Henning Mankell - The Return of the Dancing Master

He was brought back to consciousness by the sound of the phone ringing. He fumbled for his cell phone. It was Larsson.

“Did I wake you up?”

“Yes.”

“I wondered if I should call, but I thought you’d like to know.”

“What’s happened?”

“Molin’s house is on fire. Erik and I are on our way there. The alarm was raised a quarter of an hour ago. A snowplow went past and the driver saw the glow among the trees.”

Lindman rubbed his eyes.

“Are you still there?” Larsson said.

“Yes.”

“At least we don’t need to worry about anybody being injured. The place is deserted.”

Reception was poor. Larsson’s voice was lost. The link was broken. Then he called again.

“I thought you’d like to know.”

“Do you think the fire has any significance?”

“The only thing I can think of is that somebody knew about Molin’s diary but didn’t know that you’d already found it. I’ll call again if anything crops up.”

“So you think it has to be arson?”

“I don’t think anything. The house was already largely destroyed. It could be natural causes, of course. Erik says they’ve got a good fire chief here in Sveg. Olof Lundin. They say he’s never wrong when it comes to establishing the cause of a fire. I’ll be in touch.”

Lindman put the phone on the bedside table. The light coming in through the window was reflected by the snow. He thought about what Larsson had said. His mind started wandering. He settled down in order to go back to sleep.

It already felt as if he were walking up the hill to the hospital. He was passing the school now. It was raining. Or maybe it was sleet. He was wearing the wrong shoes. He had gotten dressed up in preparation for what was in store. The black shoes he’d bought last year and hardly ever worn. He should have been wearing boots, or at the very least his brown shoes with the thick rubber soles. His feet already felt wet.

He couldn’t get to sleep. It was too light in the room. He got up to pull down the blinds and shut out the light from the hotel entrance. Then he saw something that made him do a double take. There was a man in the street outside. A figure in the half-light. Staring up at his window. Lindman was wearing a white T-shirt. Perhaps it was visible even though it was dark in the room? The shadow didn’t move. Lindman held his breath. The man slowly raised his arms. It looked like a sign of submission. Then he turned on his heel and walked out of the light.

Lindman wondered if he’d been imagining it. Then he saw the footprints in the snow.

Lindman threw on his clothes, grabbed his keys, and hurried out of the room. The lobby was deserted. The card players had gone to bed. The cards were still there, strewn over the table. Lindman ran out into the darkness. Somewhere in the distance he heard the sound of a car engine dying away. He stood stock-still and looked around. Then he walked over to the place where the man had been standing. The footsteps were clear in the snow. He’d left the same way as he’d come, toward the furniture shop.

Lindman examined the footprints. They formed a pattern, that was obvious. He’d seen the pattern before. The man who’d been standing there, looking up at Lindman’s window, had marked out the steps of the tango in the glittering, newly fallen snow. The last time Lindman had seen these same footprints, they had been marked out in blood.

He should call Larsson. It was the only sensible thing to do, but something held him back. It was still too unreal, the pattern in the snow, the man underneath his window, raising his arms as if to surrender.

He checked to make sure he had his cell phone in his pocket, then started following the tracks. Just outside the hotel courtyard it was crossed by prints from a dog. The dog had then crossed the road after leaving a yellow patch. Not many people were out in the streets. The only tracks visible were from the man he was following. Straight, confident strides. Heading north, past the furniture shop and toward the train station. He looked around. Not a soul in sight, no shadowy figures now, just this one set of footprints in the snow. The man had stopped to look around when he came to the café, then he had crossed the road, still heading north, before turning left towards the deserted, unlit station building. Lindman let a car drive past, then continued on his way.

He paused when he came to the station. The tracks continued around the building towards the tracks and the platform. If his suspicions were correct, he was now following the man who’d killed Molin. Not only killed but tortured him, whipped him to death, and then dragged him around in a bloodstained tango. For the first time, it struck him that the man might be insane. What they had assumed all the time was something rational, cold-blooded, and well-planned might in fact be the opposite of that: pure madness. He turned, walked back until he was under a streetlight, and called Larsson. Busy. They’ll be at the scene of the fire by now, he thought. Larsson is calling somebody to tell him about it, probably Rundström. He waited, keeping his eye on the station all the time, then tried the number again. Still busy. After a few minutes he tried for a third time. A woman’s voice informed him that it was impossible to get through to the required number and would he please try again later. He put the cell phone back in his pocket and tried to decide what to do. Then he started walking south towards Fjällvägen. He turned when he came to a long warehouse and found himself among the railroad tracks. He could see the station some distance away. He kept walking across the tracks and into the shadows on the other side, then slowly approached the station again. An old guard’s van was standing in a siding. He walked around behind it. He still wasn’t close enough to see where the footprints had gone. He stood in the shadow of the guard’s van and peered around it.

The snow muffled all sounds, so he didn’t hear the man creeping up on him from behind and hitting him hard on the back of his head. Lindman was unconscious by the time he landed in the snow.

It was pitch-black when he opened his eyes. There was a pounding in the back of his head. He remembered immediately what had happened — standing by the guard’s van, peering out at the station. Then a flash. He knew nothing about what happened next, but he was no longer outdoors. He was sitting on a chair. He couldn’t move his arms. Nor his legs. He was tied to a chair, and there was a blindfold over his eyes.

He was terrified. He’d been captured by the man whose tracks he’d followed through the snow. He had done exactly what he shouldn’t have done: gone off on his own, without backup and without warning his colleagues. His heart was racing. When he tried to turn his head he felt excruciating pain in the back of his neck. He listened to the darkness and wondered how long he’d been unconscious.

He gave a start. He could hear somebody breathing close by him. Where was he? Indoors, but where? There was a smell in the room that he recognized but couldn’t place. He’d been in this room before, but where was it? There was a glimmer of light around the edge of the blindfold. He still couldn’t see anything, but the light had been turned on. He held his breath and heard muffled footsteps. A carpet, he thought, and the floor’s vibrating. An old house with a wooden floor. I’ve been here before, I’m certain of it.

Then somebody started talking to him in English. A man’s voice, coming from his left. It was gruff, the words came out slowly, and the foreign accent was obvious.

“I’m sorry I had to knock you out, but this meeting was necessary.”

Lindman made no reply. Every word he said could be dangerous if the man really was insane. Silence was the only protection he had at the moment.