The Demon of Dakar aka The Demon from Dakar

Fifty

The police had distributed an advisory to the public after Armas’s murder, asking the public to notify them if anyone had seen a blue BMW. It was a relatively exclusive car, and an uncommon model, so Lindell was surprised that no one had called in.

But after a week, Algot Andersson, a retired hardware store owner, called the police and was put through to Ann Lindell.

All summer he had been busy renovating an old schooner that he had hauled up out of the water off the Fyris river, and he had seen something that might “be of interest to the police.”

A little way down from his work area, something had suddenly turned up. A blue tarp, pulled over something that he at first believed to be a boat. He knew the family that used that space, knew they were on a long sail trip and that they would not be back until the end of September.

Therefore, the tarp had caused him some consternation from the outset, and he had speculated about what the Gardenståhls had allowed to be erected in their space.

After a week, his curiosity had won over his desire not to be nosy, and when he had checked under the tarp, he had found a car.

“There’s something not right about it,” Algot Andersson said. “I thought I had better call in.”

“You did the right thing,” Lindell said, convinced that they had finally located Armas’s car.

Andersson had not made a note of the license plate number, but both the color and make corresponded.

The boat club dock was on the Fyris river, close to the southern industrial area and the area upstream from it where Armas had been found bobbing among the reeds.

“I’m still here and can check the license plate for you,” Algot Andersson offered. “Hang on!”

Lindell heard static on the line and imagined the man approaching the car with agile steps. She imagined him looking like an older version of Berglund.

“Hello,” he said, and quickly recited the number.

“I could kiss you,” she said.

She called Ryde at forensics, but it was Charles Morgansson who picked up.

“Eskil had to go to a funeral today,” he explained.

Lindell told him about the car find and the technician promised to go down to the Fyris river right away. Lindell, who had been planning to go down there herself but who definitely did not want to bump into her ex-lover, informed him that he would be working with Ola Haver.

“How is everything?” Morgansson asked.

She knew he didn’t mean work, but she still chose to tell him about the situation of the case. Morgansson took the hint and did not ask further questions.

Lindell called Haver, who was pleased to have a reason to leave the building. Thereafter she read Beatrice’s summary of Armas’s life. It had been lying on her desk for a day or so, but now she pulled herself together and read through the brief report.

Armas’s background was murky, to say the least. He was probably born to Armenian parents in Paris, but there was also information that suggested Trieste, Italy, as his birthplace.

He had claimed to have been born in 1951. He had come to Sweden eighteen years ago and immediately found work at the shipbuilding company Kockums in Malmö. In France he had apparently trained as a welder. After six months at the shipyard, he most likely left the country, but returned in 1970 and was hired at Club Malibu in Helsingborg.

Beatrice had put in a great deal of effort in tracing his career, but there were many gaps and questions. He was convicted of assault in the mid-seventies and was sentenced to eight months in prison. It was a matter of a fight in a nightclub. It was the only occasion on which he was seriously in trouble with the law.

After serving his sentence he again disappeared from view only to reemerge many years later when he moved to Uppsala at the same time as Slobodan Andersson.

His income the past several years had been even but not excessive. The most recent information indicated a taxable income of just two hundred thousand. He had been cited by the tax authority thirteen times, but all notations were in regards to small sums. Fourteen parking tickets and a speeding fine were also registered.

Lindell sighed. In spite of Bea’s efforts there was nothing to go on. Not a word of any son. No information that was useful in their current situation. Nothing.

Irritably, she tossed the report aside, took out her notebook, and flipped through her notes from the past few days but had no new ideas. And she knew why: her thoughts were at the Fyris river and Armas’s car. She should be there.

Given a lack of anything else to do, she called Barbro Liljendahl, who answered on the first signal.

“Great! I had been thinking of calling you. I’ve checked out Rosenberg. He is a regular at Dakar.”

This was not news to Lindell, who had seen him there in the company of Lorenzo Wader.

“How did you find out?”

“I talked to Måns Fredriksson. He works in the bar and is the son of my sister’s neighbor. I was over at my sister’s having a cup of coffee. She has a patio and the neighbor was sitting out on her patio with her son. We started to talk and I don’t know how it came up but we started talking about the Armas murder and then Måns told us that he worked at Dakar.”

