Henning Mankell - The Return of the Dancing Master

“The man is in the hotel dining room. He hears that we are police officers. When we leave, he steals the bill you left behind. Now a few assumptions. If he takes the bill, he does so because he has an interest. And if he has an interest it can only be because he’s involved.”

Larsson raised a hand. “Involved? How?”

“That leads us on to the next assumption. If this is the man who came to see Berggren last night and tried to strangle me, we should ask ourselves at least one more important question.”

“Which is?”

“A question about the question he asked Berggren: ‘Who killed Andersson?’ ”

Larsson shook his head in annoyance. “You’ve lost me.”

“I’m suggesting that this question leads us to another question, the crucial one, the one he didn’t ask.”

The penny dropped. It was as if Larsson started breathing again.

“Who murdered Molin?”

“Exactly. Shall I go on?”

Larsson nodded.

“You could draw various conclusions. The most likely is that he didn’t ask the question about Molin because he already knew the answer. It means that, in all probability, he was the one who killed Molin.”

Larsson raised both arms. “Hang on, you’re going much too fast. We need some time to figure things out up here in Jämtland. So we’re looking for two murderers. We’ve already reached that conclusion. The question is: are we looking for two different motives?”

“Maybe.”

“It’s just that I find it difficult to take all this in. We’re in a place where crime of this kind is rare. Now we have two cases, one on top of the other, but not committed by the same man. You have to accept that all my experience rebels against such a conclusion.”

“There always has to be a first time. I think it’s time you started thinking new thoughts.”

“Let’s hear them!”

“Somebody makes his way here to the forest and kills Molin. It’s carefully planned. A few days later Andersson dies as well. He’s killed by somebody else. For some reason we don’t know, the man who killed Molin wants to know what happened. He’d been camping beside the lake, but he left after dragging Molin’s dead body to the edge of the forest. He comes back, because he needs to know what happened to Andersson. Why was he murdered? He picks up a scrap of paper left on a restaurant table by a police officer. What does he find there? Not two names, but three.”

“Berggren?”

“It seems to him that she must know the answer, so he tries to put pressure on her. She attacks him when he gets threatening. He runs away, but I happen to be there. You know the rest.”

Larsson opened a window and left it ajar.

“Who is this man?”

“I don’t know. But we can make another assumption. And it could prove that I’m right.”

Larsson said nothing, but waited for what was coming next.

“We think we know the murderer camped by the lake. Once he’s killed Molin, he goes away. But then he comes back again. He’s not going to put up his tent in the same place. So the question is: where’s he living?”

Larsson looked doubtful.

“You mean he might have checked into a hotel?”

“That possibility could be worth following up.”

Larsson checked his watch. “When’s breakfast?”

“They start serving at 6:30.”

“That means we might be in luck. Let’s go.”

A few minutes later they were in the hotel lobby. The girl at the desk looked at them in surprise.

“Two early birds looking for breakfast?”

“Breakfast can wait,” Larsson said. “Do you have a guest list for last week? Do you have your customer records in a ledger, or on loose sheets of paper?”

The girl looked worried. “Has something happened?”

“This is a routine inquiry,” Lindman said. “Nothing to worry about. Have you had any foreigners staying here in the last week or so?”

She thought for a moment. “There were four Finns here for two nights last week, Wednesday and Thursday.”

“Nobody else?”

“No.”

“He might have checked in somewhere else, of course,” Larsson said. “This isn’t the only place to stay in Sveg.”

He turned to the girl. “When we had dinner here, quite late, you may remember another customer in the dining room. What language did he speak?”

“English. But he came from Argentina.”

“How do you know?”

“He paid by credit card. He showed me his passport.”

She went into a back room and eventually came back with a Visa receipt. They read the name. Fernando Hereira. Legible even in the signature.

Larsson grunted with pleasure. “We’ve got him,” he said. “Always assuming it is him.”

“Has he been here before?” Lindman said.

“No.”

“Did you see what kind of car he had?”

“No.”

“Did he say where he’d come from? Or where he was going to?”

“No. He didn’t say much at all. He was friendly, though.”

“Could you describe him?”

The girl thought for a moment. Lindman could see she was trying hard.

“I have such an awful memory for faces.”

“But you must have seen something. Did he look like one of us?”

“Not at all.”

“How old was he?”

“Sixty, perhaps.”

“Hair?”

“Gray hair.”

“Eyes?”

“I wouldn’t remember that.”

“Was he fat or thin?”

“I don’t think he was fat.”

“What was he wearing?”

“A blue shirt, I think. And a blazer — I’m not sure.”

“Can you remember anything else?”

“No.”

Larsson shook his head and sat down on one of the brown sofas in the lobby with the Visa slip in his hand. Lindman joined him. By now it was 6:25 A.M. on November 11. Eight days to go before Lindman was due to report to the hospital in Borås. Larsson yawned and rubbed his eyes. Neither of them spoke.

A door leading to the bedrooms opened. Lindman looked up and saw Veronica Molin.

Silberstein watched the dawn approaching. For a while it was like being at home. The light was the same as what he had often seen while the sun rose over the horizon and spread its rays over the plains to the west of Buenos Aires, but after a few minutes, the feeling had gone. He was in the Swedish mountains, not far from the Norwegian border. He had gone straight back to Frostengren’s chalet after the botched visit to the Berggren woman. The man he’d seen behind the house and had no choice but to knock down and frighten with a pretended attempt to strangle him was one of the police officers he’d seen at the hotel when he was having dinner. He couldn’t understand what the man was doing there at night. Was the woman’s house being guarded after all? He had kept a careful watch on it before knocking on the door and pushing his way in.

He forced himself to consider the possibility that he had squeezed too hard and that the policeman was dead.

He had driven fast through the night, not because he was afraid somebody might be chasing him, but because he could no longer control his craving for alcohol. He had bought both wine and hard liquor in Sveg, as if anticipating a disaster. Now he accepted that he could no longer survive without alcohol. The only restriction he would apply was that he would not open any of the bottles until he got back to the chalet.

It was 3 A.M. by the time he drove the last difficult stretch up to Frostengren’s chalet. It was pitch-black on all sides as he made his way to the door. The moment he was inside, he opened a bottle of wine and downed half of it. Calm gradually settled in him. He sat at the table next to the window, without moving a muscle, without a thought in his head, and steadily drank. Then he drew the telephone towards him and dialed Maria’s number. There was a buzzing and scraping on the line, but her voice sounded very close even so. He could almost smell her breath through the receiver.