Henning Mankell - The Return of the Dancing Master

“Why isn’t there a prosecutor?” he said. “I haven’t heard a name, at any rate.”

“Lövander,” Larsson said. “Albert Lövander. They say that in his younger days he was a pretty good highjumper, only just below the elite standard. Now he devotes most of his time to his grandchildren. Of course there’s a prosecutor involved. We don’t work outside the legal system. Besides, Lövander and Rundström are old friends. They talk to each other every morning and every evening. And Lövander never interferes in what we’re doing.”

“But surely he must have given some general instructions?”

“Only to keep on with what we’re doing.”

It was now 9:15. Larsson called home. Lindman went out and stood next to the stuffed bear. Then he called Elena.

“Where are you?”

“Next to the bear.”

“I consulted a map of Sweden today, large-scale. I’m trying to find out where you are exactly.”

“We got a confession. One of the murders might have been solved. It was a woman.”

“Who’d done what?”

“Killed a man who’d been blackmailing her. She shot him.”

“Was that the man who was tied to a tree?”

“Yes.”

“No woman would ever do that.”

“Why not?”

“Women defend themselves. They never attack.”

“I don’t think it’s quite as straightforward as that.”

“How straightforward is it, then?”

He hadn’t the energy to try to explain.

“When are you coming home?”

“I’ve already said.”

“Have you thought any more about our trip to London?”

Lindman had forgotten all about it.

“No,” he said. “But I will. I think it sounds like an excellent idea.”

“What are you doing just now?”

“Talking to Giuseppe.”

“Doesn’t he have a family to go home to?”

“What makes you ask that? Right now he’s talking to his wife on the phone.”

“Can you give me an honest answer to a question?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Does he know that I exist?”

“I think so.”

“Think?”

“I’ve probably mentioned your name. Or he’s heard me talking to you on the phone.”

“Anyway, I’m glad you called. But don’t call again until tomorrow. I’m going to bed early tonight.”

Lindman went back to the office. Larsson had finished his call. He was picking at his fingernails with a straightened paper clip.

“That window cracked open,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. It seems plausible that there was somebody there, listening to what we said. I’ve been trying to remember when it was open, and when it was closed. Impossible, of course.”

“Maybe you should be thinking about what information came from this room and nowhere else.”

Larsson contemplated his hands. “We decided on the roadblocks here,” he said eventually. “We talked about a man on his way from Funäsdalen towards the southwest.”

“I take it you’re thinking about the red Ford? The man who did the shooting?”

“I’m thinking more about the suggestion that there might have been a leak from the police. It seems more likely that it was an open window.”

Lindman hesitated.

“This last day or so I’ve had the feeling that somebody has been following me,” he said. “I’ve felt it over and over again. A shadow somewhere behind me. Noises too. But I can’t be sure.”

Larsson said nothing. Instead he stood up and went to the door.

“Walk over to the wall,” he said. “Keep on talking. When I turn off the light, look out the window.”

Lindman did as he was told. Larsson started babbling about grapes. Why red ones were much better than green ones. Lindman had gotten as far as the window. Larsson switched off the light. Lindman tried to see what was happening in the darkness outside, but everything was black. Larsson put the light back on, and went back to his desk.

“Did you see anything?”

“No.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean that there wasn’t somebody there. Or that there wasn’t somebody there not long ago. But I don’t see what we can do about it.”

He pushed aside two small plastic bags lying on top of a file. One of them fell on the floor.

“The forensic boys forgot a couple of plastic bags,” Larsson said. “Odds and ends they’d found on the road not far from the blue Golf.”

Lindman bent down to look. One of them contained a receipt from a gas station. Shell. It was dirty, hardly legible. Larsson watched him intently. Lindman studied the text. It seemed a bit clearer now. The gas receipt was from a filling station near Söderköping. Slowly, he replaced the plastic bag on the desk and looked at Larsson. Thoughts were whirring around in his brain.

“Berggren didn’t kill Andersson,” he said slowly. “We’re into something much bigger than that, Giuseppe. Berggren didn’t kill him.”

Snow was falling again. Larsson went to the window to check the thermometer. — 1 °C. He sat down and looked at Lindman. Lindman would remember that moment, a clear and unmistakable image of a turning point. It was made up of the newly falling snow, Larsson with his bloodshot eyes, and the story itself, what had happened in Kalmar, the discovery he had made when he broke into Wetterstedt’s apartment. He remembered that only a few hours beforehand he had told the same story to Veronica Molin. Now it was Larsson listening with great interest. Was he surprised? Lindman couldn’t tell from the expression on his face.

He was trying to create an overall picture. That dirty gas station receipt from a Shell station in Söderköping was a key that fitted all doors, but in order to draw conclusions he must first tell the whole story, not just parts of it.

What had he realized when he picked up the plastic bag that had fallen from the overladen desk? A sort of silent explosion, a wall being broken through, and something that had been limited all at once became very large. Although they were groping in the dark, looking for a murderer who might be called Fernando Hereira and might come from Argentina, the investigation had been local. They had been looking for the solution in Härjedalen. Now the artificial walls had collapsed. The gas receipt shot like a rocket through everything they had built, and at last it was possible to see things clearly.

Somebody had filled up with gas in Söderköping, in a red Ford Escort belonging to a man by the name of Herner who had a P.O. box in Portugal. Then somebody had driven the car across much of Sweden, stopped on a country road west of Sveg, and started shooting at a car that was coming from the mountains. They scraped at the dirty receipt but were unable to read the date, although the time was clearly 20:12. Larsson thought the forensic people would be able to decipher the date, and they had to do that as soon as possible.

Somebody sets off for Härjedalen from Kalmar. On the way, in Söderköping, he stops to fill up with gas. He continues his journey. He tries to kill the man who most probably was responsible for the murder of Molin. Neither Lindman nor Larsson were the type of police officer who believed in coincidences. Somewhere in the Nazi underworld, inhabited by the likes of Wetterstedt and the Strong Sweden foundation, Lindman’s visit had stirred up unrest. They couldn’t be certain that he was the one who’d broken into the apartment. Or could they? Lindman remembered the front door closing shut as he left the apartment, the feeling that somebody was watching him, the same feeling he’d had these last few days. “Perhaps two invisible shadows make one visible shadow,” he said to Larsson. It could be that the shadow following him in Kalmar was the same as the one in Sveg. The conclusion that Lindman was trying to reach was that their thinking had been closer to the truth than they had dared to believe. It was all about the underworld where old Nazis had come across something new that enabled the old madness join up with the new version. Somebody had broken into this shadow world and killed Molin. A shudder had run through the old Nazis. “The woodlice are starting to crawl out from under the rocks,” as Larsson put it afterwards. Who was the enemy of these Nazis? Was it the man who had killed Molin? Could it mean that Andersson had known about more than just the past of Molin and Berggren, that he’d known about the whole organization, and had threatened to expose it and perhaps even something still bigger? They couldn’t know that. But a Ford Escort had been filled up with gas and driven to Härjedalen by a man intent on killing somebody. And Berggren had decided to take responsibility for a murder she almost certainly hadn’t committed. The pattern was becoming clear, and conclusions possible to draw. There was an organization, to which Lindman’s own father was continuing to give support long after his death. Molin was a member, as was Berggren. But not Andersson. Nevertheless, one way or another he had discovered its existence. On the surface he was a friendly man who played the violin in the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra, a dues-paying member of the Center Party who also wrote trivial pop songs under the pseudonym Siv Nilsson. Beneath the surface he was a man with more than one trick in his bag. A blackmailer who made threats and demands. And maybe, deep down, was upset at the very thought of living close to an unreformed Nazi.