The Return of the Dancing Master

Epilogue Inverness April 2000

On Sunday, April 9, Lindman picked up Elena early in the morning. On the way from Allégatan to Norrby he’d started humming. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that. Nor did he know at first what it was he was humming. A song of somewhere far from Sweden, he seemed to recall as he drove through the empty streets. Then it dawned on him that it was something his father used to play on the banjo. “Beale Street Blues.” Lindman also remembered his father saying that it was a street that really did exist, possibly in several North American cities, but certainly in Memphis.

I remember his music, Lindman thought, but my father, his face, his lunatic political opinions, have all started to fade into oblivion. He emerged from the shadows to tell me who he really was. Now I’ve kicked him back. The only way I’m going to remember him now and in the future is by the fragments of songs that have stuck in my head. Maybe that provides him with a redeeming feature. As far as Nazis were concerned, black people, their music, their traditions, their way of life — everything was barbaric. Blacks were subhuman creatures. Although the African American athlete Jesse Owens was the star of the 1936 Olympics, Hitler refused to shake his hand. But my father loved the music of black men, the blues. He made no attempt to hide it either. Perhaps that’s where I can find a crack in his defenses, a reason for thinking that he hadn’t given himself entirely to evil and to contempt for his fellowman. I’ll never know if I’m right, but I have the right to believe what I want to believe.

Elena was waiting for him at her front door. On the way to the airport they talked about which of them was looking forward to the trip more. Elena, who had seldom been even a few kilometers from Borås, or Lindman, whose doctor had given him hope that he’d overcome his cancer, thanks to the radiation therapy and the subsequent operation. They didn’t agree on the answer, but it was only a game.

They left for London Gatwick on a British Airways flight at 7:35 A.M. Elena was afraid of flying and clutched Lindman’s hand as the airplane took off and flew out to sea north of Kungsbacka. As they carved their way through the clouds, Lindman experienced a feeling of liberation. For six months he’d lived with a fear that hardly left him. Now it had gone. It wasn’t absolutely certain that he was or would ever be fully cured — his doctor had told him he would have to have tests for five years — but he could lead a normal life again, not be forever on the lookout for symptoms, not nourish the fear he had harbored for so long. Now that he was in the airplane, he felt that at last he’d really taken that vital step away from the fear, and back to something he’d long been waiting for.

Elena looked at him.

“A penny for your thoughts.”

“What I haven’t dared to think for half a year.”

She said nothing, but took hold of his hand. He thought he would burst into tears, but he managed to keep control of himself.

They landed at Gatwick, and after passing through customs they went their different ways. Elena was going to spend two days in London visiting a distant relative from Krakow who had a grocery store in one of London’s suburbs. Lindman would be continuing his journey on a domestic flight.

“I still don’t understand why you have to make this extra trip,” Elena said.

“Don’t forget that I’m a police officer. I want to follow things through to the bitter end.”

“But you’ve arrested the murderer, haven’t you? Or one of them, at least. And the woman is dead. You know why it all happened. What more is there to find out?”

“There are always gaps. Perhaps it’s only curiosity, something only indirectly linked.”

She eyed him severely. “It said in the newspapers that an officer had been wounded and another one had been in extreme danger. I wonder when you’re going to admit to me that you were the one in danger? How long do I have to wait?”

Lindman said nothing, merely flung out his arms.

“You don’t know why you have to make this extra journey,” Elena said. “Is that it? Or is there something you don’t want to tell me? Why can’t you just tell me the truth?”

“I’m trying to learn how to do that. But I have told you the truth. It’s just that there’s one last door I want to open, and find out what’s behind it.”

He watched her melt into the crowd making their way to the exit, then headed for the transit desk. The song he’d had in his head earlier came back to him.

If he’d managed to understand correctly what they said over the loudspeakers, the flight would take an hour. He fell asleep and didn’t wake up until they landed at Inverness Airport. He walked towards the ancient terminal and registered that the air was fresh and clear — just as he remembered it from Härjedalen. In Sveg, the wooded hillsides surrounding the little town had been a dark, threatening circle. The countryside was different here. High, sharply outlined mountains in the distance to the north, elsewhere fields and heaths, and the sky seemed to be low, almost touchable. He got the key to his rented car, and felt a vague worry about having to drive on the left-hand side of the road. The road was narrow. He was annoyed by the sluggishness of the transmission. He wondered if he should go back and upgrade, but soon gave up on that thought. He wasn’t going far, only to Inverness and back, with perhaps the occasional excursion.

