The Return of the Dancing Master(110)

“Did he see anybody?”

“No. He didn’t hang around. I suppose he was thinking of Molin and Andersson. But he did notice a few other things. The car had an Ostersund license plate. Plus he saw a foreign newspaper on the backseat.”

“Let’s go,” Larsson said, putting on his jacket.

Rundström turned to Lindman.

“You’d better come too. I mean, you more or less saw him. Assuming it was him.”

Larsson asked Lindman to drive because he had calls to make from his cell phone.

“Forget the speed limit,” Larsson said. “As long as you keep us on the road.”

Lindman listened to what Larsson was saying on the phone. A helicopter was on its way. And dogs. They were about to drive through Linsell when Rundström called: a salesperson in Sveg had told the police that she’d sold a knitted woolen hat the previous day.

“Unfortunately the girl can’t remember what he looked like, nor does she know if he said anything,” Larsson said, with a sigh. “She can’t even remember if it was a man or a woman. All she knows is that she sold a stupid woolen hat. Come on! Some people keep their eyes up their asses.”

There was a man waiting for them just north of Funasdalen. Elmberg, he said he was. They hung around until Rundström and another car arrived. Then they continued a couple of kilometers along the main road before turning off.

It was a red Toyota. None of the police officers there could distinguish between Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian. Lindman thought the newspaper on the back seat, El País, was Italian. Then he looked at the price and realized that “ptas” meant “pesetas,” hence Spain. They continued on foot. The mountain towered above them. There was a chalet where the final steep ascent started. It looked like an old shepherd’s hut that had been modernized. Rundström and Larsson reconnoitered, and decided there was nobody there. Both were armed, however, and they approached the front door with care. Rundström shouted a warning. No reply. He shouted again. His words died away with a ghostly echo. Larsson flung the door open. They ran in. A minute later Larsson emerged to say that the chalet was empty, but that somebody had been there. They would now wait for the helicopter with the dog team. The forensic unit that had been sifting through the evidence at Berggren’s house had broken off and were on their way.

The helicopter came in from the northeast and landed on a field above the chalet. The dogs and dog handlers disembarked. The handlers let the dogs sniff at an unwashed glass Larsson had found. Then they set off into the mountains.





Chapter Twenty-Six

Larsson called off the search at around 5 P.M. Mist had come rolling in from the west, and that together with the gathering darkness made it pointless to go on.

They had started walking toward the mountain at 1 P.M. All approaching roads were being watched. The dogs kept losing the scent, then finding it again. They started out heading due north, then branched off along a ridge heading west before turning north again. They were on a sort of plateau when Larsson called off the operation, after consulting Rundström. They had set off in a line, then spread out as they walked along the ridge. It had been easy going to start with, not too steep. Even so, Lindman soon noticed that he was out of shape, but he didn’t want to give up, certainly not be the first to do so.

But there was something else about this walk up the mountain. At first it was just a vague, imprecise feeling, but eventually it turned into a memory and became steadily clearer. He had been up this mountain before. It happened when he was seven or eight, but he had repressed it.

It was late summer, a couple of weeks before school started again. His mother was away—her sister, who lived in Kristianstad, had been unexpectedly widowed and his mother had gone there to help her. One day his father announced that they were going to pack the car and go on vacation. They would head north, live in a tent, and do it cheaply. Lindman only had a vague recollection of the car journey. He had been squashed in the backseat with one of his sisters and all the luggage that for some reason his father had not secured on the roof. He was also fighting against car sickness. His father didn’t deem it necessary to stop just because one of the children was going to be sick. He couldn’t remember if he and his sisters survived without vomiting: that part of his recollection had gone forever.

Lindman was the last in line. Thirty meters in front of him was Johansson, who occasionally answered calls on his walkie-talkie. The memory unfolded with every step he took.

If he were eight then, it was twenty-nine years ago. 1970, August 1970. On their way up to the mountains they had spent a cramped night in the tent, and Stefan had to clamber over the rest of the family to go outside and pee. The next day they had come to a place that Lindman seemed to remember was Vemdalsskalet. They had pitched their tent behind an old wooden cabin not far away from the mountain hotel.