The Strange Case of the Moderate Extremists Read online

  Praise for Alexander McCall Smith

  “An addictively easy-to-read writer….A great observer of people.”

  —The Guardian

  “[McCall Smith’s] writing is soothing, elegant, understated, beguiling, joyous, engaging, charming and extremely funny; he is an understanding, witty writer; he employs a sly humour; and he’s a treasure….His books are beach books, they are airport books, they are summer and winter books, they are books that make you want to embrace life.”

  —The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

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  —The Telegraph (London)

  “If Dr. McCall Smith didn’t exist, we should have had to invent him. He is that rare creature known as a storyteller.”

  —The Washington Times

  Alexander McCall Smith

  The Strange Case of the Moderate Extremists

  Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency novels and a number of other series and stand-alone books. His works have been translated into more than forty languages and have been bestsellers throughout the world. He lives in Scotland.

  ALSO BY ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH

  In The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Series

  The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

  Tears of the Giraffe

  Morality for Beautiful Girls

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  The Full Cupboard of Life

  In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

  Blue Shoes and Happiness

  The Good Husband of Zebra Drive

  The Miracle at Speedy Motors

  Tea Time for the Traditionally Built

  The Double Comfort Safari Club

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  The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection

  The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon

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  The Colors of All the Cattle

  In The Isabel Dalhousie Series

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  The Perils of Morning Coffee (ebook only)

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  A Distant View of Everything

  The Quiet Side of Passion

  In the Detective Varg Series

  The Department of Sensitive Crimes

  In the Corduroy Mansion Series

  Corduroy Mansions

  The Dog Who Came in from the Cold

  A Conspiracy of Friends

  In the Portuguese Irregular Verbs Series

  Portuguese Irregular Verbs

  The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs

  At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances

  Unusual Uses for Olive Oil

  In the 44 Scotland Street Series

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  Bertie Plays the Blues

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  Bertie’s Guide to Life and Mothers

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  A Time of Love and Tartan

  Other Works

  The Girl Who Married a Lion and Other Tales from Africa

  La’s Orchestra Saves the World

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  The Forever Girl

  Fatty O’Leary’s Dinner Party (ebook only)

  Emma: A Modern Retelling

  Chance Developments

  My Italian Bulldozer

  The Good Pilot Peter Woodhouse

  The Strange Case of the Moderate Extremists

  A Detective Varg Story

  Alexander McCall Smith

  A Vintage Short

  Vintage Books

  A Division of Penguin Random House LLC

  New York

  Copyright © 2019 by Alexander McCall Smith

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The Cataloging-in-Publication Data for The Strange Case of the Moderate Extremists is available from the Library of Congress.

  Vintage eShort ISBN 9781984898524

  Cover based on a design by Kelly Blair

  www.vintagebooks.com

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  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Also by Alexander McCall Smith

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One: Compulsory Bergman

  Chapter Two: I’ll Never Learn Salsa Now

  Chapter Three: The Criminal Use of Laxatives

  Chapter Four: Four O’clock—in Your Saab

  Chapter Five: He Hates Me

  Chapter Six: Meeting Kitty

  Chapter Seven: Merino Underpants

  Chapter Eight: It Reminded Her of What Sweden Used to Be

  Chapter One

  Compulsory Bergman

  When Ulf Varg, a senior member of Malmö’s Department of Sensitive Crimes, awoke that morning he was aware that he had been dreaming. Like most sound sleepers, he tended to remember only those dreams that visited in the final moments of sleep. There were scientific reasons for this, he believed, once explained to him by his long-term psychotherapist, Dr. Svensson. It had to do with sleep cycles and rapid-eye movements, Dr. Svensson had said, and although Ulf had listened attentively he had quickly forgotten what it was that dictated the memorability, or otherwise, of our nightly subconscious fantasies.

  “How strange that I should forget what you told me about the process of forgetting,” Ulf mused.

  To which Dr. Svensson, smiling enigmatically, had said, “Nothing is strange, Mr. Varg. Don’t forget that.”