Lindell chuckled. This is how it is, she thought, the harvest of fate.

“Måns said that Rosenberg and Slobodan Andersson know each other. Rosenberg tends to hang at the bar and talk a lot of nonsense. Måns doesn’t like him, I could tell.”

“How did you manage to get on to Rosenberg?”

“It was easy,” Liljendahl said, but did not reveal how she had done it.

“How is Rosenberg? What does he talk about?”

“Deals. He wants to give the impression that he is a successful businessman. Likes to brag. Always leaves a big tip, but in a way that draws attention to it.”

“Has the bartender seen Rosenberg and Slobodan together?”

“Definitely,” Barbro Liljendahl said. “They not only know each other, they are friends. At least that is Måns’s impression.”

“What did he say about your curiosity, I mean, how did you explain your interest?” Lindell asked; she had the feeling that her colleague was using Armas’s murder-a case that was not on her desk-as a way to get Rosenberg. Maybe also to show off.

“I lay very low,” Barbro Liljendahl said, most likely sensitive to the unspoken critique.

The hell you did, Lindell thought, but was nonetheless grateful for the information. That Konrad Rosenberg was no choirboy had already been established, but a connection between him and Slobodan Andersson was candy.

“Can there be drugs involved?”

“Why is someone like Slobodan tight with someone like Rosenberg? Drugs is the only thing he knows,” Liljendahl said.

Lindell took her words as a kind of redemption. The Armas investigation had never really gathered momentum, no self-evident motives had been uncovered, the background investigation was idling, no crucial witnesses had been heard from, and the questioning that had been undertaken had not really provided any breakthroughs. The only elements of interest thus far were the removal of the tattoo and the video.

Now Liljendahl’s words provided them with a background against which they could proceed. Drugs could be a motive to the murder. The tattoo was a piece of the puzzle, and probably also the video, but Lindell did not understand how they all hung together.

After the phone call, Lindell pulled out her notebook again, drew new circles and arrows, and tried to create a believable chain of events.

The telephone rang. She saw that it was Haver and answered.

“Clean as a whistle,” he said. “There was not a single thing in the car that gives us an idea. We’ll have to see if the technicians find anything. It seems Armas was packed and ready for Spain. Two small suitcases and a shoulder bag in the trunk. As far as I can tell they haven’t been touched. That speaks against robbery.”

Lindell heard voices in the background.

“Are you still at the marina?”

“Yes, but I’m leaving as soon as we’ve arranged for transportation. We’ll have to examine the car in the garage.”

“No traces outside the car?”

“Morgansson is looking into that right now, but it’s gravel so the prospects are minimal.”

They ended the call and Lindell continued to scribble in her notebook. Why was the car located so far from the murder scene? Did the killer drive it there? Or had they met there and gone to Lugnet together in the killer’s car? No, she reasoned, it was covered with a tarp. The killer had done everything not to connect it to the scene of the murder, where he had most likely camped, with the car. He wanted as much time as possible to go by before we found it. Lindell decided that the perp must have driven the car there after the murder and had then made his way back to the tent. Maybe he had an accomplice who had given him a ride back? So far everything had indicated a lone killer, but she could not completely rule out an accomplice.

Should she bring in Rosenberg? He was most likely the weakest link. He associated with Slobodan and was familiar with Lorenzo Wader, which was interesting for their colleagues in both Stockholm and Västerås.

She was interrupted in her train of thought by Ottosson. He stepped into her office after a short knock on the door.

“I have bad news,” he said. “Berglund isn’t doing so well.”

Lindell saw his hesitation. She wanted everything to be fine with Berglund, and did not want to hear anything else.

“He has a brain tumor.”

“No!” Lindell exclaimed. “That’s not true!”

“They’ve done one of those scans,” Ottosson said, and proceeded with an account of what he knew.

He kept speaking somewhat disjointedly because the alternative was silence. Lindell listened, and the tears started to run down her cheeks. She mechanically wiped them away. Ottosson finished.

“What happens now?”

“He has an operation on Monday,” Ottosson said.

“Have you talked to him? How is he taking it?”

