Henning Mankell - The Return of the Dancing Master

“They are still ruining lives,” the voice said. “They’ll go on cultivating their hatred. Hatred of people whose skin is a different color, who have different customs, different gods.”

Lindman realized that Hereira’s calm was skin-deep. He was close to the breaking point, a collapse that could result in his resorting to violence again. He killed Molin, Lindman thought, and he tried to strangle me. He knocked me out, and now I’m sitting here tied to a chair. Unless I’m attacked from behind I’m stronger than he is. I’m thirty-seven and he’s nearly seventy. He can’t let me go because in that case I’d arrest him. He knows that he’s captured a police officer. That’s the worst thing you can do, whether you’re in Sweden or Argentina. Lindman had no doubt that the man in this room with him could kill him if he wanted to. He’d just finished telling his story of what happened, he’d made a confession, so what options were open to him? Running away, nothing else. And in that case, what would he do with the police officer he’d captured?

I haven’t seen his face, Lindman thought. As long as I haven’t seen his face he can go away and leave me here. I must make sure he doesn’t take off this blindfold.

“Who was the man in the road who tried to shoot me?”

The man seemed impatient again.

“A young neo-Nazi. His name’s Magnus Holmström.”

“Is he Swedish?”

“Yes.”

“I thought this was a decent country. Without Nazis. Apart from the old ones from Hitler’s generation who aren’t dead yet. Who are still hiding away in their lairs.”

“There’s a new generation. Not many of them, but they do exist.”

“I’m not talking about the young men with shaven heads. I’m talking about the ones who dream in blood, plan genocide, see the world as a feudal empire ruled by white men.”

“Magnus Holmström’s like that.”

“Has he been arrested?”

“Not yet.”

Silence. The bottle clinked.

“Was it her who asked him to come?”

Who did he mean, Lindman wondered. Then he realized that there was only one possibility. Elsa Berggren.

“We don’t know.”

“Who else could it have been?”

“We don’t know.”

“But there must have been a motive, surely?”

Be careful now, Lindman thought. Don’t say too much. Not too little either, make sure you get it right. But what is right? He wants to know if he’s to blame. Which he is, of course. When he killed Molin, it was like turning over a rock: the woodlice scattered in all directions. Now they want to get back under the rock, they want somebody to put it back where it was before all this trouble started in the forest.

There were still a lot of things he didn’t understand. He had the feeling that a link was missing, some thread holding everything together that he hadn’t found yet. Nor had Larsson; nobody had.

He thought about Molin’s house, burning down in the forest. That seemed a question it wasn’t too dangerous to ask.

“Was it you who set fire to Molin’s house?”

“I assumed the police would go there, but perhaps not you. I didn’t know for sure, but it seemed to be a possibility. I was right. You stayed in the hotel.”

“Why me? Why not one of the other officers?”

The man didn’t answer. Lindman wondered if he’d overstepped his mark. He waited. All the time he was searching for a chance to get away, to get out of this room where he was tied to a chair. To do that he must first establish were he was.

The bottle clinked again. Then the man stood up. Lindman listened. He couldn’t feel any vibrations in the floor. Everything was still. Had the man left the room? Lindman strained all his senses. The man didn’t seem to be there. Then a clock started striking. Lindman knew where he was. In Berggren’s house, it was her clock.

The blindfold was suddenly ripped off. It happened so quickly that he didn’t have time to react. He was in Berggren’s living room, on the very chair he had sat on when he first went there. The man was behind him. Lindman slowly turned his head.

Fernando Hereira was very pale. Unshaven and with dark shadows under his eyes. His hair was gray and unkempt. He was thin. His clothes, dark trousers and a blue jacket, were dirty. The jacket was torn near the collar. He was wearing sneakers. So this was the man who had lived in a tent by the lake, killed Molin so brutally, then dragged him around in a bloodstained tango. It was also the man who had attacked him twice, the first time almost strangling him, the second time only an hour or so ago, by hitting him hard on the back of the head.

The clock had struck the half-hour, 5:30 A.M. Lindman had been unconscious for longer than he’d thought. On the table in front of the man was a bottle of brandy. No glass. The man took a swig, then turned to face Lindman.

“What punishment will I get?”

“I can’t tell you that. It’s up to the court.”

Hereira shook his head sadly. “Nobody will understand. Is there a death penalty in your country?”

“No.”

Hereira took another swig from the bottle. He fumbled as he put it down on the table. He’s drunk, Lindman thought. He’s losing control of his movements.

“There’s somebody I want to talk to,” Hereira said. “I want to explain to Molin’s daughter why I killed her father. Stuckford told me in a letter that Molin had a daughter. Perhaps he had other children as well? Anyway, I want to talk to the daughter. Veronica. She must be here.”

“Molin will be buried today.”

Hereira gave a start. “Today?”

“His son, too, has arrived. The funeral’s at 11.”

Hereira stared at his hands. “I can only handle talking to her,” he said after a while. “Then she can explain it to whoever she likes. I want to tell her why I did it.”

Lindman had been given the opportunity he’d been hoping for.

“Veronica didn’t know her father was a Nazi. She’s very upset now that she does know. I think she’ll understand, if you tell her what you’ve told me.”

“Everything I’ve said is true.” Hereira took another drink from the bottle. “The question is, will you allow me the time I need? If I let you go and ask you to contact the girl on my behalf, will I have the time I need before you arrest me?”

“How do I know that you won’t treat Veronica the way you treated her father?”

“You can’t know that. But why should I? She didn’t kill my father.”

“You attacked me.”

“It was necessary. I regret it, of course. I’ll let you go. I’ll stay here. It’s nearly 6 A.M. You talk to the girl, tell her where I am. Once she’s left me, you and the rest of the police can come and get me. I know I’ll never return home. I’ll die here, in prison.”

Hereira was lost in thought. Was he telling the truth? Lindman knew that it wasn’t something he could take for granted.

“Needless to say, I won’t let Veronica come to you on her own,” he said.

“Why not?”

“You’ve already shown that you do not hesitate to use violence.”

“I want to see her on her own. I will not lay a finger on her.”

Hereira slammed his fist down on the table. Lindman could feel his misgivings rising.

“What if I don’t go along with what you are asking?”

Hereira looked hard at him before answering. “I’m a peaceful man, though it’s true that I’ve used violence on others. I don’t know what I’d do. I might kill you, I might not.”

“I can give you the time you need,” Lindman said, “and you can talk to her on the telephone.”

He could see the positive glint in Hereira’s eye. He was tired, but far from resigned.

“I’m already committing myself to more than I should,” Lindman said. “I’ll guarantee you the time you need, and you can talk to her on the telephone. I’m sure you realize that, as a police officer, I shouldn’t be doing this.”