The Return of the Dancing Master

Chapter One

He woke in the night, besieged by shadows. It had started when he was twenty-two. Fifty-four years of sleepless nights, constantly besieged by shadows. He’d only managed to sleep after taking heavy doses of sleeping pills. He knew the shadows had been there when he woke up, even if he’d been unaware of them.

This night, now drawing to its close, was no exception. Nor did he have to wait for the shadows — or the visitors, as he sometimes called them — to put in an appearance. They generally showed up a few hours after darkness fell. Were there without warning, by his side, with silent white faces. He’d gotten used to their presence after all the years, but he knew he couldn’t trust them. One of these days they were bound to break loose. He didn’t know what would happen then. Would they attack him, or would they betray him? There had been times when he’d shouted at them, hit out in all directions to drive them off. He had kept them at bay for a while. Then they would return and stay until dawn. He’d fall asleep in the end, but usually for only a few hours because he needed to get up and go to work.

He had been tired all of his adult life. He had no idea how he’d gotten by. Looking back, he could recognize only an endless string of days that he’d somehow muddled through. He had hardly any memories unconnected with his tiredness. In photographs taken of him he always looked haggard. The shadows had also taken their revenge on him during his two marriages: his wives had been frustrated by his constant state of unease, and the fact that when he wasn’t working, he was always half-asleep. They had lost patience with finding him up for most of the night, and he was never able to explain why he couldn’t sleep like a normal person. In the end they had left him, and he was alone again.

He looked at his watch. 4:15 A.M. He went to the kitchen and poured himself coffee from the thermos he’d filled before going to bed. The thermometer outside the window showed — 2 °C. If he didn’t remember to change the screws holding it in place, before long it would fall. He moved the curtain, and the dog started barking out there in the darkness. Shaka was the only security he had. He had found the name he’d given his Norwegian elkhound in a book — he couldn’t remember the title. It had something to do with a powerful Zulu chieftain, and he had thought it a suitable name for a guard dog. Short and easy to shout. He took his coffee into the living room. The thick curtains were securely drawn. He knew that already, but felt compelled to keep checking. He checked the windows.

Then he sat at the table again and contemplated the jigsaw pieces spread out before him. It was a good puzzle. It had lots of pieces and demanded imagination and perseverance to solve it. Whenever he finished a puzzle, he would burn it and immediately start on a new one. He made sure he always had a store of puzzles. It was a bit like a smoker and his cigarettes. For years he’d been a member of a worldwide club devoted to the culture of jigsaw puzzles. It was based in Rome, and every month he would get a newsletter with information about puzzlemakers who had ceased trading and others who had entered the field. As early as the mid-1970s it had struck him how hard it was to find really good puzzles — that is, hand-sawn ones. He didn’t think much of the mechanically-produced ones. There was no logic in the way the pieces were cut, and they didn’t fit in with the patterns. That might make them hard to solve, but the difficulties were mechanically contrived. Just now he was working on a puzzle based on Rembrandt’s The Conspiracy of the Bathavians under Claudius Civilis. It had 3,000 pieces and had been made by a specialist in Rouen. Once he had driven down to visit the man. They had talked about how the best puzzles were the ones with the most subtle nuances of light. And how Rembrandt’s color schemes made the greatest demands.

He sat holding a piece that obviously belonged in the background of the painting. It took him nearly ten minutes to find where. He checked his watch again: 4:30. Hours to go before dawn, before the shadows would withdraw and he could get some sleep.

It seemed to him that on the whole everything had become much simpler since he’d turned sixty-five and retired. He didn’t need to be anxious about feeling tired all day. Didn’t need to be scared of nodding off at work. But the shadows should have left him in peace long ago. He had served his time. They had no need now to keep their eye on him. His life had been ruined.

He went to the bookcase where he kept his CD player. He’d bought it a few months ago, on one of his rare visits to Östersund. He put the disc back in the machine — he’d been surprised to find it among the pop music in the shop where he’d bought the player. It was a tango, a genuine Argentinean tango. He turned up the sound. The elkhound out there in the dark had good ears and responded to the music with a bark, then was quiet again. He went back to the table and walked around it, studying the puzzle as he listened to the music. There was plenty yet to do. It would keep him going for at least three more nights before he burned it. He had several more, still in their boxes. Then he would drive to the post office in Sveg and collect another batch sent by the old master in Rouen.

He sat on the sofa to enjoy the music. It had been one of his life’s ambitions to visit Argentina. To spend a few months in Buenos Aires, dancing the tango every night. But it had never happened; something always cropped up to make him draw back at the last minute. When he’d left Vastergotland eleven years ago and moved north to the forests of Härjedalen, he’d meant to take a trip every year. He lived frugally, and although his pension wasn’t a big one, he could afford it. In fact, all he’d done was drive around Europe once or twice looking for new jigsaw puzzles.

He would never go to Argentina. He would never dance the tango in Buenos Aires. But there’s nothing to stop me from dancing here, he thought. I have the music and I have my partner.

He stood up. It was 5 A.M. Dawn was a long way off. It was time for a dance. He went to the bedroom and took his dark suit from the wardrobe. He examined it carefully before putting it on. A stain on the jacket lapel annoyed him. He wet a handkerchief and wiped it clean. Then he changed. This morning he chose a rust-brown tie to go with his white shirt. Most important of all were the shoes. He had several pairs of Italian dancing shoes, all expensive. For the serious dancer, the shoes had to be perfect.

When he was ready, he studied his appearance in the mirror on the wardrobe door. His hair was gray and cropped short. He was thin; he told himself he should eat more. But he looked considerably younger than his seventy-six years.

He knocked on the door to the spare bedroom. He imagined hearing somebody bidding him enter. He opened the door and switched on the light. His dancing partner was lying in the bed. He was always surprised by how real she looked, even though she was only a doll. He pulled back the duvet and lifted her up. She was wearing a white blouse and a black skirt. He’d given her the name Esmeralda. There were some bottles of perfume on the bedside table. He sat her down, and selected a discreet Dior, which he sprayed gently onto her neck. When he closed his eyes it seemed to him that there was no difference between the doll and a living human being.

He escorted her to the living room. He’d often thought he should take away all the furniture, fix some dimmed lights in the ceiling, and place a burning cigar in an ashtray. Then he would have his own Argentinean dance hall. But he’d never gotten around to it. There was just the empty stretch of floor between the table and the bookcase with the CD player. He slid his shoes into the loops attached to the bottoms of Esmeralda’s feet.

Then he started dancing. As he twirled Esmeralda around the floor, he felt he had succeeded in sweeping all the shadows out of the room. He was very light on his feet. He had learned a lot of dances over the years, but it was the tango that suited him best. And there was nobody he danced with as well as Esmeralda. Once there had been a woman in Borås, Rosemarie, who had a milliner’s shop. He used to dance the tango with her, and none of his previous partners had followed him as well as she did. One day, when he was getting ready to drive to Gothenburg, where he’d arranged to meet her at a dance club, he received a call saying she’d been killed in a car accident. He danced with lots of other women after that, but it wasn’t until he created Esmeralda that he got the same feeling he’d had with Rosemarie.

He had the idea many years ago. He had tuned in to a musical on television; he’d been awake all night, as usual. In the film a man — Gene Kelly, perhaps — had danced with a doll. He’d been fascinated, and decided then and there that he would make one himself.

The hardest part was the filling. He’d tried all sorts of things, but it wasn’t until he’d filled her with foam rubber that it felt as if he were holding a real person in his arms. He had chosen to give her large breasts and a big bottom. Both his wives had been slim. Now he’d provided himself with a woman who had something he could get his hands around. When he danced with her and smelled her perfume, he was sometimes aroused; but that hadn’t happened often over the last five or six years. His erotic desires had started to fade.

He danced for more than an hour. When he finally carried Esmeralda back to the spare room and put her to bed, he was sweating. He undressed, hung the suit in the wardrobe, and took a shower. It would soon be light, and he would be able to go to bed and sleep. He had survived another night.

He put on his dressing gown and made himself some coffee. The thermometer outside the window was still showing — 2°. He touched the curtains, and Shaka barked briefly out there in the darkness. He thought about the forest surrounding him on all sides. This was what he’d dreamed of. A remote cottage, modern in every way, but no neighbors. And it was also a house at the very end of a road. It was a roomy house, well-built and with a big living room that satisfied his need for a dance floor. The seller was a forestry official who had retired and moved to Spain.

He sat at the kitchen table with his coffee. Dawn was approaching. Soon he’d be able to get some sleep. The shadows would leave him in peace.

A single bark from Shaka. He sat up straight. Another bark. Then all was quiet. It must have been an animal. Probably a hare. Shaka could move around freely in his large pen. The dog kept watch over him.

He washed his cup and put it next to the stove. He would use it again seven hours from now. He didn’t like changing cups unnecessarily. He could use the same one for weeks. Then he went into the bedroom, took off his robe, and snuggled into bed. It was still dark, but usually he lay in bed as he waited for dawn to break, listening to the radio. When he noticed the first faint signs of light outside the house he would turn off the radio, switch off the light, and lie comfortably, ready for sleep.

Shaka started barking again. Then stopped. He frowned, listening intently, and counted up to thirty. No sound from Shaka. Whatever animal it had been, it was gone now. He turned on the radio and listened absentmindedly to the music.

Another bark from Shaka. But it was different now. He sat up in bed. Shaka was barking away frantically. That could only mean that there was an elk in the vicinity. Or a bear. Bears were shot every year in this area. He’d never seen one himself. Shaka was still barking just as frenziedly. He got out of bed and put on his robe. Shaka fell silent. He waited, but nothing. He took off his robe and got back into bed. He always slept naked. The lamp by the radio was on.

Suddenly he sat up again. Something odd was going on, something that had to do with the dog. He held his breath and listened. Silence. He was uneasy. It was as if the shadows all around him had started to change. He got out of bed. There was something odd about Shaka’s last barks. They hadn’t stopped in a natural way, they seemed to have been cut off. He went into the living room and opened one of the curtains in the window looking directly out onto the dog pen. Shaka didn’t bark, and he felt his heart beating faster. He went back into the bedroom and pulled on a pair of pants and a sweater. He took out the gun he always kept under his bed, a shotgun with room for six cartridges in the magazine. He went into the hall and stuck his feet into a pair of boots, listening all the time. Not a sound from Shaka. He was imagining things, no doubt, everything was as it should be. It would be light soon. It was the shadows making him uneasy, that was it. He unlocked the three locks on the front door and slowly opened it. Still no reaction from Shaka. Now he knew for certain that something was wrong. He picked up a flashlight from a shelf and shone it into the darkness. There was no sign of Shaka in the pen. He shouted for Shaka and shone the flashlight along the edge of the woods. Still no reaction. He quickly shut the door. Sweat was pouring off him. He cocked the gun and opened the door again. Cautiously he stepped out onto the porch. No sound. He walked over to the dog pen, then stopped in his tracks. Shaka was lying on the ground. The dog’s eyes were staring out and his grayish white fur was bloodstained. He turned on his heel and ran back to the house, slamming the door behind him. Something was going on, but he had no idea what. Somebody had killed Shaka, though. He turned on every light in the house and sat down on his bed. He was shaking.

The shadows had fooled him. He hadn’t caught on to the danger in time. He had always supposed the shadows would change, that they would be his attackers. But he’d been fooled: the threat came from outside. The shadows had persuaded him to look in the wrong place. He’d been misled for fifty-four years. He thought he’d gotten away with it, but he had been wrong. Images from that awful year of 1945 came welling up inside him. He hadn’t gotten away with it after all.

He shook his head and resolved not to give himself up without a fight. He didn’t know who was out there in the darkness, the person who had killed his dog. Shaka had succeeded in warning him even so. He wasn’t going to surrender. He kicked off his boots, put on a pair of socks, and took his sneakers out from under the bed. His ears were alert all the time. What had happened to the dawn? If only daylight would set in, they would have no chance. He dried his sweaty palms on the duvet. The shotgun gave him some sense of security. He was a good shot. He wouldn’t allow himself to be taken by surprise.

And then the house collapsed. That’s what it felt like, at least. At the explosion he flung himself onto the floor. He’d had his finger on the trigger and his gun went off, shattering the mirror on the wardrobe. He crawled to the door and looked into the living room. Then he saw what had happened. Somebody had fired a shot or maybe thrown a grenade through the big window facing south. The room was a sea of splintered glass.

He had no chance to think any further as the window facing north was demolished by another shot. He pressed himself against the floor. They’re coming from all directions, he thought. The house is surrounded and they’re shooting out the windows before coming in. He searched desperately for a way out.

Dawn, he thought. That’s what can save me. If only this accursed night would come to an end.

Then the kitchen window was shot out. He lay on his stomach, pressing down against the floor with his hands over his head. Then the next crash, the bathroom window. He could feel the cold air rushing in.

There was a whistling noise, then a thud right next to him. He raised his head and saw it was a tear gas canister. He turned his head away, but it was too late. The gas was in his eyes and his lungs. Without being able to see anything, he could hear more canisters sailing through the other windows. The pain in his eyes was so bad that he could stand it no longer. He still had his shotgun in his hands. He had no choice but to leave the house. Maybe the darkness would save him after all, not the dawn. He scrambled to the front door. The pain in his eyes was unbearable, and his coughing threatened to tear his lungs apart. He flung the door open and rushed out, shooting at the same time. He knew it was about thirty meters to the trees. Although he couldn’t see a thing, he ran as fast as he could. All the time he was expecting a fatal bullet to hit him. It was only a short run to the forest, but far enough for him to think that he was going to be killed — but he didn’t know by whom. He knew why, but not who. That thought was as painful as his eyes.

He barged into a tree trunk and almost fell. Still blinded by the tear gas, he staggered through the trees. Branches made deep wounds in his face, but he knew he must not stop. Whoever it was was somewhere behind him. Maybe several of them. They’d catch him if he didn’t get far enough away into the forest.

He stumbled over a rock and fell. He was about to get up when he felt something on the back of his neck. A boot on his head. The game was up. The shadows had defeated him.

He wanted to see who it was that was going to kill him. He tried to turn his head, but the boot prevented him. Then somebody pulled him to his feet. He still could see nothing. He was blinded. For a moment he felt the breath of the person placing the blindfold over his eyes and tying the knot at the back of his head. He tried to say something. But when he opened his mouth, no words came out, just a new attack of coughing.

Then a pair of hands wrapped themselves around his throat. He tried to resist, but he didn’t have the strength. He could feel his life ebbing away.

It would be nearly two hours before he finally died. As if in a borderland of horror between the nagging pain and the hopeless will to live, he was taken back in time, to the occasion when he had given rise to the fate that had now caught up with him. He was thrown to the ground. Somebody pulled off his pants and sweater. He could feel the cold earth against his skin before the whiplashes hit him and transformed everything into an inferno. He didn’t know how many lashes there were. Whenever he passed out, he was dragged back up to the surface by cold water thrown over him. Then the blows continued to rain down. He could hear himself screaming, but there was nobody there to help him. Least of all Shaka, lying dead in his pen.

The last thing he felt was being dragged over the ground, into the house, and then being beaten on the soles of his feet. Everything went black. He was dead.

He couldn’t know that the last thing that happened to him was being dragged naked to the edge of the forest and left with his face pressed into the cold earth.

By then it was dawn.

That was October 19, 1999. A few hours later it started raining, rain that barely perceptibly turned to wet snow.

Chapter Two

Stefan Lindman was a police officer. At least once every year he found himself in situations where he experienced considerable fear. On one occasion he’d been attacked by a psychopath weighing over 300 pounds. He had been on the floor with the man astride him, and in rising desperation had fought to prevent his head from being torn off by the madman’s gigantic hands. If one of his colleagues hadn’t succeeded in stunning the man with a blow to the head, he would certainly have succumbed. Another time he’d been shot at while approaching a house to deal with domestic violence. The shot was from a Mauser and narrowly missed one of his legs. But he had never been as frightened as he felt now, on the morning of October 25, 1999, as he lay in bed staring up at the ceiling.

He barely slept. He dozed off now and again only to be woken with a start by nightmares the moment he lost consciousness. In desperation he finally got up and sat in front of the television, zapping the channels until he found a pornographic film. But after a short while he switched it off in disgust and went back to bed.

It was 7 A.M. when he got up. He’d devised a plan during the night. A plan that was also an invocation. He wouldn’t go directly up the hill to the hospital. He would make sure he had enough time not only to take a roundabout route, but also to circle the hospital twice. All the time he would search for signs that the news he was going to receive from the doctor would be positive. To give himself an extra dose of energy, he would have coffee in the hospital cafeteria, and force himself to calm down by reading the local paper.

Without having thought about it in advance, he put on his best suit. Generally, when he wasn’t in uniform or other working clothes, he dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Today, though, he felt his best suit was called for. As he knotted his tie he contemplated his face in the bathroom mirror. It was obvious he hadn’t been sleeping or eating properly for weeks. His cheeks were hollow. And he could use a haircut. He didn’t like the way it was sticking out over his ears.

He didn’t like at all what he saw in the mirror this morning. It was an unusual feeling. He was a vain man, and often checked his appearance in the mirror. Normally, he liked what he saw. His reflection would generally raise his spirits, but this morning everything was different.

When he’d finished dressing he made coffee. He prepared some open-faced sandwiches, but didn’t feel like eating anything. His appointment with the doctor was for 8:45. It was now 7:27. So he had exactly one hour and eighteen minutes for his walk to the hospital.

By the time he walked onto the street it had started drizzling.

Lindman lived in the center of Borås, in Allégatan. Three years ago he had lived in Sjömarken, outside the town, but then he had happened to hear about this three-room apartment and hadn’t hesitated to sign a lease for it. Directly across the street was the Vävaren Hotel. He was within walking distance of the police station, and could even walk to Ryavallen Stadium when Elfsborg were playing a home game. Soccer was his biggest interest, apart from his work. Although he didn’t tell anybody, he still collected pictures and press clips about his local team in a file. He had daydreams about being a professional soccer player in Italy, instead of a police officer in Sweden. These dreams embarrassed him, but he couldn’t put them behind him.

He walked up the steps taking him to Stengardsgatan and kept on towards the City Theater and the high school. A police car drove past. Whoever was in it didn’t notice him. His fear stabbed into him. It was as if he were already gone, were already dead. He pulled his jacket more tightly around him. There was no real reason why he should expect a negative verdict. He increased his pace. His mind was buzzing. The raindrops falling onto his face were reminders of a life, his life, that was ebbing away.

He was thirty-seven. He’d worked in Borås ever since leaving the police academy. It was where he wanted to be posted. He was born in Kinna and grew up in a family with three children; his father was a secondhand car salesman and his mother worked in a bakery. Lindman was the youngest. His two sisters were seven and nine years older than he was — you could almost say he was an afterthought.

When Lindman thought back to his childhood, it sometimes seemed strangely uneventful and boring. Life had been secure and routine. His parents disliked traveling. The furthest they could bring themselves to go was Borås or Varberg. Even Gothenburg was too big, too far, and too scary. His sisters had rebelled against this life and moved away early, one to Stockholm and the other to Helsinki. His parents had taken that as a failure on their part, and Lindman had realized he was almost bound to stay in Kinna, or at least to go back there when he’d decided what to do with his life. He’d been restless as a teenager, and had no idea what he wanted to do when he grew up.

Then, purely by chance, he’d gotten to know a young man devoted to motocross. He’d become this man’s assistant and spent a few years traveling around racetracks the length and breadth of central Sweden. But he tired of that eventually and returned to Kinna, where his parents welcomed him with open arms, the return of the prodigal son. He still didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life, but then he happened to meet a policeman from Malmö who was visiting some mutual friends in Kinna. And the thought struck Lindman: maybe I should become a police officer? He thought it over for a few days, and made up his mind to at least give it a try.

His parents received his decision with a degree of unease, but Lindman pointed out that there were police officers in Kinna — he wouldn’t need to move away.

He set out immediately to turn his decision into reality. The first thing he did was to go back to school and earn some more academic credits. Since he was so eager, it had been easier than he’d expected. He occasionally worked as a substitute school caretaker in order to earn his keep.

To his surprise he’d been accepted by the police academy on his first attempt. The training hadn’t caused him any problems. He hadn’t been outstanding in any way, but had been among the better ones in his year. One day he’d come back home to Kinna in uniform and announced that he would be working in Borås, just forty kilometers down the road.

For the first few years he’d commuted from Kinna, but when he fell in love with one of the girls at the police station, he moved into Borås. They lived together for three years. Then one day, out of the blue, she announced that she had met a man from Trondheim and was moving there. Lindman had taken the development in stride. He’d realized that their relationship was beginning to bore him. It was a little like going back to his childhood. What intrigued him, though, was how she could have met another man and started an affair without Lindman noticing.

