The Return of the Dancing Master Read Online Free PDF Page A

purely by chance, he’d gotten to know a young man devoted to motocross. He’d become this man’s assistant and spent a few years traveling around racetracks the length and breadth of central Sweden. But he tired of that eventually and returned to Kinna, where his parents welcomed him with open arms, the return of the prodigal son. He still didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life, but then he happened to meet a policeman from Malmö who was visiting some mutual friends in Kinna. And the thought struck Lindman: maybe I should become a police officer? He thought it over for a few days, and made up his mind to at least give it a try.
    His parents received his decision with a degree of unease, but Lindman pointed out that there were police officers in Kinna—he wouldn’t need to move away.
    He set out immediately to turn his decision into reality. The first thing he did was to go back to school and earn some more academic credits. Since he was so eager, it had been easier than he’d expected. He occasionally worked as a substitute school caretaker in order to earn his keep.
    To his surprise he’d been accepted by the police academy on his first attempt. The training hadn’t caused him any problems. He hadn’t been outstanding in any way, but had been among the better ones in his year. One day he’d come back home to Kinna in uniform and
announced that he would be working in Borås, just forty kilometers down the road.
    For the first few years he’d commuted from Kinna, but when he fell in love with one of the girls at the police station, he moved into Boras. They lived together for three years. Then one day, out of the blue, she announced that she had met a man from Trondheim and was moving there. Lindman had taken the development in stride. He’d realized that their relationship was beginning to bore him. It was a little like going back to his childhood. What intrigued him, though, was how she could have met another man and started an affair without Lindman noticing.
    By then he’d reached the age of thirty, almost without noticing it. Then his father had a heart attack and died, and a few months later his mother died as well. The day after her funeral he’d posted a personal ad in the local paper. He had four replies, and met the women one after the other. One of them was a Pole who had lived in BorÃ¥s for many years. She had two grown-up children, and worked as a meal supervisor at the high school. She was nearly ten years older than Lindman, but they never really noticed the difference. He couldn’t understand at first what there was that had immediately attracted him to her, made him fall in love with her. Then it dawned on him: she was completely ordinary. She took life seriously, but didn’t fuss about anything unnecessarily. They had started a relationship, and for the first time in his life Lindman discovered that he could feel something for a woman that was more than lust. Her name was Elena and she lived in Norrby. He used to spend the night there several times a week.
    It was there, one day, while he was in the bathroom, that he discovered he had a strange lump on his tongue.
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    He interrupted his train of thought. He was in front of the hospital. It was still drizzling. It was 7:56 by his watch. He walked past the hospital and speeded up. He had made up his mind to walk around it twice, and that was what he was going to do.
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    It was 8:30 by the time he sat down in the cafeteria with a cup of coffee and the local paper. But he didn’t read a word, and never touched his coffee.
    He was scared stiff by the time he got as far as the doctor’s door. He
knocked and went in. The doctor was a woman. He tried to work out from her face what he could expect: a death sentence, or a reprieve? She gave him a smile, but that only confused him. Did it denote uncertainty, sympathy, or relief at not needing to tell somebody