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

his shoe. He called back, and Lindman answered. He might be a reporter nevertheless, of course. What he should do was call the station in Boras and ask if they had an officer by the name of Stefan Lindman. Even so, the way the man at the other end of the line expressed himself suggested to Larsson that he was telling the truth, and he tried to answer Lindman’s questions. But it wasn’t easy to do so on the phone. In any case, reception was not good, and he could hear the forensic team approaching.
    â€œI’ve got your number,” Larsson said. “And you can get hold of me at this number or at the station in Ostersund. Meanwhile, is there any thing you can tell me ? Did Molin feel he was under threat? Any information could be of value. We don’t have much to go on. No witnesses, no apparent motive. Nothing at all, really. We’re ready to clutch at any straw.”
    He listened to the response without comment. The police crime scene van drove up to the house. Larsson concluded the call, and made the number he’d traced in the gravel more obvious with the toe of his shoe.
    The policeman who’d phoned from Boras had said something important. Molin had been scared. He had never explained why he was uneasy, but Lindman had no doubt. Molin had been scared all the time, wherever he had been, whatever he had done.
    There were two forensic officers, both of them young. Larsson liked working with them. They were full of energy, meticulous, and efficient. Larsson watched them enter the house they were destined to investigate and try to take in the blood splattered over the walls and floor. As the young men donned their coveralls, Larsson began once more to think about what had happened.
    He was clear about the main outline. It started with the death of the dog. Then the windows had been smashed, and tear gas canisters shot in. It wasn’t the tear gas canisters that had broken the windows. They had found some cartridges from a hunting rifle outside the house. The man who carried out the attack had been methodical. Molin was asleep
when it all started—at least, it looked as if he’d been in bed at the time. He was naked when his body was found at the edge of the forest, but his sweater and pants were found soaked in blood at the bottom of the steps leading down from the front door. From the remnants they had found of the tear gas canisters it would seem that the place must have been filled with gas. Molin had run out of the house with his shotgun. He’d also managed to fire a few shots. Then he’d been stopped in his tracks. The gun was discarded on the ground. Larsson knew that Molin must have been more or less blind when he left the house. He would also have had great difficulty breathing. So Molin had been hounded out of his house, and had been incapable of defending himself as he staggered from the door.
    Larsson picked his way carefully into the room leading off the living room. It contained the biggest riddle of all. In a bed lay a bloodstained doll, life-size. He thought at first it was some kind of sex toy used by lonely Molin, but the doll had no orifices. The loops on its feet suggested that it was used as a dancing partner. The big question was: why was it covered in blood? Had Molin moved into this room before the tear gas made it impossible for him to stay in the house? Even so, that wouldn’t have explained the blood. Larsson and the other detectives who had spent six days going through the house with a fine-toothed comb still hadn’t come up with a plausible explanation. Larsson was going to spend this day trying to work out once and for all why the doll was covered in blood. There was something about the doll that worried him. It concealed a secret and he wanted to know what it was.
    He left the house to get some fresh air. His cell phone rang. It was the chief of police in Ostersund. Larsson told him the current state of affairs: that they were hard at work,