At some point a man called Herbert Molin—probably at that point called Mattson-Herzén-is shot three times. He survives. At some point this man also runs a music shop. He also has a particular association with dancing. Perhaps it’s just that dancing has been a passion for him all his life? The way that other people are crazy about picking mushrooms or fishing for salmon in Norwegian rivers?
There’s a woman called Elsa Berggren in his life. When Molin retires, he asks her to find him a house deep in the forests of Harjedalen, not far from where she lives herself. He never goes to visit her, however. That is confirmed by the best possible witness—an inquisitive neighbor. In Elsa Berggren’s closet, deep in a corner, is an SS uniform.
And somebody may have come paddling over a lake of water and set up camp not far from Molin’s house, perhaps with the intention of taking his life.
In Lindman’s head that’s where the story ended. With a man paddling over a lake who then disappears without trace.
But there were other bricks to build into the story. The bloodstained footprints that formed the basic steps of the tango. Molin’s fear. The fact that he’d changed his name. A downmarket move, it seemed to Lindman. In all probability there were very few people in Sweden called Mattson-Herzén. But plenty called Molin. He thought that there could only be one explanation. The change of name was a hiding place. The man was covering his tracks. But what tracks? And why? If he’d thought that Mattson-Herzen was too long and awkward, he could simply have called himself Mattson.
He read through what he’d written, then turned over the page and wrote down two dates. Born 1923, died 1999. Then he returned to the notes he’d made when he’d been shut up in Larsson’s office. In 1941, when Molin is eighteen, he does his military service. War is raging all around neutral Sweden. He’s posted to the coastal defense forces. Lindman’s notes were not complete, but he remembers that Molin had been stationed on a small island in the Östergötland archipelago, guarding one of the main sea channels to Sweden. Lindman assumed he’d remained with the coastal defenses until the end of the war, by which time he’d been commissioned. Seven years later he applies for a discharge, tries his hand at being a shop owner, and is then employed first in some council offices and subsequently in the police force.
From a military family, Lindman had noted. His father was a cavalry officer based in Kalmar, his mother a housewife. So to start with, Molin does not stray far from the family tradition. He tries a career as an army officer, but then changes course.
Lindman put down his pad and filled his wineglass. The man crawling around in the rocks not far from Hollywood had now been captured by the men on horseback. They were about to hang him. The man with the rope around his neck seemed strangely unconcerned about his fate. The colors were still very pale.
If the circumstances surrounding Molin’s death had been a film, Lindman thought, it would now be necessary for something to happen. Otherwise the audience would become bored. Even police officers can become bored. But that doesn’t mean they give up the search for an explanation and a murderer.
He reached for his pad again. As he did so the man in the film was getting away via highly improbable circumstances. Lindman tried to develop a few plausible theories. The first, the most obvious one, was that Molin had been the victim of a madman. Where he’d come from and why he’d been equipped with a tent and some tear gas was impossible to explain, of course. The madman scenario was bad, but it had to be formulated even so.
The second theory had to do with an unknown connection between the murder and something that lay concealed in Molin’s past. As Veronica Molin had pointed out, her father didn’t possess a fortune. Money could hardly be the reason for his death, even if his daughter had made it sound as if it were the only conceivable motive for murdering anybody. But police officers acquire enemies, Lindman thought. Nowadays it was not uncommon for police officers to receive death threats, for bombs to be placed under prosecutors’ cars. Somebody bent on revenge could wait for as long as it took to get back at someone. This meant that patient searches through the archives would be essential.
There was a third possibility. Something connected with Berggren. Did the uniform in her wardrobe have anything to do with Molin? Or did Berggren have something in her past linked with Hitler’s Germany?
Lindman did some math. According to Björn Wigren, Berggren and Molin were about the same age. Berggren could have been born a year or so later, around 1924 or 1925. So she would have been fifteen when war broke out, and twenty-one when it ended. Lindman shook his head. That didn’t fit. But Berggren has a father, and perhaps also an elder brother. He made more notes. Elsa Berggren lives alone, has an income from an unknown source, is on her guard. He made another note: Molin and Berggren. According to her own account she had known Molin since his first marriage. When she said that, he’d had a strong feeling that she wasn’t telling the truth.