By then he’d reached the age of thirty, almost without noticing it. Then his father had a heart attack and died, and a few months later his mother died as well. The day after her funeral he’d posted a personal ad in the local paper. He had four replies, and met the women one after the other. One of them was a Pole who had lived in Borås for many years. She had two grown-up children, and worked as a meal supervisor at the high school. She was nearly ten years older than Lindman, but they never really noticed the difference. He couldn’t understand at first what there was that had immediately attracted him to her, made him fall in love with her. Then it dawned on him: she was completely ordinary. She took life seriously, but didn’t fuss about anything unnecessarily. They had started a relationship, and for the first time in his life Lindman discovered that he could feel something for a woman that was more than lust. Her name was Elena and she lived in Norrby. He used to spend the night there several times a week.

It was there, one day, while he was in the bathroom, that he discovered he had a strange lump on his tongue.

He interrupted his train of thought. He was in front of the hospital. It was still drizzling. It was 7:56 by his watch. He walked past the hospital and speeded up. He had made up his mind to walk around it twice, and that was what he was going to do.

It was 8:30 by the time he sat down in the cafeteria with a cup of coffee and the local paper. But he didn’t read a word, and never touched his coffee.

He was scared stiff by the time he got as far as the doctor’s door. He knocked and went in. The doctor was a woman. He tried to work out from her face what he could expect: a death sentence, or a reprieve? She gave him a smile, but that only confused him. Did it denote uncertainty, sympathy, or relief at not needing to tell somebody that they had cancer?

He sat down. She organized some papers on the desk.

“I’m afraid I have to tell you that the lump you have on your tongue is a malignant tumor.”

He swallowed. He’d known all along, ever since that morning in Elena’s apartment in Norrby. He had cancer.

“We can’t see any sign of it spreading. Since we’ve found it in the early stages, we can start treating it right away.”

“What does that mean? Will you cut my tongue out?”

“No, it will be radiation therapy to start with. And then an operation.”

“Will I die of it?”

This wasn’t a question he’d prepared in advance. It burst out without him being able to stop it.

“Cancer is always serious,” the doctor said, “but nowadays we can take measures. It’s been a long time since diagnosing cancer meant passing a death sentence.”

He sat with the doctor for more than an hour. When he left her office he was soaked in sweat. In the pit of his stomach was a spot as cold as ice. A pain that didn’t burn, but felt like the hands of that psychopath on his throat. He forced himself to be calm. He would go for coffee now and read the paper. Then he’d make up his mind whether or not he was dying.

But the paper was no longer there. He picked up one of the previous day’s national papers instead. That ice-cold knot was still there. He drank his coffee and thumbed through the paper. He forgot all the words and the pictures the moment he turned over a page.

Something caught his attention. A photograph. A headline about a brutal murder. He stared at the photograph and the caption. Herbert Molin, age about 76. Former police officer.

He pushed the paper aside and went for another cup of coffee. He knew it cost two kronor, but he didn’t bother paying. He had cancer and was entitled to take certain liberties. A man who had shuffled quickly up to the counter was pouring himself a cup of coffee. His hands shook so badly that hardly any coffee made it into the cup. Lindman helped him. The man gave him a grateful look.

He picked up the paper again, and read what it said without any of it really sinking in.

When he’d first arrived in Borås as a probationer, he’d been introduced to the oldest and most experienced detective on the staff, Herbert Molin. They had worked together in the serious crimes division for some years until Molin retired. Lindman had often thought about him afterwards. The way in which he was always looking for links and clues. A lot of people spoke ill of him behind his back, but he’d always been a rich source of learning as far as Lindman was concerned. One of Molin’s main lessons was that intuition was the most important and most underestimated resource for a true detective. The more experience Lindman accrued, the more he realized that Molin was right.

Molin had been a recluse. Nobody Lindman knew had ever been to Molin’s house opposite the district courthouse in Bramhultsvagen. Some years after he’d retired, Lindman heard quite by chance that Molin had left town, but nobody could say where he had moved.

Lindman put the newspaper down.

So Herbert Molin had moved to Härjedalen. According to the paper, he had been living in a remote house in the middle of the forest. That is where he had been murdered. There was apparently no discernible motive, nor any clues as to who the killer might have been. The murder had been committed several days ago, but Lindman’s nervousness about his hospital appointment had meant that he shied away from the outside world and the news had only gotten through to him via this much-thumbed evening paper.

He got to his feet. He’d had enough of his own mortality to deal with. He left the hospital and met with a heavy drizzle. He started downhill to the town center. Molin was dead, and he himself had been informed that he belonged to the category of people whose days might be numbered. He was thirty-seven years old and had never really thought about his own age. Now it felt as if he’d suddenly been robbed of all perspective. A little like being in a boat on the open sea, then being cast into a narrow fjord surrounded by high cliffs. He paused on the pavement to get his breath back. He wasn’t just scared; he also had the feeling that somehow or another he was being swindled. By something invisible that had smuggled its way into his body and was now busy destroying him.

It also seemed to him rather ridiculous that he should have to explain to people that he had cancer of the tongue, of all places. People got cancer, you heard about that all the time. But in the tongue?

He started walking again. To give himself time he decided to make his mind completely blank until he got as far as the high school. Then he’d decide what to do. The doctor had given him an appointment for further tests the next day. She also had extended his sick leave by a month. He would start his course of treatment in three weeks’ time.

Outside the theater was a group of actors and actresses in costumes and wigs being photographed. They were all young, and laughing very loudly. Lindman had never set foot inside the Borås theater. When he heard the players laughing, he quickened his pace.

He went into the library and proceeded to the newspaper room. An old man was perusing a newspaper with Russian characters. Lindman got a motorcycle magazine before sitting at one of the tables. He used it to hide behind. Stared at a picture of a motorcycle while trying to make up his mind.

The doctor had said he wasn’t going to die. Not yet, at least. There was a risk that the tumor would grow and the cancer might start to spread. It would be a head-to-head battle: he’d either win or lose. There was no possibility of a draw.

He stared at the motorcycle and it struck him that for the first time in years he missed his mother. He would have been able to discuss things with her, but now he had nobody he could talk to. The very idea of taking Elena into his confidence was unthinkable. Why? He didn’t understand. If there was anybody he should be able to talk to and who could give him the support he needed, it was Elena. Even so he couldn’t bring himself to call her. It was as if he were ashamed of having to tell her that he did have cancer. He hadn’t even told her about his hospital appointment.

He leafed through all the pages with pictures of bikes. Leafed his way to a conclusion.

Half an hour later he knew what he was going to do. He would talk to his boss, Superintendent Olausson, who’d just gotten back from vacation — he’d been shooting elk. He would tell him he’d been given a medical certificate without mentioning why. He would just say he had to undergo a thorough examination because of the pains he was having in his throat. Nothing serious, no doubt. He could hand the doctor’s certificate in to the personnel office himself: that would give him at least a week before Olausson knew the reason for his absence.

Then he would go home, call Elena, and tell her he was going away for a few days. Maybe to Helsinki to see his sister. He’d done that before. That wouldn’t arouse her suspicions. Next, he would go to the wine shop and buy a few bottles. During the course of the evening and the night, he would make all the other necessary decisions, the main one being whether or not he thought he could cope with fighting a cancer that might turn out to be life-threatening. Or whether he should simply give up.

He put the magazine back on its shelf, continued through the reading room, and paused at a shelf with medical reference books. He took down one about cancer. Then he put it back again without opening it.

Superintendent Olausson of the Borås police was a man who laughed his way through life. His door was always open. It was midday when Lindman entered his office. He was just finishing a telephone call, and Lindman waited. Olausson slammed down the receiver, produced a handkerchief, and blew his nose.

“They want me to give a lecture,” he said, with a laugh. “Rotary. They wanted me to talk about the Russian Mafia, but there is no Russian Mafia in Borås. We don’t have any Mafia at all. So I turned ’em down.” He gestured to Lindman that he should sit down.

“I just wanted to let you know that my doctor’s certificate has been extended.”

Olausson stared at him in surprise. “But you’re never sick?”

“I am now. I have pains in my throat. I’ll be out for another month. At least.”

Olausson leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach. “A month sounds like a long time for a sore throat, don’t you think?”

“It was the doctor who signed the certificate, not me.”

Olausson nodded. “Police officers do catch cold in the autumn,” he said. “But I get the impression that the criminal classes never get the flu. Why do you think that is?”

“Maybe they have better immune systems?”

“That could be. Perhaps that’s something we should let the commissioner know about.”

Olausson didn’t like the national commissioner. Nor did he think much of the justice minister. He didn’t like any superiors, for that matter. It was a standing joke in the Borås police force that some years ago a Social Democratic justice minister had visited the town to open the new district court, and at the dinner afterwards had gotten so drunk that Olausson had to carry him up to his hotel room.

Lindman stood up to leave. “I read that Herbert Molin was murdered the other day.”

Olausson stared at him in surprise. “Molin? Murdered?”

“In Härjedalen. He lived up there, it seems. I saw it in one of the evening papers.”

“Which one?”

“I don’t remember which one.”

Olausson accompanied him out into the corridor. The evening papers were piled up in reception. Olausson found the article and read what they’d written.

“I wonder what happened,” Lindman said.

“I’ll find out. I’ll call our colleagues in Östersund.”

Lindman left the police station. The drizzle seemed determined to keep falling forever. He waited in line at the wine shop and eventually took home two bottles of an expensive Italian wine. Before he’d even taken off his jacket he opened one of the bottles and filled a glass that he proceeded to empty in one gulp. He kicked off his shoes and threw his jacket over a kitchen chair. The telephone answering machine in the hall was blinking. It was Elena, wondering if he would like to come by for dinner. He took his glass and the bottle of wine with him into the bedroom. The traffic outside was reduced to a faint buzz. He lay down on the bed with the bottle in his hand. There was a stain on the ceiling. He’d lain in bed the night before staring at it. It looked different by day. After another glass of wine he rolled over onto his side and fell asleep without further ado.

It was nearly midnight when he woke up. He’d slept for nearly eleven hours. His shirt was soaked in sweat. He stared into the darkness. The curtains kept out any light there was in the street.

His first thought was that he was going to die.

Then he decided that he would fight it. After the next set of tests he would have three weeks in which to do whatever he liked. He’d spend that time finding out all there was to find out about cancer. And he’d prepare for the fight he was going to put up.

He got out of bed, took off his shirt, and tossed it into the laundry basket in the bathroom. Then he stood at the window overlooking Allégatan. Outside the Varvaren Hotel garage a few drunken men were arguing. The street was shiny with rain. He thought about Molin. A vague thought had been nagging at him since he’d read the report in the paper at the hospital. Now it came back to him.

Once they had been chasing an escaped murderer through the woods north of Borås. It was late autumn, like now. Lindman and Molin had somehow become separated among the trees, and when Lindman eventually found him he’d approached so quietly that he surprised Molin, who turned to stare at him with terror-stricken eyes.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Lindman said.

Molin just shrugged.

“I thought it was somebody else,” he said.

That was all. I thought it was somebody else.

Lindman remained standing at the window. The drunks had dispersed. He ran his tongue over his top teeth. There was death in that tongue of his, but somewhere there was also Herbert Molin. I thought it was somebody else.

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?

Chapter Three

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.

He passed through Stenstavik and continued towards Sveg. It was getting light now, and the wooded ridges surrounding him on all sides were acquiring a shade of blue. His mind turned to the preliminary report he’d received from the coroner’s office in Umeå where pathologists had been examining the body. It explained how the wounds had been inflicted, of course, but hadn’t provided Larsson with any clues as to where this savage attack might have come from, nor why. The pathologist described in detail the violence inflicted on Molin. The wounds on his back appeared to have been caused by whiplashes. Because there was no skin left on his back, it was only when they discovered a fragment of the lash that they realized what had happened. A microscopic examination revealed that the whip had been made from the hide of an animal. Just what animal they were unable to say, as it did not correspond with any animal in Sweden. It was highly probable that the injuries to the soles of Molin’s feet had been caused by the same instrument. He had not been beaten in the face: the scrape marks indicated that he had been dragged facedown over the ground. The wounds were full of soil. The doctor was able to state that on the basis of bruises on the victim’s neck, it was clear that an attempt had been made to strangle him. An attempt was a wording that should be taken literally, the report stressed. Molin had not been choked to death. Nor did he die from the residue of tear gas found in his eyes, throat, and lungs. Molin had died from exhaustion. He had, literally, had the life whipped out of him.

Larsson pulled onto the side of the road and stopped. He switched off the engine, got out of the car, and waited until a truck had driven past on its way up north. Then he unzipped his fly and peed. Of all the joys that life had to offer, peeing at the side of the road was the best. He got back into the car, but before starting the engine, he tried to think objectively about what he now knew concerning the death of Molin. Slowly and deliberately, he tried to let everything he’d seen and read in various reports filter through his mind and find their own way into appropriate pigeonholes. Something among that information might provide a lead. They had found no trace of a motive. Nevertheless, it was obvious that Molin had been subjected to protracted and savage violence. Frenzy, fury, Larsson thought. That’s what it’s all about. Perhaps this furious frenzy is in fact the motive. Fury and a thirst for vengeance.

There was something else that suggested he might be on the right track. Everything gave the impression of having been carefully planned. The guard dog had had its throat cut. The murderer had been equipped with whips and tear gas cartridges. That can’t have been coincidental. The fury must have been an outburst within the framework of a meticulous plan.

Fury, thought Larsson. Fury and vengeance. A plan. That means that whoever killed Molin had most probably been to the house before, possibly on several occasions. Somebody should have noticed strangers hanging around in the vicinity. Or maybe the opposite applied: nobody had noticed anything. Which would mean that the murderer, or murderers, would have been friends of Molin.

But Molin didn’t have any friends. That was something Mrs. Tunberg had been very clear about. Molin didn’t have a social life. He had been a recluse.

Larsson went over what had happened one more time. He had the feeling that the attacker had been on his own. Somebody had turned up at the isolated dwelling, armed with a whip made from an unidentified animal hide and a tear gas pistol. Molin had been killed with ruthless and planned sadism, and the body had been abandoned naked at the edge of the forest.

The question was: had Molin simply been murdered? Or was it an execution?

Expert reinforcements would have to be brought in. This wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill murder case. Larsson was increasingly persuaded that they were faced with an execution.

It was 9:40 by the time Larsson drove up to Molin’s house. The crime scene tape was still in place, but there was no sign of a police vehicle. Larsson got out of his car. There was quite a wind blowing now. The swishing sound from the forest imposed itself upon the autumn morning. Larsson stood quite still and slowly looked around. The forensic unit had found traces of a car parked exactly where he was standing now: the tracks didn’t correspond to Molin’s ancient Volvo. Every time Larsson came to the scene of the murder, he tried to imagine exactly what had happened. Who had clambered out of this unknown car? And when? It must have been during the night. The pathologists still hadn’t been able to establish the precise time of death. Even so, the writer of the preliminary report had hinted in carefully chosen words that the assault could well have taken place over an extended period of time. He couldn’t say how many strokes of the whip Molin had received, but the beating — with pauses — might well have gone on for several hours.

Larsson rehearsed yet again in his head the thoughts that had occurred to him during the drive out from Östersund.

Fury, and the thirst for revenge. A solitary murderer. Everything meticulously planned. No killing on the spur of the moment.

The phone rang. He started. He still hadn’t gotten used to the fact that he could be reached by telephone anywhere, even in the middle of the forest. He retrieved his cell phone from his jacket pocket and answered.

“Giuseppe Larsson.”

He’d lost count of the number of times he’d cursed his mother for giving him his first name after hearing an Italian crooner at a concert in Östersund’s People’s Park one summer night as a young girl. He’d been teased ruthlessly throughout his school years, and now, every time anybody called him and he said his name, whoever was at the other end of the line always paused to consider.

“Giuseppe Larsson?”

“Speaking.”

He listened. The man at the other end said his name was Stefan Lindman, and that he was a police officer. He was calling from Borås. Lindman went on to say that he’d worked with Molin and was curious about what had happened. Larsson said he’d call him back. He’d had cases when reporters had pretended to be police officers, and he didn’t want to run that risk again. Lindman said he appreciated that. Larsson couldn’t find a pencil, and instead marked the phone number in the gravel with the toe of his shoe. He called back, and Lindman answered. He might be a reporter nevertheless, of course. What he should do was call the station in Borås and ask if they had an officer by the name of Stefan Lindman. Even so, the way the man at the other end of the line expressed himself suggested to Larsson that he was telling the truth, and he tried to answer Lindman’s questions. But it wasn’t easy to do so on the phone. In any case, reception was not good, and he could hear the forensic team approaching.

“I’ve got your number,” Larsson said. “And you can get hold of me at this number or at the station in Östersund. Meanwhile, is there any thing you can tell me? Did Molin feel he was under threat? Any information could be of value. We don’t have much to go on. No witnesses, no apparent motive. Nothing at all, really. We’re ready to clutch at any straw.”

He listened to the response without comment. The police crime scene van drove up to the house. Larsson concluded the call, and made the number he’d traced in the gravel more obvious with the toe of his shoe.

The policeman who’d phoned from Borås had said something important. Molin had been scared. He had never explained why he was uneasy, but Lindman had no doubt. Molin had been scared all the time, wherever he had been, whatever he had done.

There were two forensic officers, both of them young. Larsson liked working with them. They were full of energy, meticulous, and efficient. Larsson watched them enter the house they were destined to investigate and try to take in the blood splattered over the walls and floor. As the young men donned their coveralls, Larsson began once more to think about what had happened.

He was clear about the main outline. It started with the death of the dog. Then the windows had been smashed, and tear gas canisters shot in. It wasn’t the tear gas canisters that had broken the windows. They had found some cartridges from a hunting rifle outside the house. The man who carried out the attack had been methodical. Molin was asleep when it all started — at least, it looked as if he’d been in bed at the time. He was naked when his body was found at the edge of the forest, but his sweater and pants were found soaked in blood at the bottom of the steps leading down from the front door. From the remnants they had found of the tear gas canisters it would seem that the place must have been filled with gas. Molin had run out of the house with his shotgun. He’d also managed to fire a few shots. Then he’d been stopped in his tracks. The gun was discarded on the ground. Larsson knew that Molin must have been more or less blind when he left the house. He would also have had great difficulty breathing. So Molin had been hounded out of his house, and had been incapable of defending himself as he staggered from the door.

Larsson picked his way carefully into the room leading off the living room. It contained the biggest riddle of all. In a bed lay a bloodstained doll, life-size. He thought at first it was some kind of sex toy used by lonely Molin, but the doll had no orifices. The loops on its feet suggested that it was used as a dancing partner. The big question was: why was it covered in blood? Had Molin moved into this room before the tear gas made it impossible for him to stay in the house? Even so, that wouldn’t have explained the blood. Larsson and the other detectives who had spent six days going through the house with a fine-toothed comb still hadn’t come up with a plausible explanation. Larsson was going to spend this day trying to work out once and for all why the doll was covered in blood. There was something about the doll that worried him. It concealed a secret and he wanted to know what it was.

He left the house to get some fresh air. His cell phone rang. It was the chief of police in Östersund. Larsson told him the current state of affairs: that they were hard at work, but they hadn’t found anything new at the scene of the crime yet. Mrs. Tunberg was in Östersund, talking to Artur Nyman, a detective sergeant and Larsson’s closest colleague. The chief of police was able to inform Larsson that Molin’s daughter, who was in Germany, would soon be on her way to Sweden. They’d also been in touch with Molin’s son, who worked as a steward on a cruise ship in the Caribbean.

“Any news about his second wife?” Larsson wondered.

The first wife, the mother of his two children, had died some years ago. Larsson had spent several hours looking into her death, but she’d died of natural causes. Besides, Molin and his first wife had been divorced for nineteen years. His second wife, a woman Molin had been married to while living in Borås, was proving difficult to trace.

Larsson went back into the house. He stood just inside the door and scrutinized the dried bloodstains on the floor. Then he took a couple of steps sideways and looked hard at them again. He frowned. There was something about the marks that puzzled him. He took out his notebook, borrowed a pencil from one of the forensic officers, and made a sketch. There were nineteen footprints in all, ten made by a right foot and nine by a left foot.

He went outside. A crow was disturbed and flew off. Larsson studied his sketch. Then he fetched a rake he knew was in the shed, and smoothed out the gravel in front of the house. He pressed his feet down into the gravel to reproduce the pattern he’d sketched in his notebook. Stepped to one side and studied the result. Walked all the way around, examining the marks from different angles. Then he carefully stepped into the footprints, one after the other, moving slowly. He did it again, faster now, with his knees slightly bent. The penny dropped.

