Henning Mankell - The Return of the Dancing Master

They gathered in Johansson’s office at 2:15. Lindman had been hesitant about joining them, but Larsson insisted. Johansson was tired and irritable, but most of all he was worried. Lindman sat next to the wall, behind the others. The rain had passed over and the sun, already quite low in the sky, shone in through the open window. Johansson switched his cell phone to speakerphone, and Rundström’s voice could be heard despite a poor connection. The mist in the mountains of northwest Härjedalen was still there.

“We’re marking time here,” he said.

“And the roadblocks?” Johansson said.

“They’re still in place. A Norwegian drunk drove straight into the ditch from shock when he saw police standing in the road. He had a zebra skin in his car, incidentally.”

“Why?”

“How should I know? If it had been a bearskin you could have understood it, but I didn’t know there were any zebras in Härjedalen.”

The connection was lost, then it came back.

“I have a question about the weapons that were stolen,” Rundström said. “I know what make of guns and how many, but what about ammunition?”

“Two magazines for the pistol and twelve cartridges for the Mauser.”

“I don’t like this at all,” Rundström said. “Did he leave any clues?”

His voice was coming and going in waves.

“The house was empty,” Johansson said. “My wife is in Järvsö visiting our daughter. I don’t have any neighbors. The gun cabinet had been broken into.”

“No footprints? Did anybody see a car?”

“No.”

“The mist will start clearing soon, according to the weather people. But the sun will set before long. We’re wondering what to do. If he’s the one who stole the guns there’s not much point in our staying here. It would mean he’d already passed through our cordon.”

Larsson leaned towards the telephone. “Larsson here. I think it’s too soon to withdraw from up there. It might not have been him who broke into Erik’s house. But I have a question. Do we know anything about what this Hereira might have in the way of food?”

“Frostman claimed he didn’t have anything in his pantry. Maybe some jam. He wasn’t sure. On the other hand, the freezer was full. It was worth leaving it on to store all the berries and elk meat he’d been given by friends.”

“It’s hardly possible to prepare an elk steak on a camping gas stove. Sooner or later he’ll have to find a shop and buy some food.”

“We’ve been checking the houses up here. There’s just one solitary old man who lives here all year round. Hudin, he’s called, in a place called Högvreten. We’ve got a couple of officers there. Apparently he’s ninety-five and not exactly a shrinking violet. Apart from him, there are only vacation cottages in the area. You can’t say it’s overpopulated around here.”

“Anything else?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Okay, thanks. We’ll talk again later.”

Rundström’s voice faded away in a buzz of interference. Johansson turned off the phone.

“Frostengren,” said one of the officers. “Wasn’t that his name? Not Frostman?”

“Rundström’s not very good at names,” Larsson said. “Let’s have a rundown now. Is there anybody here who hasn’t met Stefan Lindman? A colleague from Borås who used to work with Herbert Molin.”

Lindman recognized all the faces. He wondered what they would say if he stood up and told them that in a few days’ time he would be starting a course of radiation for cancer.

There was a mass of detail and reports to sort out. Larsson urged them to be brief. They couldn’t waste time dwelling unnecessarily on minor details. At the same time, he had to make decisions about what was important and what could wait. Lindman tried to listen, but found that his head was full of images of women. Hanna Tunberg getting up from her chair and falling dead on the floor. Veronica Molin, her hand and her back as she lay asleep. And Elena was there as well. Especially Elena. He was ashamed of having told Veronica Molin that there was no one in his life.

He forced such thoughts out of his mind and tried to concentrate on what was being said around the table. They talked about the weapons used when Molin was murdered. They must have come from somewhere. It could be assumed that Hereira had entered Sweden from abroad, and so it followed that he had acquired them in Sweden. Larsson had a list of guns reported stolen in Sweden in recent months. He glanced through them, then put it to one side. No Swedish border control post had any information about a man called Fernando Hereira from Argentina passing through.

“Interpol are looking into that right now,” Larsson said. “I know that South American countries can be hard to deal with. A girl from Järpen disappeared in Rio de Janeiro a few years ago. It was sheer hell trying to get anything out of the police there. She turned up eventually, thank God. She’d fallen in love with an Indian and lived with him for a while in Amazonas. But it didn’t last. Now she’s an elementary school teacher and married to a man who works for a travel agent in Östersund. Rumor has it that her house is full of parrots.”

Laughter ran through the room.

“Let’s just hope that a suitable Fernando Hereira turns up,” Larsson said.

Some more papers were put to one side. There was a preliminary summary of Abraham Andersson’s life, but it was far from complete. So far, they had found nothing at all to link him with Molin. Everybody agreed that in light of what Hanna Tunberg had said, they should immediately put more resources into digging up Andersson’s past. Lindman could see that Larsson was trying to keep his impatience under control. He knows he’ll become a bad police officer if he loses his cool, Lindman thought.

They turned their attention to Hanna Tunberg for a while. Johansson said that she’d been one of the leading lights when the Sveg curling club was formed, and that it now had an international reputation.

“They used to play in the park near the train station,” he said. “I can remember her sweeping the ice clear as soon as it was cold enough in the autumn.”

“And now she’s dead,” Larsson said. “That was a horrific experience, believe me.”

“What caused it?” It was one of the officers who hadn’t said anything so far. Lindman seemed to recall that he was from Hede.

Larsson shrugged. “A stroke, maybe a blood clot in the brain. Or a heart attack. She was a chain-smoker. Anyway, the last thing she did before she died was to tell us about Berggren. She thought she’d seen her in Andersson’s house some time last spring. Hanna was honest enough to admit that she wasn’t sure. If she was right, it could mean at least two things. First, that we’ve established a link between Andersson and Molin. A woman. And we must also bear in mind that, so far, Berggren has denied anything more than a fleeting acquaintance with Andersson.”

Larsson reached for a file and picked out a piece of paper.

“Katrin Andersson, Abraham’s widow, told the Helsingborg police that she had never heard the name Elsa Berggren. She claims to have a good memory for names, and that her husband never — I’m quoting here — ‘kept any secrets from me.’” Larsson snapped the file shut. “That could be a claim that proves to be untrue, of course. We’ve all heard that phrase before.”

“I think we should be a little cautious,” Johansson said. “Hanna had a lot of good points, but she also had a reputation for being a nosy busybody. People like that sometimes have trouble distinguishing between what’s fact and what they’ve made up.”

“What do you mean?” Larsson said, irritated. “Should we take what she said seriously or shouldn’t we?”