Henning Mankell - The Return of the Dancing Master

It dawned on Lindman that he’d known all the time. Molin had been scared stiff. All those years they had worked together his fear had always been there. Molin had usually managed to hide it, but not always.

Lindman frowned.

Molin had been murdered in the depths of the northern forests, having always been frightened. The question was: of whom?

Giuseppe Larsson was a man who had learned from experience never to take anything for granted. He woke up on October 26 when his backup alarm clock rang. He looked at his frontline clock on the bedside table and noted that it had stopped at 3:04. So you couldn’t even rely on alarm clocks. That’s why he always used two. He got out of bed and opened the blinds with a snap. The television weather forecast the night before had said there would be a light snowfall over the province of Jämtland, but Larsson could see no sign of snow. The sky was dark, but full of stars.

Larsson had a quick breakfast made for him by his wife. Their nineteen-year-old daughter, who still hadn’t left the nest, was fast asleep. She had a job at the hospital and was due to start on a weeklong night shift that evening. Shortly after seven Larsson forced his feet into a pair of Wellington boots, pulled his hat down over his eyes, stroked his wife’s cheek, and set off for work. He was faced with a drive of a couple of hundred kilometers. This last week he’d made it there and back several times, apart from one occasion when he was so tired, he’d felt obliged to check into a hotel in Sveg.

Now he had to drive there yet again. On the way he had to keep an eye out for elks while also trying to summarize the murder investigation he was involved in. He left Östersund behind, headed for Stenstavik, and set his cruise control to 85 kilometers per hour. He couldn’t be sure that he’d be able to stay under the speed limit of 90 kilometers per hour if he didn’t. An average of 85 would get him there in good time for the meeting with the forensic unit arranged for 10 A.M.

He seemed to be driving through tightly-packed darkness. The northern winter was at hand. Larsson was born in Östersund forty-three years ago, and couldn’t understand people who complained about the darkness and the cold. As far as he was concerned, the half of the year usually described as winter was a time when everything settled down and became uneventful. Needless to say, there was always somebody now and then who couldn’t stand the winter any longer and committed suicide or beat some other person to death — but that was the way it had always been. Not even the police could do anything about that.

However, what had happened not far from Sveg was hardly an everyday occurrence. Larsson found himself having to rehearse all the details one more time.

The emergency call reached the Östersund police station late in the afternoon of October 19. Seven days ago now. Larsson was on the point of leaving for a haircut when somebody thrust a telephone into his hand. The woman at the other end was shouting. He was forced to hold the receiver away from his ear to grasp what she was saying. Two things were clear from the start: the woman was very upset, and she was sober. He sat down at his desk and fumbled for a notepad. After a few minutes he made enough notes to give him a good picture of what he thought she was trying to make him understand. The woman’s name was Hanna Tunberg. Twice a month she used to clean for a man called Herbert Molin, who lived some miles outside Sveg in a house called Rätmyren. When she arrived that day she found a dog lying dead in its pen, and seen that all the windows in the house were broken. She didn’t dare stay as she thought the man who lived there must have gone insane. She drove back to Sveg and got her husband, who was retired for health reasons. They went back to the house together. It was about four in the afternoon by then. They considered phoning the police right away, but decided to wait until they had established what had actually happened — a decision they both bitterly regretted. Her husband entered the house but emerged immediately and shouted to his wife, who’d stayed in the car, that the place was full of blood. Then he thought he saw something at the edge of the forest. He went to investigate, took a step back, then sprinted to the car, and started vomiting into the grass. When he recovered sufficiently, they drove straight to Sveg. Since her husband had a weak heart, he lay down on the sofa while she called the police in Sveg, and they passed the call on to Östersund. Larsson noted down the woman’s name and telephone number. After they finished talking he called her back in order to check that the number was correct. He also made sure he’d gotten the name of the dead man right. Herbert Molin. When he put the receiver down for the second time, he abandoned any thought of having his hair cut.

He immediately went to Rundström, who was in charge of emergencies, and explained the situation. Just twenty minutes later he was on his way to Sveg in a police car with blue lights flashing. The forensic boys were making preparations to follow as soon as possible.

They reached the house some time after 7:30. Hanna Tunberg was waiting for them at the turnoff, along with Inspector Erik Johansson, who was stationed in Sveg and had just returned from another call, a truck laden with timber that had overturned outside Ytterhögdal. It was already dark by then. Larsson could see from the woman’s eyes that the sight awaiting them would not be a pretty one. They went first to the spot on the edge of the forest that Hanna Tunberg had described to them. They found themselves gasping for breath when they shone their flashlights on the dead body. Larsson understood the woman’s horror. He thought he’d seen everything. He had several times seen suicides who’d fired shotguns straight into their faces, but the man on the ground in front of them was worse than anything he’d been obliged to look at before. It wasn’t really a man at all, just a bloody bundle. The face had been scraped away, the feet were no more than blood-soaked lumps, and his back had been beaten so badly that bones were exposed.

They then approached the house with guns drawn. They established that there was indeed a Norwegian elkhound dead in the pen. When they entered the house they found that Hanna’s description of what her husband had told her was in no way exaggerated. The floor was covered in bloody footprints and broken glass. They closed the door to make sure that nothing was disturbed before the forensic team arrived.

Hanna was in the car the whole time, her hands clutching the steering wheel. Larsson felt sorry for her. He knew that what she’d been through today would stay with her for the rest of her life, a constant source of fear or a never-ending nightmare.

Larsson sent Johansson in Hanna’s car to the junction with the main road to wait for the forensic team. He also told him to write down in detail everything the woman had to say. Precise times especially.

Then Larsson was on his own. He suspected he was faced with something he wasn’t really up to dealing with, but he also knew that there was nobody else in the entire Jämtland police force who was better equipped than he was to lead the investigation. He decided to tell the chief of police immediately that reinforcements would have to be called in from outside.

He was approaching Stenstavik. It was still dark. Several days had passed, but they were no closer to solving the mystery of the murdered man in the forest.

There was another major problem. It had transpired that the dead man was a retired police officer who had moved up to Härjedalen after working for many years as a detective in Borås. Larsson had spent the previous evening at home, reading through documents faxed to him from Borås. He was now familiar with all the basic information that forms an individual’s profile. Nevertheless, he had the impression he was staring into a vacuum. There was no motive, no clues, no witnesses. It was as if some mysterious evil force had been let loose, emerged from the forest to attack Molin with all its might, and then disappeared without trace.