The Return of the Dancing Master(121)

“Interpol are looking into that right now,” Larsson said. “I know that South American countries can be hard to deal with. A girl from Järpen disappeared in Rio de Janeiro a few years ago. It was sheer hell trying to get anything out of the police there. She turned up eventually, thank God. She’d fallen in love with an Indian and lived with him for a while in Amazonas. But it didn’t last. Now she’s an elementary school teacher and married to a man who works for a travel agent in Ostersund. Rumor has it that her house is full of parrots.”

Laughter ran through the room.

“Let’s just hope that a suitable Fernando Hereira turns up,” Larsson said.

Some more papers were put to one side. There was a preliminary summary of Abraham Andersson’s life, but it was far from complete. So far, they had found nothing at all to link him with Molin. Everybody agreed that in light of what Hanna Tunberg had said, they should immediately put more resources into digging up Andersson’s past. Lindman could see that Larsson was trying to keep his impatience under control. He knows he’ll become a bad police officer if he loses his cool, Lindman thought.

They turned their attention to Hanna Tunberg for a while. Johansson said that she’d been one of the leading lights when the Sveg curling club was formed, and that it now had an international reputation.

“They used to play in the park near the train station,” he said. “I can remember her sweeping the ice clear as soon as it was cold enough in the autumn.”

“And now she’s dead,” Larsson said. “That was a horrific experience, believe me.”

“What caused it?” It was one of the officers who hadn’t said anything so far. Lindman seemed to recall that he was from Hede.

Larsson shrugged. “A stroke, maybe a blood clot in the brain. Or a heart attack. She was a chain-smoker. Anyway, the last thing she did before she died was to tell us about Berggren. She thought she’d seen her in Andersson’s house some time last spring. Hanna was honest enough to admit that she wasn’t sure. If she was right, it could mean at least two things. First, that we’ve established a link between Andersson and Molin. A woman. And we must also bear in mind that, so far, Berggren has denied anything more than a fleeting acquaintance with Andersson.”

Larsson reached for a file and picked out a piece of paper.

“Katrin Andersson, Abraham’s widow, told the Helsingborg police that she had never heard the name Elsa Berggren. She claims to have a good memory for names, and that her husband never—I’m quoting here—‘kept any secrets from me.’” Larsson snapped the file shut. “That could be a claim that proves to be untrue, of course. We’ve all heard that phrase before.”

“I think we should be a little cautious,” Johansson said. “Hanna had a lot of good points, but she also had a reputation for being a nosy busybody. People like that sometimes have trouble distinguishing between what’s fact and what they’ve made up.”

“What do you mean?” Larsson said, irritated. “Should we take what she said seriously or shouldn’t we?”

“Perhaps we shouldn’t be a hundred percent certain that the woman outside Andersson’s house really was Berggren.”

“If the woman actually was outside the door,” Larsson said. “I suspect that Hanna peered in through a window.”

“Surely the dog would have barked in that case?”

Larsson reached impatiently for another file. He leafed through it without finding what he was looking for. “I know I’ve read somewhere that after the murder of Molin, Andersson said that he sometimes had the dog inside the house. This could have been one of those occasions. Now, some guard dogs bark even when they’re in the house if they hear a noise outside, I’ll grant you that.”

“It didn’t seem all that alert for a guard dog when I was there,” Lindman said. “It appeared to be more of a hunting dog.”

Johansson was still skeptical. “Is there anything else that links them? We know that Elsa and Molin were Nazis. If we can believe everything that has emerged so far, that’s what they had in common. Two lunatics, in other words, but harmless. Was Andersson a Nazi?”

“He was a dues-paying member of the Center Party,” Larsson said grimly. “For a while he was even an elected member of the Helsingborg Town Council. He resigned over a split about funding for the local symphony orchestra, but he didn’t leave the party. We can assume that not only was Andersson a man with no links to the unpleasant political movement known as neo-Nazism, but also that he took great exception to it. It would be interesting to know how he’d have reacted if he’d realized that he had a former Waffen-SS officer for a neighbor.”