The Demon of Dakar aka The Demon from Dakar

Thirty

Lindell was worried. She had allowed herself to engage in a ridiculous war of words with Slobodan Andersson. It was amateurish and stupid. It worried her because it revealed the extent of her desperation. Armas did not want to take shape. He slid behind a curtain that consisted of an unknown background and such a strict and unimaginative life as to appear almost indecipherable.

To understand the victim was many times the prerequisite for understanding the perpetrator. No one had known Armas fully, she was convinced of this, not even Slobodan.

Who knows me? she thought as she took the walking path along the railway. The intense heat of the past few days had been replaced with large clouds that threatened from all sides. Will there be thunder? No one knows my fear of lightning, she thought, no one except Edvard.

The telephone call from Haver that had prompted her to leave Slobodan Andersson was about the forensic investigation. Some fifty meters from the clearing that they believed to be the scene of the crime, the technicians had found tire marks from a car. The ground was dry and therefore the tracks were unclear, but it was apparent that someone had opened the barbed-wire gate, after following a old path down to the river, and had subsequently parked. The car had been hidden behind a thicket of alders and underbrush.

Lindell went straight to Ola Haver’s office. He had barricaded himself behind piles of papers, his hair on end as it always was when Haver sat lost in deep thought.

“The hardworking Constable Ola Haver,” Lindell said lightly, relieved to escape her own thoughts after the meeting with the restaurant owner.

Haver grinned. Their relationship had only continued to improve after a romantic snag a few years ago. Nothing remained of their earlier attraction. Both of them realized now that it had never been a real infatuation,that what they had felt was simply a result of Lindell’s disappointment over her and Edvard’s relationship and Haver’s frustration with a marriage that appeared to be idling.

“That Morgansson is a sharp bastard,” Haver said, “but you must already know that. I missed the marks but he’s a real pathfinder, quiet as the devil but tracks like an Indian.”

“What do they look like?”

Haver took out several photographs, but they did not say much to Lindell: the faint impression of what could possibly be traces of a car tire.

“That isn’t much,” she said, disappointed.

“Don’t say that,” Haver replied. “We’ll be able to match it to a tire brand, determine how wide the vehicle is, and from there perhaps even identify a specific make and model. It’s already clear that this is a small, narrow car.”

“Why does someone camp?” she started, unsure of where the discussion would lead. “Well, if one is a guest in town and doesn’t want to be visible at a hotel. How do you get to Uppsala? In your own car?”

“Doubtful,” Haver inserted, aware of where she wanted to go. “Why risk being seen in your own car?”

“A rental,” Lindell said.

“A person who camps is probably no Richie Rich,” Haver said. “I mean-”

“If this was an isolated task, to kill Armas, then why the need to camp? He could have gone into town, done the deed, and disappeared.”

“Maybe he had to spy him out first,” Haver said, “and needed a few days. Or the mission is more complicated than that.”

The back-and-forth between Haver and Lindell led to the topic of motive and there they had nothing, even if they could speculate.

“Slobodan became noticeably upset when I brought up the homosexual angle,” Lindell said after a while. “Maybe we should pursue that.”

“A triangle drama, you mean?”

“I don’t know,” Lindell said and shrugged.

They stopped talking, well aware of the fact that it was rarely useful to spin on for too long. Over the years they had developed this style of conducting brief discussions that could later be revisited in more detail.

“Let’s see what the technicians uncover,” Lindell concluded. “Have you heard anything from Berglund?”

“Not a word. Are you worried?”

“Not really,” Lindell said. “But we need him.”

Haver moved the computer mouse and the computer switched to another humming sound before it turned off.

“There was one more thing,” Haver said as Lindell was getting ready to leave.

“Oh?” Lindell said, pausing at the door.

“It was Fälth, the technician, who discovered it.”

“What?” Lindell said, tired of his evasiveness but also irritated at herself for her impatience.

“He noticed part of a branch on the ground, it was close to the tent, and he thought it looked a bit strange. It had been torn off a larger branch at a height of three meters above the ground.”

“How do you tear down a branch that high?” Lindell asked, and watched Haver revel in smugness.

“A bullet,” he said. “And we were damned lucky to find it in a tree trunk.”

“You mean a bullet was fired at the campground?”

Haver nodded.

“Nine millimeters. Fälth dug it out.”

Lindell stared at her colleague.

“I think Armas was armed, fired a shot, missed, and got his throat cut as punishment,” Haver said.

“Only now? Shouldn’t they have spotted this branch before?”

“One might have thought so,” Haver said laconically.

“That makes this a completely different investigation,” Lindell said. “But it could equally well have been the perp who fired the shot?”

“Morgansson doesn’t think so. Look at this and you’ll see,” Haver said and reached for a notepad.

Lindell took a couple of steps closer, increasingly agitated by her colleague’s attitude.

“This is what we think happened. Armas was standing here, facing the tree where they found the bullet, he fired, had his throat slashed, and fell backward. The bloodstains corroborate this.”

“There was no trace of gunpowder on his hands,” Lindell said.

“He was found in the water,” Haver replied.

His smug expression had waned and he looked at Lindell with his former look of mutual understanding.

“Armas had no gun license,” Lindell said.

“How many gangsters do?”

“We have nothing on him.”

“He was a shady character, I am certain of it. This was an armed conflict with the owner of the tent.”

“Slobodan Andersson,” Lindell said thoughtfully, registering the fact that Haver was smiling almost imperceptibly.

“Should we put him under surveillance?”

“No sense,” Lindell said. “If he is involved in any funny business, he’ll be lying low right now. Armas was going to Spain, packed, exchanged money, was ready to leave, and the question is, was the meeting down by the river planned all along, or was it something that just happened?”

“Do we believe it really was a vacation trip, with a few Spanish restaurants planned in on the side, as Slobodan claimed?”

“That’s impossible to verify,” Lindell said.

She walked toward the door, but then turned again.

“Have you ever worked with Barbro Liljendahl?”

“Not really, we worked together a little before I started at violent crimes,” Haver said. “At the time she was a bit, what should I say, fussy. Why do you ask?”

“She’s in charge of a case of a stabbing in Sävja and had some idea that there was a connection to Armas since both crimes were knife-related. Do you happen to know anything about Konrad Rosenberg?”

Haver shook his head, closed a folder, and pushed the papers on his desk together.

“I don’t either. We need a Berglund for that,” Lindell said and went to her office, logged onto her computer, and looked up Konrad Rosenberg.

It was as if she and Haver were involved in two different investigations. Maybe his surprise song-and-dance number was a kind of protest at her way of leading the investigation?

She smiled to herself as Rosenberg’s history slowly printed out. A bullet in a tree was indisputably progress. Before she turned to Rosenberg, she dialed Fälth’s number and felt incredibly generous as she praised the technician for his fine work.

“One needs a Smålander for detail work,” she said. Smålanders were known for their attention to detail, and Lindell wondered if he picked up the compliment.