Ottosson nodded.

“You know how he is. He said to say hello.”

The thoughts surrounding the case, which for several minutes had filled her with optimism and a desire to act, suddenly appeared meaningless. Berglund was her favorite, her mentor, and her walking encyclopedia regarding policework and a general knowledge of Uppsala. Everything would seem meaningless if Berglund was no longer part of their unit.

“Berglund,” Lindell mumbled, and the tears started to flow again.

“We’ll have to hope for the best,” Ottosson said.

She saw that he wanted to say something comforting, as he was always prepared to do, but a brain tumor was a disease of such gravity that not even Ottosson could find words of encouragement.

Once Ottosson had left Lindell’s office, with some reluctance, she remained at her desk, reflective but distracted from all policework. The whole time she saw Berglund before her, his cunning smile, his laughter and the eagerness he could display when he saw interest and understanding in the person he was talking to. She caught herself already regarding him as dead and buried.

It took an hour before she got anything done. She called Beatrice and asked if she could bring in Konrad Rosenberg the following morning.

Haver returned shortly after three. Lindell let him talk, lacking the energy to jump in and tell him about Berglund. He would find out in due course. She remembered a conversation from the lunchroom recently when Berglund had talked about “Sture with the hat” and Rosenberg. Haver’s tone then had been superior, bordering on condescension.

Finally, he left to go down to the garage and join the technicians in examining Armas’s car, and Lindell was happy to be left alone.

Her peace did not last long, however. Sammy Nilsson walked in without knocking and she was on the verge of blasting him for his annoying habit, but then immediately noticed from his expression that he had something important to tell her.

“An escape from the Norrtälje prison this morning,” he started, in his usual abbreviated way. “Four men got out, with armed threats and hostage-taking.”

Lindell stared at him. A break-out in Norrtälje only indirectly involved law enforcement in Uppsala, and was above all a matter for the patrol units and criminal information service.

“One of the guys is of interest,” Nilsson went on. “He’s Mexican.”

Lindell became attentive.

“His name is Patricio Alavez and he was sentenced for illegal trafficking, that is to say, drugs.”

“Cocaine?”

“Yes,” Sammy Nilsson said smugly.

What a day, Lindell thought. Absolutely nothing one week, and then the information starts to rain down on us.

“I heard Johansson, you know that lug of a guy from Storvreta, talk about it down at the communications headquarters. When he said Mexico, my ears perked up.”

“Any traces? Is the hostage-”

“As if swallowed up by the earth. There is some information on a car, most likely an Audi, that drove through Kårsta at high speed, but it hasn’t yielded anything so far.”

“Mexico,” Lindell said. “We’re going to have to take this fucking nice and easy.”

Sammy Nilsson looked at her, at first with surprise, then amusement. Lindell cursed very infrequently.

“I am calm,” he said. “I’m fucking calm.”

Like Lindell, he sensed that they were closing in. She continued her line of reasoning, but without really turning to Sammy. It became a monologue where she was trying to connect all the threads. Connections between the stabbing of Sidström in Sävja, cocaine, and Rosenberg. Nilsson could not clearly see the connections between these events and Slobodan Andersson and Dakar, and he interrupted her. Lindell looked somewhat taken aback, but then told him about Barbro Liljendahl’s case and speculations.

“That’s a lot of arrows,” he said.

He had seen her open notebook on the desk.

“I’ve asked Bea to bring in Rosenberg tomorrow morning, but the question is if we shouldn’t do it right away. And we have to get in touch with Västerås and Stockholm.”

“Why?”

Lindell realized that she hadn’t told him about her visit to Dakar, and she suddenly felt very embarrassed, but Sammy Nilsson simply waved away her explanations about having had too much to do.

“I’ll go with Bea to track down Rosenberg,” Sammy said. “You take on the Stockholm colleagues who are working on this jewel, what’s his name? Lorenzo? Otto will have to check to see if there is more news on the escape. I looked in on him just now but he was just staring into space like some zombie.”

Lindell knew why, but did not want to say anything to Sammy Nilsson and take the edge off his enthusiasm.

“Sounds like a plan,” she simply said, and reached for the phone. “I’ll call Bea back.”