One of the forensic officers came out onto the steps and lit a cigarette. He stared at the footprints in the gravel. “What are you doing?”

“Testing a theory. What can you see here?”

“Footprints in the gravel. A replica of the ones we have inside the house.”

“Nothing else?”

“No.”

The other officer came out. He had a thermos flask in his hand.

“Wasn’t there a disc in the CD player?” Larsson asked.

“That’s right,” said the man with the flask.

“What kind of music was it?”

The technician handed the flask to his colleague and went inside. He was back in a flash.

“Argentinean stuff. An orchestra. I can’t pronounce the name.”

Larsson walked around the footprints in the gravel once again. The two forensic officers watched him as they smoked and drank their coffee.

“Does either of you dance the tango?” he said.

“Not normally. Why?”

It was the man with the thermos flask who answered.

“Because what we have here are tango steps. It’s kind of like when you were little and went to dancing classes. The teacher used to tape footprints onto the floor, and you had to follow them. The steps are tango steps.”

To prove his theory Larsson started to hum a tango tune that he didn’t know the name of. At the same time he followed the footprints in the gravel. The steps fitted.

“What we have on the floor in there is a set of tango steps. Somebody dragged Molin around and placed his blood-soaked feet on the floor as if he’d been attending a dancing class.”

The forensic officers stared at him incredulously, but knew he was right. They all went back into the house.

“Tango,” said Larsson. “That’s all it is. Whoever killed Molin invited him to dance a tango.”

They contemplated the footprints in silence.

“The question,” Larsson said, when he spoke again, “is who? Who invites a dead man to dance with him?”

Chapter Four

Lindman began to have the feeling that his body was being drained completely of blood. Even though the laboratory assistants were very gentle with him, he felt increasingly weary. He spent many hours at the hospital every day, having blood drawn for testing. He also talked to the doctor on two more occasions. Each time he had lots of questions, but never got around to asking any of them. In fact, there was only one question he really wanted answered: was he going to survive? And if that question couldn’t be answered with any degree of certainty, how much time did he, for sure, have left? He’d read somewhere that death was a tailor who measured people for their final suit, invisibly and in silence. Even if he did survive, he had the feeling that his lifespan had already been measured out. It was much too early for that.

The second night he went to Elena’s in Dalbogatan. He hadn’t phoned in advance as he usually did. The moment she saw him in the doorway, she knew something was wrong. Lindman had tried to make up his mind whether or not to tell her, but he wasn’t sure right up to the moment he rang the doorbell. He barely had time to hang up his jacket before she asked him what was wrong.

“I’m sick,” he’d said.

“Sick?”

“I’ve got cancer.”

That left him with no more defenses. He might as well tell the truth now. He needed somebody to confide in, and Elena was his only choice. They sat up long into the night, and she was sensible enough not to try to console him. What he needed was courage. She brought him a mirror and said, Look, the man on her sofa was very much alive, not a corpse, that was how he should approach the situation. He stayed the night, and lay awake long after she had gone to sleep.

He got up at dawn, quietly, so as not to wake her, and left the building as discreetly as possible. But he didn’t go straight back to Allégatan: instead he made a long detour around Ramna Lake and turned towards home only after he’d reached Druvefors. The doctor had said that they would finish all the necessary tests today. He’d asked if he could go away, possibly abroad, before the treatment started, and she said he could do whatever he liked. He had a cup of coffee when he got home, and played back his answering machine. Elena had been worried when she woke up and found that he’d left.

Shortly after ten he went to the travel agent’s in Vasterlanggatan. He sat down and started going through the brochures. He’d more or less made up his mind that it would be Mallorca when the thought of Herbert Molin came to him. He knew then and there what he was going to do. He wasn’t going to fly to Mallorca. If he did, all he would do was wander around a place where he knew no one, worrying about what had happened and what was going to happen. If he went to Härjedalen, he would be no less alone — since he didn’t know anybody up there either — but he would be able to devote his attention to something other than himself and his problems. What he might be able to do, he wasn’t sure. Nevertheless, he left the travel agent’s, went to the bookshop in the square, and bought a map of the neighboring provinces of Jämtland and Härjedalen. When he got home he spread it out over the kitchen table. He figured it would take him twelve to fifteen hours to drive there. If he got too tired, he could always spend the night somewhere on the way.

In the afternoon he went to the hospital for the final tests. The doctor had already given him an appointment for when he should return to start his treatment. He’d noted it in his diary in his usual sprawling handwriting, as if he were recording some holiday or somebody’s birthday. On Friday, November 19, 8:15 A.M.

When he returned home he packed his suitcase. He looked up the weather on teletext and saw that the temperature in Östersund was forecast at between 5° and 10 °C. He assumed there would be no significant difference between Östersund and Sveg. Before going to bed it occurred to him that he should tell Elena that he was leaving. She’d be worried if he simply disappeared. But he put it off. He had his cell phone, and she had the number. Perhaps he wanted her to worry? Maybe he wanted to hurt an innocent party to make up for being the one who was sick?

The following day, Friday, October 29, he left Borås before 8 A.M. Earlier he’d driven to Bramhultsvagen and taken a good look at the house where Molin had lived. That had been his home as a married man, for a time on his own, and that was the place he’d left when he moved north on his retirement.

Lindman recalled the farewell party for Molin in the canteen on the top floor of the station. Molin hadn’t drunk very much — he’d probably been the most sober of all present. Detective Chief Inspector Nylund, who retired the year after Molin, had given a speech: Lindman couldn’t remember a word of it. It had been a pretty insipid affair, and had ended early. It was the practice for newly-retired officers to have their colleagues over, as a sort of thank you: Molin had not done so. He’d simply walked out of the police station, and a few weeks later left Borås altogether.

Now Lindman was about to make the same journey. He was following in Molin’s tracks, without understanding why Molin had moved — or perhaps fled — to Norrland.

By nightfall Lindman had driven as far as Orsa. He stopped for an evening meal, a greasy steak in a roadside café, then settled down in the backseat of his car. He was worn out, and fell asleep at once. The bandages on his arm were itching. In his dreams, he was running through an endless succession of dark rooms.

He woke up while it was still dark, feeling stiff and with a splitting headache. He wriggled his way out of the car, and as he was peeing he noticed that his breath was coming out like steam. The gravel crunched under his feet. It was obvious that the temperature was around or even below zero. The previous evening he’d filled a thermos flask with hot coffee. He sat behind the wheel and drank a cup. A truck parked beside him started up and drove off. He switched on the radio and listened to the early news. He felt uneasy. Being dead would mean he could no longer listen to the radio. Death meant many different things. Even the radio would fall silent.

He put the thermos on the backseat and started the engine. It was another 100 kilometers or so to Sveg. He drove out onto the main road, and reminded himself that he must be on the lookout for elks. It grew gradually lighter. Lindman was thinking about Molin. He tried to sift through what he could remember about him, every conversation, all those meetings, all that time when nothing special had happened. What were Molin’s habits? Did he have any habits at all? When did he laugh? When was he angry? He had difficulty remembering. The image was elusive. The only thing he was sure about was that Molin had been frightened that time.

The forest came to an end, and after crossing the Ljusnan River Lindman found himself driving into Sveg. The place was so small that he nearly drove out of it on the other side before realizing that he’d reached his destination. He turned left at the church and saw a hotel sign. He’d assumed it wouldn’t be necessary to reserve a room in advance, but when he went to reception the girl behind the desk told him that he’d had a stroke of luck. They had one room, thanks to a cancellation.

“Who wants to stay in a hotel in Sveg?” he said in surprise.

“Test drivers,” the girl told him. “They check in up here and test new models. And then there are the computer people.”

“Computer people?”

“There’s lots of that sort of thing just now,” the girl said. “New firms setting up. And there aren’t enough houses. The council is talking about building hostels.”

She asked him how long he intended staying.

“A week,” he said. “Maybe longer. Is that possible?”

She checked in the ledger.

“Well, I think so, but I can’t promise,” she said. “We’re full more or less all the time.”

Lindman left his suitcase in his room and went downstairs to the dining room, where the breakfast buffet was open. Young people were sitting at all the tables, many of them dressed in what looked like flying suits. After he’d eaten he went back to his room, stripped down, removed the bandages from his arm, and took a shower. Then he crept between the sheets. What am I doing here? he wondered. I could have gone to Mallorca. But I’m in Sveg. Instead of walking along a beach and looking at a blue sea, I’m surrounded by endless trees.

When he woke up, he didn’t know where he was at first. He lay in bed and tried to construct some sort of plan. But first he’d have to see the place where Molin had died. The simplest thing, of course, would be to talk to the detective in charge of the case in Östersund, Giuseppe Larsson; but something told him it would be better to take a look at the scene of the crime without anybody knowing about it. He could talk to Larsson later, maybe even drive to Östersund. On the way north he’d wondered if there were any police stationed in Sveg, or did the police have to drive nearly 200 kilometers from Östersund to investigate petty crimes? Eventually, he got up. He had no end of questions, but the crucial thing was to see the scene of the crime.

He dressed and went down to the lobby. The girl who’d checked him in was on the phone. Lindman spread out his map and waited. He could hear that she was talking to a child, no doubt her own, something about coming to the end of her shift shortly and another person taking over, so that she could go home.

“Everything okay with the room?” she asked as she put the receiver down.

“All in order,” Lindman said. “I have a question, though. I haven’t come here to see if cars can handle extreme conditions. Nor am I a tourist, or a fisherman. I’m here because a good friend of mine was murdered not far from here last week.”

Her face turned serious.

“The guy who lived out at Linsell? The former policeman?”

“That’s the one.” He showed her his police ID, then pointed to his map. “Can you show me where he lived?”

She turned the map around and took a good look at it. Then she pointed to the spot.

“You have to head for Linsell,” she said. “Then turn off towards Lofsdalen, cross the Ljusnan River, and you’ll come to a signpost directing you to Linkvarnen. Continue past there for another ten kilometers or so. His house is off to the right, but the road isn’t marked on this map.”

She looked at him.

“I’m not really nosy,” she said. “I know lots of people have come here just to gape. But we’ve had some police from Östersund staying here, and I heard them describing how to get there over the telephone. Somebody was supposed to be coming here by helicopter.”

“I don’t suppose you get much of that sort of thing here,” Lindman said.

“I’ve never heard of anything of the kind, and I was born in Sveg. When there was still a maternity hospital here.”

Lindman tried to fold his map together, but made a mess of it.

“Let me help you,” she said, flattening it out before folding it neatly.

When Lindman left the hotel he could see that the weather had changed. There was a clear sky; the morning clouds had dispersed. He breathed in the fresh air.

Suddenly he had the feeling that he was dead, and he wondered who would come to his funeral.

He reached Linsell at around two in the afternoon. To his surprise, he saw a sign advertising an Internet café. The village also boasted a gas station and a general store. He turned left across the bridge and kept going. Between Sveg and Linsell he’d seen a grand total of three cars going in the opposite direction. He drove slowly; there was no hurry. About ten kilometers, she’d said. After seven kilometers he came to an almost invisible side road turning into a dirt road that disappeared into the forest on his right. He followed the badly potholed road for about 500 meters, at which point it petered out. A few homemade signposts indicated that various tracks going off in all directions were for snowmobiles during the winter months. He turned around and returned to the main road. After another kilometer he came to the next turn. It was practically impassable, and after two kilometers came to a stop at a log pile. He’d scratched the bottom of his car several times on stones projecting from the badly maintained road.

When he got to Dravagen, it was obvious that he’d gone too far. He turned around. A truck and two cars passed him in the opposite direction. Then the road was empty again. He was driving very slowly now, with the side windows wide open. He kept thinking about his illness. Wondering what would have happened if he’d gone to Mallorca. He wouldn’t have needed to search for a road there. What would he have been doing instead? Sitting in the depths of some dimly-lit bar, getting drunk?

Then he found the road. Just after a bend. He knew it was right the moment he saw it. It led him uphill and into three bends, one right after the next. The surface was smooth and covered in gravel. After two kilometers he saw a house behind the trees. He drove into the parking area at the front and came to a halt. The police tape closing it off was still there, but the place was deserted. He got out of the car.

There wasn’t a breath of wind. He stood still and looked around. Molin had moved from his house in Bramhultsvagen in Borås to be in this remote spot in the depths of the forest. And somebody had found their way here in order to kill him. Lindman looked at the house. The smashed windows. He approached the front door and tried it. Locked. Then he walked around the building. Every window was broken. From the rear he could see water glittering through the trees. He tried the shed door. It was open. Inside it smelled of potatoes, and he took note of a wheelbarrow and various garden implements. He went out again.

Molin was isolated here, he thought. That must be what he’d been looking for. Even in his Borås days he’d longed to be alone, and that’s what attracted him here.

He wondered how Molin had discovered this house. Who had he bought it from? And why here, in the depths of the Härjedalen forests? He walked up to one of the windows on the short wall. There was a kicksled parked next to the house wall. He used it as a stepladder to open the broken window from the inside. Carefully he removed the protruding bits of glass and clambered into the house. It struck him that there was always a special smell in places where the police had been. Every trade has its own smell. That applies to us as well.

He was in a small bedroom. The bed was made, but it was covered in patches of dried blood. The forensic examination had no doubt been completed, but he preferred not to touch anything. He wanted to see exactly the same things as the forensic officers had seen. He would start where they had left off. But what did he think he was doing? What did he think he might be able to uncover? He told himself he was in Molin’s house as a private citizen. Not as a policeman or a private detective, just a man who had cancer and who wanted to find something other than his illness to think about.

He went into the living room. Furniture had been overturned. There were bloodstains on the walls and on the floor. Only now did he realize how horrific Molin’s death must have been. He hadn’t been stabbed or shot and fallen dead on the spot. He’d been subjected to a violent attack, and it looked as though he’d been chased and had resisted. He walked carefully around the room. Stopped at the CD player that was standing open. No disc in it, but an empty case beside the player. Argentinean tango. He continued his exploration. Molin had lived a life devoid of ornament, it seemed. No pictures, no vases. No family photographs either.

A thought struck him. He went back to the bedroom and looked in the wardrobe. No police uniform. So Molin seemed to have gotten rid of it. Most retired police officers kept their uniforms.

He went back to the living room, and from that into the kitchen. All the time he was trying hard to imagine Molin walking at his side. A lonely man of about seventy-five. Getting up in the morning, making meals, getting through the day. A man is always doing something, it seemed to him. The same must have applied to Molin. Nobody just sits on a chair all day. Even the most passive of people do something. But what had Molin done? How had he spent his days? He went back to the living room and scrutinized the floor. Next to one of the bloodstained footprints was a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. There were other pieces strewn over the floor. He stood up, and felt a shooting pain in his back. The cancer, he thought. Or had he just slept awkwardly in his car last night? He waited until the pain had gone. Then he went over to the bookcase with the CD player. Bent down and opened a cabinet. It was full of boxes that he thought at first contained various games. He took out the top one, and saw that it was a jigsaw puzzle. He looked at the picture on the front of the box. A painting by an artist called Matisse. Had he heard that name before, perhaps? He wasn’t sure. The subject was a large garden, with two women dressed in white in the background. He turned to the rest of the pile. Nearly all of them were based on paintings. Big puzzles with lots of pieces. He opened the next cabinet. That was full of jigsaw puzzles too, none of them opened. He stood up gingerly, afraid that the pain might return. So Molin spent a lot of his time doing jigsaw puzzles, he thought. Odd. But then again, maybe no odder than his own hobby, collecting pointless press clippings about the Elfsborg football club.

He looked around the room again. It was so quiet he could hear his own pulse beating. He really ought to get in touch with the Östersund police officer with the unusual first name. Maybe he should drive there on Monday and have a talk with him? Then again, the murder investigation had nothing to do with him. He had better be quite clear about that. He hadn’t come to Härjedalen to carry out some kind of private investigation into who had killed Herbert Molin. No doubt there was a straightforward explanation. There generally was. Murder nearly always had something to do with money or revenge. Alcohol was generally involved. And the culprit usually came from a circle of close contacts — family and friends.

It could be that Larsson and his colleagues had pinpointed a motive already and been able to point the finger at a possible suspect. Why not?

Lindman took another look around. Asked himself what the room had to say about what had happened in it. But he heard no answers. He looked at the bloodstained footprints. They formed a pattern. What surprised him was that they were so clear, suggesting they’d been put there in that form intentionally, and were not the accidental traces of a struggle or the staggering steps of a dying man. He wondered what the forensic team and Giuseppe Larsson had made of that.

Then he walked over to the big broken window in the living room. Stopped in his tracks, and ducked down. There was a man standing outside. Holding a rifle. Motionless, staring straight at the window.

Chapter Five

Lindman had no time to be afraid. When he saw the man with the gun outside, he took a step back and crouched by the side of the window. At once he heard a key in the front door lock. If he had thought for a second that the man outside was the murderer, he shed it now. The man who had killed Molin would hardly have his frontdoor key.

The door opened. The man paused in the entrance to the living room. He was holding the gun pointing down at his side. Lindman saw that it was a shotgun.

“There’s not supposed to be anybody here,” the man said. “But there is.”

He spoke slowly and distinctly, but not like the girl at the hotel reception desk. His dialect was different. Lindman couldn’t tell what it was.

“I knew the dead man.”

The stranger nodded. “I believe you,” he said. “I just wonder who you are.”

“Herbert Molin and I worked together for several years. He was a police officer, and I still am.”

“That’s about all I know about Herbert,” said the man. “That he’d been a police officer.”

“Who are you?” The man gestured to Lindman, suggesting that they should go outside. He nodded towards the empty dog pen. “I think I knew Shaka better than I knew Herbert,” he said. “Nobody knew Herbert.”

Lindman looked at the dog pen, then at the man. He was bald, in his sixties, tall, thin, and dressed in bib overalls, a jacket, and rubber boots. He turned his gaze from the dog pen and looked at Lindman.

“You wonder who I am,” he said. “Why I have a key. And a shotgun.”

Lindman nodded.

“In these parts distances are long. I don’t suppose you met many cars on the way here. I bet you didn’t see many people either. I live about ten kilometers away, but even so I was one of Herbert’s nearest neighbors.”

“What sort of work do you do?”

The man smiled. “Isn’t it usual to ask a man first his name,” he said, “and then what he does?”

“My name’s Stefan Lindman, police officer in Borås. Where Herbert used to work.”

“Abraham Andersson. But around here they call me Dunkärr, because I live at a farm called Dunkärret.”

“So are you a farmer?”

The man laughed and spat into the gravel. “No,” he said. “I don’t care for agriculture. Nor forestry. Well, I go into the forest, but not to cut down trees. I play the violin. I was in the symphony orchestra in Helsingborg for twenty years. Then one day I simply felt I’d had enough. And moved up here. I still play sometimes. Mostly to keep my fingers moving. Old violinists can have problems with their joints if they stop just like that. In fact, that was how I met Herbert.”

“How so?”

“I take my violin into the forest. I settle down where the trees are densest. The violin sounds different there. At other times I go up a mountain, or to a lakeside. The sound is always different. After all those years in a concert hall it’s as if I’ve got a new instrument in my hands.” He pointed at the lake that was just visible through the trees. “I was standing down there, playing away. Mendelssohn’s violin concerto, I think it was, the second movement. Then Herbert appeared with his dog. Wondered what the hell was going on. I can understand him. Who expects to find an old fellow in a forest playing a violin? Plus he was upset because I was trespassing on his land. But we became friends after that. Or whatever you would call it.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I don’t suppose anybody became a friend of Herbert’s.”

“Why?”

“He bought this house in order to be in peace. But you can’t entirely cut yourself off from other people. After a year or so, he told me that there was a spare key on a hook in the shed. I don’t know why.”

“But you used to see a little of each other socially?”

“No. He let me play down by the lake whenever I wanted. To tell you the truth, I never set foot in this house before today. He never came around to visit me either.”

“Was there anybody else who visited him?”

The man’s reaction was almost imperceptible, but Lindman noticed the slight hesitation before he answered. “Not as far as I know.”

So he did have visitors, Lindman thought. But he said: “So, in other words, you’re a retiree as well. And you’ve hidden yourself away in the forest, just like Herbert.”

The man started laughing again. “Not at all,” he said. “I’m not a retiree, and I haven’t hidden myself away in the forest. I write a little bit for a few dance bands.”

“Dance bands?”

“The occasional song. Light hearts, broken hearts. Mostly crap, but I’ve had some hits. Not as Abraham Andersson, of course. I use what’s known as a pseudonym.”

“What do you call yourself?”

“Siv Nilsson.”

“A woman’s name?”

“I once knew a girl at school I was in love with. It was her name. I thought it was a rather nice way of declaring my affection for her.”