  That morning, though, as he was licked into wakefulness by his dog, Martin, who had leapt on to his bed and applied his tongue to his master’s still pillow-bound face, Ulf recalled very clearly the subject of his fading dream. And the setting, too, which was his uncle’s place on the outskirts of Stockholm, a rambling late-nineteenth-century house surrounded by a thick gr
owth of birch trees. Such establishments, with their generous grounds and rus in urbe privacy, had become increasingly rare as Stockholm grew outwards from the centre; some of them had lost their gardens, sacrificed for the erection of smaller dwellings; others had become institutions of one sort or another—the homes of learned societies, private clinics, embassies. Ulf’s uncle Maksimilian, though, had possessed the means to keep his house exactly as it was when he bought it, even though, as a bachelor, he had no need of all five bedrooms that the house boasted on the ground floor, nor of the six on the floor above that.

  Ulf did not come from a wealthy family. His own father, Ture Varg, had been a man of modest means, an autodidact who had spent much of his life working as the doorman of a Malmö hotel. Like his brother, Maksimilian Varg had also started in a humdrum job, but in his spare time had studied assiduously for a chemistry degree. A few years after graduating, and while still a young man, he had invented a chemical formula for a process that made the dyeing of cloth both cheaper and easier. He had the foresight and the persistence to patent this, and had soon been in a position to buy a substantial house and to equip it with a private cinema, a former billiard room, in which he installed a projector and a dozen luxurious theatre seats, upholstered in plush velvet. The sellers of the house, a couple of aristocratic background, had sneered when they heard what the new owner had done. “I had no idea,” said the husband, “that our house would become a cinema. Whatever next? A bordello, perhaps?”

  From an early age, Ulf and his younger brother, Bjorn, arrived every summer from Malmö to spend three weeks with their uncle Maksimilian. They looked forward eagerly to these holidays, as Maksimilian always indulged them shamelessly, allowing the boys to gorge on sweet treats strictly rationed at home—elaborate ice cream sundaes, chocolate tarts and so on—and letting them ride their bicycles without supervision in the grounds of the house and in the neighbouring streets. Being with Uncle Maksimilian was a time of great freedom—a time of adventure and excitement that was marred by only one thing—the cinematography of Ingmar Bergman.

  Maksimilian had many women friends, and the boys quite understandably became confused as to which of these friends were in favour at any particular time. But one or two seemed to be on especially close terms with their uncle, and were often mysteriously present at breakfast. These friends the boys were encouraged to address as Aunt. So there was Aunt Ingrid, Aunt Anneke, and Aunt Birgitte, all of whom they got to know quite well and who indulged them almost as much as did their generous uncle. Of these three, Aunt Birgitte seemed to enjoy particular status within the household. She was a good cook and would divide her time between the kitchen, from which enticing cooking smells would emanate for much of the day, and the sauna, where she spent long spells with Uncle Maksimilian. The boys were forbidden to use the sauna while the adults were in it, but they would sometimes stand outside and hear the laughter coming from within. It struck Ulf as strange that people could spend so long in that dry and rasping heat, with nothing else to do but talk.

  “It’s because they’re in love,” said Bjorn. “Uncle Maksimilian is in love with Aunt Birgitte. That is why he likes to sit with her in the sauna.”

  And when they went back to their parents in Malmö and told them that Uncle Maksimilian spent hours in the sauna with Aunt Birgitte, their mother raised an eyebrow while their father simply laughed, and said, “If you invent a chemical formula, then that’s what you can do.” Ulf did not understand that remark, and nor did Bjorn.

  The one drawback to those halcyon days at Uncle Maksimilian’s house was the showing of the Bergman films in the private cinema. Uncle Maksimilian had purchased, at considerable expense, prints of the entire Bergman oeuvre, and these were shown every other day, immediately before dinner. He knew every frame of these films, every line of dialogue, and every flicker of light from those strange black-and-white scenes. And if he was aware that most of Bergman’s films were strikingly unsuitable for twelve-year-old boys, then he seemed indifferent to this fact, appearing to expect his two nephews to take these interminable showings as a treat. “We are very lucky, aren’t we, boys, to have this little cinema,” he said to the nephews. “What other boys can watch Bergman all by themselves? And without having to pay as well!”

  Even if the boys survived Wild Strawberries and Autumn Sonata, then they were both deeply upset by The Hour of the Wolf, with its harrowing depiction of a descent into madness. That film gave both of them nightmares, although neither spoke to the other about his fear. “Bergman isn’t real,” said Ulf, with false bravado. “It’s all just acting, you know.” And Bjorn, determined not to be taken as less courageous than his older brother, agreed. “Ingmar Bergman doesn’t fool me,” he said. “Not for one moment.”

