The Return of the Dancing Master(120)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

They gathered in Johansson’s office at 2:15. Lindman had been hesitant about joining them, but Larsson insisted. Johansson was tired and irritable, but most of all he was worried. Lindman sat next to the wall, behind the others. The rain had passed over and the sun, already quite low in the sky, shone in through the open window. Johansson switched his cell phone to speakerphone, and Rundström’s voice could be heard despite a poor connection. The mist in the mountains of northwest Harjedalen was still there.

“We’re marking time here,” he said.

“And the roadblocks?” Johansson said.

“They’re still in place. A Norwegian drunk drove straight into the ditch from shock when he saw police standing in the road. He had a zebra skin in his car, incidentally.”

“Why?”

“How should I know? If it had been a bearskin you could have understood it, but I didn’t know there were any zebras in Härjedalen.”

The connection was lost, then it came back.

“I have a question about the weapons that were stolen,” Rundström said. “I know what make of guns and how many, but what about ammunition?”

“Two magazines for the pistol and twelve cartridges for the Mauser.”

“I don’t like this at all,” Rundström said. “Did he leave any clues?”

His voice was coming and going in waves.

“The house was empty,” Johansson said. “My wife is in Järvsö visiting our daughter. I don’t have any neighbors. The gun cabinet had been broken into.”

“No footprints? Did anybody see a car?”

“No.”

“The mist will start clearing soon, according to the weather people. But the sun will set before long. We’re wondering what to do. If he’s the one who stole the guns there’s not much point in our staying here. It would mean he’d already passed through our cordon.”

Larsson leaned towards the telephone. “Larsson here. I think it’s too soon to withdraw from up there. It might not have been him who broke into Erik’s house. But I have a question. Do we know anything about what this Hereira might have in the way of food?”

“Frostman claimed he didn’t have anything in his pantry. Maybe some jam. He wasn’t sure. On the other hand, the freezer was full. It was worth leaving it on to store all the berries and elk meat he’d been given by friends.”

“It’s hardly possible to prepare an elk steak on a camping gas stove. Sooner or later he’ll have to find a shop and buy some food.”

“We’ve been checking the houses up here. There’s just one solitary old man who lives here all year round. Hudin, he’s called, in a place called Högvreten. We’ve got a couple of officers there. Apparently he’s ninety-five and not exactly a shrinking violet. Apart from him, there are only vacation cottages in the area. You can’t say it’s overpopulated around here.”

“Anything else?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Okay, thanks. We’ll talk again later.”

Rundström’s voice faded away in a buzz of interference. Johansson turned off the phone.

“Frostengren,” said one of the officers. “Wasn’t that his name? Not Frostman?”

“Rundström’s not very good at names,” Larsson said. “Let’s have a rundown now. Is there anybody here who hasn’t met Stefan Lindman? A colleague from Borås who used to work with Herbert Molin.”

Lindman recognized all the faces. He wondered what they would say if he stood up and told them that in a few days’ time he would be starting a course of radiation for cancer.

There was a mass of detail and reports to sort out. Larsson urged them to be brief. They couldn’t waste time dwelling unnecessarily on minor details. At the same time, he had to make decisions about what was important and what could wait. Lindman tried to listen, but found that his head was full of images of women. Hanna Tunberg getting up from her chair and falling dead on the floor. Veronica Molin, her hand and her back as she lay asleep. And Elena was there as well. Especially Elena. He was ashamed of having told Veronica Molin that there was no one in his life.

He forced such thoughts out of his mind and tried to concentrate on what was being said around the table. They talked about the weapons used when Molin was murdered. They must have come from somewhere. It could be assumed that Hereira had entered Sweden from abroad, and so it followed that he had acquired them in Sweden. Larsson had a list of guns reported stolen in Sweden in recent months. He glanced through them, then put it to one side. No Swedish border control post had any information about a man called Fernando Hereira from Argentina passing through.