Lindman wondered if Andersson was pulling his leg, but decided that he was telling the truth. He looked at the man’s hands. His fingers were long and slim. He could indeed be a violinist.

“You have to ask yourself what on earth happened here,” the man said. “Who could have come out here and finished Herbert off. The place has been crawling with police until yesterday. There have been folks coming in helicopters and roaming around with dogs, police knocking on doors for miles around. But nobody knows a thing.”

“Nobody?”

“Nobody. Herbert came here from somewhere else and wanted to be left in peace. But somebody didn’t want to leave him in peace, and now he’s dead.”

“When did you last see him?”

“You’re asking the same questions as the police.”

“I am the police.”

Andersson looked at him quizzically. “But you’re not from the local police. That means you can’t be on the case.”

“I knew Herbert. I’m on vacation. I came here.”

Andersson nodded, but Lindman was sure he hadn’t been believed.

“I leave here for one week every month. I go to Helsingborg to see my wife. It’s odd that it should happen when I wasn’t here.”

“Why?”

“Because I never go away at the same time. It could be in the middle of a month from Sunday until the following Saturday, but it might just as easily be from Wednesday to Tuesday. Never the same. And yet it happens when I’m away.”

Lindman thought that over. “So you think that somebody was keeping watch and made his move when you weren’t around?”

“I don’t think anything. I’m just saying that it’s odd. I’m probably the only one who wanders around here. Apart from Herbert.”

“What do you think happened?”

“I don’t know. I have to go now.”

Lindman walked him to his car, which was parked at the bottom of the slope. He could see a violin case in the back seat.

“Where did you say you lived?” he said. “Dunkärret?”

“Just this side of Glöte. Keep going when you get there. About six kilometers. There’s a sign pointing to the left. Dunkärret. 2.”

Andersson got into the car. “You have to catch whoever did this,” he said. “Herbert was an oddball, but harmless. Whoever killed him must have been insane.”

Lindman watched the car drive off, standing there until the sound of the engine had died away. It struck him that sound travels a long way in a forest. Then he went back to the house and along the path that led to the lake. All the time he was pondering what Andersson had said. Nobody knew Molin. But somebody had paid him visits. Andersson hadn’t been prepared to say who, however. And the murder had taken place when Andersson wasn’t in the vicinity, always assuming that Dunkärret could be counted as in the vicinity. Lindman paused to think. That could only mean one thing. Andersson must suspect that whoever killed Molin knew that Andersson was away, and that in turn could mean only two things: either the murderer was local, or he’d been keeping watch on Molin for a considerable period of time — at least a month, possibly longer.

He came to the lake. It was bigger than he’d expected. The water was brown, with only a very few gentle ripples. He squatted down and dipped his hand in. It was cold. He stood up and suddenly saw Borås Hospital in his mind’s eye. It was several hours since he’d last thought about what was in store for him. He sat on a rock and gazed over the lake. Wooded ridges stretched away into the distance on the other side, and he could hear a power saw somewhere a long way off. I have no business being here, he thought. Molin might have had a reason for coming up north to the gigantic forests and the silence, but I haven’t. On the contrary, I should be preparing myself for what’s going to happen. My doctor has given me a good chance of surviving. I’m still young, and I’m strong, but the bottom line is that nobody can know for sure whether I’m going to make it or not.

He started along the shore. When he turned to look, he could no longer see the house. He was alone in the world now. He continued along the stony shore and eventually came to a rotting rowboat that had been beached. In the decaying remains was an anthill. He kept on walking, with no direction in mind, until he came to an opening in the trees, and sat down again, this time on a fallen tree trunk. The ground seemed to be well-trodden. He noticed some cuts on the trunk that could only have been made by a knife. Perhaps Molin used to come here, he thought vaguely. Between jigsaw puzzles. Maybe he brought his dog with him? What was its name? Shaka? An odd name for a dog.

His mind was a complete blank. The only thing he could see was the road ahead, the long road he’d driven from Borås to get here. Then something intruded, spoiling the image. Something he should give thought to. He knew what it was. Something that had just occurred to him: that perhaps Molin came here with his dog.

It could have been somebody else, he thought. Somebody else sitting here. He started to look around, more attentively this time. The site had been cleared. Somebody had removed the undergrowth and leveled the ground. He got up from his tree trunk and squatted in the middle of the leveled area. It wasn’t big, hardly more than twenty square meters, but pretty well shielded from view. Fallen trees and some large rocks made it more or less impossible to get there unless one came at it from the water’s edge. He looked hard at the ground. If he screwed up his eyes, he could just make out a faint shape in the moss. A square. He felt with his fingers in the four corners. There were holes there. He stood up. A tent, he thought. Unless I’m totally mistaken, there was a tent pitched here. No way of knowing how long ago, but it must have been this year, otherwise the snow would have obliterated all the marks.

He looked around again, more slowly, as if every detail he saw might be crucial. At the back of his mind he kept thinking that what he was doing was pointless. But then again, he had nothing else to do at the moment. Nothing else to distract him.

He could find no trace of a fire, but that was irrelevant. People nowadays used camping gas stoves when they were in the forest. He examined the ground around the tree trunk one more time, but found nothing.

Then he went back down to the water’s edge. There was a big stone on the waterline. He sat on it. Looked into the water, then felt at the back of the stone and the moss came loose. When he scraped it to one side he saw the remains of cigarette butts. The paper was brown, but they had certainly been cigarettes. They’d rotted away, but there were unmistakable flakes of tobacco. He explored further with his hands. There were cigarette butts everywhere. Whoever had sat here was a heavy smoker. He found a butt where the paper was discolored but still retained a bit of whiteness. He picked it up carefully and searched in his pockets for something to put it in. The only thing he could find was a receipt. The Hospital Cafeteria, Borås. He placed the cigarette butt carefully in the receipt, then folded it to form a parcel. He kept on searching and asked himself what he would have done if he’d pitched a tent here. You’d need a shithole, he thought. It was possible to clamber into the forest past the side of one of the biggest rocks. It looked as if the moss had been scraped from one side of the stone. He examined the ground behind the stone. Nothing. He worked his way into the forest, a meter at a time. He thought about the police dogs Andersson had told him about. If they hadn’t found any tracks, they could not have come this far.

He stopped short. Next to the trunk of a pine tree was a pile that had clearly been made by a human. Feces and paper. His heart started beating faster. He was right. Somebody had camped by the side of the lake. A person who smoked cigarettes and didn’t trouble to bury his excrement.

Even so, there was nothing to link the camper with Herbert Molin. He went back to where the tent must have been. There had to be some connection with the main road, or a forest road where the man in the tent might have left his car.

The shortcomings of his argument were immediately obvious to him. The camping site could well have been a meticulously arranged hiding place. The idea of a car parked near the main road didn’t fit in with that. What were the alternatives? A motorcycle or an ordinary bicycle would be easier to hide than a car. Or perhaps somebody else had driven the camper here.

He looked over the lake. There was another possibility, of course. The camper could have come that way. But where’s the boat?

Larsson, he thought, is the man I have to talk to. There’s no reason why I should be playing the private detective here. It’s the police in Jämtland and Härjedalen that have to figure this out. He sat on the fallen tree again. It was colder. The sun was setting. There was a flapping noise in the trees. When he turned to look, the bird had already disappeared. He started retracing his steps. A brooding silence prevailed around Molin’s house. The chill emanating from the events that had taken place here was getting to him.

He drove back to Sveg. He stopped at the store in Linsell and bought the local newspaper, Härjedalen, published every Thursday (except public holidays). The man behind the counter gave him a friendly smile. Lindman could see he was curious.

“We don’t get very many visitors here in the autumn,” the man said. His nametag said that his name was Torbjörn Lundell. Lindman thought he might as well tell him the truth. “I knew Herbert Molin,” he said. “We worked together before he retired.”

Lundell looked doubtfully at him. “You’re the police,” he said. “Can’t our own force handle this?”

“I’ve got nothing to do with the investigation.”

“But even so, you’ve come here, from as far away as... Halland, was it?”

“Vâstergötland. I’m on vacation. But Herbert told you that, did he? That he came from Borås?”

Lundell shook his head. “It was the police who said that. But he used to shop here. Every other week. Always on a Thursday. Never said a word unless he had to. Always bought the same things. He was a bit choosy when it came to coffee, though. I had to order it specially for him. French coffee.”

“When did you last see him?”

“Thursday, the week before he died.”

“Did you notice anything unusual about him?”

“Such as what?”

“Was he different at all?”

“He was the same as ever. Didn’t say a word more than he had to.”

Lindman hesitated. He shouldn’t have lapsed so easily into his role as a police officer. Rumors would get around that there was a policeman from some distant place, asking awkward questions. Nevertheless, there was one question he simply couldn’t resist asking.

“Have you had any other customers lately? Ones you don’t usually have?”

“That’s what the fuzz from Östersund asked me. And the officer from Sveg. I told ’em the way it was — apart from a few Norwegians and some berry pickers from Belgium last week, I haven’t seen a soul here that I didn’t know.”

Lindman thanked him, left the shop, and continued towards Sveg. It was dark by now. He was feeling distinctly hungry.

He’d gotten an answer to one of his questions, though. There was a police presence in Sveg. Even if the investigation was based in Östersund.

Shortly before he came to Glissjöberg an elk ran over the road into his headlights. He managed to brake in time. The animal disappeared into the trees at the side of the road. He waited to see if others would follow it, but none did.

He parked outside his hotel. There was a group of men in uniforms chatting away in the lobby. He went up to his room and sat on the bed. Before he knew where he was, he had visions of himself lying in bed with tubes attached to his body and face. Elena was in a chair at the side of his bed, crying.

He jumped up and slammed his fist hard into the wall. Before he knew where he was there came a knock at the door. Another of the test drivers.

“Did you want something?” the man said.

“What on earth would I want?”

“You knocked on the wall.”

“It must have been from somewhere else.”

Lindman slammed the door in the driver’s face. I’ve made my first enemy in Härjedalen, he thought. Just when I should be concentrating on making friends. That set him thinking. Why did he have so few friends? Why didn’t he move in with Elena and start living the life he really yearned for? Why did he lead a life that left him all on his own, now that he was faced with a serious illness? He had no answer to that.

He thought about calling Elena, but decided to eat first. He went down to the dining room and chose a window table. He was the only customer. He could hear the sound from a television set coming from the bar. To his surprise he found that the receptionist had been reincarnated as a waitress. He ordered a steak and a beer. As he ate, he thumbed through the newspaper he’d bought in Linsell. He read all the way through the obituaries, and tried to imagine his own obituary. He ordered a coffee after the meal, and stared out into the darkness.

He left the dining room and paused in the lobby, wondering whether to go for a walk or return to his room. He chose the latter course. He dialed Elena’s number. She picked up immediately. Lindman had the impression she’d been sitting by the phone, waiting for him to call.

“Where are you?”

“In Sveg.”

“What’s it like there?” she asked, hesitantly.

“Cold, and I feel lonely.”

“I don’t understand why you’ve gone there.”

“Neither do I.”

“Come back home, then.”

“If I could, I’d head back right away. But I’ll be here for a few more days.”

“Can’t you tell me you miss me, at least?”

“You know I do.”

He gave her the hotel telephone number, and hung up. Neither of them liked talking on the phone. Their conversations were often short. Even so, Lindman had the feeling she was close by his side.

He was tired. It had been a long day. He untied his laces and kicked his shoes away from the side of the bed. Then he lay down and stared at the ceiling. I must make up my mind what I’m doing here, he thought. I came here to try to understand what had happened, to understand what Molin had been so frightened of. Now I’ve seen the house where he was murdered, and I’ve found a camping site that might have been a hiding place.

He wondered what to do next. The obvious thing would be to drive up to Östersund and meet this Larsson.

But then what?

Maybe the journey here was pointless. He should have gone to Mallorca. The Jämtland police would do what they had to do. One day he would find out what had happened. Somewhere out there was a murderer waiting to be arrested.

He lay on his side and looked at the blank television screen. He could hear some young people laughing in the street below. Had he laughed at all during the day that had just passed? He searched his memory, but couldn’t even remember a smile. Just at this moment I’m not the person I usually am, he thought. A man who’s always laughing. At the moment I’m a man with a malignant lump on his tongue who’s scared to death about what’s going to happen next.

Then he looked at his shoes. Something had stuck to one of the soles, he discovered, trapped in the pattern of the rubber sole. A stone from the gravel path, he thought. He reached to extract it.

But it wasn’t a stone. It was part of a jigsaw puzzle piece. He sat up and adjusted the bedside lamp. The piece was soft and discolored by soil. He was certain he hadn’t stepped on any pieces inside the house. It might have been outside the house. Nevertheless, his intuition told him that the jigsaw piece had stuck to the sole of his shoe at the place where the tent had been pitched. Whoever killed Herbert Molin had been camping at the lakeside.

Chapter Six

The discovery of the broken jigsaw puzzle piece livened him up somewhat. He sat at the table and started making notes about everything that had happened in the course of the day. It took the form of a letter. At first, he couldn’t think to whom it should be addressed. It occurred to him that it should go to the doctor who was expecting to see him in Borås on the morning of November 19. Was there nobody else to write to? Perhaps it was that Elena wouldn’t understand what he was talking about? At the top of the page he wrote: The fear of Herbert Molin, and underlined the words with forceful strokes of his pen. Then he noted one by one the observations he’d made in and around the house, and where the tent had been. He tried to draw some conclusions, but the only thing that seemed to him definite was that Molin’s murder had long been planned.

It was 10 P.M. He hesitated, but decided to phone Larsson at home and tell him he would come and see him in Östersund the following day. He looked for the number in the phone book. There were a lot of Larssons, but predictably only one Giuseppe, a police officer. His wife answered. Lindman explained who he was. She sounded friendly. While he was waiting, he wondered what Larsson’s hobby might be. Why didn’t he have a hobby himself, apart from football? He hadn’t managed to find an answer before Larsson came to the phone.

“Stefan Lindman,” he said. “From Borås. I hope this isn’t too late.”

“Not quite. Another half hour and I’d have been asleep. Where are you?”

“In Sveg.”

“Just down the road, then.” Larsson roared with laughter. “A couple of hundred kilometers is nothing to us up here. Where do you get to if you drive two hundred kilometres from Borås?”

“Almost to Malmö.”

“There you go, you see.”

“I thought I might visit you in Östersund tomorrow.”

“You’re welcome to come. I’ll be there quite early in the morning. The police station is behind the National Rural Agency building. It’s a small town. You’ll have no trouble in finding it. When had you thought of coming?”

“I can fit into your schedule. Whenever you’ve got time.”

“How about eleven? We have a nine o’clock meeting of our little murder squad.”

“Have you got a suspect?”

“We’ve got nothing at all,” said Larsson, cheerfully. “But we’ll solve this one in the end, we hope. We’ll be discussing tomorrow if we need any help from Stockholm. Somebody who can draw up a profile of the person we’re looking for would be useful. Could be interesting. Up here, we’ve never been faced with anything like this before.”

“They’re good at that,” Lindman said. “We’ve had some help from them in Borås now and then.”

“See you tomorrow, then. Eleven o’clock.”

Then he went out. The driver next door was snoring. Lindman went down the stairs as quietly as he could. His room key also fitted the front door. The lights were out in the lobby, the door to the restaurant closed. It was 10:30. When he emerged onto the street he found that a wind had started up. He pulled his jacket tightly around him and started walking through the empty streets. He came to the train station, which was dark and locked. He read a sign and learned that trains no longer came here. The old “National Railway,” he thought. That’s what the line used to be called, if I remember correctly. Nothing left but rusting rails. He continued on his nocturnal ramble, passed a park with swings and tennis courts, and came to the church. The main door was locked. In front of the school was a statue of a lumberjack. He tried to make out the features of the man. In the poor light of the streetlights they seemed to be expressionless.

He hadn’t seen a single person. When he got back to the hotel, he lay down on the bed for a while and watched the television with the sound turned down. He could still hear the man next door snoring through the paper-thin wall.

It was 4:30 before he fell asleep. His head was a vacuum.

He was up again at 7 A.M. His head throbbed with tired thoughts. He sat at a table alone in the dining room, which was teeming with earlybird test drivers. The receptionist was playing the part of waitress again.

“Did you sleep well?” she asked.

“Yes, thank you,” he said, and wondered if she believed him.

It was raining by the time he came to Östersund. He drove around the town until he discovered the gloomy building with a red sign for the “National Rural Agency.” He wondered what on earth an organization like that actually did. Was its function just to facilitate the abandonment of Swedish rural communities?

He found a parking place on a side street and stayed in the car. Still forty-five minutes to go before his meeting with Larsson. He reclined his seat and closed his eyes. I have death in my body, he thought. I have to take that seriously, but I can’t get my head around it. You can’t pin down death — not your own, at least. I can understand that Molin is dead. I’ve seen the traces of his death struggle. But my own death? I can’t deal with imagining that. It’s like the elk that ran across the road just before I came to Linsell. I’m still not sure that it really existed, or whether I just imagined it.

At 11 A.M. precisely, Lindman walked through the front door of the police station. To his surprise, the woman in reception looked very much like one of the receptionists in Borås. He wondered if the National Police Board had passed a motion requiring all police receptionists to look alike.

He explained who he was.

“Larsson told us to expect you,” she said, pointing to the nearest corridor. “His office is down there, the second room on the left.”

Lindman knocked on the door with DETECTIVE INSPECTOR LARSSON on it. The man who opened it was tall and very powerfully built. His reading glasses were pushed up over his forehead.

“You’re punctual,” he said, almost hustling him into the room and closing the door behind them.

Lindman sat in the visitor’s chair. He recognized the way the office was furnished from the police station in Borås. We don’t just wear uniforms, he thought. Our offices are uniform as well.

Larsson sat an his desk and crossed his hands over his stomach. “Have you been up in this part of the world before?” he asked.

“Never. Uppsala once, when I was a child, but that’s as far north as I’ve been before.”

“Uppsala is southern Sweden. Here in Östersund you still have half of Sweden to go as you travel north. It used to be a very long way from here to Stockholm. Not anymore. Flights can take you wherever you like in Sweden in just a few hours. In the space of a few decades Sweden has turned from a big country into a little one.”

Lindman pointed to the large wall map.

“How big is your police district?”

“Big enough and more besides.”

“How many police officers are there in Härjedalen?”

Larsson thought for a moment. “Five, maybe six in Sveg, a couple in Hede. And there a few more here and there — in Funäsdalen, for instance. Possibly fifteen in all, depending on how many are on duty at a given time.”

They were interrupted by a knock on the door. It opened before Larsson could react. The man in the doorway was the polar opposite of Larsson, short and very thin.

“I thought Nisse should sit in on this,” Larsson said. “We are the ones in charge of the investigation.”

Lindman stood up to shake hands. The man who’d joined them was reserved and serious. He spoke very softly and Lindman had difficulty gathering that his surname was Rundström. Larsson seemed to be affected by his presence. He sat up straighter in his chair, and his smile disappeared. The mood had changed.

“We thought we ought to have a little talk,” Larsson said, cautiously. “About this and that.”

Rundström had not sat down, although there was a spare chair. He leaned against the door frame and avoided looking Lindman in the eye.

“We received a call this morning,” he said. “From a man who reported that a police officer from Borås was conducting an investigation in the region of Linsell. He was a bit upset, and wondered if the local police had handed the investigation over to outsiders.” Before going on he paused to examine his hands. “He was quite upset,” Rundström repeated. “And it would be fair to say that we were upset as well.”

Lindman had broken out in a sweat. “I can think of two possibilities,” he said. “The man who phoned was either Abraham Andersson — he lives in a farmhouse called Dunkrret — or it was the owner of the shop in Linsell.”

“I expect it was Lundell,” Rundström said. “But we don’t like police officers from faraway places coming here and poking their noses into our investigations.”

Lindman saw red. “I’m not conducting my own investigation,” he said. “I’ve already spoken to Larsson. I told him I’d worked with Molin for quite a few years. I’m on vacation, and so I came here. It doesn’t seem all that strange that I would have visited the scene of the murder.”

“It creates confusion,” Rundström said, in his soft, barely audible voice.

“I bought the local paper,” Lindman said, no longer bothering to conceal his anger. “I told the man who I was and asked if Molin did his shopping there.”

Rundström produced a sheet of paper he’d been holding behind his back. “You asked quite a few more questions as well. Lundell read them to me over the phone.”

This is lunacy, Lindman thought. He looked at Larsson, but he was staring down at his stomach.

For the first time Rundström looked him in the eye. “What exactly do you want to know?” he asked.

“Who killed my colleague.”

“That’s what we want to know as well. Needless to say, we’ve given this investigation top priority. It’s been a long time since we’ve set up such a broadly based investigative team as this one. We’ve had some pretty violent crimes up here over the years. We’re not exactly unused to it.”

