The Demon of Dakar

by Kjell Eriksson

  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.”

  Fifty-One

  Zero nurtured a dream of moving back to Kurdistan, the land that his father had described so many times. There were those who said that Kurdistan was only a dream, which made Zero laughed. When he was in the seventh grade, the teacher had said that this land did not exist. That made Zero angry. That was the time when Zero put up his hand and asked when they were going to read about Kurdistan. After all, they had to study all the other countries, rivers, and mountain ranges.

  “How can a land that exists not exist?” he had asked the teacher.

  “I’m afraid that I don’t understand the question. We have to keep to …”

  Maybe the teacher was convinced that Zero, who otherwise never raised his hand, was trying to mess with him, to cause trouble and confusion.

  Zero stood up from his seat and walked out. Zero’s father was at home, reading. Zero asked him if the country existed. His father lowered the paper and looked at him.

  “In here,” he said and thumped his chest, “Kurdistan is in here. If God wills it, we will move there and build a home. If we can only follow our hearts, I will drive a bus in Kurdistan.”

  He drove a bus in Sweden, most often route 13.

  “That is my lucky number,” he said, and laughed.

  He could not understand the Swedes, a superstitious and unmodern people, and their fear of numbers. He loved buses, and liked to drive route 13.

  Zero was afraid. It was a feeling he had more often now. Mostly he was afraid his father would not make it back from Turkey. At night he dreamed that he rescued his father from prison. He would drive a bus up close to the prison wall, on which his father and his friends had climbed, and then they jumped down into the seats on the bus. When it was full, Zero drove the sixty or so Kurds to freedom. His father sat up at the very front and told him how to drive, pointing to the right and to the left, but never with irritation. His father glowed with pride and he turned to his friends, pointed to the driver, and said that it was his son who was driving. Not his oldest son, admittedly, but his bravest.

  When Zero awoke he was happy at first, but then he grew afraid.

  The fear he felt as he stood in front of the Fyris movie theater was of a different order. Ever since the incident with the drug dealer outside the Sävja school, Zero had moved around with great caution, had not attended school, had hidden himself from his brothers, and had only spoken to his mother on the phone and to Patrik in the community gardens.

  That the man with the Mercedes found him, terrified him. The car had come gliding up, stopped, and waited for Zero, who was on his way to buy some food at the local grocery.

  He understood that they must have great power. Not even his family knew where he was holed up. Was it Patrik who had squealed? Zero did not think so. It was most likely Roger who had been indiscreet. He drank alcohol and took pills every day and was in constant need of money. Zero did not like him, but was allowed to stay in his apartment in Gottsunda in return for running some errands. Maybe he had sold Zero’s location so he could get more alcohol and pills?

  The man in the Mercedes said that everything would be all right, that the old debts were no longer an issue, and that he was forgiven. All they wanted was for him to meet with an important person and apologize.

  He had never been to the Fyris movie theater before, did not even know that it existed, and he did not understand the point of the movies that they were advertising.

  As arranged, Zero stood outside the movie theater for a while before continuing on up the hill. Up ahead he could see tall trees and he knew he was supposed to go to the graveyard.

  He hesitated at the entrance. The graveyard lay before him in complete darkness. There was a strong wind that was causing the trees to toss back and forth as if they were worried about what was going to happen.

  He slipped in through a space in the fence. Gravel crunched underfoot. A sudden crack brought him to a halt, but it was only a branch that had broken
off and was bouncing down through the canopy before landing on a grave.

  Zero walked on. Nothing had been said about who he was to meet or what was going to happen, but he was convinced he was being watched. He rued his decision. He did not like walking among the dead. There was another crack overhead and Zero was convinced he was going to be struck in the head with a branch or be crushed by a falling tree.

  Then he saw someone, partly obscured by gravestones, walking toward him. He stopped a couple of meters from Zero, who could not tell what he looked like except that he was a large man wearing a dark coat and with a hat pulled low over his eyes.

  “Zero?”

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  “It’s good that you came.”

  The stranger’s soft voice in the strong wind forced Zero to walk closer, but the man put up his hand and drew back behind a bush.

  “This is for enough,” he said. “We can speak like this.”

  “Who are you?”

  “That doesn’t matter. I only want to ask you to do something.”

  No, Zero thought, I don’t want you to ask me to do something. But he had no time to protest before the man spoke again. He had a different voice from Sidström, deeper and more firm.

  “I want you to go to the police and tell them what has happened.”

  “Are you a cop?”

  The man let out a laugh.

  “I want you to go to the police and tell them who is selling drugs in this town.”

  “But that’s me!”

  “Who is behind it?”

  “I don’t know that.”

  “But I do,” said the man, and Zero saw his teeth glimmer momentarily in the light.

  “They will kill me.”

  “No, they won’t. You will not have to appear in public.”

  Zero did not know what he meant.

  “No one will have to know that it was you,” the man clarified.

  Zero stared into the darkness and tried to get a sense of what the man looked like. He was no svartskalle, he spoke like a Swede, almost like a teacher.