The travel agent had booked him into a hotel called Old Blend for two nights, in the town center. It took him a while to find it. He caused chaos at two rotaries, but could breathe a sigh of relief when he eventually parked outside the hotel, a three-story, dark red brick building. Yet another hotel, but the last one in his quest to find out why Herbert Molin had been murdered. He now knew the circumstances, and he’d met the man who killed him. He didn’t know the whereabouts of the presumed murderer, Fernando Hereira.

Larsson had phoned from Östersund a few days ago and told him that the Swedish police and Interpol had drawn a blank. Presumably he was back in South America by now, using a different name — his real one. Larsson didn’t think they would ever find him. Even if they did, the Swedish authorities would never manage to have him extradited. Larsson promised to keep Lindman informed. He’d also asked about Lindman’s state of health, and been pleased about the latest diagnosis.

“What did I tell you?” he said with a laugh. “You were succumbing to doom and gloom — I’ve never met anybody as depressed as you were.”

“Perhaps you haven’t met many people with a death sentence hanging over their head. Or inside their head, to be more precise. But you had a bullet in your shoulder.”

Larsson turned serious. “I keep wondering if she shot to kill me. I remember the look on her face. I’d like to think that she shot to wound me, but I don’t really believe it.”

“How are you now?”

“A bit stiff in the shoulder, but much better.”

“What about Johansson?”

“I’ve heard that he’s thinking of applying for early retirement. This whole business has hit him hard. I saw him the other day. He looked very thin.” Larsson sighed. “I suppose things could have been much worse.”

“One of these days I’ll take Elena to a bowling alley. I’ll knock over a few pins and think of you.”

“When Molin was killed, we had no idea what we were letting ourselves in for,” Larsson said. “But what we stumbled upon is something very big. It’s more than a network of Nazi organizations. It’s grounds for facing up to the fact that Fascism is alive and kicking, albeit in a different guise.”

Larsson said that Magnus Holmström’s case would go to trial the following week. He had asserted his right to remain silent, but even so there was enough evidence to convict him and earn him a long jail sentence.

It was over — but there was one connection that Lindman still wanted to look into. He hadn’t mentioned it to Larsson. It was to be found in Inverness. Even if Veronica Molin’s attempt to invent an explanation for her father’s death had failed — the only weak move she’d made during those dramatic weeks — there had in fact been a real person hidden behind the letter “M” in Molin’s diary. Lindman had been helped by a clerical assistant called Evelyn who had worked for the police in Borås for many years. Together they had searched for and eventually found the report on the visit to Borås by a party of British police officers in November 1971, with a list of names. They had even found a photograph on the wall of an archive room. The picture was taken outside the police station. Olausson was there, posing with four British policemen, two of them women. One of the women, the older one, was called Margaret Simmons. Lindman sometimes wondered how much Veronica knew about her father’s visit to Scotland. She hadn’t used the name Margaret when she had tried sending them down a false trail: she’d said the woman’s name was Monica.

Molin was not in the picture, but he had been there. It was then, in November 1971, that he’d met this Margaret; and the following year he’d gone to Scotland to see her and written about her in his diary. They had gone for long walks in Dornoch, a coastal town north of Inverness. Lindman thought that maybe he should see what it looked like, but Margaret Simmons no longer lived there; she had moved when she retired in 1980. Without asking for his reasons, Evelyn had helped Lindman to trace her. In the end, one day in February, just when he started to believe he was going to live and eventually return to work, she called him in triumph and supplied him with an address and a telephone number in Inverness.

And that’s where he was now, and that was as far as his advance planning had gone. He had to decide what to do: should he call, or find the street and knock on her door? She was eighty. She might be ill or tired and not at all willing to receive him.

He was given a friendly welcome by a man with a loud, powerful voice. His was room number 12 on the top floor. There was no elevator, just a creaking staircase and a soft carpet. He could hear a television set somewhere. He climbed to his room, put down his suitcase, and went to the window. Traffic was buzzing around down below, but when he lifted his gaze he could see the sea, the mountains, and the sky. He took two miniature bottles of whiskey from the minibar and emptied them, standing at the window. The feeling of liberation was now even stronger than before. I’m on my way back, he thought. I’m going to survive. When I’m an old man I’ll look on this as a time that changed my life, rather than putting an end to it.