Lindman could see that Rundström was making no attempt to disguise the fact that he resented his presence, but he could also see that Larsson was upset by the approach Rundström had adopted. That gave him an escape route.

“It goes without saying that I’m not questioning the way you are working.”

“Have you any information you can give us that would be of use to the investigation?”

“No,” Lindman said. He didn’t want to tell Rundström about the tent site until he’d discussed it with Larsson. “I have no useful information to give you. I didn’t know Molin well enough to be able to tell you anything about the life he led in Borås, never mind here. No doubt there are others who would be better at that than I am. And in any case, I’ll be leaving soon.”

Rundström nodded and opened the door. “Any news from Umeå yet?”

“Nothing so far,” Larsson said.

Rundström smiled curtly at Lindman and was gone. Larsson stretched out an arm apologetically.

“Rundström can be a bit abrupt at times. But he means well.”

“He’s within his rights to complain about my poking my nose in your business.”

Larsson leaned back in his chair and eyed him speculatively. “Is that what you’re doing? Poking your nose in?”

“Only in the sense that sometimes you can’t avoid stumbling over things.”

Larsson looked at his watch. “How long are you thinking of staying in Östersund? Overnight?”

“I haven’t decided anything.”

“Stay overnight, then. I’ll be working here tonight as well. Come here sometime after seven. With a little luck, everything will be quiet here then. I have to be on call tonight, because so many officers are out sick. You can make yourself at home in my office.”

Larsson pointed to some files on a shelf behind him.

“You can look through the material we have. Then we can talk.”

“And Rundström?”

“He lives in Brunflo. You can bet your life he won’t be here tonight. Nobody will ask any questions.”

Larsson rose from his chair. Lindman understood that the conversation was over.

“The old theater’s been converted into an hotel. A good hotel. There’s no question of their being full in October.”

Lindman buttoned up his jacket.

“Umeå?” he wondered.

“That’s where we send our dead bodies.”

“I thought that was Uppsala or Stockholm.”

Larsson smiled. “You’re in Östersund now. Umeå’s a lot nearer.”

Larsson accompanied him as far as the reception area. Lindman noticed that he was limping. Larsson saw that he’d noticed.

“I slipped in the bathroom. Nothing serious.”

Larsson opened the front door and went out into the street with him. “There’s winter in the air,” he said, looking up at the sky.

“Herbert Molin must have bought the house from somebody,” said Lindman. “Privately, or through a real estate agent.”

“We’ve looked into that, of course,” Larsson said. “Molin bought the house from an independent real estate agent. Not one of the big companies. A rural real estate agent. His name’s Hans Marklund and he runs the business on his own.”

“What did he have to say?”

“Nothing yet. He’s been on vacation in Spain. He’s evidently got a second home down there. He’s on my list for tomorrow.”

“He’s back?”

“Yesterday.”

Larsson thought for a moment. “I can tell my colleagues that I’ll take the responsibility for interviewing him. Which in turn means that there’s nothing to prevent you from talking to him.”

“Hans Marklund?”

“He works from his house in Krokom. Take the road north. In Krokom itself, you’ll see a sign saying ‘Rural Properties.’ Ring the doorbell here at 7:15, and I’ll come and let you in.”

Larsson went back inside. Rundström’s attitude had annoyed Lindman, but at the same time it had given him renewed energy. And Larsson wanted to help him by letting him go through the material they had accumulated so far. In doing so, Larsson was putting himself at risk, even if there were no real impropriety in allowing a colleague from another force to take part in the investigation. Lindman found the hotel Larsson had suggested. He got a room under the eaves. He left his suitcase there and returned to his car. He phoned the hotel in Sveg and spoke to the receptionist.

“Nobody will take your room,” she assured him.

“I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“You come when it suits you.”

Lindman found his way out of Östersund. It was only twenty kilometers to Krokom, where he found the real estate agent’s right away. It was a yellow-painted house with a large garden. A man was walking around the lawn vacuuming up dead leaves. He switched off the machine when he saw Lindman. The man was tanned and about Lindman’s age. He looked fit and trim, and had a tattoo on one of his wrists.

“Are you looking for a house?” he said.

“Not exactly. Are you Hans Marklund?”

“That’s me.”

Then he turned serious. “Are you from the tax authority?”

“No. Giuseppe Larsson told me I’d find you here.”

Marklund frowned. Then he remembered who that was. “The policeman. I’ve just gotten back from Spain. There are quite a lot of Giuseppes there. Or something like that. In Östersund there’s only one. Are you a police officer as well?”

Lindman hesitated. “Yes,” he said. “I’m a police officer. You once sold a house to a man called Herbert Molin. As you know, he’s dead now.”

“Come inside,” Marklund said. “They phoned me in Spain and told me he’d been murdered. I didn’t expect to hear from them until tomorrow.”

“You will.”

One of the rooms on the ground floor had been turned into an office. There were maps on the walls, and colored photographs of houses up for sale. Lindman noticed that the prices were significantly lower than in Borås.

“I’m on my own at the moment,” Marklund said. “My wife and children are staying in Spain for another week. We’ve got a little house in Marbella. I inherited it from my parents. The kids have their fall break, or whatever it’s called.”

Marklund made some coffee and they sat down at a table strewn with files.

“I had some problems with the tax people last year,” Marklund said apologetically. “That’s why I asked. As the local authority is running short of money, I supposed they have to squeeze out every krona they can.”

“Eleven years ago or so, you sold the house near Linsell to Herbert Molin. I used to work with him in Borås. He retired and moved up here. And now he’s dead.”

“What happened?”

“He was murdered.”

“Why? By whom?”

“We don’t know yet.”

Marklund shook his head.

“It sounds nasty. We like to think that we live in a pretty peaceful area up here — but maybe there aren’t any of those anymore?”

“Maybe not. What can you tell me about that sale eleven years ago?”

Marklund disappeared into an adjoining room. He came back with a file in his hand. He soon found what he was looking for.

“March 18, 1988,” he said. “The deal was signed and sealed here in this office. The seller was an old forester. The price was 198,000 kronor. No mortgage. The transaction was paid for by check.”

“What do you remember about Molin?”

The reply surprised Lindman.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“I never met him.”

“I don’t follow.”

“It’s very simple. Somebody else took care of the matter for him. Got in touch with me, took a look at a few houses, and eventually made the decision. As far as I know, Molin was never here.”

“Who was the middleman?”

“A woman by the name of Elsa Berggren. With an address in Sveg.” Marklund handed the file over. “Here’s the authorization. She had the right to make decisions and sign the deal on Molin’s behalf.”

Lindman examined the signature. He remembered it from the Borås days. It was Molin’s signature.

“So you never met Herbert Molin?”

“I never even spoke to him on the phone.”

“How did you come into contact with this woman?”

“The usual way. She phoned me.”

Marklund leafed through the file, then pointed.

“Here’s her address and telephone number,” he said. “She’s no doubt the person you should talk to. Not me. That’s what I’ll tell Giuseppe Larsson. Incidentally, I wonder if I’ll be able to resist the temptation to ask him how he came by his name. Do you happen to know?”

“No.”

Marklund closed the file.

“Isn’t it a bit unusual? Not meeting the person with whom you were doing business?”

“I was doing business with Elsa Berggren, and I did meet her. But I never met Molin. It’s not all that unusual. I sell quite a lot of vacation cottages in the mountains to Germans and Dutchmen. They have people who take care of the details for them.”

“So there was nothing unusual about this transaction.”

“Nothing at all.”

Marklund accompanied him as far as the front gate.

“Maybe there was, though,” he said, as Lindman was walking through the gate.

“Maybe there was what?”

“I remember Elsa Berggren saying on one occasion that her client didn’t want to use any of the big real estate agencies. I recall thinking that was a bit odd.”

“Why?”

“If you’re looking for a house you wouldn’t as a rule start off with a small firm.”

“How do you interpret that?”

Hans Marklund smiled. “I don’t interpret it at all. I’m merely telling you what I remember.”

Lindman drove back towards Östersund. After ten kilometers or so he turned off onto a forest road and switched off the engine.

The Berggren woman, whoever she might be, had been asked by Molin to avoid the big real estate agents. Why? Lindman could only think of one reason. Molin had wanted to buy his house as discreetly as possible.

The impression he’d had from the very start had turned out to be correct. The house in which Molin had spent the last years of his life wasn’t really a house at all. It was a hiding place.

Chapter Seven

That evening Lindman wandered through the life of Herbert Molin. Reading between the lines of all the notes and reports, statements and forensic details that had already been collected in Larsson’s files, despite the fact that the investigation hadn’t been going for very long, Lindman was able to compile a picture of Molin that was new to him. He discovered circumstances that sometimes made him thoughtful and at others surprised. The man he thought he’d known turned out to be a quite different person, a complete stranger.

It was midnight when he closed the last of the files. Larsson had occasionally stopped by during the course of the evening. You could hardly say they indulged in conversation; they drank coffee and exchanged a few words about how the evening was going for the police emergency service in Östersund. Everything had been quiet for the first few hours, but soon after 9 P.M. Larsson had to investigate a burglary in Häggenås. When he eventually returned, Lindman had just reached the end of the last of the files.

What had he found? A map, it seemed to him, with large blank patches. A man with a history with large gaps. A man who sometimes strayed from the marked path and disappeared, only to turn up again when least expected. Molin was a man whose past was elusive and in places very difficult to follow.

Lindman had made notes as the evening progressed. When he’d finished the last file and put it on one side, he looked through his notebook and summarized what he’d discovered.

The most surprising thing as far as Lindman was concerned was that, according to the documents the Östersund police had requested from the tax authorities, Herbert Molin had been born with a different name. On March 10, 1923, he had come into this world at the hospital in Kalmar and been baptized August Gustaf Herbert. His parents were cavalry officer Axel Mattson-Herzén and his wife Marianne. That name had disappeared in June 1951 when the Swedish Patent and Registration Office allowed him to change his surname to Molin. At the same time he had changed his Christian name from August Gustaf Herbert to Herbert.

Lindman sat staring at the name. Two questions occurred to him immediately. Why had Mattson-Herzén changed his surname and his Christian name? And why Molin, which must be about as common as Mattson? So many people in Sweden had the same surname that changing it was not unusual. But most people who changed their surname did so to escape from a common one and acquire one that nobody else had, or at least one that was not always being mixed up with somebody else’s.

August Mattson-Herzén was twenty-eight years old in 1951. At the time he’d been serving in the regular army, an infantry lieutenant in Boden. It seemed to Lindman that something must have happened then, that the early 1950s were important years in Molin’s life. There was a series of significant changes. In 1951 he changed his name. The following year, in March 1952, he applied for and received an honorable discharge from the army. He married when he left the army, and had children in 1953 and 1955, first a son christened Herman, and then a daughter, Veronica. He and his wife Jeanette moved from Boden in 1952 to an address in Solna outside Stockholm, Råsundavägen 132. Nowhere could Lindman find any information about what Molin did to earn a living. Five years passed before he appeared again as an employee, in October 1957, in the local authority offices in Alingsås. He was posted from there to Borås, and after the police force was nationalized in the 1960s, he became a police officer. In 1981 his wife filed for divorce. The following year he remarried, but wife number two, Kristina Cedergren, divorced him in 1986.

Lindman studied his notes. Between March 1952 and October 1957, Herbert Molin earned his living in some way unexplained in the files. That is a relatively long time, more than five years. And he had changed his name. Why?

When Larsson returned from the break-in in Häggenås, he found Lindman standing by the window looking at the deserted street below. Larsson briefly explained the burglary, no big deal in fact: somebody had stolen two power saws from a garage.

“We’ll get them,” he said. “We have a pair of brothers in Järpen who specialize in jobs of that kind. We’ll nail them. What about you? What have you found out?”

“It’s quite remarkable,” Lindman said. “I find a man I thought I knew, but he turns out to be somebody else altogether.”

“How so?”

“The change of name. And the strange gap between 1952 and 1957.”

“Obviously. I’ve thought about that name change as well,” Larsson said. “But we haven’t really gotten that far into the investigation yet, if you see what I mean.”

Lindman understood. Murder investigations followed a certain pattern. In the beginning there was always the hope that they would catch the murderer at an early stage. If that didn’t happen, they would set out on the long and often tedious gathering and then sorting of material.

Larsson yawned. “It’s been a long day,” he said. “I need to get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be just as long. When are you thinking of going back to Västergötland?”

“I haven’t decided.”

Larsson yawned again. “I gathered that you had something to tell me. It was obvious from what you said and how you reacted when Rundström was here. The question is: can it wait until tomorrow?”

“It can wait.”

“You can’t produce a murderer from out of a hat, I take it?”

“No.”

Larsson got to his feet. “I’ll come to your hotel tomorrow morning. Perhaps we can have breakfast together? 7:30?”

Lindman agreed. They put the files back on a shelf and switched off the desk lamp. They walked together through the dimly-lit reception area. An officer was sitting in an inside room, taking a call.

“It always boils down to motive,” Larsson said. “Somebody wanted to murder Molin. That’s for sure. He was a specifically targeted victim. Somebody saw in him a motive to commit murder.”

He yawned again. “But we can talk about that tomorrow.”

Larsson walked to his car, which was parked down the street. Lindman waved to him as he drove off and walked up the hill to the hotel. The town was deserted. He felt cold. He thought about his illness.

When Lindman came down to breakfast at precisely 7:30 A.M., Larsson was already waiting for him. He’d picked a corner table where they would be undisturbed. As they ate, Lindman told him about meeting Abraham Andersson and his walk along the shore of the lake that led him to the site where the tent had been. At that point Larsson pushed his half-eaten omelette to one side. Lindman produced the little parcel with the cigarette butt and the piece of the jigsaw puzzle.

“I can only assume the dogs didn’t get that far,” he said. “I don’t know whether it might still be worth sending a handler there now.”

“There was nothing to go on,” Larsson said. “We brought in three dogs by helicopter the day after we found him, but they didn’t find a single scent.”

He picked up his briefcase from the floor and produced a xerox of a map of the area around Molin’s house. Lindman took a toothpick and indicated the spot where the tent had been pitched. Larsson put on his reading glasses and examined the map.

“There are some snowmobile tracks marked,” he said, “but there’s no road that could take a car to that part of the shore. Whoever set up camp there must have walked for at least two kilometers over quite difficult ground. Unless he used the road to Molin’s house, and that seems unlikely.”

“What about the lake?”

“That’s a possibility. There are several forestry roads on the other side with turnoffs at the edge of the lake. It would obviously be possible to paddle over in a canoe or an inflatable raft.”

He scrutinized the map for a few more minutes. Lindman waited.

“You might be right,” Larsson said, pushing the map aside.

“I wasn’t following a road. I just happened to end up there.”

“It’s not often that police officers just happen to stumble onto something. You could have been searching for something without realizing it,” Larsson said. He turned his attention to the bits of tobacco and the jigsaw puzzle piece.

“I’ll take these and get forensic to give them the once-over,” he said. “Your campsite must also be examined, of course.”

“What’s Rundström going to have to say about this?”

Larsson smiled. “There’s nothing to stop me from telling him that I was the one who found the place.”

They both went for more coffee. Larsson was still limping.

“What did the real estate agent have to say?”

Lindman told him. Again, Larsson was all ears.

“Elsa Berggren?”

“I’ve got her address and telephone number.”

Larsson peered at him. “Have you spoken to her already?”

“No.”

“You’d better leave that to me.”

“Of course.”

“You’ve weighed in with some very useful observations,” Larsson said. “But Rundström’s right of course when he says that this is something we have to figure out ourselves. I wanted to give you the opportunity to see how far we’ve gotten, but I can’t let you get further involved than that.”

“I never expected you to.”

Larsson slowly drained his coffee.

“Tell me, why did you really come to Sveg?”

“I’m on sick leave. I had nothing else to do. And, after all, I knew Molin quite well.”

“Or you thought you did.”

Lindman was aware that the man sitting opposite him was somebody he didn’t know at all. Even so, he had an urge to tell him about his illness. It was as if he could no longer bear the burden alone.

“I came here from Borås because I’m ill,” he said. “I’ve got cancer, and I’m waiting for the treatment to start. I had to choose between Mallorca and Sveg. I chose Sveg because I wanted to know what had happened to Molin. Now I’m wondering if I did the right thing.”

They sat in silence for a minute or so.

“People always ask me where I got my Giuseppe from,” Larsson said. “You haven’t asked. Because you’ve had something else on your mind, no doubt. I wondered what it was. Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really. But I wanted you to know.”

“Then I won’t ask any questions.”

Larsson bent down and took a notepad out of his briefcase. He found the page he was looking for and passed the pad over to Lindman. On the page was a sketch of footsteps forming a pattern. Lindman saw that this was the pattern of the bloodstained footsteps in Molin’s house. He’d been reminded of them by the photograph in Larsson’s files. It also occurred to him that he hadn’t mentioned to Larsson that he’d been inside Molin’s house. It would be stupid to conceal it any longer. Andersson had seen him there, and he was bound to be questioned again by the police. So he told him exactly what had occurred. Larsson didn’t seem to be surprised, and pointed once more to his notepad.

“This is a depiction of the basic steps for the fascinating dance known as the tango.”

Lindman stared at him in surprise. “The tango?”

“There’s no doubt about it. But this means that somebody carted Molin’s corpse around and made those bloody footprints. No doubt you read the provisional report from the pathologist? His back cut to pieces by lashes from the skin of some animal we have yet to identify. And the soles of his feet lacerated in similar fashion.”

Lindman had read the pathologist’s report with great distaste. The photographs had been horrific.

“This gives us food for thought,” Larsson said. “Who would lead him around the floor like this? Why? And who is it that’s supposed to see these bloody footsteps?”

“It could be a greeting to the police, of course.”

“Correct. But the question remains: why?”

“No doubt you’ve thought of the possibility that they were photographed or filmed?”

Larsson returned the pad to his briefcase.

“It also leads us to draw the conclusion that this is no ordinary little bloody murder. There are other factors at work here.”

“A madman?”

“A sadist. Look at what Molin was subjected to.”

“Torture.”

Larsson nodded. “There’s no other word for it. But it worries me.”

Larsson closed his briefcase.

“Did Molin use to dance the tango while he was in Borås?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“We’ll find out sooner or later, no doubt.”

A child started screaming somewhere in the breakfast room.

“This used to be the theater foyer,” Larsson said. “Over there, behind the bar, was the auditorium.”

“There was a beautiful old wooden theater in Borås once upon a time,” Lindman said. “But they didn’t convert it into a hotel. They tore it down, upsetting a lot of people at the time.”

The child was still crying. Lindman went out with Larsson into reception.

“Maybe you ought to go to Mallorca after all,” Larsson said. “I can keep you posted as the case develops.”

Lindman didn’t answer. Larsson was right, of course. There was no reason for him to stay in Härjedalen any longer.

They said their goodbyes in the street. Lindman went up to his room, collected his things, paid his bill, and left Östersund. He drove too fast along the straight road to Svenstavik. Then he slowed down. He tried to make a decision. If he returned to Borås now, today, he would still have time to go to the Mediterranean. To Mallorca or wherever. He could be away for two weeks. If he stayed in Sveg, he would only become more and more restless. Besides, he’d told Larsson that he wouldn’t interfere in the case more than he already had. Larsson had let him examine the investigation files. He couldn’t go on intruding on crime scenes. It was up to the Östersund police to find the motive for the murder. Up to them to track down the murderer.

The decision made itself. He’d go back to Borås the very next day. The excursion to Sveg was at an end.

He was driving slowly. Just under 60 kilometers per hour. Again and again he was passed by vehicles whose drivers eyed him with interest. He was churning over in his mind what he’d read in Larsson’s files the night before. It appeared that the investigation was being conducted meticulously and efficiently. When the call came, those on duty had reacted by the book. The first officers had been on the spot very quickly; the scene of the crime had been cordoned off exactly as it should have been; three dog patrols had arrived by helicopter from Östersund; and the forensic work seemed to have been performed with complete thoroughness. Lindman’s discovery of the site where a tent had been pitched was pure coincidence. One of the local police would have made the same discovery sooner or later. The interview with Hanna Tunberg had confirmed the picture of Molin as a recluse. The house-to-house operation had produced one clear result: nobody had noticed any suspicious movements of vehicles or people in the area. Torbjörn Lundell in the shop in Linsell had noticed no sign of Molin being nervous, or anything out of his normal routine.

Everything was as usual, thought Lindman.

Nevertheless, the placid scene is interrupted by the arrival of somebody, possibly paddling over the lake, who puts up his tent and then sometime later attacks the retired police officer. He kills the dog and uses tear gas. He drags the dead or dying man around the floor and makes carefully mapped-out footprints. Steps describing the basic pattern of a tango. Then he paddles back over the lake again, and silence descends again upon the forest.