  And it was of this cinema, and The Hour of the Wolf, that Ulf dreamed, all those years later, when their uncle was long dead, his house sold, and the prints of the Bergman films thrown out by Aunt Birgitte, to whom he had left everything, including the intellectual property rights to the chemical process. He had talked about leaving those to Ulf and Bjorn, but had not got around to making that provision, and they fell into the general estate destined for Aunt Birgitte.

  “She earned it,” said Ulf. “Sitting in the sauna with Uncle Maksimilian for all those years. And watching all that Bergman with him. She earned it.”

  In his dream, Ulf was once again twelve, or thereabouts, and was at Uncle Maksimilian’s house. Bjorn was there too, but only briefly, and there was a strange dog, a shy white creature that was lurking uninvited in the garden. Uncle Maksimilian was clearly amongst the dream’s dramatis personae, presiding over a meal in the dining room, pointing with exaggerated gestures at the Bergman film projected on the wall behind him. There was something disconcerting about the film, and Ulf suddenly realised what this was: he himself was in it. He was playing tennis while a small group of women, dressed in old-fashioned tennis dresses, looked on. Yet any feeling of disquiet was soon replaced by a feeling of relief, almost of triumph. The young women approved of his tennis; they were impressed. That was all that there was to the dream, and yet its effect was quite extraordinary. Ulf felt strangely peaceful—and privileged. It was as if he had been vouchsafed a vision of how the troubles and anxieties of this world might be resolved. But wakefulness dispelled all that; he had experienced no more than a run-of-the-mill dream, and nothing of significance should be read into such things.

  Before breakfast, he took Martin out for his early morning walk. Not far from Ulf’s apartment, tucked away behind a tenement building, was a small park, popular at this hour with the neighbourhood’s dog owners. Both owners and their dogs knew one another here, and exchanged the greetings and messages appropriate to their respective species. It was here that Ulf would meet his near-neighbour, Anders Andersen, a journalist who shared with him an interest in Scandinavian art. Anders was the owner of an overweight terrier who had a cordial, if distant, relationship with Martin.

  It was in his conversation with Anders that the subject of Ulf’s brother, Bjorn, arose—his second appearance that day, the first having been his brief role in Ulf’s dream.

  “I saw your brother, Bjorn, on the television the other night,” said Anders. “He’s quite the fellow, isn’t he?”

  Ulf smiled. Was his brother quite the fellow? Perhaps.

  “He was being interviewed by a friend of mine,” Anders continued. “Interesting.”

  Bjorn Varg was a politician, and Ulf was used to hearing of his exploits from those who saw him on television or heard him on the radio.

  “How did he come across?”

  Anders made a noncommittal gesture. “Not too bad, really. Not that I necessarily agree with all of what he says, of course. Or any of it, for that matter.”

  Ulf did not expect people to agree with Bjorn. For the last two years, his brother had been the leader of a political party, the Moderate Extremists. This was a smal
l party, positioned somewhere on the right, but not so far along that spectrum as to be xenophobic, or worse. The main thrust of their argument was that Sweden had gone soft. What was required, in their view, was the tactical withdrawal of a large part of the welfare state, thus forcing people to adapt and retrain. They were also raucously in favour of spending more on the police and the army, while at the same time cutting the number of civil servants by fifty per cent. Where their extremism became vivid, though, was in their arts policy, under the terms of which they campaigned for the sale of a whole swathe of abstract art currently owned by the National Museum.

  “Why single out conceptual artists?” Ulf once asked. “Don’t you think they have something to say?”

  “No,” said Bjorn. “They have nothing to say to ordinary people. We are the party of ordinary people, you see.”

  Ulf found this assertion highly questionable. “Everybody claims to speak for ordinary people,” he said. “Listen to them: Can you name one political party that doesn’t insist that they have the interests of ordinary people at heart? Name one—just one.”

  Bjorn simply smiled. Ulf had noticed that this was his habitual technique of dealing with questions to which he did not know the answer, or which, if answered, would paint him in a bad light. It was highly effective, as an enigmatic smile somehow suggested that the answer to a question was so obvious that no answer could be required This worked very well on television for some reason, and the audience would be left thinking, “Ah, this man does have all the answers but is not going to waste our time going on about them. Good for him!”

  On this occasion, Bjorn added, “It’s not that we want to sell everything in the National Museum. We’ll keep the Swedish art—the nonconceptual stuff, that is.”