Afternoon turned into evening. He decided to wait until tomorrow before contacting Margaret Simmons. It was drizzling outside. He walked to the harbor, and wandered from pier to pier. He felt impatient. He wanted to start work again. All he had lost was time. But what was time? Anxious breaths, mornings turning into evenings, and then new days? He didn’t know. He thought of those chaotic weeks in Härjedalen when they had first been looking for a murderer, and then for two, as almost unreal. Then came the moment after November 19, when he entered his doctor’s office at 8:15 on the dot, and began his course of radiation. How would he describe that time if he were to write himself a letter? Time had seemed to stand still. He’d lived as if his body were a prison. It wasn’t until mid-January, when he’d put it all behind him, the radiation and the operation, that he’d recovered his grasp of time as something mobile, something that passed by without ever returning.

He had dinner at a restaurant close to the hotel. He’d just been handed a menu when Elena called.

“How’s Scotland?”

“Good. But it’s hard driving on the left.”

“It’s raining here.”

“Here too.”

“What are you doing right now?”

“I’m just about to have dinner.”

“How’s it going with your talks?”

“I’ve done nothing about that today. I’m starting tomorrow.”

“Come when you said you’d come.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“When you were ill you drifted away from me. I don’t want that to happen again.”

“I’ll be there.”

“I’m going to have a Polish dinner tonight with relatives I’ve never met before.”

“I wish I could be there.”

She burst out laughing. “You’re a liar. Pass on my greetings to Scotland.”

After his meal he went walking again. Piers, promenades, the town center. He wondered where he was heading. His real destination was inside himself.

He slept deeply that night.

The next morning he rose early. It was still drizzling over Inverness. After breakfast he called the number he’d been given by Evelyn. A man answered.

“Simmons.”

“My name’s Stefan Lindman. I’d like to speak to Margaret Simmons.”

“What about?”

“I’m from Sweden. She visited Sweden in the 1970s. I never met her, but a colleague of mine who’s a police officer talked about her.”

“My mother’s not at home. Where are you calling from?”

“Inverness.”

“She’s at Culloden today.”

“Where’s that?”

“Culloden is a battlefield not far from Inverness. The site of the last battle to take place on British soil. 1745. Don’t you learn any history in Sweden?”

“Not much about Scotland.”

“It was all over in half an hour. The English slaughtered everybody who got in their way. Mum likes to wander around the battlefield. She goes there three or four times a year. She goes to the museum first. They sometimes show films. She says she likes to listen to the voices of the dead coming from under the ground. She says it prepares her for her own death.”

“When’s she due home again?”

“This evening. But she’ll go straight to bed. How long does a Swedish policeman stay in Inverness?”

“I’m leaving tomorrow afternoon.”

“Call tomorrow morning. What did you say your name was? Steven?”

“Stefan.”

That concluded the call. Lindman decided not to wait until tomorrow. He went down to the reception desk and asked for directions to Culloden. The man smiled.

“Today’s a good time to go there. The weather’s the same as when the battle was fought. Mist, rain, and a breeze.”

Lindman drove out of Inverness. It was easier this time managing the rotaries. He followed the signs off the main road. There were two buses and a few cars in the parking lot. Lindman gazed over the moor. There were poles with red and yellow flags a few hundred meters apart. He assumed they marked the lines of the opposing armies. He could see the sea and the mountains in the distance. It seemed to him that the generals had chosen an attractive place for their soldiers to die in.

He bought a ticket for the museum. There were school classes wandering here and there, looking at the dolls dressed up as soldiers and arranged in violent scenes of battle. He looked around for Margaret. The photograph he’d seen was taken almost thirty years ago, but even so, he was sure he would recognize her. He couldn’t see her in the museum, though. He went out into the gusting wind to the battlefield. The moor was deserted. Nothing but the red and yellow flags smacking against the poles. He went back inside. The children were on their way into a lecture room. He followed them. Just as he got in the lights went out and a film started. He groped his way to a seat in the front row. The film lasted half an hour, with scary sound effects. He stayed put when the lights came on again. The children jostled their way out, frequently being urged by their teachers to calm down.