It seemed to Lindman that he could legitimately draw two conclusions. The first was that his original reaction had been correct: Molin had been afraid, and his fear had driven him to his hideaway in the forest.

The second conclusion was logical. Somebody had traced him to his refuge. But why?

Something must have happened in the early 1950s, he thought. August Mattson-Herzén abandons his military career and hides behind a new name. He marries and has two children, but there is a gap: how does he earn his living until he turns up in the local council offices in Alingsås in 1957?

Could the events of nearly fifty years ago have caught up with him?

That was as far as he got. He ran out of ideas. He stopped in Ytterhogdal and refueled before driving on to Sveg and parking outside the hotel. There was a man he’d never seen before at the reception desk, who gave him a friendly nod and handed over the key. Lindman went up to his room, took off his shoes, and stretched out on the bed. He could hear a vacuum cleaner in the room next door. He sat up. Why not leave right away, today? He wouldn’t get all the way to Borås, but he could stop somewhere en route. Then he lay down again. He didn’t have the energy to organize a trip to Mallorca. The idea of going back to his apartment in Allégatan depressed him. He would only sit there, on edge, worrying about what was in store.

He couldn’t make up his mind. The vacuum cleaner went quiet. At 1 P.M. he thought he’d better have some lunch, even though he didn’t feel hungry. There must be a library somewhere in Sveg. He would be able to sit there and study everything he could lay his hands on about radiation therapy. The doctor in Borås had explained it to him, but he seemed to have forgotten everything. Or maybe he hadn’t been listening? Or couldn’t bring himself to think about what it involved?

He put on his shoes again, and looked for a clean shirt. He opened the top of his suitcase, perched on the rickety table next to the bathroom. He wasn’t sure why, but something was different. He told himself he was imagining things, but he knew that wasn’t true. He’d learned from his mother how to pack a suitcase. He could fold up shirts so that they wouldn’t crease, and he’d become fussy about planning his packing in minute detail.

He told himself again that he was imagining things. But no! Somebody had disturbed the contents of his suitcase. Not much, but enough for him to notice it.

He went through all that was in it. Nothing was missing. Nevertheless, he was certain: somebody had been through his case while he’d been in Östersund. It could have been a maid with itchy fingers, of course. But he didn’t believe that. Somebody had been in his room and searched his suitcase.

Chapter Eight

Lindman stormed down to the lobby. When the usual girl, now back on duty, smiled at him, his anger fizzled away. It must have been the maid. She had probably bumped into the suitcase and it had fallen. The rest was his imagination. After all, nothing was missing. He just smiled, put his key on the desk, and went out. He paused on the steps, and wondered what he should do. It seemed that he was incapable of making the simplest of decisions. He ran his tongue over his teeth. The lump was still there. I’m carrying death in my mouth, he thought. If I survive this, I swear that I shall always keep a close watch on my tongue. He shook his head at such an idiotic idea, and decided to find out where Elsa Berggren lived. True, he’d promised Larsson that he wouldn’t talk to her, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t find out where she lived. He went back into the lobby. The receptionist was on the phone, and he scrutinized the wall map of the town. He found the street on the other side of the river, in an area called Ulvkalla. There was another bridge, an old railroad bridge: that was the one to use for crossing the river.

As he left the hotel, there was a thick layer of cloud over Sveg. He crossed the street and stopped at the window of the local newspaper. He read the pages they had displayed about the murder. A few hundred meters along Fjällvägen, he came to the old railroad bridge. It was an arched bridge, and he stopped in the middle and looked down into the brown water. When he got to the other side, he turned left for Elsa Berggren’s house. It was a white-painted wooden house in a well-tended garden. There was a freestanding garage on the grounds. The doors were wide open, but there was no car inside. As he walked past, he thought he saw a twitch in one of the curtains on the ground floor of the two-story house. He kept on walking. A man was standing in the middle of the road, staring at the sky.

“Is it going to snow?” he said.

Lindman liked the dialect. There was something friendly about it, almost innocent. “Could be,” he said. “But isn’t it a little early? It’s only November.”

The man shook his head. “It can snow here in September, June even.” The man was quite old. His face was wrinkled and he could use a shave. “Are you looking for somebody?” he said, making no attempt to conceal his curiosity.

“I’m just visiting. And thought I’d take a walk.”

Lindman made up his mind on the spot. He’d told Larsson he wouldn’t talk to Berggren, but he hadn’t promised not to talk about her. “A nice house,” he said, pointing to the house he’d just passed.

The man nodded. “Elsa takes good care of her house. The garden too. Do you know her?”

“No.”

The man looked at him, as if he were waiting for the next step. “The name’s Björn Wigren,” he said, eventually. “The longest trip I’ve ever made was to Hede, once upon a time. Everybody travels the world nowadays. Not me. I lived on the other side of the river when I was a boy. I suppose I’ll have to go back over the river one of these days. To the cemetery.”

“My name’s Stefan. Stefan Lindman.”

“Just visiting, you say?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have relatives here?”

“No. I’m just passing through.”

“And you’ve come out for a walk?”

“That’s right.”

The conversation petered out. Wigren’s curiosity was natural, not aggressive at all. Lindman tried think of a way of leading the conversation towards Elsa Berggren.

“I’ve lived here in my house since 1959,” the man said. “But I’ve never known a stranger to take a walk here. Not at this time of the year, anyway.”

“There’s always a first time.”

“I could offer you a cup of coffee,” said Wigren. “If you’d like one? My wife’s dead. The kids have left the nest.”

“Coffee would be nice.”

They went in through the gate. Had Wigren been standing in the street specifically to catch somebody who could share his loneliness?

His house was a bungalow. On a wall in the entrance hall was The Gypsy Woman, her breast bared. There were also several trophies, including a pair of elk antlers. Lindman counted fourteen points, and wondered whether that was a lot or something less impressive. On the kitchen table was a thermos flask, and a plate covered by a napkin. Wigren produced a second cup, and invited Lindman to sit.

“We don’t need to talk,” he said, surprisingly. “You can drink coffee with a stranger and not say a word.”

They drank a cup of coffee and each of them ate a cinnamon bun. A clock on the kitchen wall sounded at the quarter hour. Lindman asked himself how people had managed to communicate with each other before coffee had penetrated as far as Sweden.

“I gather you’re retired,” Lindman said — and realized at once what a stupid thing that was to say.

“I worked in the forest for thirty years,” Wigren said. “Sometimes I think about how hard we worked — not that anybody has the slightest idea about that nowadays. We loggers were slaves under the thumb of the big forestry companies. I don’t think people realize what a blessing it was when the power saw was invented. But then I had back trouble and threw in the towel. I spent my last few years making roads. I don’t know if I was any use to them. I spent most of my time minding a machine and sharpening skates for schoolchildren. I did do one useful thing while I was allegedly helping to build roads. I learned English. Sat there night after night, wrestling with books and tapes. I was on the point of giving up several times, but I stuck it out. Then I retired, and two days after my last day at work, my wife died on me. I woke up in the morning, but she was already cold. That was seventeen years ago. I turned eighty-two last August.”

Lindman raised an eyebrow. He found it hard to believe.

“I’m not kidding,” Wigren said, seeing Lindman’s surprise. “I am eighty-two years old, and I’m in such good health that I’m counting on scoring ninety at least, and maybe more. Whatever difference that will make.”

“I’ve got cancer,” Lindman said. “I don’t know if I’ll even make it to forty.” The words came out of the blue.

Wigren raised an eyebrow. “It’s a bit unusual to tell somebody that you’ve got cancer, when you don’t know each other.”

“I have no idea why I said that.”

Wigren produced the plate with buns. “You said it because you needed to say it. If you want to say more, I’m all ears.”

“I’d rather not.’

“Okay, we’ll put that aside. If you want to say anything, okay. If you don’t, that’s also okay.”

Lindman saw how he could turn the conversation in the direction he wanted.

“If somebody wanted to buy a house around here like the one we were looking at, for example, how much would it cost?”

“Elsa’s house, you mean? Houses are cheap around here. I keep my eye on the ads. Not in the papers, on the Internet. I figured I had better find out how to do that. It took time, but I think I got there in the end. I’ve got plenty of time, after all. I have a daughter who works for the council in Gavle. She came here and brought her computer with her, and showed me what to do. Now I chat with a fellow in Canada called Jim — he’s ninety-six and also worked in the forests. There’s no limit to what those computer things can do. We’re busy trying to set up a site where old loggers and lumberjacks can talk to each other when they feel like it. What are your favorite websites?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about that; I don’t even have a computer.”

The man on the other side of the table looked worried.

“You must get yourself one. Especially if you’re sick. There are tons of people all over the world with cancer. I’ve seen that with my own eyes. I once looked up spinal cancer, which is the worst thing I can possibly imagine. I got 250,000 matches.” He paused. “Needless to say, I have no intention of talking about cancer,” he said. “As you said yourself.”

“It’s not a problem. Besides, I don’t have cancer of the spine. At least, not as far as I know.”

“I wasn’t thinking.”

Lindman returned to the question of house prices. “A house like Elsa’s — what would it cost?”

“Two or three hundred thousand, no more. But I don’t think Elsa has any intention of selling.”

“Does she live alone?”

“I don’t think she’s ever been married. She can be a bit standoffish at times. After my wife died, I thought I might make a move for her, but she wasn’t interested.”

“How old?”

“Seventy-three, I think.”

So. More or less the same as Molin, Lindman thought.

“Has she always lived here?”

“She was here when we built our house. That was in the late fifties. She must have lived in that house for forty years.”

“What did she do, anyway?”

“She said she’d been a dance teacher before she came here. No comment.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Who retires at the age of forty or younger? Something fishy there, don’t you think?”

“She must have had some means of support?”

“She inherited her parents’ estate. That’s when she moved here. Or so she says.”

Lindman tried to keep up. “So she wasn’t born here? She must have been an outsider?”

“Skåne, I think she came from. Eslöv? Can that be somewhere down where Sweden drifts to a halt?”

“That’s right. And so she came here. Why here? Did she have any family in Norrland?”

Wigren looked hard at him. “You’re talking like a police officer. Some people might even suppose that you were interrogating me.”

“I’m curious, like everybody else. You have to ask why somebody would move here from southern Sweden unless they were going to get married or had found their dream job,” Lindman said, sensing that he might be making a serious mistake by not telling the truth.

“I wondered about that as well. My wife too. But you don’t ask questions if you don’t have to. Elsa is nice, and helpful. She babysat for us when we needed it. And I still have no idea why she moved here. She didn’t have any relatives in these parts.” Wigren fell silent. Lindman waited. He had the impression that there was more to come.

“You might well think it’s a bit odd,” said Wigren, when he eventually got around to saying something. “I’ve been living next door to Elsa for a whole generation. Even so, I have no idea why she bought this house in Ulvkalla. But there’s another thing that’s even odder.”

“What?”

“All these years I never set foot in her house. Nor did my wife while she was alive. Nor the children while they were growing up. I don’t know anybody who’s ever been inside her house. Let’s face it, that’s a little strange.”

Lindman agreed. There was something about Berggren’s life that was reminiscent of Molin’s. Both came from elsewhere, and both led isolated lives. The question is whether what I think is true of Molin, that he was running away from something, also applied to Berggren. She was the one who bought the house on his behalf. But why? How had they gotten to know each other? Did they have anything else in common?

“Did you never see anyone arrive at the house?”

“Nobody has ever seen anyone set foot inside her house, nor come out again, for that matter.”

Lindman decided it was time to move on. He looked at his watch. “I’m afraid I’ve got to go now,” he said. “But thank you for the coffee.”

They headed for the front door. Lindman pointed to the fourteenpointed antlers. “I shot that beast when I belonged to a group of hunters from around Lillhardal.”

“Is that big?”

Wigren burst out laughing. “The biggest I ever shot. It wouldn’t have found its way onto my wall if it wasn’t. When I die, it will end up on the garbage pile. None of my children want it. We could be in for some snow tonight,” he said, at the door. Then he turned to face Lindman. “I don’t know why you’ve been asking all these questions about Elsa, but I’m not going to say anything. One of these days though, you’ll come and join me here in the kitchen and tell me what’s going on.”

Lindman nodded. He’d been right not to have underestimated Wigren.

“Good luck with the cancer,” the old man said in farewell. “What I mean is, I hope you recover.”

Lindman walked back the way he’d come. There was still no car in Berggren’s drive or in the garage. He glanced at the windows. No movement of the curtains. When he crossed the bridge he stopped again and gazed down into the water. The fear he felt at the thought of his illness came and went in waves. He could no longer stop himself from thinking about what was in store for him. What he was doing here. Wandering about the periphery of the investigation of Molin’s murder was a form of therapy which had only a limited effect.

In the center of the town he found the public library in the community center. There was a large stuffed bear in the foyer, staring at him. He had a sudden urge to attack it in a test of strength. The thought made him burst out laughing. A man carrying a bundle of papers looked up at him in surprise.

Lindman located the shelves with medical literature, but when he sat down with a book with information on all varieties of cancer, he couldn’t bring himself to open it. It’s too soon, he thought. One more day. But not more. Then I will have to come to terms with my situation instead of trying to bury it under my pointless efforts to find out what happened to Molin.

When he left the community center, he felt a wave of indecision again. Annoyed, he started marching back to the hotel. On the way, he decided to stop at the wine shop. He hadn’t been told by the doctor in Borås that he shouldn’t drink alcohol. No doubt he shouldn’t, but just now, he didn’t care. He bought two bottles of wine. As he emerged onto the street, his phone rang. He put his bag down on the pavement and answered it. It was Elena.

“I was wondering why you haven’t called me.”

Lindman immediately felt guilty. He could hear that she was hurt and disappointed.

“I don’t feel too good,” he said apologetically.

“Are you still in Sveg?”

“Where else could I be?”

“What are you doing there?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m waiting to go to Molin’s funeral.”

“Do you want me to come? I could take some time off work.”

He nearly said yes. Yes, he did want her to come. “No,” he said. “I think it’s better for me to be by myself.”

She didn’t ask again. They talked for a while without anything being said. Afterwards, he wondered why he hadn’t told her the truth. Why hadn’t he told her that he missed her? That he didn’t want to be on his own? It was as if he understood less and less about himself. And all because of the accursed lump in his mouth.

He walked into the hotel with his bottles. The girl was in the lobby, watering the flowers.

“Do you have everything you need?” she said.

“Everything’s fine,” he said.

She fetched his key, still holding the watering can.

“I can’t believe how gray everything looks,” she said. “Early November. And the worst is yet to come. All that awful winter.”

She went back to her plants. Lindman returned to his room. The suitcase was where he had left it. He put the shopping bag on the table. It was a few minutes past three. It’s too early, he thought. I can’t sit here drinking wine midway through the afternoon.

He stood motionless, gazing out of the window. Then he made up his mind. He would drive to the lake where he’d discovered the traces of a camp, but he’d go to the far side, to the forestry roads Larsson had talked about. He didn’t expect to find anything, but it would help to pass the time.

It took him an hour to find one of the forestry roads. On the map the lake was called Stångvattnet. It was long and narrow, widest at the point where the forestry road ended with a space big enough for trucks to turn in. He got out of the car and walked the few meters to the water’s edge. It was starting to grow dark already. He stood still and listened. The only sound was a faint rustling in the trees. He tried to remember if there had been any mention of the weather on the day of Molin’s murder in the material he’d read in Östersund. He couldn’t remember anything. It seemed to him that even if the wind were blowing towards the house it would have been possible to hear a shot fired in that direction. But what evidence was there to suggest that anybody had been here that day? None. None at all.

He remained by the water until darkness fell. A few ripples danced over the surface of the lake, then everything was still again. This was the first time in his life that he had been alone in a forest. Apart from that day when he and Molin had been chasing an escaped murderer outside Borås and he’d witnessed his colleague’s fear. So why did Molin move here? Because he wanted a refuge, a nest he could crawl into and hide? Or was there some other reason?

He thought about what Wigren had said. That nobody ever visited Berggren. That didn’t prevent Molin from being visited by her, though. There were two questions he should have asked Wigren: did Berggren go out at night? Did she still like dancing? Two questions that could have given him a lot of answers.

It struck him that it was Molin who had once taught him this simple truth. If you ask the right question at the right time, you could get a lot more answers than you were looking for.

There was a scraping noise in the darkness behind him. He gave a start. Then all was quiet again. A branch falling, he thought, or an animal.

He didn’t have the energy to think about Molin or Berggren any more. There was no point. From tomorrow onward he would devote all his strength to understanding what was happening to him. He would leave Härjedalen. He had no business being here. It was Larsson’s job to unravel the tangled web of information and find a motive and a murderer. He needed all his energy to prepare himself for the radiation.

He stood there in the darkness a while longer. The trees around him were like soldiers standing guard. The black water was like a moat. For a moment he felt invulnerable.

When he got back to the hotel, he rested for an hour, drank a couple of glasses of wine, then went down to the dining room. The test drivers had gone. The receptionist was in her waitress outfit again. She plays all the roles, he thought. Perhaps that’s the only way the hotel can make money?

He sat at his usual table. He read the menu and saw to his disappointment that it was the same as yesterday. He closed his eyes and jabbed his index finger onto the sparse column showing the main courses. It was elk steak again. He had just begun eating when he heard someone behind him come into the dining room. He turned and saw a woman walking towards his table. She stopped and looked him up and down. Lindman couldn’t help observing that she was strikingly attractive.

“I don’t want to disturb you,” she said, “but a policeman in Östersund told me that one of my father’s old colleagues was here.”

Lindman didn’t understand at first. Then it dawned on him: the woman was Molin’s daughter.

Chapter Nine

Veronica Molin was one of the most beautiful women Lindman had ever met. Before she sat down, before she even had time to say who she was, he’d imagined her naked. He thought back to the files he’d read in Larsson’s office and remembered that in 1955 Molin had had a daughter, christened Veronica. The woman standing at his table now, wearing expensive perfume, was therefore forty-four, seven years older than he was. If he hadn’t known that, he would have guessed she was his age.

He stood up, introduced himself, shook hands, and expressed his condolences.

“Thank you.” Her voice was strangely flat. It didn’t belong with her beauty. She reminds me of somebody, he thought. One of those celebrities always appearing in the papers or on television. But he couldn’t remember who it was. He invited her to join him. The receptionist came over to their table.

“Now you won’t have to eat alone,” she said to Lindman.

He just managed to avoid telling her to go to hell.

“If you prefer to be on your own,” Veronica Molin said, “then, of course, you must be.”

He noticed that she was wearing a wedding ring. This depressed him, just for a moment. It was an absurd reaction, unreasonable, and soon passed. “Not at all,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow. “Not at all what?”

“I don’t at all want to be on my own.”

She sat down, consulted the menu, but put it down again immediately.

“Could I have a salad?” she said. “And an omelette? Nothing else.”

“No problem,” the girl said.

Lindman wondered if she also did the cooking.

Veronica Molin ordered a mineral water. Lindman was still trying to remember who she reminded him of.

“I misunderstood the situation,” she said. “I thought it was here in Sveg that I was going to meet the police, but it is in Östersund. I’ll be going there tomorrow.”

“Where have you come from?”

“Cologne. That’s where I was when the news of my father’s death reached me.”

“So do you live in Germany?”

She shook her head. “In Barcelona. Or Boston. It depends. But I was in Cologne. It was very strange and frightening. I’d just returned to my room. The Dom Hotel, it’s called, next to the enormous cathedral. The church bells started ringing at the same time as the phone rang, and a man from somewhere a long way away told me that my father had been murdered. He asked if I’d like to talk to a clergyman. I flew to Stockholm this morning, the soonest I could organize my affairs, and then continued here. But, apparently, I should have gone to Östersund.”

Her mineral water arrived and she fell silent. Somebody in the bar burst out laughing, loud and shrill. Lindman thought it sounded like a man trying to imitate a dog. Then it came to him who she reminded him of. An actress in one of those soap operas that go on and on. He tried to remember her name, but he couldn’t.

Veronica Molin was serious and tense. Lindman wondered how he would have reacted if he’d been in a hotel somewhere and been told over the telephone that his father had been murdered.

“I’m really very sorry about what happened,” he said. “A completely pointless murder.”

“Aren’t all murders pointless?”

“Of course. But some have a motive that one can understand, despite everything.”

“Nobody could have had any reason to kill my father,” she said. “He had no enemies. He wasn’t rich.”

But he was scared, Lindman thought, and perhaps that fear was at the root of what happened. Her food arrived on the table. Lindman had a vague sense that the woman sitting opposite him had the upper hand. She had an assurance that he lacked.

