The Return of the Dancing Master Page 23

  He wiped his brow. Then he forced the jemmy with all his might, simultaneously pressing hard against the screwdriver with his knee. The door gave way. The only noise was a creaking and the thud of the screwdriver landing on his shoe. He switched off his torch and listened, ready to flee if necessary. Nothing happened. He opened the door carefully and pulled it to behind him. There was a stuffy, closed-in smell in the flat. He had a vague feeling that it reminded him of his aunt’s house near Värnamo, where he’d been to visit her several times as a child. A smell of old furniture. He switched on his torch, careful not to point it at a window. He had no plan and didn’t know what he was looking for. If he’d been an ordinary burglar it would have been easier. He’d have been looking for objects of value, and trying to find likely hiding places. He examined a pile of newspapers on a table. Nothing suggested that Wetterstedt subscribed to a morning paper that would be delivered in the early hours.

  He walked slowly round the flat. It was just three rooms, plus kitchen and bathroom. Unlike the spartan furniture and fittings at the summer cottage, Wetterstedt’s town flat was overflowing with furniture. He glanced into the bedroom, then continued to the living room, that evidently also served as a studio. There was an empty easel, and an escritoire against one wall. He opened a drawer.

  Old pairs of glasses, packs of playing cards, newspaper cuttings. “The portrait painter Emil Wetterstedt celebrates his 50th birthday.” The photograph had faded, but Lindman recognised Wetterstedt’s piercing eyes gazing straight at the photographer. The text was full of deference. “The nationally and internationally well-known portrait painter who never left his home town Kalmar, in spite of many chances to establish himself elsewhere … Rumours abounded of an offer to settle on the Riviera with famous and rich clients.” He returned the cutting, thinking that it wasn’t very well written. Wetterstedt had said that he didn’t like writing letters, only brief messages on postcards. Perhaps he’d written the newspaper text himself, and it had turned out so badly because he wasn’t used to writing. Lindman searched through the drawers. He still didn’t know what he was looking for. He moved on to the third room, a study, and went to the desk. The curtains were drawn. He took off his jacket and hung it over the desk lamp before switching it on.

  There were two piles of paper on the desk. He looked through the first one. It consisted of bills, and brochures from Tuscany and Provence. He wondered if Wetterstedt in fact enjoyed travelling, despite claiming not to. He replaced the pile, and drew the second one towards him. It was mainly crossword puzzles, torn out of newspapers. They were all solved, with no crossings out or alterations. He might not care for letter-writing, but he knew his words.

  At the bottom of the pile was an envelope, already opened. He took out an invitation card printed in a typeface reminiscent of rune stones. It was a reminder. “On November 30 we meet as usual at 1300 hours in the Great Hall. After lunch, reminiscences and music, there will be a lecture given by our comrade, Captain Akan Forbes, on the subject of his years fighting to keep Southern Rhodesia white. This will be followed by our A.G.M.” It was signed by the “Senior Master of Ceremonies”. Lindman looked at the envelope. It was postmarked Hässleholm. He moved the desk lamp closer and read the text again. What exactly was this an invitation to? Where was this Great Hall? He put the card back in its envelope and replaced the pile.

  Then he went through the drawers, which were unlocked. All the time he was listening for the slightest noise from the landing. In the bottom left-hand drawer was a brown leather box file. It filled the drawer. Lindman took it out and laid it on the desk. There was a swastika impressed on the leather. He opened it carefully as the side was split. It contained a thick bundle of typewritten sheets. They were carbon copies, not originals. The paper was thin. The text was written on a typewriter with a letter “c” that was slightly higher than the other letters. They seemed to be some kind of accounts. At the top of the first page was a handwritten heading: “Comrades, departed and deceased, who continue to fulfil their commitments”. Then followed long lists of names in alphabetical order. In front of every name was a number. Lindman moved carefully on to the next page: another long list of names. He glanced through them without recognising any. They were all Swedish names. He turned to the next page.

  Under the letter D, after Karl-Evert Danielsson, the same hand as had written on the first page had noted: “Now deceased. Pledged an annual subscription for 30 years.” Annual subscription to what? Lindman wondered. There was no reference to the title of an organisation, just this list of names. He could see that many had died. In some places there was a handwritten note that future subscriptions had been specified in a will, in others that “the estate will pay” or “paid by the son or daughter, no name given”. He turned back to the letter B. There she was, Berggren, Elsa. He turned to the letter M. Sure enough, there was Molin, Herbert. He returned to the beginning. The letter A. No Andersson, Abraham. He moved on to the end. The last name was Öxe, Hans, numbered 1,430.

  Lindman closed the file and replaced it in the drawer. Were these the papers Wetterstedt had referred to? A Nazi old comrades association, or a political organisation? He tried to work out what he had stumbled upon. Somebody ought to take a look at this, he thought. It ought to be published. But I can’t take the file with me because there would be no way I could have got it without having broken into this flat. He turned off the desk lamp and sat in the dark. The air was heavy with the disgust he was feeling. What stank was not the old carpets or the curtains – it was the list of names. All these living and dead individuals paying their subscriptions, in person or via their trustees, their sons or daughters – to some organisation that declined to reveal its name – 1,430 persons still adhering to a doctrine that ought to have been done away with once and for all. But that wasn’t the way it was. Standing behind Wetterstedt had been a boy, a reminder that everything was still very much alive.

