The Return of the Dancing Master by Henning Mankell Read Free Book Online Page A

having been carefully planned. The guard dog had had its throat cut. The murderer had been equipped with whips and tear gas cartridges. That can’t have been coincidental. The fury must have been an outburst within the framework of a meticulous plan.
    Fury, thought Larsson. Fury and vengeance. A plan. That means that whoever killed Molin had most probably been to the house before, possibly on several occasions. Somebody should have noticed strangers hanging around in the vicinity. Or maybe the opposite applied: nobody had noticed anything. Which would mean that the murderer, or murderers, would have been friends of Molin.
    But Molin didn’t have any friends. That was something Mrs. Tunberg had been very clear about. Molin didn’t have a social life. He had been a recluse.
    Larsson went over what had happened one more time. He had the feeling that the attacker had been on his own. Somebody had turned up at the isolated dwelling, armed with a whip made from an unidentified animal hide and a tear gas pistol. Molin had been killed with ruthless and planned sadism, and the body had been abandoned naked at the edge of the forest.
    The question was: had Molin simply been murdered? Or was it an execution?

    Expert reinforcements would have to be brought in. This wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill murder case. Larsson was increasingly persuaded that they were faced with an execution.
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    It was 9:40 by the time Larsson drove up to Molin’s house. The crime scene tape was still in place, but there was no sign of a police vehicle. Larsson got out of his car. There was quite a wind blowing now. The swishing sound from the forest imposed itself upon the autumn morning. Larsson stood quite still and slowly looked around. The forensic unit had found traces of a car parked exactly where he was standing now: the tracks didn’t correspond to Molin’s ancient Volvo. Every time Larsson came to the scene of the murder, he tried to imagine exactly what had happened. Who had clambered out of this unknown car? And when? It must have been during the night. The pathologists still hadn’t been able to establish the precise time of death. Even so, the writer of the preliminary report had hinted in carefully chosen words that the assault could well have taken place over an extended period of time. He couldn’t say how many strokes of the whip Molin had received, but the beating—with pauses—might well have gone on for several hours.
    Larsson rehearsed yet again in his head the thoughts that had occurred to him during the drive out from Ostersund.
    Fury, and the thirst for revenge. A solitary murderer. Everything meticulously planned. No killing on the spur of the moment.
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    The phone rang. He started. He still hadn’t gotten used to the fact that he could be reached by telephone anywhere, even in the middle of the forest. He retrieved his cell phone from his jacket pocket and answered.
    â€œGiuseppe Larsson.”
    He’d lost count of the number of times he’d cursed his mother for giving him his first name after hearing an Italian crooner at a concert in Ostersund’s People’s Park one summer night as a young girl. He’d been teased ruthlessly throughout his school years, and now, every time anybody called him and he said his name, whoever was at the other end of the line always paused to consider.
    â€œGiuseppe Larsson?”
    â€œSpeaking.”

    He listened. The man at the other end said his name was Stefan Lindman, and that he was a police officer. He was calling from Boras. Lindman went on to say that he’d worked with Molin and was curious about what had happened. Larsson said he’d call him back. He’d had cases when reporters had pretended to be police officers, and he didn’t want to run that risk again. Lindman said he appreciated that. Larsson couldn’t find a pencil, and instead marked the phone number in the gravel with the toe of