“I gather you and he used to work together.”

“Yes, in Borås. I started my police career there. Your father helped to put me on the right track. He left a big gap when he retired.”

That makes it sound as if we were close friends, he thought. It isn’t true. We were never friends. We were colleagues.

“Needless to say, I wondered why he’d moved up here to Härjedalen,” he said after a while.

She saw through him immediately. “I didn’t think he had told anyone where he was going to move to.”

“Perhaps I remember wrongly. But I’m curious, naturally. Why did he move here?”

“He wanted to be left in peace. My father was a recluse. So am I.”

There’s no answer to that, thought Lindman. She hadn’t only given him a reply, she’d nipped the conversation in the bud. Why is she sitting at my table if she doesn’t want to talk to me? He could feel himself getting irritated.

“I have nothing to do with the murder investigation,” he said. “I came here because I’m off work.”

She put down her fork and looked at him. “To do what?”

“Maybe to attend the funeral. Assuming it will take place here. Once the medical people release the body.”

She didn’t believe him, he could see that, and that increased his irritation.

“Were you often in contact with him?”

“Very seldom. I’m a consultant for a computer firm that operates all over the world. I’m nearly always traveling. I used to send him a postcard once or twice every year, maybe called him at Christmas. But that was about it.”

“It doesn’t sound as if you had a very good relationship.”

He looked hard at her. He still thought she was beautiful, but she radiated coldness and remoteness.

“What kind of relationship I had with my father is hardly anybody else’s business. He wanted to be left in peace. I respected that. And he respected the fact that we were two of a kind.”

“You have a brother as well, I believe?”

Her response was firm and outspoken.

“We avoid speaking to each other unless it’s absolutely necessary. The best way of describing that relationship is that it is close to open enmity. Why that should be is no business of anybody else either. I’ve been in touch with a firm of funeral directors who will take care of everything. My father will be buried here in Sveg.”

That was the end of the conversation.

Lindman ran his tongue over his teeth. The lump was still there.

They ordered coffee. She asked if he minded if she smoked. He said that it was fine and she lit a cigarette and blew smoke rings towards the ceiling. Then she looked at him.

“Why did you come here, really?” she said.

Lindman gave her part of the truth. “I’m on sick leave. I had nothing else to do.”

“The policeman I spoke to in Östersund said you were helping with the investigation.”

“One gets upset when a colleague is murdered, naturally. But my visit here is of no significance. I’ve just spoken to a few people, that’s all.”

“Who?”

“Mainly the police officer you’ll be meeting in Östersund tomorrow. Giuseppe Larsson. And Abraham Andersson.”

“Who’s he?”

“Your father’s nearest neighbor, even if he does live quite a long way away.”

“Did he have anything interesting to say?”

“No. But if anybody was going to notice something, it would have been him. You can talk to him, if you like.”

She stubbed out her cigarette, crushing the butt as if it were an insect.

“Your father changed his name,” Lindman said. “From Mattson-Herzén to Molin. That was a few years before you were born. At about the same time he asked to be discharged from the army and moved to Stockholm. When you were two, there was another move, to Alingsås. You can hardly be expected to remember anything about the time in Stockholm. A two-year-old doesn’t have a conscious memory. But there’s one thing I wonder about. What did he do in Stockholm?”

“He had a music shop.” She could see that he was surprised. “As you say, I don’t recall anything about it. But I heard later. He tried running a shop and opened one in Solna. It went well in the early years. He opened a second one in Sollentuna. But things went rapidly downhill from there. My first memories are from Alingsås. We lived outside the town in an old house that never got sufficiently warm in the winter.” She paused and lit another cigarette. “I wonder why you want to know all this.”

“Your father is dead. That means that all questions are important.”

“Are you suggesting that somebody killed him because he once owned a music shop?”

Lindman didn’t answer and moved instead to the next question.

“Why did he change his name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why would anybody want to change their name from Herzén to Molin?”

“I simply don’t know.”

Lindman suddenly had the feeling that he should be careful. He wasn’t sure where the feeling came from, but it was certainly there. He was asking questions and she was answering, but at the same time something quite different was going on. Veronica Molin was finding out how much he knew about her father.

He picked up the coffeepot and asked if she would like a refill. She said no.

“When we worked together I had the impression that your father was worried. In fact, that he was scared. What of, I’ve no idea, but I can remember his fear still, though it’s been more than ten years since he retired.”

She frowned. “What would he have been scared of?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I’m asking you.”

She shook her head. “My father wasn’t the frightened type. On the contrary, he was brave.”

“In what way?”

“He was never afraid of doing things. Never afraid of refusing to do things.”

Her cell phone rang. She apologized, and answered. The conversation took place in a foreign language. Lindman wasn’t sure if it was Spanish or French. When it was over she beckoned the receptionist and asked for her bill.

“Did you go out to see the house?” Lindman said.

She looked at him for a while before answering. “I have a good memory of my father. We were never close, but I’ve lived long enough to know what sort of a relationship some children can have with their parents. I don’t want to spoil the image of my father by seeing the place where he was killed.”

Lindman understood. Or at least, he thought he did.

“Your father must have been very fond of dancing,” he said.

“Why on earth should he have been?”

Her surprise seemed genuine.

“Somebody said so,” Lindman said.

The receptionist came with two bills. Lindman tried to take them both, but she insisted on taking hers.

“I prefer to pay my own way.”

The girl went to get some change.

“What exactly does a computer consultant do?” Lindman said.

She smiled but didn’t reply.

They went their separate ways in the lobby. Her room was on the ground floor.

“How are you going to get to Östersund?” he said.

“Sveg is only a little place,” she said, “but I managed to rent a car even so. Thanks for your company.”

He watched her walk away. Her clothes, her shoes, everything about her looked expensive. Their conversation had restored some of his lost energy. The question was: what should he do with it? He didn’t suppose there was much in the way of a nightlife in Sveg.

He decided to go for a walk. What Björn Wigren had told him made him think. There was a connection between Berggren and Molin that he wanted to know more about. The curtain had been moved. He was certain of it.

He fetched his jacket and left the hotel. It was chillier than the previous night.

He took the same road as he’d taken earlier in the day. Stopped on the bridge. Listened to the water flowing beneath him. He met a man walking his dog. It was like meeting a ship with no lights far out on a black sea. When he reached the house, he stood in the shadows, away from the glow of the street lights. There was a car on the drive now, but it was too dark to see what make it was. There was a light on upstairs, behind drawn curtains. He stood motionless. He didn’t know what he was waiting for. But he stood there nevertheless.

The man approaching moved very quietly. He’d been watching Lindman for some time before deciding that he’d seen enough. He came diagonally from behind, staying in the shadows all the time.

Johansson had no idea who the man was. He looked in good condition. He eyed him warily.

“Hello,” he said. “I was wondering what you’re doing here.”

Lindman was startled. The man had moved so quietly, he’d had no idea there was anybody there.

“Who are you, asking me these questions?”

“Erik Johansson. I’m a police officer. I am asking myself just what you are doing here.”

“I’m looking at a house,” said Lindman. “I’m in a public place, I’m sober, I’m not creating a disturbance, I’m not even urinating. Is it forbidden to stand and look at a pretty house?”

“Not at all. But the lady who lives there was made nervous and telephoned. When people get nervous, I’m the one they contact. I thought I’d find out who you were. People are not used to strangers standing in the street staring at them. Not at night, in any case.”

Lindman took out his wallet and produced his police ID. He’d moved a couple of meters so that he was in the glow from the streetlight. Johansson grinned.

“So it’s you,” he said, as if he’d known Lindman of old but only just remembered.

“Stefan Lindman.”

Johansson scratched his forehead. Lindman noticed that he was only wearing a thin T-shirt under his jacket.

“Both of us being police officers doesn’t improve matters. Larsson told me you were here. But I couldn’t know it was you outside Elsa’s house.”

“It was Elsa who bought Molin’s house for him,” Lindman said. “No doubt you knew that?”

“I didn’t know that at all.”

“I found that out from a real estate agent in Krokom. I thought Larsson might have mentioned that.”

“All he said was that you were here on a visit and that you used to work with Molin. He certainly didn’t say anything about your spying on Elsa.”

“I’m not spying,” Lindman said. “I went out for a walk. I don’t know why I stopped.”

He realized that it was an idiotic answer. He’d been standing there for a long time.

“We’d better move on,” Johansson said. “Otherwise Elsa will start wondering.”

Johansson’s car was parked in a nearby side street. It wasn’t a blue-and-white police car, but a Toyota with a grill in front of the backseat.

“So you went out for a walk,” Johansson said again. “And just happened to wind up outside Elsa’s house?”

“Yes.”

Johansson looked worried.

“It’s probably best if we don’t say anything about this to Giuseppe,” he said. “He would no doubt be a bit worried if we did. I don’t think they’re all that thrilled in Östersund to have you spying on people.”

“I’m not spying.”

“No, you said that. But it’s a little odd that you should be standing here at Elsa’s house. Even if she was the one who bought Molin’s cottage for him.”

“Do you know her?”

“She’s always lived here. Nice and friendly. Takes an interest in children.”

“Meaning?”

“She runs dancing classes in the community center. Or used to. The children learned how to dance. I don’t know if she still does it.”

Lindman nodded, but didn’t ask any questions.

“Are you staying at the hotel? I can give you a lift.”

“I’d rather walk,” Lindman said. “But thanks for the offer. I haven’t noticed a police station in Sveg.”

“We’re in the community center.”

“Can I check in tomorrow morning? Just to see how things are here. And to have a talk.”

“Of course.”

Johansson opened his car door.

“I’d better give Elsa a call and tell her everything’s okay.”

He got into the car, said goodbye, and closed the door. Lindman waited until the car was out of sight before walking away.

He stopped on the bridge for the fourth time. The link, he thought. It’s not just that Berggren and Molin knew each other. There’s more to it than that. But what? He started walking slowly, waiting for his thoughts to fall into a pattern. Molin had used Berggren to find a house for him. They already knew each other. Maybe Molin had moved to Härjedalen to be close to her?

At the end of the bridge he paused again. Another thought had struck him. He should have thought of it earlier. Berggren had noticed him in the street despite the fact that he’d avoided the light of the streetlights. That could only mean that she was keeping watch over the street. That she either expected or feared that somebody would come. He was certain of it. She couldn’t possibly have seen him by chance.

He set off again, more quickly now. It seemed to him that the interest Berggren and Molin shared in dance could not have been a coincidence.

The reception desk was closed by the time he got back to the hotel. As he walked up the stairs, he wondered if Veronica Molin was asleep. Assuming she was still called Molin.

He unlocked his door and switched on the light. On the floor, pushed under the door, was a message. He picked it up and read it. “Phone Giuseppe Larsson in Östersund. Urgent.”

Chapter Ten

It was Larsson himself who answered.

“I couldn’t find your cell phone number,” he said. “I must have left it at the office. I phoned the hotel, but they said you were out.”

Lindman wondered if Johansson had phoned Larsson after all to tell him about their meeting outside Berggren’s house.

“I went for a walk. There’s not much else to do here.”

Larsson chuckled.

“I think they show films sometimes at the community center.”

“I need to keep moving.”

Lindman could hear that Larsson was talking to somebody. The volume of the television set behind him was turned down.

“I thought I’d entertain you with something we heard from Umeå today. A paper signed by Dr. Hollander. You might well ask why he didn’t mention it in the first preliminary report he sent us, but these pathologists have their own way of doing things. Have you got a moment?”

“I have all the time in the world.”

“He says he’s found three old entry wounds.”

“What does he mean by that?”

“That Molin had been shot at some time. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“Not just one bullet. Three. And Dr. Hollander takes the liberty of deviating from strict protocol. He thinks that Molin was fantastically lucky to have survived. He actually used that word: ‘fantastic good fortune.’ Two of the bullets hit him in the chest just beneath his heart, and the third in his left arm. On the basis of the scars and other things I don’t understand, Hollander concludes that Molin received these wounds when he was a young man. He can’t tell whether all three bullets came at the same time, but it seems likely.”

Larsson started sneezing. Lindman waited.

“Red wine always does that to me,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t resist the temptation tonight. I’m being punished for it.”

“There was nothing about bullet wounds in the files, was there?”

“No. But I phoned Borås and spoke to a friendly man who laughed nearly all the time.”

“Inspector Olausson.”

“That’s the one. I didn’t mention that you were here; I simply asked if he knew that Molin had been shot. He didn’t. Which enables us to draw a simple conclusion.”

“That it happened before he joined the police?”

“Even earlier than that. When the old regional council offices were reformed, the police took over their archives and personnel details. It would have been documented when the police force was nationalized and Molin became an employee of His Majesty the King.”

“So it must have happened while he was in the army.”

“That’s more or less the conclusion I’ve come to. But it takes time to get into military archives. But what we should be asking ourselves even now is what might have happened if it turns out that he wasn’t wounded while he was a soldier.”

Larsson paused.

“Does this change the picture?”

“It changes everything in the picture. Or rather, we don’t have a picture any more. I don’t think we’re going to find out who did this for quite a long time. My experience tells me that it’s going to take a long time, because we’re going to have to dig deep. What does your experience tell you?”

“That you might be right.”

Larsson started sneezing again.

“I thought you’d want to know this,” Larsson said when he came back on the phone. “Incidentally, I shall be meeting Molin’s daughter tomorrow.”

“She’s staying here in the hotel.”

“I thought you might meet her. What’s she like?”

“Reserved. But she’s a very good-looking woman.”

“I have something to look forward to then. Have you spoken to her?”

“We had dinner together. She told me something I didn’t know, about those missing years in the mid-fifties. She says Molin owned a couple of music shops in the Stockholm area, but he went bankrupt.”

“I suppose there’s no reason why she should lie about that?”

“Hardly. But you’ll meet her tomorrow anyway.”

“I’ll certainly ask her about the bullet wounds. Have you decided how long you’re going to stay?”

“Perhaps tomorrow as well. Then I’m leaving. But I’ll stay in touch.”

“Make sure you do.”

Lindman put the phone down and slumped onto the bed. He felt tired. Without even taking off his shoes, he stretched out and fell asleep.

He woke up with a start and checked his watch. 4:45. He’d been dreaming. Somebody was chasing him. Then he was surrounded by a pack of dogs that were tearing at his clothes and biting him all over his body. His father was there somewhere, and Elena. He went to the bathroom and rinsed his face in cold water. It wasn’t difficult to interpret the dream. The illness I have, the cells multiplying out of control, they are like a pack of wild dogs careering around inside me. He undressed and burrowed into the sheets, but didn’t manage to get back to sleep.

It was always in the early morning, before dawn, that he felt most defenseless. He was thirty-seven, a police officer trying to lead a decent life. Nothing remarkable, a life that was never more than ordinary. Then again, what was ordinary? He was rapidly approaching middle age and didn’t have any children. Now he had to fight an illness that might overcome him. In which case the end of his life wouldn’t even be ordinary. It would mean that he would never be able to demonstrate his true worth.

He got up at 6 A.M. They wouldn’t start serving breakfast for another half-hour. He took some clean clothes from his suitcase. Thought that he should shave, but didn’t bother. By 6:30 he was in the lobby. The dining room door was ajar. When he peeped in he was surprised to see that the receptionist was sitting on a chair, drying her eyes with a napkin. Hastily, he withdrew. She’d obviously been crying. He went back up the stairs and waited. The doors were opened. The girl was smiling.

“You’re early,” she said.

As he ate his breakfast, he wondered why she’d been crying, but it was none of his business. We all have our private miseries, he thought. Our packs of dogs to battle.

By the time he’d finished, he’d made up his mind. He would go back to Molin’s house. Not because he thought he might find anything new, but to go through again in his mind what he now knew. Or didn’t know. Then he’d leave everything to figure itself out. He wouldn’t stay in Sveg waiting for a funeral that he didn’t want to go to anyway. Just now, this was the last thing he wanted to submit himself to. He would go back to Borås, repack his bag, and hope to find a cheap package trip to Mallorca. I need a plan, he thought. If I don’t have a plan, I won’t be able to cope with what’s in store for me.

He left the hotel at 7:15. There had been no sign of Molin’s daughter. The receptionist smiled as she always did when he handed in his room key. Something must have happened, but it wasn’t likely that she’d been told she had cancer.

He drove west through the autumn and the silence. Occasionally a few drops of rain spattered against the windscreen. He switched on the radio and half-listened to the news. The New York Stock Exchange had gone up, or was it down? He couldn’t hear. As he passed Linsell he saw some children with book bags waiting for the school bus. Most roofs there had satellite dishes. He thought back to his own childhood in Kinna. The past became almost tangible. He looked at the road and thought about all the boring journeys he’d made through central Sweden while he was assistant to the motocross rider who hardly ever won a race. He was so lost in thought that he missed the turn for Rätmyren. He went back, and parked in the same place as last time.

There were fresh tire marks in the gravel. Perhaps Veronica Molin had changed her mind? He got out of the car and filled his lungs with crisp, chilly air. A wind was gusting through the treetops. This is what Sweden’s all about, he thought. Trees, wind, cold. Grass and moss. A lonely person in the middle of a forest. Only that person doesn’t usually have cancer of the tongue.

He walked slowly around the house and made a list of all he now knew about the death of Herbert Molin. There was the campsite, the place to which somebody had rowed across the lake, pitched a tent, and then abandoned it. Larsson’s news about the bullet wounds. Lindman stopped in his tracks. What had Larsson said? Two wounds in the chest and one in the left arm. So Molin had been hit from the front. Three shots. He tried to imagine what could have happened but failed.

Then there was Berggren, an invisible shadow behind a curtain. If his suspicions were correct, she was on guard. Against what? Johansson had described her as a friendly person who gave dancing lessons for children. That was another link: dancing. But what did it mean? Did it mean anything at all? He continued his circuit around the smashed-up house. Wondered why the police hadn’t done a better job of boarding up the broken windows. Bits of torn plastic flapped in front of the gaping holes. Veronica Molin had turned up unexpectedly. A beautiful woman who’d heard the news of her father’s death in a hotel room in Cologne, while on her travels around the world. Lindman, who had been all around the house by now, thought back to the time he’d been chasing, with Molin, the escaped murderer from Tidaholm. His fear. “I thought it was somebody else.” Lindman paused again. Unless Molin had been the victim of a madman, there must have been a crucial starting point. Fear. The flight to the forests of Härjedalen. A hiding place at the end of a side road that Lindman had great difficulty in finding.

That was as far as he got. Molin’s death was a riddle: he’d managed to find a few loose threads that led to a center that was still a vacuum. He went back to his car. The wind was getting stronger. He was about to open his car door when he had the feeling he was being watched. He spun around. The forest was empty. The dog pen was abandoned. The torn plastic was flapping against the window frames. He got into his car and drove away, certain that he would never return.

He parked outside the community center and went in. The bear was still glaring at him. He found his way to the police office and bumped into Johansson, who was on his way out.

“I was going to have coffee with the library staff,” he said. “But that can wait. I have news for you.”

They went to his office. Lindman sat in the visitor’s chair. Johansson had cheered up the decor with a devil mask hanging on the wall.

“I bought it in New Orleans ages ago. I was drunk at the time and no doubt paid far too much for it. I thought it would look good hanging here. A reminder of the forces of evil that conspire to make things difficult for the police.”

“Are you the only one on duty today?”

“Yes,” said Johansson cheerfully. “There should really be four or five of us, but people are out sick or on educational leave or maternity leave. I’m the only one left. It’s impossible to get standby staff.”

“How do you manage?”

“I don’t. But at least people who call here during working hours don’t get fobbed off with an answering machine.”

“But Berggren called you in the evening, didn’t she?”

“There’s a special emergency number. Lots of people in town know it.”

“Town?”

“I call Sveg a town. It makes it a bit bigger that way.”

The telephone rang. Lindman looked at the mask and wondered what the news was that Johansson had promised him. The call was from someone who had found a tractor tire on a road. Johansson seemed to be a man blessed with a fund of patience. He eventually replaced the receiver.

“Elsa Berggren called this morning. I tried to reach you at the hotel.”

“What did she want?”

“She wanted to invite you over for coffee.”

“That sounds odd.”

“No more odd than you staking out her house.”

Johansson stood up. “She’ll be at home now,” he said. “Go there right away. She’s going shopping later. By all means come back here and tell me what she said if it’s of any interest. But not this afternoon or this evening. I’m going to Funäsdalen. I have some police business to take care of, and then I’m going to play poker with some buddies. We may be in the middle of a murder investigation, but that doesn’t prevent us from leading as normal a life as possible.”

Johansson went off for his coffee. Lindman paused to have another look at the bear.

Then he drove to Ulvkalla and parked outside the white house. He saw Wigren in the street, no doubt looking for somebody he could invite into his kitchen for a cup of coffee.

