Henning Mankell - The Return of the Dancing Master

They went back to the conference room where the rest of them were assembled, but the meeting never got going again. Rundström’s cell phone rang. He answered, then raised his hand.

“They’ve found a rental car in the Funäsdalen mountains,” he said.

They gathered around the wall map. Rundström pointed to the spot.

“There. The car was abandoned.”

“Who found it?” It was Larsson who asked.

“A man called Elmberg, he has a summer place there. He went to check that his cottage was okay. Somebody had been there, and he thought it was a bit strange at this time of year. Then he found the car. He suspects the chalet where the car’s parked has been broken into too.”

“Did he see anybody?”

“No. He didn’t hang around. I suppose he was thinking of Molin and Andersson. But he did notice a few other things. The car had an Östersund license plate. Plus he saw a foreign newspaper on the backseat.”

“Let’s go,” Larsson said, putting on his jacket.

Rundström turned to Lindman.

“You’d better come too. I mean, you more or less saw him. Assuming it was him.”

Larsson asked Lindman to drive because he had calls to make from his cell phone.

“Forget the speed limit,” Larsson said. “As long as you keep us on the road.”

Lindman listened to what Larsson was saying on the phone. A helicopter was on its way. And dogs. They were about to drive through Linsell when Rundström called: a salesperson in Sveg had told the police that she’d sold a knitted woolen hat the previous day.

“Unfortunately the girl can’t remember what he looked like, nor does she know if he said anything,” Larsson said, with a sigh. “She can’t even remember if it was a man or a woman. All she knows is that she sold a stupid woolen hat. Come on! Some people keep their eyes up their asses.”

There was a man waiting for them just north of Funäsdalen. Elmberg, he said he was. They hung around until Rundström and another car arrived. Then they continued a couple of kilometers along the main road before turning off.

It was a red Toyota. None of the police officers there could distinguish between Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian. Lindman thought the newspaper on the back seat, El País, was Italian. Then he looked at the price and realized that “ptas” meant “pesetas,” hence Spain. They continued on foot. The mountain towered above them. There was a chalet where the final steep ascent started. It looked like an old shepherd’s hut that had been modernized. Rundström and Larsson reconnoitered, and decided there was nobody there. Both were armed, however, and they approached the front door with care. Rundström shouted a warning. No reply. He shouted again. His words died away with a ghostly echo. Larsson flung the door open. They ran in. A minute later Larsson emerged to say that the chalet was empty, but that somebody had been there. They would now wait for the helicopter with the dog team. The forensic unit that had been sifting through the evidence at Berggren’s house had broken off and were on their way.

The helicopter came in from the northeast and landed on a field above the chalet. The dogs and dog handlers disembarked. The handlers let the dogs sniff at an unwashed glass Larsson had found. Then they set off into the mountains.

Larsson called off the search at around 5 P.M. Mist had come rolling in from the west, and that together with the gathering darkness made it pointless to go on.

They had started walking toward the mountain at 1 P.M. All approaching roads were being watched. The dogs kept losing the scent, then finding it again. They started out heading due north, then branched off along a ridge heading west before turning north again. They were on a sort of plateau when Larsson called off the operation, after consulting Rundström. They had set off in a line, then spread out as they walked along the ridge. It had been easy going to start with, not too steep. Even so, Lindman soon noticed that he was out of shape, but he didn’t want to give up, certainly not be the first to do so.

But there was something else about this walk up the mountain. At first it was just a vague, imprecise feeling, but eventually it turned into a memory and became steadily clearer. He had been up this mountain before. It happened when he was seven or eight, but he had repressed it.

It was late summer, a couple of weeks before school started again. His mother was away — her sister, who lived in Kristianstad, had been unexpectedly widowed and his mother had gone there to help her. One day his father announced that they were going to pack the car and go on vacation. They would head north, live in a tent, and do it cheaply. Lindman only had a vague recollection of the car journey. He had been squashed in the backseat with one of his sisters and all the luggage that for some reason his father had not secured on the roof. He was also fighting against car sickness. His father didn’t deem it necessary to stop just because one of the children was going to be sick. He couldn’t remember if he and his sisters survived without vomiting: that part of his recollection had gone forever.

Lindman was the last in line. Thirty meters in front of him was Johansson, who occasionally answered calls on his walkie-talkie. The memory unfolded with every step he took.

If he were eight then, it was twenty-nine years ago. 1970, August 1970. On their way up to the mountains they had spent a cramped night in the tent, and Stefan had to clamber over the rest of the family to go outside and pee. The next day they had come to a place that Lindman seemed to remember was Vemdalsskalet. They had pitched their tent behind an old wooden cabin not far away from the mountain hotel.

He was surprised that he’d been able to lose the memory of that holiday. So he had been here before, in these very parts. Why had he chosen not to remember? What had happened?

There was a woman somewhere in that memory. She had appeared just after they had pitched the tent. His father had seen her on the other side of the road, and had gone to greet her. Stefan and his sisters watched as their father shook hands with the woman and started talking, out of earshot. Stefan remembered asking his sisters if they knew who she was, but they had hissed at him to be quiet. That was a part of his recollection that raised a smile. His youth was marked by his sisters always telling him to be quiet, never listening to what he said, looking at him with a degree of contempt that indicated he would never be included in their games or their circle of friends, that he was too small, too stupid.

His father came back to join them; so did the woman. She was older than he was, with stripes of gray in her hair, and she was wearing the black-and-white uniform of a waitress. She reminded him of somebody, he now thought. And then the penny dropped: Elsa Berggren. Even if it wasn’t her. He could remember a smile, but also something off-putting, a ruthless streak. They had stood next to the tent, and she hadn’t been surprised by their arrival. Stefan remembered being rather worried — worried that his father would never go back to Kinna, and that his mother would stay in Kristianstad. The rest of the meeting with the unknown woman now fell into place. His father told them that her name was Vera, that she was from Germany, and then she’d shaken hands with them all in turn, first his sisters and then him.

Lindman stopped. Johansson was over to his left, and cursed as he tripped. The helicopter came rattling in at a low altitude and started circling over the valley below. He started walking again. There’s still another door to open, he thought. They had walked on the mountain all those years ago as well. No really long treks, always within easy distance from the hotel.