Henning Mankell - The Return of the Dancing Master

An unusually hot August evening in the mountains. He couldn’t see where his sisters were, but Vera and his father were in deck chairs next to the wooden cabin. They were laughing. Stefan didn’t like what he saw and went away to the back of the cabin. There was a door there, and he opened it. He had no idea if it was allowed, but now he was inside Vera’s house. Two cramped rooms and a low ceiling. Some photographs standing on a bureau. He strained his eyes to conjure up those pictures. A wedding photo. Vera and her husband wearing a uniform.

He recalled it now, as clear as day. The man in an army uniform, Vera dressed in white, smiling, a garland of flowers in her hair, or maybe it was a bridal headpiece. Next to the wedding photograph was another picture in a frame. A picture of Hitler. At that moment the door opened. Vera was there, with his father. She said something in German, or possibly Swedish with a German accent, he couldn’t remember. But she had been angry, he remembered that all right. His father had led him away and boxed his ears.

That was it. The memory ended as the blow landed. He had no recollection of the drive back to Kinna. Nothing about being squashed in the backseat, or feeling car sick. Nothing at all. A picture of Hitler, a box on the ears, nothing else.

Lindman shook his head. Thirty years ago his father had taken the children and visited a German woman who worked at a hotel in the mountains. Just under the surface, as on a photograph behind another photograph, was the whole of the Hitler era. It was just as Wetterstedt had said: nothing had completely gone away, it had simply taken on new forms, new means of expression, but the dream of white supremacy was still alive. His father went to see a woman called Vera, and punished his son when he saw something he shouldn’t have seen. Was there anything else? He searched his memory, but his father had never made any reference to it. After the beating there was nothing more.

The helicopter circled around once more, then flew off. Lindman let his gaze wander over the mountain, but all he actually saw were two photographs standing in a room with a low ceiling.

Soon after that the mist came down and they turned back. They came to the chalet at about 6 P.M. The helicopter dropped off two of the dog handlers, then disappeared in the direction of Östersund. The pilot had brought with him baskets containing sandwiches and coffee. Rundström always seemed to be talking into his walkie-talkie when he wasn’t on the phone. Lindman kept to the periphery. Larsson listened to a report from one of the forensic officers who had searched the chalet, and made notes. Then he poured himself a cup of coffee and came over to Lindman.

“Well, we’ve found out a few things at least,” he said.

He balanced his cup on a stone and thumbed through his notebook.

“The owner is a Kurt Frostengren and lives in Stockholm. He usually comes here in the summer, over Christmas and New Year, and a week in March for some skiing. The house is empty for the rest of the year. Apparently he inherited it from a relative. Someone has broken in and set up his headquarters here, then gone away. He knows Berggren has seen his face. He must be aware of the possibility that we might have put two and two together and realized that he read the back of my bill in the restaurant. There is a cold-blooded side to the man that we mustn’t underestimate. He knows we’ll go looking for him. Especially after he attacked you and Berggren.”

“Where’s he headed?”

Larsson thought before replying. “I’d formulate the question differently. Why is he still here?”

“There’s something he still has to do.”

“The question is: what?”

“He wants to know who murdered Andersson. We’ve already talked about that.”

Larsson shook his head. “Not only that. He wants more than that. He intends to kill whoever murdered Andersson.” There was no other explanation. But he had one more question for Lindman.

“Why is it so important for him?”

“If we knew that, we’d know what this whole business is about.”

They stood gazing into the mist.

“He’s hiding,” Larsson said. “He’s clever, our man from Buenos Aires.”

Lindman looked at him in surprise. “How do you know he’s from Buenos Aires?”

Larsson took a piece of paper out of his pocket. A torn piece of newspaper, the crossword from Aftonbladet. Something like a doodle was in the margin, crossed out but originally written quite firmly.

“541,” Larsson said. “54 is Argentina. And 1 is Buenos Aires. The paper is dated June 12, when Frostengren was here. He saved newspapers for starting fires. The numbers have been written by somebody else. It must be Fernando Hereira. The newspaper in the car is Spanish, not from Argentina, but the language is the same. It can’t be easy to find newspapers from Argentina in Sweden, but it’s comparatively easy to find Spanish ones.”

“Is there a full telephone number for the number in Argentina?”

“No.”

Lindman thought for a moment.

“So he’s been sitting up here in the mountains, and made a phone call to Argentina. Can’t the call be traced?”

“We’re doing that now. Frostengren’s phone has its own line and you can dial direct. If Hereira had used a cell phone, we could have traced that without difficulty.”

Larsson bent down to pick up his coffee.

“I keep forgetting that we’re looking for not one but perhaps two cold-blooded murderers,” he said. “We’re beginning to get an idea of who Hereira might be and how he goes about things, but what about the other one? The one who killed Andersson, who’s he?”

The question remained unanswered in the mist. Larsson left Lindman and went to talk to Rundström and the remaining dog handler. Lindman looked at the Alsatian. It was exhausted. It lay with its neck pressed against the damp earth. Lindman wondered if a police dog could feel disappointment.

Half an hour later Larsson and Lindman returned to Sveg. Rundström would stay in Funäsdalen with the dog handler and three other officers. They drove in silence through the forest. This time Larsson did the driving. Lindman could see that he was very tired. A few kilometers short of Sveg he pulled onto the shoulder and stopped.

“I can’t work it out,” Larsson said “Who killed Andersson? It’s like we’re only scratching the surface. We have no idea what this is about. A man from Argentina disappears up a mountain when he should be getting away from here as fast as possible. He doesn’t flee up the mountain, he withdraws there, and then comes back again.”

“There’s another possibility that we haven’t considered,” Lindman said. “The man we are calling Fernando Hereira might know something we don’t.”

Larsson shook his head. “In that case he wouldn’t have put on a hood and asked Berggren those questions.”

Then they looked at each other.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Larsson said.

“Possibly,” Lindman said. “That Hereira knows, or thinks he knows, that it was Berggren who killed Andersson. And he wants to make her confess.”

Larsson drummed his fingers on the wheel.

“Perhaps Berggren isn’t telling the truth. She says the man who forced his way into her house asked her who had killed Andersson. He might well have said, ‘I know it was you who killed Andersson.’ ” Larsson restarted the engine. “We’ll continue keeping watch on the mountain,” he said. “And we’ll get tough with Berggren.”

They continued to Sveg. The countryside vanished beyond the beams of the headlights. As they were driving into the hotel courtyard, Larsson’s cell phone rang.

“It was Rundström,” he said when the call was over. “The car was rented in Östersund on November 5. By Fernando Hereira, an Argentinean citizen.”