Lindman looked around. He recognized her immediately. She was in the back row, wearing a black raincoat. When she stood up, she leaned on her umbrella and was careful where she placed her feet. She walked past him and glanced in his direction. Lindman waited until she had left the lecture room before following her. There was no sign of the children now. A woman, knitting behind a counter, was selling postcards and souvenirs. There was the sound of the radio and the clatter of china from the nearby café.

Margaret Simmons was heading for the wall encircling the battlefield. It was raining, but she hadn’t raised her umbrella. The wind was too strong. Lindman waited until she’d passed through the gate and disappeared behind the wall. He wondered where all the children had gone. She was heading for one of the paths that meandered through the battlefield. He kept his distance, thinking that he’d made the right decision. He wanted to know why Molin had written about her in his diary. She was the exception. Molin had described how he’d crossed over the border and entered Norway, enjoyed some ice cream, and eyed the girls in Oslo — and then the awful years in the Waffen-SS. The years that had warped his nature and turned him into a henchman of Waldemar Lehmann. Then came the journey to Scotland. If he remembered correctly, it was the longest section in the diary, longer even than the letters he’d sent home from the war.

He would soon catch up with her and be able to place the final piece in the jigsaw puzzle that was Herbert Molin. At regular intervals along the path were gravestones. Not for individual lost soldiers, but for the clans whose men had been massacred by the English artillery. Margaret Simmons is walking though a battlefield, he thought. Molin spent some years in a battlefield, but he escaped the machine-gun and rifle fire. He was murdered by somebody who traced him to his cottage in Härjedalen.

The old woman leaned on one of the gravestones beside the path. Lindman stopped as well. She looked at him, then continued along the path. He followed her to the middle of the battlefield; a Swedish police officer who still hadn’t reached his fortieth birthday, thirty meters behind a Scottish lady who had also been a police officer and now spent her time preparing for death.

They came to a point between the red and yellow flags. She stopped and turned to look at him. He didn’t look away. She waited. He saw that she was heavily made-up, short and thin. She tapped the ground with her umbrella.

“Are you following me? Who are you?”

“My name is Stefan Lindman, I’m from Sweden. I’m a police officer. Like you used to be.”

She brushed aside her hair, which had blown into her face. “You must have spoken to my son. He’s the only one who knows where I am.”

“He was very helpful.”

“What do you want?”

“You once visited a town in Sweden called Borås. It’s not a very big place — two churches, two squares, a dirty river. You were there twenty-eight years ago, in the autumn of 1971. You met a policeman by the name of Herbert Molin. The following year he came to see you in Dornoch.”

She eyed him up and down, saying nothing.

“I’d like to continue my walk if you don’t mind,” she said eventually. “I’m getting used to the idea of being dead.”

She started walking again. Lindman walked beside her.

“The other side,” she said. “I don’t want anybody on my left.”

He changed sides.

“Is Herbert dead?” she said, out of the blue.

“Yes, he’s dead.”

“That’s the way it goes when you’re old. People think the only news you want to hear is that old acquaintances are dead. You can really put your foot in it if you don’t know.”

“Herbert Molin was murdered.”

She gave a start and stopped in her tracks. For a moment Lindman thought she was going to fall over.

“What happened?” she asked after a while.

“His past caught up with him. He was killed by a man who wanted to avenge something he’d done during the war.”

“Have you caught the murderer?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He got away. We don’t even know his real name. He has an Argentinean passport in the name of Hereira, and we think he lives in Buenos Aires. But we assume that that is not his real name.”

“What had Herbert done?”

“He murdered a Jewish dancing master in Berlin.”

She had stopped again. She looked around at the battlefield.

“The battle they fought here was a very strange one. It wasn’t really a battle. It was all over in a very short time.”

She pointed. “We were over there, the Scots, and the English were on that side. They fired their cannons. The Scots died like flies. When they finally got round to attacking the English it was too late. There were thousands of dead and wounded here in less than half an hour. They’re still here.” She started walking again.

“Molin kept a diary,” Lindman said. “Most of it’s about the war. He was a Nazi, and fought as a volunteer for Hitler. But maybe you knew about that?”

She didn’t answer, but rapped her umbrella hard onto the ground.

“I found the diary, wrapped in a raincoat in the house where he was murdered. A diary, a few photographs, and some letters. The only thing in his diary that he took the trouble to write up at any length was the visit he made to Dornoch. It says that he went for long walks there with ‘M.’”

