The Return of the Dancing Master(145)

Then somebody started talking to him in English. A man’s voice, coming from his left. It was gruff, the words came out slowly, and the foreign accent was obvious.

“I’m sorry I had to knock you out, but this meeting was necessary.”

Lindman made no reply. Every word he said could be dangerous if the man really was insane. Silence was the only protection he had at the moment.

“I know you’re a policeman,” the voice said. “Never mind how I know.”

The man waited for Lindman to reply, but he didn’t.

“I’m tired,” the voice said. “This has been far too long a journey. I want to go home, but I need answers to some questions. And there’s somebody I want to talk to. Answer just one question: who am I?”

Lindman tried to work out what it meant. Not the words, but what lay behind them. The man talking to him gave the impression of being perfectly calm, not in the least worried or impatient.

“I’d like a reply,” the voice said. “You won’t come to any harm, but I can’t let you see my face. Who am I?”

Lindman realized he would have to respond. It was a very clear question.

“I saw you in the snow beneath my hotel window. You raised your arms and you left some prints in the snow like those in Herbert Molin’s house.”

“I killed him. It was necessary. I spent all those years thinking that I would draw back when it came down to it, but I didn’t. Perhaps I shall regret it when I’m on my deathbed. I don’t know.”

Lindman was soaked in sweat. He wants to talk, he thought. What I need is time, time to work out where I am and what I can do. He also thought about what the voice had said: all those years. That was something he could latch onto, and put a simple question of his own.

“I realize it must have had something to do with the war,” he said. “Events that took place a long time ago.”

“Herbert Molin killed my father.”

The words were spoken calmly and slowly. Herbert Molin killed my father. Lindman had no doubt that Fernando Hereira, or whatever he was really called, was speaking the truth.

“What happened?”

“Millions of people died as a result of Hitler’s evil war, but every death is individual, every horror has its own face.”

Silence. Lindman tried to pick out the most significant bits of what the man had said. All those years, that was the war; and now he knew that Fernando Hereira had avenged his father. He’d also mentioned a journey that had been far too long. And most important of all, perhaps: there’s somebody I want to talk to. Somebody besides me, Lindman thought, who?

“They hanged Josef Lehmann,” the voice said. “Sometime in the autumn of 1945. He deserved it. He had killed many people in the terror-stricken concentration camps he governed. But they should have hanged his brother as well. Waldemar Lehmann. He was worse. Two brothers, two monsters who served their master by making vast numbers of humans scream. One of them ended up with a rope around his neck, the other one disappeared, and if the gods have been incredibly careless he might be still alive. I’ve sometimes thought I’ve seen him in the street, but I don’t know what he looks like. There are no photographs of him. He had been more careful than his brother Josef. That saved him. Besides, what he enjoyed most was getting others to carry out the torture. He trained people to become monsters. He educated the henchmen of death.”

There was a sigh, or a sob. The man speaking to him moved again. A creaking noise, Lindman had heard it before. A chair, or maybe a sofa that creaked in that way. He’d never sat on it himself.

He gave a start. He knew. He’d sat in exactly the same chair that he was now tied to.

“I want to go home,” the voice said. “Back to what remains of my life. But first I must know who killed Abraham Andersson. I must know if I have to bear some of the responsibility for what happened. I can’t undo what’s already done, but I can spend the rest of my life lighting candles for the Holy Virgin and asking for forgiveness.”

“You drove in a blue Golf,” Lindman said. “Somebody stepped into the road and shot at you. You escaped. I don’t know if you were wounded, but whoever shot you could well have been the person who killed Abraham Andersson.”

“You know a lot,” the voice said. “But then, you’re a policeman. It’s your job to know, you have to do all you can to catch me, even if what has actually happened is the opposite and I’ve caught you. I’m not wounded. You were right: I was lucky. I got out of the car without being hit, and spent the rest of the night hiding in the forest, until I dared to move on.