The Demon of Dakar

by Kjell Eriksson

  “I’ve never spent this long in Uppsala. I usually make do with the town,” Viola said, and Ann gathered she was referring to Öregrund. “During my entire life I’ve been to Uppsala perhaps twenty or so times, but never for this long.”

  She fell silent and looked out the window.

  “They are building so much,” she said, and took on a look of satisfaction. Ann sensed that she was thinking of Edvard.

  What joy she had received from Edvard. She must have thanked her lucky stars countless times for that evening when Edvard had come knocking and asked if he could rent a room.

  “It’s time for me to leave,” Ann said. “Are you sleeping well?”

  Viola chuckled.

  “That was a question,” she said. “Go on, get out here and catch some thieves.”

  Ann put her chair back and walked to the door, turning when she was halfway. The old woman was looking at her. Ann quickly went back, leaned down, and gave her a clumsy hug. Then she left without saying anything else and without turning back.

  She felt that it was the last time she would see Viola. “Go on, get out here and catch some thieves.” At the start of their friendship Viola had openly expressed her disapproval over the fact that Ann was a police officer. She said it was not a suitable occupation for a woman. Now Ann interpreted her last comment as a sign of approval. Perhaps it was her way of saying that she liked Ann despite everything, despite what she had done, in betraying and hurting Viola’s adored Edvard. Ann had always had a feeling, which admittedly had grown weaker with time, of inferiority to the old woman. It was not only her awe-inspiring age, her stubborn strength, and independence that inspired this feeling, but also the fact that she had lived and continued to live a life outside society.

  In some obscure way this both appealed to and frightened Ann. It was probably her guilty conscience playing tricks. She had left Ödeshög and her parents, sick of the duck pond that her home town was in her eyes, and bored by her parents, whose only goal in life appeared to be keeping the spirea hedge in top form.

  She was about twenty years old when she left Östergötland for the Police Academy. Contact with her parents had been sporadic since then. At the end of June, when she had gone down there for a week, she had started to miss Uppsala after only one night.

  Ann Lindell was upset but did not know how to sort out her thoughts, much less draw any conclusions and formulate goals. There was too much at stake, her own life, Erik’s, work, Edvard, her parents—everything had been brought to the surface by her visit to the hospital.

  She decided to push these thoughts aside. She had techniques for this. Right now the solution had the name of Berglund.

  Berglund had gone home! Lindell listened astonished to Ottosson’s account of Berglund coming down with a migraine.

  “That’s never happened before, has it?”

  “No,” Ottosson replied. “I can’t remember the last time Berglund was sick. Some time in the eighties, I think.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing. I was the one who sent him home and he didn’t protest. He was as pale as a corpse. Allan gave him a ride.”

  “Oh,” Lindell said, in a defeated voice.

  “Was there anything in particular?”

  “I was going to check on something, a name that turned up.”

  Lindell told him how Berglund had mentioned in passing a crook who had recently come into money and how the same name had now turned up in connection with the case in Sävja.

  “Rosenberg,” Ottosson said. “Yes, he’s a jewel of a guy. I knew his father. He was part of the gang at the Weather Vane, an old beer hall on Salagatan. They tore it down about six months after I started patrolling. There was another joint on Salagatan, Cafe 31, there was an old lady by the name of Anna who … she lived, if I remember correctly, almost at the top of Ymergatan, you know, on the same street as Little John, you know, grew up. There was a Konsum grocery store there that had damned good fresh buns, fifteen öre a piece or if—It’s almost a pity that places like the Weather Vane fold, because—The stores were packed so tightly back then. There was a Konsum store on Väderkvarnsgatan as well, and then a Haages Livs grocery on Torkelsgatan, up by Törnlundsplan there was also something, what was their name? … Brodd or something like that, and then Ekdahls at the corner of Ymergatan and St. Göransgatan, and then the milk-and-bread store in Tripolis. You see! All within five minutes’ walk from one another.”

  Ottosson lost himself in revery. Lindell had to laugh.

  “I should have known,” she said.

  “But I don’t associate Rosenberg with violence and definitely not with big business,” Ottosson resumed.

  “Maybe it’s worth checking into anyway,” Lindell said and told him about Liljendahl’s observation that a knife was involved in both cases.

  “Well,” Ottosson said, “I think that’s pushing it. We have a lot of conflicts where knives are involved.”

  “I’m still going to have someone check up on Rosenberg. In any case, it would be amusing to find out what has made him so conspicuously rich. Have you heard anything about Haver’s excursion to the camping spot by the river?”

  “He called and wanted you to call him back.”

  “I had my phone turned off at the hospital. What did he say?”

  “That the camper may have been our man.”

  Lindell hurried to her office and dialed Haver’s number.

  He sounded pleased, almost excited, and he had good reason to be. They had most likely located the scene of the crime, a small clearing perhaps some twenty square meters concealed behind a thicket and a large mound of rubble, not visible from the road, perhaps four hundred meters north of the place the body was found, and some one hundred meters from the river.

