The Return of the Dancing Master(124)
His mother had pushed him out of the way, screamed, and what followed was like a kaleidoscope: an ambulance, his father in a sickbed, his lips less blue. A few words that somebody must have repeated over and over again. A heart attack. Very slight.
What he remembered now with crystal clarity was the words his father had said to him. “I want to die upright, like a man. ”
Like a soldier in Hitler’s army, Lindman thought. Marching for a Fourth Reich that wouldn’t be crushed like the Third.
He took his jacket and left the room. Somewhere among all those memories he had dozed off for a while. It was 9 P.M. already. He didn’t want to eat in the hotel and made his way to a hot dog stand he’d noticed by the bridge, next to one of the gas stations. He ate some mashed potatoes and two half-grilled sausages while listening to some teenage boys discussing a car parked a few meters away. Then he kept walking, wondering what Larsson was doing. Was he still poring over his files? And what about Elena? He’d left his cell phone in his room.
He walked through the dark streets. The church, the scattered shops, empty premises waiting for someone to make something of them.
When he returned to the hotel, he stopped outside the entrance. He could see the receptionist preparing to go home. He walked down the street, to the front side of the hotel. There was a light in Veronica Molin’s room. The curtains were drawn, but there was a narrow gap in the middle. He slunk into the shadows as the receptionist walked down the street. He wondered again why she’d been crying that time. A car went past. Then he stood on tiptoe to look through the window. She was wearing dark blue. Silk pajamas, perhaps? She was sitting at her computer, with her back to him. He couldn’t see what she was doing. He was about to move on when she got up and moved out of view. He ducked down, then slowly stood up again to look through the window. The computer screen was shimmering. There was some kind of pattern on it, a logo probably. At first he couldn’t make out what it was. Then he recognized it. The screen was filled by a swastika.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
It was like receiving a powerful electric shock. He was almost knocked backwards. A car came around the corner, and Lindman turned to walk away, ducking into the courtyard of the building next door, which housed the newspaper offices. Only a week ago he’d opened a wardrobe and found an SS uniform. Then he’d discovered that behind a respectable façade, his own father had been a Nazi and even now, after his death, was paying blood money to keep afloat an organization that might look harmless but nevertheless had murderous intentions. And now came Veronica Molin’s computer screen with its shimmering swastika. His first impulse was to go to her room and take her to task. But for what? Because she had lied to him. Not only had she known that her father was a Nazi, but she was one herself.
He forced himself to remain calm, to act like a police officer, to see clearly, analytically, to distinguish between what was fact and what wasn’t. In the darkness behind the blacked-out editorial offices of the Härjedalen, it was as if everything that had happened since the time he’d been sitting in the hospital cafeteria in Boras and stumbled upon a newspaper report saying that Molin had been murdered finally fell into its logical place. Molin had spent his old age solving jigsaw puzzles, when he wasn’t dancing with a doll or dreaming about some absurd Fourth Reich. Now it seemed that the puzzle in which Molin had been one of the crucial pieces was finally finished. The last piece in place, the picture clear at last. Thoughts were racing through his head. It was as if a series of floodgates had been opened and he was now hastily directing all the masses of water into the correct channels. He was forced to hold on tight so as not to be swept off his feet and away with the current.
He stood quite still. Something moved at his feet. He jumped. A cat. It scuttled away through the light from a streetlamp.
What is this that I can see? A pattern, absolutely clear. Possibly more than a pattern, possibly a conspiracy. He started walking, as he thought more clearly when on the move. He headed for the railroad bridge. The district courthouse on the left, all the windows in darkness. He came upon three women, all humming a tune. They laughed, said “Good night” as he passed, and he recognized the tune as something by ABBA, “Crying over You.” He turned off, following the railroad tracks to the bridge. The railroad tracks, now only used by occasional peat trains and the so-called National Railway during the summer, looked like neglected cracks in a bronze-colored wooden floor. On the other side of the river—Berggren’s side—he could hear a dog barking. He stopped in the middle of the bridge. The sky was full of stars now; it was colder. He picked up a stone and dropped it into the water.