shore. The long car journey was still taking its toll on his body. Twice he’d dreamed that big trucks were heading straight for him. He’d tried to get out of the way, but it had been too late and he’d woken up. His hotel was in the middle of town. The walls were like cardboard, and he’d been forced to listen to a woman blathering away on the telephone. After an hour of that, he’d felt justified in thumping on the wall; soon afterwards the conversation came to an end. Before dropping off to sleep, he’d lain in bed and stared up at the ceiling, wondering why he’d to come to Kalmar. Could it be that he was trying to put off his return to Borås for as long as possible? Had he grown tired of being with Elena but didn’t want to admit it? He didn’t know, but he was not sure that his detour to Kalmar was exclusively due to curiosity about Herbert Molin’s past.

The forests of Härjedalen were already a part of his own past. All that mattered now was himself, his illness, and the thirteen days remaining until he was due to start his therapy. Nothing else had any importance. Stefan Lindman’s thirteen days in November. How will I look back on them ten or twenty years from now, always assuming I live that long? He tried to avoid answering the question, and wandered back towards town, leaving the water and the fog behind him. He found a café, went in, ordered a cup of coffee, and borrowed a telephone directory.

There was only one Wetterstedt in the Kalmar district. Emil Wetterstedt, artist. He lived in Lagmansgatan. Lindman turned the pages until he found a map of the area: he located the street straight away. In the center of town, only a couple of blocks from the café. He took out his cell phone — then he remembered that it didn’t work. If I can get hold of a new battery, I should be able to use it again, he thought. Or I could go to his apartment. Ring the doorbell. But what would I say? That I was a friend of Herbert Molin’s? That would be a lie: we were never friends. We worked together at the same police station in the same police district. We once went looking for a murderer together. That’s all. He gave me some useful advice now and then, but whether that advice really was as good as I’m claiming it to be, I can’t possibly say. I can hardly arrive and announce that I’ve come to have my portrait painted. Another thing: Wetterstedt is no doubt an old man, about the same age as Molin. An old man who doesn’t much care about the world any longer.

He kept sipping his coffee. When he’d finished working his way through his ideas one by one, he’d ring Wetterstedt’s doorbell, say that he was a policeman, and say that he would like to talk to him about Herbert Molin. What happened next would depend on how Wetterstedt reacted.

He drained his cup and left the café. The air felt different from the air he’d been breathing in Härjedalen. It had felt dry up there, whereas the air he was breathing now was damp. All the shops were still closed, but as he walked to the house where Wetterstedt lived, he saw one that sold cell phones. Perhaps the old portrait painter was a late riser.

The block of apartments in Lagmansgatan was three stories high, with a gray façade. No balconies. The front door was unlocked. From the names next to the bells, he saw that Wetterstedt lived on the top floor. There was no elevator. The old man must have strong legs, he thought. A door slammed somewhere. It echoed through the stairwell. By the time he reached the top of the three flights he was out of breath. He was surprised that his condition seemed to have deteriorated so much.