  He sat there in the dark, making up his mind that it was time for him to set off for home. But something held him back. He took out the file once more, opened it and turned to the letter L. At the bottom of a page was the name “Lennartsson, David. Subscription paid by the wife.” He turned the page.

  It was like being on the receiving end of a punch, he reflected afterwards, on his way to Borås, driving far too fast through the darkness. He had been totally unprepared. It was as if somebody had crept up on him from behind. But there was no room for doubt. It was his father’s name there at the top of the page: “Evert Lindman, deceased, subscriptions pledged for 25 years.” There was also the date of his father’s death seven years ago; and there was something else that removed any possible doubt. He recalled as clear as day sitting with one of his father’s friends, a solicitor, going through the estate. There had been a gift, written into the will a year or so before his father died. It was not a large sum, but striking nevertheless. He had left 15,000 kronor to something calling itself the Strong Sweden Foundation. There was a bank giro number, but no name, no address. Lindman had wondered about that donation, and what kind of a foundation it was. The solicitor assured him that there was no ambiguity, his father had been very firm on the point; Lindman had been devastated by the death of his father, and lacked the strength to think any more about it.

  Now, in Wetterstedt’s stuffy flat, that donation had caught up with him. He couldn’t close his eyes to facts. His father had been a Nazi. One of the type that kept quiet about it, didn’t speak openly about their political opinions. It was incomprehensible, but true nevertheless. Lindman now realised why Wetterstedt had asked about his name, and where he came from. He knew something Lindman didn’t know: that his own father was among those Wetterstedt admired above all others. Lindman’s father had been like Molin and Berggren.

  He closed the drawer, pushed back the desk lamp, and noticed that his hand was shaking. Then he checked everything meticulously before leaving the room. It was 1.45 a.m. He needed to get away fast, away from what was hidden in Wettersted
t’s desk. He paused in the hall, and listened. Then he opened the door, and went out, shutting it as tightly after him as he could.

  At that very moment there came the sound of the front door opening or closing. He stood motionless in the darkness, holding his breath and keeping his ears pricked. No sound of footsteps on the stairs. Someone might be standing down there, hidden in the dark, he thought. He kept on listening, and also checked to make sure he’d remembered to take everything with him. The torch, the screwdriver, the jemmy. All present and correct. He went down one floor, tentatively. The lunacy of the whole undertaking had now hit him like a freezing cold shower. Not only had he committed a pointless break-in, he’d also unearthed a secret he’d infinitely rather not have known anything about.

  He paused, listened, and then switched on the staircase lights. He walked down the last two flights to the front door. He looked round when he emerged into the street. No-one. He hugged the wall of the block of flats to the end, then crossed the street. When he reached his car he looked round again, but could see no sign of anybody having followed him. Nevertheless, he was quite sure. He wasn’t imagining things. Someone had left the building as he was closing the damaged door to the flat.

  He switched on the engine and backed out of his parking place. He didn’t see the man in the shadows writing down his registration number.

  He drove out of Kalmar, on the Västervik road. There was an all-night café there. An articulated lorry was parked outside. When he went into the café, he noticed the driver immediately, sitting with his head against the wall, sleeping with his mouth open. Nobody here will wake you up, he thought. An all-night café’s not like a library.

  The woman behind the counter gave him a smile. She had a name badge: she was called Erika. He poured himself a cup of coffee.

  “Are you a lorry driver?” she said.

  “Afraid not.”

  “Professional drivers don’t need to pay for coffee during the night.”

  “Maybe I ought to change jobs,” he said.

  She declined his offer to pay. He took a good look at her and decided she had a pretty face, in spite of the stark light from the fluorescent tubes on the ceiling.

  When he sat down, he realised how exhausted he was. He still couldn’t come to terms with what he’d found in Wetterstedt’s desk drawer. He would have to face up to that later, but not now.

  He drank his coffee, decided against a refill. He was in Borås by 9.00, by way of Jönköping. He’d stopped twice and taken a nap. On both occasions he’d been woken by headlights in his face.

  He undressed and stretched out on the bed. I got away with it, he thought. Nobody will be able to prove that I broke into Wetterstedt’s flat. Nobody saw me. Before going to sleep, he tried to work out how many days he’d been away. He couldn’t make it add up. Nothing added up.

  He closed his eyes and thought about the woman who hadn’t charged him for his coffee. He had already forgotten her name.

  CHAPTER 20

  He had disposed of the tools on the road home, but when he woke up after a few hours of restless sleep, he began to wonder if he’d only imagined it. The first thing he did was to go through his pockets. No sign of the tools. Somewhere not far from Jönköping, at the coldest and darkest time of the night, he had stopped for a sleep. Before driving away from the lay-by, he’d buried the jemmy and the screwdriver under the moss. He remembered exactly what he’d done, but even so, he couldn’t help wondering. He seemed to be unsure of everything now.