  The technicians had almost immediately isolated samples from the ground of what they believed to be blood, and also traces of what most likely was urine.

  Apparently one or more persons had occupied the site for several days. A rectangle of flattened grass suggested the presence of a tent. The surrounding area was trampled, there were broken twigs and the remains of a fire. A veritable feast for the forensic team.

  Valdemar Husman, who had alerted the police, had nothing to say about the person or persons who might have been camping. He had only noticed something peeking out of the vegetation, and had assumed it was a tent. He explained that he had not approached it further so as not to appear curious, and not to get “dragged into anything.”

  “What did he mean by that?” Lindell asked.

  “I don’t know,” Haver answered. “He didn’t say.”

  “I mean, did he have a suspicion that something illegal was going on? Did he hear or see anything that appeared suspicious?”

  “Neither. He simply didn’t want to get involved.”

  “A little more curiosity wouldn’t hurt,” Lindell said. “Will you be there for a while?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t have much to do here. Morgansson and the rest are the ones who are busy. They’re thinking of erecting a tarp over the site in case it rains.”

  “Okay, but can we hope for a little DNA?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Then the question is, what was Armas doing there? Did he go willingly or was he forced?”

  “I’ll let you figure that one out,” Haver said.

  After she hung up, Ann Lindell sat absolutely still and stared into space.

  “Who camps out?” she muttered.

  Tourists or young people seemed most likely.

  The site was private and probably chosen with care.

  “Okay, you come to this city for murky business,” she said out loud. “You are careful not to be seen in a hotel or even at a public campsite. Instead, you camp in the forest, but you are so clumsy you leave a corpse and numerous traces behind.”

  She shook her head. Something didn’t make sense.

  She went over to Ottosson and recounted what Haver had told her, and added her ow
n thoughts.

  “Maybe the perp couldn’t afford to stay in a hotel,” Ottosson said.

  “What kind of murderer is that?” Lindell exclaimed.

  “Most people don’t stay in hotels,” Ottosson said with a grin.

  The rest of the day was spent reviewing the material that had been collected. This had to be done, but above all Lindell felt a need to be alone. More and more she suffered an almost claustrophobic feeling in her dealings with people, whether at work, in meetings at Erik’s day care, or in situations where the room was small and the number of people large.

  There were reports from questionings, an initial overview of Slobodan Andersson’s business dealings, and the autopsy report.

  Armas’s personal history was still missing. Slobodan Andersson had contributed a part, but much of his early life was still unknown.

  Lindell heard Ola Haver return, and could hear him and Fredriksson chatting in the corridor. Her thoughts went to Berglund. She decided to wait until the following day. If he didn’t come in to work she would call him at home.

  Twenty-Eight

  The call was received at two twenty-two in the afternoon. The fire-fighting unit at the Viktoria fire station, just east of the city, arrived on the scene seven minutes later, but at that point there was not much more to do other than keeping the fire from spreading into the adjacent areas.

  The closest neighbor, who had discovered the fire when he returned from a mushroom-picking trip in the forest, had hauled his garden hose over, which did not reach more than halfway. If he pinched the nozzle, however, he was able to drizzle water onto the shed.

  The firefighters thanked him for his efforts but then asked him to move out of the way.

  “Do you know if there are people inside?” the fire chief asked him.

  “I don’t think so,” the neighbor said.

  The cottage, which had been constructed with sugar crates, burned down in about twenty minutes. The shed was saved but a shower of sparks lit a few fires at the edge of the woods. These were quickly extinguished.

  “Just as well that piece of shit burns down,” the neighbor said and gathered up his hose, “but it’s lucky it didn’t explode. I think they have kerosene in there.”

  The fire chief reacted immediately by ordering all onlookers to stand at least one hundred meters back. He physically shoved the neighbor away and did not let him collect his hose.

  “How fucking stupid can you be?” he said to his coworker.

  The patrol unit, which had arrived ten minutes after the firefighters, went around methodically questioning the onlookers who were gathered in a group on the road. No one turned out to have any useful information to contribute that could explain how the fire had started. No one had seen or heard anything. People rarely came out to the cottage. No one was sure who owned it.

  “It must be one of the dynamiter’s sons,” an older man said. “The Rosenbergs, there are quite a number of them. Try Åke, I think he’s the oldest.”

  “Have you seen him here lately?” the police officer asked.

  “He came out when the chimney sweep was here, but that was at least a year ago. We exchanged a few words. He’s in the explosives business, just like his father.”

  The fire chief walked up and took the police officer aside.

  “It’s arson,” he said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Fairly. The house isn’t wired so it can’t be electric. And we saw a ten-liter container in there. We haven’t checked it carefully yet because it has to cool down first. Apparently there’s a kerosene tank in there. That’s what the neighbor thought. But the container was the first thing we saw. It was located in full view on the metal plate in front of the woodstove.

  “Could it be someone who simply wanted to start a fire in a hurry?”

  “That wouldn’t surprise me,” the chief said, “but why start a fire in this weather?”

  “To put on a pot of coffee?”

