Henning Mankell - The Return of the Dancing Master

When he returned from Jerusalem, Silberstein had cared no more about his Jewish origins, but he’d resumed his search and received assistance from Simon Wiesenthal in Vienna, although it led to nothing. He didn’t know it at the time, but he would have to wait until Höllner appeared before he found the clue he’d been looking for.

He sat in the chalet belonging to the man named Frostengren, gazing at the mountains and valleys. He’d managed to find a needle in a haystack, and when the moment of truth came, he hadn’t hesitated. Molin was dead. Everything had gone according to plan up to that point. Then they’d found the other man, murdered in the woods outside his own house.

There were similarities between the two deaths, as if whoever killed Andersson had imitated what Silberstein had done with Molin. Two old men who lived on their own. Both had a dog. Both were killed in the open. Yet more important were the differences. He couldn’t tell how much the police had noticed, but he could see the differences because he had had nothing to do with Andersson’s death.

Silberstein looked at the mountains. Clouds of mist drifted down to the valley. He was close now to a decision. Whoever killed Andersson had tried to make it look as if the same murderer had come back to strike again. This raised an intriguing question: who knew so much about the way Molin died? Silberstein did not know what had been in the newspapers, and he had no idea what the police had revealed at the press conferences they’d presumably held.

There was another “why” that he was trying to find an answer to. The person who killed Andersson must have had a motive. A spring had been wound up, it seemed to him. When Molin died, it triggered some mechanism that meant Andersson had to be killed as well. Why, and by whom? He spent the whole day analyzing these questions from different points of view. He made lots of meals, not because he was especially hungry, but to quell his nervousness. He couldn’t help worrying that somehow, he was responsible for what happened to Andersson. Was there a secret between the two men? Was there a risk that Andersson might reveal it after Molin’s death? That must have been it. Something he hadn’t known about. Molin’s death meant that somebody had been put in danger, and therefore Andersson had to die as well to prevent the secret from coming out.

He opened the door and went outside. It smelled of damp moss. Clouds were drifting past, very low. Clouds in complete silence. He walked slowly around the wooden chalet, then once again.

Another person had appeared in the place where Molin and Andersson lived their lives. A woman. He’d seen her three times when she came to visit Molin. He’d followed them when they went for walks on forest tracks. Once, during her second visit, they’d gone towards the lake and he’d been afraid they might discover his tent. Luckily they turned back before they came to the last bend. He’d followed them through the trees, like a Boy Scout or one of those Red Indians he’d read about as a child, in the books by Edward S. Ellis. Sometimes they talked, and very occasionally they laughed.

After their walks they would go back to the house, and the dog would go wild; he would hear the sound of music. The first time he’d scarcely been able to believe his ears when he heard somebody singing in Spanish, Argentinean Spanish, with the characteristic intonation different from that in any other Spanish-speaking country. After the music, which usually lasted between half an hour and an hour, everything had been quiet. He wondered if they’d been making love. Afterwards Molin had accompanied her to where she’d parked her car. They had shaken hands, never embraced. Then she’d driven away.

He guessed that woman must have been Elsa Berggren. That was the name with those of Molin and Andersson on the back of the bill the police officer had crumpled up and dropped into the ashtray. He still wasn’t sure what the implications were. Was Berggren another old Nazi who had withdrawn to Härjedalen?

He gazed over the hills and tried to work out the possibilities. A triangle of Molin, Berggren, and Andersson. He didn’t know if Berggren also knew Andersson. Andersson and Berggren had been mere extras in the drama he’d come into the forests to enact.

He walked around the house one more time. He thought he could hear an airplane in the distance, then only the wind swishing along the sides of the mountains.

There was no other explanation, it seemed to him, but that there was some kind of link, a secret, between the three of them, just as the policeman had written on that bill. Molin was dead, so Andersson had to die as well. That left only the woman. She must be the one with the key to all this.

He went back inside. He’d taken another package of hamburgers out of the freezer, and they were thawing on the draining board. He would have to speak to the Berggren woman to find out what had happened.

In the evening, he worked out his plan. He had drawn the curtains and put the table lamp on the floor so that no light would seep out into the surrounding darkness. He sat at the table until midnight. By then he knew what he was going to do. It would be risky, but he had no choice.

Before going to bed he dialed a telephone number in Buenos Aires. The man who answered was in a hurry. He could hear the hum of conversation in the background.

“La Cãbana,” the man shouted. “Hello?”

Silberstein replaced the receiver. The restaurant was still there. Before long he’d be back at his table, next to the window overlooking the side street leading into Avenida Corrientes.

Next to the telephone was a directory in which he found Elsa Berggren’s number and an address in town. He checked the map of Sveg in the phone book and saw that it was a street on the south side of the river. He breathed a sigh of relief: he wouldn’t need to go looking for her house in the forest. The risk of being seen by someone else would be greater, of course. He wrote the address on a scrap of paper, then put the directory back where he’d found it.

He slept uneasily. He felt shattered when he woke. He stayed in bed all day, only getting up occasionally to eat some of the food he’d taken out of the freezer.

He stayed in Frostengren’s chalet for three more days, by which time he could feel his strength returning. On the morning of the fourth day he cleaned the place and waited until the afternoon before locking up and replacing the key under the stone. When he came to his car, he consulted the map again. Although it was hardly likely that the police would have set up roadblocks, he decided not to take the shortest route to Sveg. Instead, he drove north towards Vålådalen. When he came to Mittådalen he turned towards Hede and came to Sveg just as it was getting dark. He parked on the edge of the little town where there were stores and gas stations, and also an information board and a map. He found his way to Mrs. Berggren’s house. She lived in a white house surrounded by a large garden. There was a light on downstairs. He took a good look around, then returned to his car when he’d seen enough.

He still had a lot of hours to fill. He went into a supermarket, found himself a woollen hat big enough for it to be pulled down over his face, then joined the longest of the checkout lines, where the girl seemed to be the one most under pressure. He gave her exactly the right amount, and was sure as he left the store that nobody would remember what he looked like nor how he was dressed. When he got back to the car he used a knife he’d taken from Frostengren’s chalet to make holes in the hat for him to see through.

By 8 P.M. there wasn’t much traffic. He drove over the bridge and parked where his car was invisible from the road. Then he went on waiting. To pass the time, in his head he reupholstered the sofa that Don Batista wanted to give his daughter as a wedding present.