  He stood in the window, looking down over Allégatan. He could hear fru Håkansson playing the piano in the flat downstairs. This was a regular occurrence, every day except Sunday. She played the piano from 11.15 to 12.15. Always the same piece, over and over again. There was a detective inspector at the police station who was interested in classical music. Once, Lindman had tried to hum the tune for him, and the inspector had said without hesitation that it was Chopin. Lindman had later bought a record containing that particular mazurka. For some time when he was working nights and sleeping during the day he would try to put the record on simultaneously with fru Håkansson’s playing, but he had never managed to get the two versions synchronised.

  She was playing now. In my chaotic world, she’s the only thing that is unchanging, he thought. He looked into the street. The self-discipline he had hitherto taken for granted didn’t exist any longer. It had been sheer idiocy to break into Wetterstedt’s flat. Even if he’d left no trace behind, even if he’d taken nothing other than a piece of knowledge he would have preferred to be without.

  He finished his breakfast and collected the dirty washing he was going to take to Elena’s. There was a laundry room in the basement of the flats where he lived, but he hardly ever used it. Then he fetched a photo album he kept in a bureau, and sat with it on the living-room sofa. His mother had collected the pictures and given him the album as a 21st birthday present. He remembered how, when he was very small, his father had taken photographs with a box camera. Then he’d bought more modern models, and the last pictures in the book had been taken by a Minolta SLR camera. It had always been his father taking the pictures, never his mother, although he’d used the self-timer whenever practical. Lindman studied the pictures, his mother on the left and his father on the right. There was always a hint of stress in his father’s face, as if he had only just come into the picture before it was taken. It often went wrong. Lindman remembered once when there was only one exposure left on the film and his father had stumbled as he hurried away from the camera. He leafed through the album. There were his sisters side by side, and his mother staring straight at the lens.

  What do my sisters know about their father’s political views? Presumably nothing. What did my mother know? And could she have shared his opinions?

  He started again and worked his way slowly through the album, one picture at a time.

  1969, he’s seven. His first day at school. Colours starting to fade. He remembered how proud he was of his new, dark-blue blazer.

  1971, he’s nine. It’s summer. They’ve gone to Varberg, and rented a little cottage on the island of Getterön. Bath towels among the rocks, a transistor radio. He could even remember the music being played when the picture was taken: “Sail along, silvery moon”. He remembered because his father had said what it was called just before pressing the self-timer. It was idyllic there among the rocks, his father, mother, himself and his two teenaged sisters. The sun was bright, the shadows solid, and the colours faded, as usual.

  Pictures only show the surface, he thought. Something quite different was going on underneath. I had a father who led a double life. Perhaps there were other families in cottages on Getterön that he would visit and involve in discussions on the Fourth Reich that he must have hoped would come to pass sooner or later. When Lindman was growing up, in the ’60s and ’70s, there had never been any mention of Nazism. He had a vague memory of classmates at school hissing “Jewish swine” at some unpleasant person who wasn’t in fact Jewish at all. There were swastikas drawn on the lavatory walls at school, and the caretaker would be furious and try to scrub them off. Even so, he certainly couldn’t recall any symptoms of Nazism.

  The pictures slowly brought memories to life. The album was made up of stepping stones that he could jump along. In between were other memories that had not been photographed, but which came to mind even so.

  He must have been twelve years old. He’d been hoping for a new bike for ages. His father wasn’t mean, but it took some time to convince him that the old one simply wasn’t up to it any more. In the end his father gave in, and they drove to Borås.

  They had to wait their turn in the shop. Another man was buying a bike for his son. He spoke broken Swedish. It took some time to complete the deal, and the man and the boy went off with the new bicycle. The shop owner was about the same age as Stefan’s father. He apologised for the delay.

  “Those Yugoslavians. We’re lumbered with more and more of ’em.”

 
; “What are they doing here?” his father said. “They should be sent back. They’ve no business to be in Sweden. Haven’t we got enough problems with all the Finns? Not to mention the gypsies. We should send the whole lot packing.”

  Lindman could remember it well. It wasn’t a wording made up in retrospect: that was exactly what his father said. And the shop assistant didn’t react to the last comment: “We should send the whole lot packing.” He might have smiled or nodded, but he didn’t say anything. Then they’d bought the bicycle, fixed it to the roof of the car and driven back to Kinna. The memory was crystal clear, but how had he reacted at the time? He’d been full of enthusiasm about the long hoped-for bike. He remembered the smell of the shop – rubber and oil. Nevertheless, he remembered something else he’d felt at the time – not that his father thought the gypsies and Yugoslavs ought to be sent packing, but the fact that his father had expressed an opinion. A political opinion. That was so unusual.

  When he was growing up, nothing had ever been discussed among the family apart from insignificant matters. What to have for dinner, whether the lawn needed mowing, what colour they ought to choose for the kitchen table cloth they were going to buy. There was one exception: music. That was something they could talk about.