She looked at him in surprise. “Didn’t he write my name in full?”

“All he put was ‘M.’ Nothing else.”

“What did he say?”

“That you went for long walks.”

“What else?”

“Nothing.”

She walked on without speaking. Then she stopped again.

“One of my ancestors died on this very spot,” she said. “I’m partly descended from the McLeod clan, even if my married name is Simmons. I can’t really be certain that it was just here that Angus McLeod died, of course, but I’ve decided it was.”

“I have wondered,” Lindman said. “About what happened.”

She looked at him in surprise. “He’d fallen in love with me. Pure stupidity, of course. What else could it have been? Men are hunters, whether they’re after an animal or a woman. He wasn’t even good-looking. Flabby. And in any case I was married. I nearly died of shock when he phoned out of the blue and announced that he was in Scotland. It was the only time in my life that I lied to my husband. I told him I was working overtime whenever I met Herbert. He tried to talk me into going back to Sweden with him.”

They had come to the edge of the battlefield. She started back on a path alongside a stone wall. It wasn’t until they’d returned to their starting point, the gate in the wall, that she turned to look at Lindman.

“I usually have a cup of tea at this time. Then I go out again. Would you join me?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Herbert always wanted coffee. That would have been enough in itself. How could I live with a man who didn’t like tea?”

In the cafeteria some young men in kilts were sitting at one table, talking in low voices. Margaret chose a window table where she could see the battlefield, and beyond it Inverness and the sea.

“I didn’t like him,” she said firmly. “I couldn’t shake him off, even though I’d made it clear from the start that his journey was a waste of time. I already had a husband. He might have been a bit of a handful, and he drank too much, but he was the father of my son and that was the most important thing. I told Herbert to come to his senses and go back to Sweden. I thought he’d done that and left. Then he phoned me at the police station. I was afraid he might come to my home, so I agreed to meet him again. That was when he told me.”

“That he was a Nazi?”

“That he’d been a Nazi. He had enough sense to realize that I’d experienced Hitler’s brutality during the air raids here in Britain. He claimed to regret it all.”

“Did you believe him?”

“I don’t know. I was only interested in getting rid of him.”

“But you still went for walks with him?”

“He started using me as a mother confessor. He insisted it had been a youthful mistake. I remember being afraid that he might go down on his knees. It was pretty awful in point of fact. He wanted me to forgive him. As if I were a priest or a messenger from all those who’d suffered in the Hitler period.”

“What did you say?”

“That I could listen, but that his conscience had nothing to do with me.”

The men in kilts stood up and left. The rain was now beating against the window pane.

She looked at him. “But it wasn’t true, is that it?”

“What do you mean?”

“That he regretted it.”

“I believe that he was a Nazi until the day he died. He was terrified about what had happened in Germany, but I don’t think he gave up his Nazi beliefs. He even handed them down to his daughter. She’s dead too.”

“How come?”

“She was shot in an exchange of fire with the police. She damn near killed me.”

“I’m an old woman,” she said. “I have time. Or maybe I don’t. But I want to hear the whole story from the start. Herbert Molin is starting to interest me, and that’s something new.”

When Lindman was on the flight back to London, where Elena was waiting for him, he thought that it was only when he told the story to Margaret, in the cafeteria at the museum in Culloden, that he grasped the full seriousness of what had happened during those autumn weeks in Härjedalen. Now he was able to see everything in a new light, the bloodstained tango steps, the remains of the tent by the black water. Most of all he saw himself, the person he’d been at that time, a man like a quivering shadow at the edge of a remarkable murder investigation. As he told the story to Margaret it was as if he’d become a pawn in the game: it was him, but then again not him, a different person he no longer wanted anything to do with.

When he came to the end, they sat there in silence for the longest time, staring out at the rain, now easing off. She asked no questions, merely sat there stroking her nose with the tip of a lean finger. There were not many visitors to Culloden that day. The girls behind the counter in the cafeteria had nothing to do, and were reading magazines or travel brochures.

“It’s stopped raining,” she said eventually. “Time for my second walk among the dead. I’d like you to come with me.”

The wind had veered from the north to the east. This time she took a different path, apparently wanting to cover the entire battlefield in her walks.

