Henning Mankell - The Return of the Dancing Master

“I know you’re a policeman,” the voice said. “Never mind how I know.”

The man waited for Lindman to reply, but he didn’t.

“I’m tired,” the voice said. “This has been far too long a journey. I want to go home, but I need answers to some questions. And there’s somebody I want to talk to. Answer just one question: who am I?”

Lindman tried to work out what it meant. Not the words, but what lay behind them. The man talking to him gave the impression of being perfectly calm, not in the least worried or impatient.

“I’d like a reply,” the voice said. “You won’t come to any harm, but I can’t let you see my face. Who am I?”

Lindman realized he would have to respond. It was a very clear question.

“I saw you in the snow beneath my hotel window. You raised your arms and you left some prints in the snow like those in Herbert Molin’s house.”

“I killed him. It was necessary. I spent all those years thinking that I would draw back when it came down to it, but I didn’t. Perhaps I shall regret it when I’m on my deathbed. I don’t know.”

Lindman was soaked in sweat. He wants to talk, he thought. What I need is time, time to work out where I am and what I can do. He also thought about what the voice had said: all those years . That was something he could latch onto, and put a simple question of his own.

“I realize it must have had something to do with the war,” he said. “Events that took place a long time ago.”

“Herbert Molin killed my father.”

The words were spoken calmly and slowly. Herbert Molin killed my father . Lindman had no doubt that Fernando Hereira, or whatever he was really called, was speaking the truth.

“What happened?”

“Millions of people died as a result of Hitler’s evil war, but every death is individual, every horror has its own face.”

Silence. Lindman tried to pick out the most significant bits of what the man had said. All those years , that was the war; and now he knew that Fernando Hereira had avenged his father. He’d also mentioned a journey that had been far too long . And most important of all, perhaps: there’s somebody I want to talk to . Somebody besides me, Lindman thought, who?

“They hanged Josef Lehmann,” the voice said. “Sometime in the autumn of 1945. He deserved it. He had killed many people in the terror-stricken concentration camps he governed. But they should have hanged his brother as well. Waldemar Lehmann. He was worse. Two brothers, two monsters who served their master by making vast numbers of humans scream. One of them ended up with a rope around his neck, the other one disappeared, and if the gods have been incredibly careless he might be still alive. I’ve sometimes thought I’ve seen him in the street, but I don’t know what he looks like. There are no photographs of him. He had been more careful than his brother Josef. That saved him. Besides, what he enjoyed most was getting others to carry out the torture. He trained people to become monsters. He educated the henchmen of death.”

There was a sigh, or a sob. The man speaking to him moved again. A creaking noise, Lindman had heard it before. A chair, or maybe a sofa that creaked in that way. He’d never sat on it himself.

He gave a start. He knew. He’d sat in exactly the same chair that he was now tied to.

“I want to go home,” the voice said. “Back to what remains of my life. But first I must know who killed Abraham Andersson. I must know if I have to bear some of the responsibility for what happened. I can’t undo what’s already done, but I can spend the rest of my life lighting candles for the Holy Virgin and asking for forgiveness.”

“You drove in a blue Golf,” Lindman said. “Somebody stepped into the road and shot at you. You escaped. I don’t know if you were wounded, but whoever shot you could well have been the person who killed Abraham Andersson.”

“You know a lot,” the voice said. “But then, you’re a policeman. It’s your job to know, you have to do all you can to catch me, even if what has actually happened is the opposite and I’ve caught you. I’m not wounded. You were right: I was lucky. I got out of the car without being hit, and spent the rest of the night hiding in the forest, until I dared to move on.

“You must have had a car.”

“I’ll pay for the car that was shot up. Once I get home I’ll send some money.”

“I mean afterwards. You must have taken another car?”

“I found it in a garage by a house at the edge of the forest. I don’t know if anybody’s noticed that it’s missing. The house looked to be deserted.”

Lindman thought he could detect the beginnings of impatience in the man’s voice. He would have to be more careful about what he said. There was a clinking of a bottle, a top being unscrewed. Some swigs, but no glass, Lindman thought. He’s drinking straight out of the bottle. There was a faint smell of alcohol.

Then the man described what had happened fifty-four years ago. A brief tale, clear, unambiguous, and totally horrific.

“Waldemar Lehmann was a master. A genius at torturing people. One day Herbert Molin entered his life. I’m not sure about all the details. It wasn’t until I met Höllner that I realized who had killed my father. After that I was able to find out enough to know that it would be necessary and just to kill Herbert Molin.”

The bottle clinked again. The smell of spirits, more swigs. This man is drinking himself into a stupor, Lindman thought. Does that mean he will lose control of what he’s doing? He could feel his fear growing, and his temperature rising.

“My father was a dancing master. A peaceful man who loved to teach people how to dance. Especially young, shy people. One day, the man who would hide behind the name of Herbert Molin came to him as a pupil. He’d been granted a week’s leave that he was spending in Berlin. I don’t know how many lessons he had, but I remember seeing that young soldier several times. I can see his face now, and I recognized him when I eventually caught up with him.”

The man stood up. More creaking. Lindman recognized the sound, but it was from the house on Öland, Wetterstedt’s holiday home. I’m going insane, Lindman thought in desperation. I recognize a sound from Öland, but I’m in Härjedalen. The noise started again. From the right now. The man had moved to another chair. One that didn’t creak. Another memory was stirred in Lindman’s mind. He recalled the chair that didn’t creak. Where was this room?

“I was twelve at the time. My father gave his lessons at home. When the war started in 1939 he’d had his dance studio taken away from him. One day a Star of David appeared on the door. He never referred to it. Nobody referred to it. We saw our friends disappear, but my father survived. Lurking somewhere in the background was my uncle. He used to give Hermann Goering massages. That was the invisible protection our family enjoyed. Nobody was allowed to touch us. Until August Mattson-Herzén showed up and became my father’s pupil.”

The voice ground to a halt. Lindman was trying desperately to think where he could be. That was the first thing he needed to know if he were to find a way of escaping. This man he was sharing the room with could be unpredictable, he’d killed Mattson-Herzén, tortured him, he had behaved exactly like the people on whom he had exacted his vengeance.

The man was talking again. “I used to sit in on the lessons sometimes. Once, our eyes met. The young soldier smiled. I can still remember it. I liked him. A young man in a uniform who smiled. Since he never spoke I thought he was German, of course. How could I have known he was from Sweden? I don’t know what happened next, but he became one of Waldemar Lehmann’s henchmen. Lehmann must have found out somehow that Mattson-Herzén was taking dancing lessons from one of those disgusting Jews that were still in Berlin, and was being impertinent enough to behave like a normal, free, respectable citizen. I don’t know what he did to convince the young soldier, but I do know that Waldemar Lehman was one of the devil’s most assiduous servants. He succeeded in changing Mattson-Herzén into a monster. He came for his dancing lesson one afternoon. I used to sit out in the hall, listening to what went on in the big room after my father had pushed the furniture against the walls to make space for his lessons. The room had red curtains and a shiny parquet floor. I could hear my father’s friendly voice, counting the bars and saying things like ‘left foot,’ ‘right foot,’ and imagined his unfailingly straight back. Then the record player stopped. There wasn’t a sound. I thought at first they were resting. The door opened. The soldier hurried out of the apartment. I noticed his feet, his dancing shoes, as he left. Generally he came out, wiping the sweat from his brow, and gave me a smile, but none of that today. I went to the living room. My father was dead. Mattson-Herzén had strangled him with his own belt.”