Free The Return of the Dancing Master by Henning Mankell

in the front door lock. If he had thought for a second that the man outside was the murderer, he shed it now. The man who had killed Molin would hardly have his frontdoor key.
    The door opened. The man paused in the entrance to the living room. He was holding the gun pointing down at his side. Lindman saw that it was a shotgun.
    â€œThere’s not supposed to be anybody here,” the man said. “But there is.”
    He spoke slowly and distinctly, but not like the girl at the hotel reception desk. His dialect was different. Lindman couldn’t tell what it was.
    â€œI knew the dead man.”
    The stranger nodded. “I believe you,” he said. “I just wonder who you are.”
    â€œHerbert Molin and I worked together for several years. He was a police officer, and I still am.”
    â€œThat’s about all I know about Herbert,” said the man. “That he’d been a police officer.”
    â€œWho are you?” The man gestured to Lindman, suggesting that they should go outside. He nodded towards the empty dog pen. “I think I knew Shaka better than I knew Herbert,” he said. “Nobody knew Herbert.”
    Lindman looked at the dog pen, then at the man. He was bald, in his
sixties, tall, thin, and dressed in bib overalls, a jacket, and rubber boots. He turned his gaze from the dog pen and looked at Lindman.
    â€œYou wonder who I am,” he said. “Why I have a key. And a shotgun.”
    Lindman nodded.
    â€œIn these parts distances are long. I don’t suppose you met many cars on the way here. I bet you didn’t see many people either. I live about ten kilometers away, but even so I was one of Herbert’s nearest neighbors.”
    â€œWhat sort of work do you do?”
    The man smiled. “Isn’t it usual to ask a man first his name,” he said, “and then what he does?”
    â€œMy name’s Stefan Lindman, police officer in BorÃ¥s. Where Herbert used to work.”
    â€œAbraham Andersson. But around here they call me Dunkarr, because I live at a farm called Dunkarret.”
    â€œSo are you a farmer?”
    The man laughed and spat into the gravel. “No,” he said. “I don’t care for agriculture. Nor forestry. Well, I go into the forest, but not to cut down trees. I play the violin. I was in the symphony orchestra in Helsingborg for twenty years. Then one day I simply felt I’d had enough. And moved up here. I still play sometimes. Mostly to keep my fingers moving. Old violinists can have problems with their joints if they stop just like that. In fact, that was how I met Herbert.”
    â€œHow so?”
    â€œI take my violin into the forest. I settle down where the trees are densest. The violin sounds different there. At other times I go up a mountain, or to a lakeside. The sound is always different. After all those years in a concert hall it’s as if I’ve got a new instrument in my hands.” He pointed at the lake that was just visible through the trees. “I was standing down there, playing away. Mendelssohn’s violin concerto, I think it was, the second movement. Then Herbert appeared with his dog. Wondered what the hell was going on. I can understand him. Who expects to find an old fellow in a forest playing a violin? Plus he was upset because I was trespassing on his land. But we became friends after that. Or whatever you would call it.”
    â€œWhat do you mean by that?”
    â€œI don’t suppose anybody became a friend of Herbert’s.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œHe bought this house in order to be in peace. But you can’t entirely
cut yourself off from other people. After a year or so, he told me that there was a spare key on a hook in the shed. I don’t know why.”
    â€œBut you used to see a little of each other socially?”
    â€œNo. He let me play down by the lake whenever I wanted. To tell you the truth, I never set foot in this house