“I was twenty when war broke out,” she said. “I lived in London then. I remember that awful autumn of 1940, when the siren went and we knew somebody would die that night, but didn’t know if it would be us. I remember thinking that it was Evil itself that had broken loose. They weren’t airplanes up there in the darkness, they were devils with tails and clawed feet, carrying bombs and dropping them on us. Later, much later, when I’d become a police officer, I realized that there was no such thing as an evil person, people with evil in their soul, if you see what I mean. Only circumstances that induce that evil.”

“I wonder what Molin thought about himself.”

“If he was an evil person, you mean?”

“Yes.”

She pondered before replying. They had stopped by a tall cairn at the edge of the battlefield so that she could retie a shoelace. He tried to help her, but she refused.

“Herbert saw himself as a victim,” she said. “At least, he did in his confessions to me. I know now it was all lies. I didn’t see through him at the time, though. I was mainly worried that he’d become so lovesick that he’d stand outside my window howling.”

“But he didn’t?”

“Thank God, no.”

“What did he say when he left?”

“ ‘Goodbye.’ That’s all. Maybe he tried to kiss me. I can’t remember. I was just glad to see the back of him.”

“Then you heard nothing more of him?”

“Never. Not until now. When you came here and told me your remarkable story.”

They had reached the end of the battlefield for the second time and started walking back again.

“I never believed that Nazism had died with Hitler,” she said. “There are just as many people today who think the same evil thoughts, who despise other people, who are racists. But they’re called different names, and use different methods. There are no fights between hordes of warriors on battlefields nowadays. Hatred of people you despise is expressed in a different way. From underneath, you might say. This country, and indeed the whole of Europe, is being blown apart from the inside by its contempt for weakness, its attacks on refugees, its racism. I see it all around me, and I ask myself if we are able to offer sufficiently firm resistance.”

Lindman opened the gate, but she didn’t follow him out.

“I’ll stay here a bit longer. I haven’t really finished with the dead yet. Your story was remarkable, but I still haven’t had an answer to the question I’ve been asking myself, of course.”

“Which question is that?”

“Why did you come here?”

“Curiosity. I wanted to know who was the person behind the letter ‘M’ in the diary. I wanted to know why he had made that journey to Scotland.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes. That’s all.”

She brushed her hair out of her face and smiled.

“Good luck,” she said.

“With what?”

“You might find him one day. Aron Silberstein, who murdered Herbert.”

“So he told you what had happened in Berlin?”

“He told me about his fear. The man called Lukas Silberstein who had been his dancing master had a son called Aron. Herbert was afraid someone would take revenge, and he thought that is where it would come from. He remembered that little boy, Aron. I think Herbert dreamt about him every night. I have an instinct that he was the one who tracked Herbert down in the end.”

“Aron Silberstein?”

“I have a good memory. That was the name he told me. Anyway, it’s time for us to say goodbye. I’m going back to my dead souls. And you’re going back to the living.” She stepped forward and stroked him on the cheek. He watched her marching resolutely back onto the battlefield. He kept watching her until she was out of sight. This marked the end of his thoughts about what had happened last autumn. Somewhere in the Östersund police archives was a diary that had been hidden away with a raincoat. Also in the package were the letters and photographs. Now he had met Margaret Simmons. She’d not only told him about Molin’s journey to Scotland; she’d also given him the name of the man who called himself Fernando Hereira. He went into the museum and bought a postcard. Then he sat down on a bench and wrote to Larsson.

Giuseppe,

It’s raining here in Scotland, but it’s very beautiful. The man who killed Herbert Molin is called Aron Silberstein.

Best wishes,

Stefan

He drove back to Inverness. The man in the hotel reception said he would mail the postcard.

The rest of his time in Inverness was spent waiting. He went for a long walk, he had dinner at the same restaurant as on the previous day, and he talked for a long time on the telephone to Elena in the evening. He was missing her and now no longer had a problem telling her so.

He flew to London the next afternoon. He took a taxi from Gatwick to the hotel where Elena was staying. They spent three more days in London before going home to Borås.

Stefan Lindman started work again on April 17, a Monday. The first thing he did was to go to the archive where the picture of the visiting group of British police officers from 1971 was hanging on the wall. He took it down and put it in a box with other photographs from that visit. Then he returned the box to its place, hidden away in a corner closet.

He took a deep breath, and resumed the work he’d been missing for so long.