  “According to the neighbor they cooked on a kerosene stove.”

  The officer nodded.

  “I’ll call forensics,” he said. “Are you sure no one was left in there?”

  “I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think so.”

  Åke Rosenberg was contacted. He was in the middle of a blasting job in Mehedeby in north Uppland. He confirmed that he was the one who owned the cottage but said he had not been there since the spring.

  “I come out twice a year to rake leaves and do basic maintenance.”

  “Does anyone else have access to the cottage?”

  “No,” Åke Rosenberg lied. “It must be some young devil who did it. I’ll come by tomorrow when I get back to town.”

  As soon as they finished, he called his brother Konrad. Åke was angry, but also pleased. The cottage was insured and now he was spared the task of pulling it down—something he had been planning to do for years. He had toyed with the idea of building a house and moving out there.

  “When were you there last?” he asked Konrad.

  “Where?”

  Konrad sensed that something was up and had a deep fear of his brother.

  “Answer the question!”

  “It must have been awhile,” Konrad said.

  “It’s burned down. According to the cops only soot is left. I thought you might have set it on fire. It wouldn’t have surprised me in any case.”

  Konrad Rosenberg sank down on the hall floor. A fortune up in smoke.

  “I said nothing to the cops about you spending time there. I thought that was best. One never knows what you get up to with your drinking buddies. So keep your mouth shut, otherwise there can be problems with the insurance company.”

  “Sure,” Konrad said faintly and hung up.

  It took him an hour to work up enough courage to call Slobodan Andersson.

  Twenty-Nine

  What is happening? Slobodan Andersson wondered. First Armas and now this.

  Never before had anyone treated Slobodan Andersson in this way, but now he was too alarmed to be really angry. This development put Armas’s death in a new light. It had not been a robbery-related killing, an accident that he died. And how could anyone know about the cottage?

  Konrad Rosenberg assured him he had said nothing and Slobodan was inclined to believe him. Even if Rosenberg was a zero he was smart enough not to reveal the source of his wealth.

  Could it have been a coincidence that the house burned down only an hour or so after he and Rosenberg had been there? And now the cop was coming to see him. Did they suspect anything. Did they see a connection between the murder and the fire?

  Slobodan walked to his window and looked out. On the other side of the railway there was group of schoolchildren on bikes with a teacher in the lead. An older man was walking his dog and a couple of women turned the corner toward the center of town. Long rows of cars were parked in the parking lot below his window. Everything appeared normal and yet it wasn’t. Someone, or more than one, was out to get him.

  Suddenly it struck him that there were only three people who had known about the cottage: Rosenberg, Armas, and himself. Had Armas revealed the hiding place to anyone?

  The thought was so inconceivable that he immediately dismissed it, but the very fact that it had appeared depressed him even further. After pouring himself a large cognac, he found himself back at the window, staring at the cars and the passersby.

  Had someone followed him and Rosenberg to the cottage? He took a swallow of cognac. There were too many questions. Take it easy, he told himself, take the questions one by one, that’s what Armas would have done. Grief for his friend burned in his chest like acid. The taste of cognac in his mouth made him nauseated, but even so he returned to the wet bar and refilled his glass. The doorbell rang at the same moment that he raised the snifter to his lips, making him jump, spilling some cognac on his shirt. Then he remembered about the female officer.

  “I’m coming!” he yelled automatically, as if he had been caught red-handed. He
looked out the window to the parking lot. It would not have surprised him if it had been full of blue-and-white patrol cars.

  Ann Lindell was alone. That soothed his nerves somewhat. At the last visit he had been irritated by the other officer’s presence, how he sneakily moved around beyond Slobodan’s field of vision.

  Now he had control. He placed her in the white sofa that was expensive and contemporary but in which it was completely impossible to sit comfortably and at ease.

  She smiled, but not particularly warmly, and, without any small talk, started to ask him if he had thought of anything new on top of what he had already told them.

  He shook his head. “Say as little as possible” went through his head, and the idea reassured him. They know nothing, they are fumbling in the dark and trying to get more information from me.

  “We think we know where Armas died,” Lindell said. “Was murdered,” she added.

  He waited for more, but it didn’t come. Instead she posed a new question.

  “Could Armas have been involved in things that were unknown to you?

  “Excuse me, but I don’t remember your first name,” Slobodan said.

  “Ann, Ann Lindell.”

  He nodded.

  “Could this have been the case?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Lindell repeated the question and Slobodan read from her expression that he could not drive her too far.

  “No,” he said firmly. “I knew Armas as well as myself. He was a friend, like a brother to me.”

  Lindell sat quietly for a moment. Slobodan glanced down at his chest. The cognac stain bothered him.

  “Even brothers can let you down,” she said, but did not proceed to develop this thought, simply continuing with her somewhat haphazard line of questioning. “I was thinking of the tattoo. Isn’t it strange that you, if you were as close as you say, did not know what it represented? You must have seen it on numerous occasions. Weren’t you curious?”

  “Armas was my friend, not my partner or someone I snuggled with. He was reserved but unquestionably loyal.”