She opened the door before he could ring the bell. Lindman didn’t know what to expect, but certainly not the elegantly dressed lady in the doorway. She had long black hair, obviously dyed, and she was heavily made-up around her eyes.

“I thought you might as well come in,” she said. “Instead of standing out there in the street.”

Lindman stepped into the hall. He’d gotten further than Wigren had managed in forty years. She led him into the living room that was at the back of the house, facing the garden. In the background Lindman could see the wooded hills rising towards Orsa Finnmark.

The room was expensively furnished. There were no prints of bare-breasted gypsy girls on Berggren’s walls. She had original oil paintings instead, and it seemed to Lindman that she had good taste. She excused herself and disappeared into the kitchen. He sat on the sofa to wait. He stood up again immediately. There were several photographs in frames in a bookcase. One of the pictures was of two girls sitting on a park bench. It had been taken several decades ago. In the background was a house with a sign outside. Lindman peered to see if he could make out what was on it. It didn’t look like Swedish, but it wasn’t clear enough to be sure. He sat down again. Berggren came in with coffee and cookies.

“A man appears and stands staring at my house,” she said. “Naturally, I’m surprised. And worried as well. After what happened to Herbert things will never be the same again in Sveg.”

“I’ll tell you why I was there,” Lindman said. “I used to work with Herbert Molin. I’m also a police officer.”

“Erik told me that.”

“I’m on sick leave and was kicking my heels. So I came here. I happened to speak to a real estate agent in Krokom who told me you had bought Herbert’s house on his behalf.”

“He asked me to. He phoned before he retired. He wanted me to help him.”

“So you knew each other?”

She looked dismissively at him. “Why else would he ask me to help him?”

“I’m trying to understand who he was. I’ve realized that the man I used to work with was not who I thought he was.”

“In what way?”

“In many ways.”

She stood up and adjusted a curtain in one of the windows.

“I knew Herbert’s first wife,” she said. “We went to school together. So I also got to know Herbert, to some extent. That was when he lived in Stockholm. Then I lost contact with her after they divorced. But not with Herbert.” She returned to her chair. “That’s all there is to it. And now he’s dead. And I’m sad about that.”

“Did you know that his daughter Veronica’s here?”

She shook her head.

“No, I didn’t know that. But I don’t expect her to pay me a visit. It was Herbert I knew, not his children.”

“Did he move here because you were here?”

She looked him straight in the eye. “That is something that concerned only him and me. And now it concerns only me.”

“Of course.”

Lindman took a sip of coffee. Berggren was not telling him the truth. The disappearing wife was plausible, but there was something about what she said that didn’t add up. Something he should be able to work out. He put down his cup, which was blue with a gold edge.

“Do you have any idea who could have killed him?”

“No. Do you?”

Lindman shook his head.

“An old man who wanted to live in peace,” she said. “Who on earth would want to kill him?”

Lindman looked at his hands. “There must have been somebody who did,” he said.

There was only one other question he wanted to ask.

“I find it strange that you haven’t spoken to the police in Östersund. The ones who are in charge of the investigation.”

“I’ve been waiting for them to contact me.”

Lindman was now certain. The woman was not telling him the whole truth.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about why Herbert came here,” he said. “Why would anybody want to live such a lonely life?”

“It’s not lonely up here,” Berggren said. “There’s lots you can do if you want to. For instance, I’m going to a concert in the church tonight. There’s an organist coming here from Sundsvall.”

“I heard from Erik Johansson that you give dancing lessons.”

“Children should learn how to dance. If nobody else teaches them, I can. But I don’t know if I’ve got the strength to go on for much longer.”

Lindman decided not to ask any questions about Molin’s interest in dancing. Larsson was the man to ask those questions, nobody else.

A telephone rang somewhere in the house. She excused herself and left the room. Lindman stood up and made a rapid choice between the balcony door and a window, then unfastened the catch on a window, making sure it held tight and didn’t open. Then he sat down again. She returned a minute later.

“I won’t impose on you any longer,” Lindman said, getting to his feet. “Thank you for the coffee. It’s not often you get coffee as strong as that.”

“Why should everything have to be weak?” she said. “Everything is weak nowadays. Coffee, and people as well.”

Lindman had left his jacket in the hall. As he put it on, he looked around to see if the house had a burglar alarm. He could see no sign of one.

He drove back to the hotel, thinking over what Berggren had said about weak coffee and weak people. The receptionist seemed to be her cheerful self again. There was a signboard next to the desk. On it was a yellow poster advertising an organ concert in the church that evening, starting at 7:30. The program consisted exclusively of music by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Shortly after 7:00 that evening Lindman went to the church. He took up a position beyond the church wall. He could hear the organist rehearsing. At 7:25, Berggren arrived and walked into the church.

Lindman hurried back to the hotel and got into his car. He drove to the river and parked on the other side of the bridge. Then he approached Berggren’s house from the back. He was counting on the concert lasting for at least an hour. He checked his watch: 7:41. There was a narrow path around the back of the white house. He had no flashlight with him, but he felt his way cautiously forward in the dark. There was a light on in the room where he had had his coffee. He paused when he came to the garden fence and listened. Then he jumped over and ran to the house wall, crouching low. He stood up and felt the underside of the window. Berggren had failed to notice that he had unhooked the catch. He opened it carefully, hoisted himself up, and, taking careful stock of its position, lifted down the vase of flowers on the window ledge.

Here he was, breaking into Berggren’s house just as he had broken into Molin’s house a few days earlier.

He wiped the soles of his shoes with a handkerchief. It was 7:45. He looked around the room. He had no idea what he was looking for. Perhaps some indication that he had been right, that Berggren hadn’t been telling the truth. He knew that a lie could be exposed by an object. He left the living room, glanced into the kitchen, and then continued into what appeared to be a study. This is the last place I’ll search, he decided. First he wanted to look on the upper floor. He ran up the stairs. The first room seemed to be a guest room. He walked into Berggren’s bedroom. She slept in a large double bed. There was a pale blue fitted carpet. He looked into the bathroom. Bottles were lined up in neat rows in front of the mirror.

He was about to go downstairs to the study when he had the idea of opening the double doors of the closet. The hangers were tightly packed. He ran his hand over the clothes. They all seemed to be of high quality. At the furthest left of the hangers, something caught his eye. He pulled some dresses to one side to get a closer look.

A uniform. It was several seconds before he realized what it was — a German army uniform. On the shelf above was an army hat. He took it down and saw the skull. Hanging in Berggren’s wardrobe was an SS officer’s uniform.

Chapter Eleven

Lindman didn’t bother to search Berggren’s study. He left the house in Ulvkalla as he’d entered it, replacing the vase exactly as it had been, closing the window carefully behind him. It had started snowing — heavy wet flakes. He drove back to the hotel, poured himself a glass of wine, and tried to make up his mind whether or not to call Larsson right away. He hesitated to do so. He’d promised not to contact Berggren. Now he’d not only spoken to her, he’d broken into her house. This was not the kind of thing to discuss on the telephone, he thought. Larsson will understand that. We need to be sitting face-to-face, with plenty of time.

He turned on the television and zapped his way through the channels. Eventually he opted for an old Western with faded colors. A man with a rifle was crawling around among some rocks in a studio landscape, trying to avoid some other men coming towards him on horseback. Lindman turned the sound down and took out his notepad. He tried to make a summary of what had happened since he came to Sveg. What did he know now that he hadn’t known before? He tried to construct a plausible hypothesis of the reason for Molin’s death. He made it simple, as if he were reading a story to himself.

At some point a man called Herbert Molin — probably at that point called Mattson-Herzén — is shot three times. He survives. At some point this man also runs a music shop. He also has a particular association with dancing. Perhaps it’s just that dancing has been a passion for him all his life? The way that other people are crazy about picking mushrooms or fishing for salmon in Norwegian rivers?

There’s a woman called Elsa Berggren in his life. When Molin retires, he asks her to find him a house deep in the forests of Härjedalen, not far from where she lives herself. He never goes to visit her, however. That is confirmed by the best possible witness — an inquisitive neighbor. In Elsa Berggren’s closet, deep in a corner, is an SS uniform.

And somebody may have come paddling over a lake of water and set up camp not far from Molin’s house, perhaps with the intention of taking his life.

In Lindman’s head that’s where the story ended. With a man paddling over a lake who then disappears without trace.

But there were other bricks to build into the story. The bloodstained footprints that formed the basic steps of the tango. Molin’s fear. The fact that he’d changed his name. A downmarket move, it seemed to Lindman. In all probability there were very few people in Sweden called Mattson-Herzén. But plenty called Molin. He thought that there could only be one explanation. The change of name was a hiding place. The man was covering his tracks. But what tracks? And why? If he’d thought that Mattson-Herzén was too long and awkward, he could simply have called himself Mattson.

He read through what he’d written, then turned over the page and wrote down two dates. Born 1923, died 1999. Then he returned to the notes he’d made when he’d been shut up in Larsson’s office. In 1941, when Molin is eighteen, he does his military service. War is raging all around neutral Sweden. He’s posted to the coastal defense forces. Lindman’s notes were not complete, but he remembers that Molin had been stationed on a small island in the Östergötland archipelago, guarding one of the main sea channels to Sweden. Lindman assumed he’d remained with the coastal defenses until the end of the war, by which time he’d been commissioned. Seven years later he applies for a discharge, tries his hand at being a shop owner, and is then employed first in some council offices and subsequently in the police force.

From a military family, Lindman had noted. His father was a cavalry officer based in Kalmar, his mother a housewife. So to start with, Molin does not stray far from the family tradition. He tries a career as an army officer, but then changes course.

Lindman put down his pad and filled his wineglass. The man crawling around in the rocks not far from Hollywood had now been captured by the men on horseback. They were about to hang him. The man with the rope around his neck seemed strangely unconcerned about his fate. The colors were still very pale.

If the circumstances surrounding Molin’s death had been a film, Lindman thought, it would now be necessary for something to happen. Otherwise the audience would become bored. Even police officers can become bored. But that doesn’t mean they give up the search for an explanation and a murderer.

He reached for his pad again. As he did so the man in the film was getting away via highly improbable circumstances. Lindman tried to develop a few plausible theories. The first, the most obvious one, was that Molin had been the victim of a madman. Where he’d come from and why he’d been equipped with a tent and some tear gas was impossible to explain, of course. The madman scenario was bad, but it had to be formulated even so.

The second theory had to do with an unknown connection between the murder and something that lay concealed in Molin’s past. As Veronica Molin had pointed out, her father didn’t possess a fortune. Money could hardly be the reason for his death, even if his daughter had made it sound as if it were the only conceivable motive for murdering anybody. But police officers acquire enemies, Lindman thought. Nowadays it was not uncommon for police officers to receive death threats, for bombs to be placed under prosecutors’ cars. Somebody bent on revenge could wait for as long as it took to get back at someone. This meant that patient searches through the archives would be essential.

There was a third possibility. Something connected with Berggren. Did the uniform in her wardrobe have anything to do with Molin? Or did Berggren have something in her past linked with Hitler’s Germany?

Lindman did some math. According to Björn Wigren, Berggren and Molin were about the same age. Berggren could have been born a year or so later, around 1924 or 1925. So she would have been fifteen when war broke out, and twenty-one when it ended. Lindman shook his head. That didn’t fit. But Berggren has a father, and perhaps also an elder brother. He made more notes. Elsa Berggren lives alone, has an income from an unknown source, is on her guard. He made another note: Molin and Berggren. According to her own account she had known Molin since his first marriage. When she said that, he’d had a strong feeling that she wasn’t telling the truth.

That was as far as he could get. He put down the pad. He would talk to Larsson the following day. That would mean he’d have to drive back to Östersund. Once he’d done that, he could return to Borås. As he was getting ready for bed he wondered if he should ask Elena whether there was any chance of her being able to take a week off work and fly south with him. But he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to handle that. The choice between having her company and being alone would be a hard one to make.

He went to the bathroom, opened his mouth, and stuck out his tongue. The lump was not visible, but it was there. He studied his face and thought that he looked pale. Then in his mind’s eye he put on the uniform he’d seen in Berggren’s wardrobe. Tried to remember the ranks they’d had in the SS — Rottenfűhrer Lindman, Unterscharfűhrer Lindman.

He took off the invisible peaked cap and washed his face. By the time he left the bathroom the Western had almost finished. The man who had escaped the lynching party was sitting with a big-breasted woman in a log cabin. Lindman reached for the remote control and turned off the TV.

He called Elena’s number. She answered almost immediately.

“I’m leaving here tomorrow. I might even be back home by tomorrow evening.”

“Don’t drive too fast, will you?”

“That’s all, really. I’m worn out. We can talk when I get home.”

“How’s it going?”

“How’s what going?”

“You, your health.”

He said he didn’t have the strength to discuss how he was feeling, and Elena understood.

He drank another glass of wine before settling down in bed. I have one more visit to make, he thought as he was falling asleep. I have one more person to see before I talk to Larsson, and then I can put all of this behind me.

He woke up before dawn with excruciating pain in one of his cheeks. He was also running a temperature. He lay still in the darkness and tried to wish away the pain by sheer willpower. But it didn’t work. When he got out of bed, he felt another stab in his cheek. He found a tube of painkillers and dissolved two in a glass of water. He wondered if he’d been lying awkwardly during the night. But he knew that the pain was coming from the inside. The doctor had warned him. He might suddenly find himself in pain. He emptied the glass and lay down again, hoping the pain would go away. But things got no better. 7 A.M. passed but he was in too much pain to go down for breakfast.

After another hour, he couldn’t stand it any longer. He looked up the telephone number for the hospital in Borås and had a stroke of luck. His doctor answered as soon as he was put through. He described the pain he was in. She said she would write him a prescription and call it into the pharmacist in Sveg. If that didn’t ease the pain, he was to call her again. Lindman went back to bed. The doctor had said she would call Sveg immediately. He decided to try to put up with the pain for another hour. Then he would drive to the pharmacy. He lay still in bed. All he could think about was the pain. At 9 A.M. he got up, dressed, and went downstairs. The receptionist wished him a good morning. He smiled and left his key on the desk.

He got his pills and took the first dose immediately. Then he went back to the hotel. The girl handed him his key.

“Are you unwell?” she said.

“Yes, I’m in a bit of pain,” he said. “But it’ll pass.”

“You haven’t had any breakfast. Would you like something in your room?”

“Just coffee, please. And some extra pillows.”

He waited until she arrived with a tray and two more pillows.

“Give me a call if there’s anything you need.”

“You were upset last night,” he said. “I hope you feel better now.”

She didn’t seem surprised. “I noticed you in the doorway,” she said. “It was just a momentary weakness. Nothing more.”

When she was gone, Lindman lay down on the bed and wondered what a “momentary weakness” entailed. It occurred to him that he didn’t know her name. He took another pill.

After a while the pain began to ease. He looked to see what it said on the box. Doleron. There was a red warning triangle on the package. He noticed he was feeling drowsy, but he also thought that there was no greater happiness in life than the ebbing away of acute pain.

He stayed in bed for the rest of the day. The pain came and went. He dozed off and again dreamed of the pack of wild dogs. It was late afternoon before it became clear that the pain was going away rather than just becoming more bearable. Although he hadn’t eaten anything all day, he wasn’t hungry. Shortly after 4 P.M. his cell phone rang. It was Johansson.

“How did it go?” Lindman said.

“How did what go?”

“The poker game in Funäsdalen.”

Johansson laughed. “I won 19 kronor. After four hours. I thought you were going to get in touch with me?”

“I’m not feeling so well today.”

“Nothing serious, I hope?”

“Just a bit of pain. But I talked to Elsa Berggren.”

“Did she have anything interesting to say?”

“Not really. She claimed she’d known Molin for a long time.”

“Did she have any idea why he was murdered?”

“She found it incomprehensible.”

“I thought as much. Will you be coming by tomorrow? I forgot to ask how long you were staying.”

“I’m leaving tomorrow. But I can stop by even so.”

“About nine would be convenient.”

He turned off his phone. The pain had more or less gone now.

He dressed and went down to the lobby. He left his key on the desk and opened the hotel door. The snow had melted. He went for a walk through the little town. Went into Agardh’s and bought some disposable razors.

Last night he’d made up his mind to visit Abraham Andersson. He wasn’t sure he felt up to it. It was dark. He wondered if he would be able to find the house. But Andersson had said there was a sign to Dunkärret. He went back to the hotel and got into his car. I’ll go for it, he thought. Tomorrow morning I’ll visit Johansson. Then I’ll drive to Östersund and talk to Larsson. I can be back in Borås by nightfall.

Before leaving Sveg he stopped at a gas station and filled his tank. When he went to pay he noticed a display with pocket flashlights next to the counter. He bought one and put it in the glove compartment.

He set off in the direction of Linsell, waiting all the time to see if the pains were coming back. For now, at least, they were leaving him in peace. As he drove, he kept looking out for signs of animals by the side of the road. He slowed down as he passed the turnoff to Molin’s house. For a moment he wondered if he should go there, but decided it would be inappropriate. He pressed ahead, wondering what his daughter and her brother planned to do with the property. Who would buy a house in which someone had been so savagely murdered? The repercussions of that killing would haunt the region for a long time to come.

He passed Dravagen, kept going towards Glöte until he saw the sign for Dunkärret 2. The road was bumpy and narrow. After about a kilometer it divided into two. Lindman kept to the left as the other road appeared to be more or less unused. About another kilometer and he was there. Andersson had put up a sign of his own with the name Dunkärr. The house lights were on. Lindman turned off the engine and got out of the car. A dog started barking. Lindman walked up a slope. The house was quite high up, surrounded by darkness. He wondered what drove people to live in such isolated places. What could a person find in all this darkness, apart from a hiding place? He could see the dog now. It was running back and forth along a line stretched between a tree and the house wall. There was a doghouse by the tree. It was a Norwegian elkhound, the same breed as Molin’s. Lindman wondered who had buried the dead dog. The police? He walked up the steps to the front door and knocked hard. The dog started barking again. After a while he knocked again harder. He tried the door. It was unlocked. He opened it and shouted into the house. Perhaps Andersson was one of those people who go to bed early? He looked at his watch. 8:15. Too early. He stepped into the hall and shouted again.

Suddenly he was on his guard. He didn’t know why. He had the feeling that all was not as it should be. He went into the kitchen. There was an empty coffee cup on the table, and next to it a program for the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra. He shouted again, but there was no answer. He went from the kitchen into the living room. There was a music stand next to the television, and a violin on a sofa. He frowned. Then he went upstairs and looked everywhere, but found no one. Something was definitely wrong.

Lindman went back outside and shouted yet again. The dog continued barking, running back and forth on its line. He walked towards it. The dog stopped barking and started wagging its tail. He stroked it cautiously. Not much of a guard dog, he thought. Then he went back to the car and collected the flashlight. He shone it around, feeling all the time that something was very amiss. Andersson’s car was parked beside a toolshed. Lindman checked and found it was unlocked. He looked inside and saw the keys in the ignition. The dog barked again; then all was silent. There was a rustling of wind through the trees in the darkness. He pricked up his ears, then shouted again. The dog answered him with a bark. Lindman went back to the house. He felt the burners on the stove. They were cold. A telephone rang. Lindman gave a start. The telephone was on a table in the living room. He picked up the receiver. Somebody was trying to send a fax. He pressed the start button and put down the receiver. It was a handwritten note from somebody named Katarina saying, “The Monteverdi sheet music has come.”

Lindman went back outside. Now he was certain that something was wrong.

The dog, he thought. It knows. He went back to the house and took a leash hanging from the wall.

The dog jerked at the line when he approached, then stood quite still while he attached the leash to its collar and released it from the line. Immediately it began dragging him towards the forest behind the house. Lindman turned on his flashlight. The dog was heading for a path into the pine trees. Lindman tried to hold it back. I shouldn’t be doing this, he thought, not if there’s a madman loose in the forest.

The dog turned off the path. Lindman followed, restraining it as much as he could. It was rough ground, and he kept stumbling in the undergrowth. The dog forged ahead.

Then it stopped, raised one of its front paws, and sniffed the air. He shone his flashlight among the trees. The dog put down its paw. Lindman pulled at the leash. It resisted, but the leash was long enough for Lindman to tie it around a tree trunk.

The dog was staring intently at some rocks just visible through a dense clump of pine trees. Lindman went towards the trees and walked around them. He made out a path leading to the rocks.

He stopped. At first he wasn’t sure what he’d seen. Something white, shining. Then, to his horror, he realized that it was Andersson. He was naked, tied to a tree. His chest was covered in blood. His eyes were open and staring straight at Lindman. But the gaze was as lifeless as Abraham Andersson himself.