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.
“You must have had a car.”
“I’ll pay for the car that was shot up. Once I get home I’ll send some money.”
“I mean afterwards. You must have taken another car?”
“I found it in a garage by a house at the edge of the forest. I don’t know if anybody’s noticed that it’s missing. The house looked to be deserted.”
Lindman thought he could detect the beginnings of impatience in the man’s voice. He would have to be more careful about what he said. There was a clinking of a bottle, a top being unscrewed. Some swigs, but no glass, Lindman thought. He’s drinking straight out of the bottle. There was a faint smell of alcohol.
Then the man described what had happened fifty-four years ago. A brief tale, clear, unambiguous, and totally horrific.
“Waldemar Lehmann was a master. A genius at torturing people. One day Herbert Molin entered his life. I’m not sure about all the details. It wasn’t until I met Höllner that I realized who had killed my father. After that I was able to find out enough to know that it would be necessary and just to kill Herbert Molin.”
The bottle clinked again. The smell of spirits, more swigs. This man is drinking himself into a stupor, Lindman thought. Does that mean he will lose control of what he’s doing? He could feel his fear growing, and his temperature rising.
“My father was a dancing master. A peaceful man who loved to teach people how to dance. Especially young, shy people. One day, the man who would hide behind the name of Herbert Molin came to him as a pupil. He’d been granted a week’s leave that he was spending in Berlin. I don’t know how many lessons he had, but I remember seeing that young soldier several times. I can see his face now, and I recognized him when I eventually caught up with him.”
The man stood up. More creaking. Lindman recognized the sound, but it was from the house on Öland, Wetterstedt’s holiday home. I’m going insane, Lindman thought in desperation. I recognize a sound from Öland, but I’m in Härjedalen. The noise started again. From the right now. The man had moved to another chair. One that didn’t creak. Another memory was stirred in Lindman’s mind. He recalled the chair that didn’t creak. Where was this room?
“I was twelve at the time. My father gave his lessons at home. When the war started in 1939 he’d had his dance studio taken away from him. One day a Star of David appeared on the door. He never referred to it. Nobody referred to it. We saw our friends disappear, but my father survived. Lurking somewhere in the background was my uncle. He used to give Hermann Goering massages. That was the invisible protection our family enjoyed. Nobody was allowed to touch us. Until August Mattson-Herzén showed up and became my father’s pupil.”
The voice ground to a halt. Lindman was trying desperately to think where he could be. That was the first thing he needed to know if he were to find a way of escaping. This man he was sharing the room with could be unpredictable, he’d killed Mattson-Herzén, tortured him, he had behaved exactly like the people on whom he had exacted his vengeance.
The man was talking again. “I used to sit in on the lessons sometimes. Once, our eyes met. The young soldier smiled. I can still remember it. I liked him. A young man in a uniform who smiled. Since he never spoke I thought he was German, of course. How could I have known he was from Sweden? I don’t know what happened next, but he became one of Waldemar Lehmann’s henchmen. Lehmann must have found out somehow that Mattson-Herzén was taking dancing lessons from one of those disgusting Jews that were still in Berlin, and was being impertinent enough to behave like a normal, free, respectable citizen. I don’t know what he did to convince the young soldier, but I do know that Waldemar Lehman was one of the devil’s most assiduous servants. He succeeded in changing Mattson-Herzén into a monster. He came for his dancing lesson one afternoon. I used to sit out in the hall, listening to what went on in the big room after my father had pushed the furniture against the walls to make space for his lessons. The room had red curtains and a shiny parquet floor. I could hear my father’s friendly voice, counting the bars and saying things like ‘left foot,’ ‘right foot,’ and imagined his unfailingly straight back. Then the record player stopped. There wasn’t a sound. I thought at first they were resting. The door opened. The soldier hurried out of the apartment. I noticed his feet, his dancing shoes, as he left. Generally he came out, wiping the sweat from his brow, and gave me a smile, but none of that today. I went to the living room. My father was dead. Mattson-Herzén had strangled him with his own belt.”
Lindman experienced the rest of what the man had to say as a long, drawn-out scream.
“He’d strangled him with his own belt! Then shoved a shattered record into his mouth. The label was covered in blood, but I could see that it was a tango. I’ve spent the rest of my life looking for the man who did that to my father. It wasn’t until I happened to bump into Höllner that I discovered who the murderer really was. Learned that my father’s murderer was a Swede, somebody who hadn’t even been forced into serving Hitler, never mind giving vent to an utterly pointless and incomprehensible hatred of Jews. He killed the man who had tried to help him overcome his shyness and teach him to dance. I don’t know what Waldemar Lehmann did to Mattson-Herzén, I have no idea what he beat into him, what he threatened him with. What made him swallow the ultimate Nazi lunacy. It doesn’t matter. He came to our house that day not to learn how to dance, but to kill my father. That murder was so brutal, so horrific, that it is beyond description. My father lay dead with his own belt around his neck. He wasn’t the only one to die. His wife, my mother, and me and my brothers and sisters — all of us died. We all died with that belt around our necks. We kept our lives going, it’s true — my mother only for a few months, until she’d arranged for her children to go abroad. That was the last favor my uncle managed to extract from Goering. Once we were in Switzerland he committed suicide; now I’m the only one of us left. None of my brothers and sisters got beyond their thirties. One brother drank himself to death, a sister took her own life, and I ended up in South America. How I searched for that young man, for that young soldier who killed my father! I suppose that’s why I went to South America, where such a lot of Nazis had fled. I couldn’t understand how he had the right to go on living after my father had died. I found him in the end, an old man who’d hidden himself with a new name, away up here in the forest. I killed him. I gave him his final dancing lesson, and I was about to go home when somebody killed his neighbor. What makes me anxious is to what extent I am responsible for that.”