The Demon of Dakar (40 page)

It was a northerly wind
and it gave Eva a boost across the fields. In spite of this, she wished she had taken the bus. It had driven past her by Lilla Ultuna. Seeing Manuel had frightened her. Not because she was afraid of him but because she had been reminded that there was a dark side to Uppsala, where murder and drugs were everyday things.

She biked with a frenzy that meant she was over the fields in a matter of minutes and arrived, damp with sweat, at Kuggebro, where she was forced to reduce her speed somewhat. Then the trip went uphill, at first a tough slope up past Vilan and then a decidedly steeper one the last stretch before she home.

She had called home at ten o’clock. Hugo had answered. Eva had asked to speak to Patrik to make sure that he was home as well. Now she only had one thought in her mind: to see them both in bed.

She was greeted by a thermos of tea on the kitchen table, a plate of crackers, and a note that Hugo had written wishing her good night.

They were asleep. Patrik lay on his back snoring a little, while Hugo was turned on his stomach, arms outstretched.

Eva returned to the kitchen, draped her jacket on a chair, drank a cup of tea, and munched on a cracker. The encounter with Manuel had stirred up her mind. Her feelings had gone from surprise to anger and from there to sadness. His touch on her cheek and brief kiss had paralyzed her.

She remembered his present, took the sock from her pocket and shook out the contents. It was a hard roll of bills wrapped in a wrinkled note.

She unfurled a bill, one hundred dollars, and then quickly counted the rest. There were fifty one-hundred-dollar notes. She did not know
exactly how much a dollar was worth, but realized she had been given tens of thousands of kronor.

She stared at the note with Manuel’s home address and the neighbor’s telephone number. The nice neighbor.

Before Eva went to bed she counted the money one last time, tucked the bills into an old envelope from the social insurance administration, and hid it in the very back of the utility closet.

Even though she was completely exhausted she couldn’t sleep.

“Manuel,” she ventured in a whisper into the darkness. In a way she now regretted having warned him. If he had gone to Arlanda and been arrested by the police he would have received a trial and perhaps been found not guilty of the murder accusation. It wasn’t inconceivable that Armas … Of course, his brother would wind up back in prison, but Manuel would … If he were found to have committed voluntary manslaughter or whatever it was called.

“Stop it,” she said out loud, tormented by her own loose thoughts, threads that she could not manage to bind together into a satisfying conclusion. She both wanted and did not want him to get caught. The horrifying thing was that she understood him so well. He had lost one brother and the other had received a long prison sentence. Of course Manuel was trying to get him out of the country. How would she have reacted if Hugo or Patrik were in jail in Mexico? Wouldn’t she have done everything in her power to free them, regardless of what they were accused?

After having tried and failed at all the old tricks to conjure sleep, Eva got up and went out to the kitchen. The clock on the wall read half past two. She took out milk and heated a cup in the microwave. Her eyes were constantly drawn to the utility closet. Never before in her life had she had so much cash. She would be able to go wherever she wanted. It would make Helen so curious and not a little envious. But could she keep the money? Where had he got hold of five thousand dollars?

She drank the last of the milk, which had cooled down, got up and walked over to the calendar on the wall. When did the kids have their fall break? It was around All Saints, but was it the week before or the week after? Her gaze went to December. They were off for three weeks then. Wouldn’t it say in the paper how much a dollar was worth?

She quickly leafed through both sections of
Upsala Nya Tidning
and finally found a whole page of stock and currency exchange and other numbers she had never paid any attention to. Over seven kronor for one dollar, and she had five thousand! Thirty-five thousand kronor in the utility closet.

She pushed the paper away and sat back down. What if the police caught Manuel and he told them that he had given her money?

“No way,” she said, as if to convince herself of the unlikelihood of this.

“What are you doing?”

Eva twirled around in the chair. A groggy Hugo was standing in the hall.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Eva said. “Go pee and go back to bed.”

“Was it fun at work?”

“It was great,” Eva said, knowing the question concealed a considerable concern. The children had heard and read about what had happened. Maybe Zero had filled them in.

“Go back to bed. I’m going to take a painkiller and do the same.”

Hugo turned back toward his room and gave her a final glance.

“Thanks for the tea and your nice note,” Eva said.

He smiled a little and then closed the door behind him.

He called himself Ramon, but
they did not think this was his real name. It didn’t matter. There was no question that he was Spanish, nor that he was a real professional.

During the night, Patricio and Manuel had made their way to the small town of Märsta, with the help of Manuel’s map. They had taken a small road that snaked through the darkened landscape, encountered at most ten cars, and once they reached Märsta, they parked outside the grocery store that Ramon had picked as their meeting place. They had waited for half an hour until the Spaniard turned up.

He had taken them to a basement room in an apartment building.

“If you get caught, we expect you not to say a single word about our meeting.”

He did not explain who the “we” referred to. Perhaps he meant José Franco.

“Of course,” Patricio said.

“I hear you can keep quiet,” Ramon said and smiled.

“How is José?”

“Very good,” Ramon said and his smile widened. “He sends his greetings.”

“Send our greetings back and thank him for all his help,” Patricio said.

Despite the early hour—it was not even six yet—Ramon appeared energetic and focused. He took out some photographic equipment, a couple of lamps, and a screen. He took a dozen photographs each of Manuel and Patricio. The whole thing was over in minutes.

Manuel held out the agree-upon sum without a word. Ramon licked one thumb, then quickly flipped through the pile of bills and stretched out his hand for a handshake.

“Who will we be?”

“Two Chileans. I have a lot of those passports.”

“When and how will we get them?”

“One of you drives to Rotebro and leaves the car there, that is not so far away. I can show you the road. Take the train back here. Someone waits here until I turn up. That will be tonight.”

“But taking the train seems dangerous,” Manuel said. “Someone might recognize—”

“We’ll take care of that,” Ramon said and left them for a moment.

They heard him looking around for something in the next room, and when he returned, he smilingly held up a wig.

“This is how you become a blond,” the Spaniard grinned. “This and the glasses will be good. Which one of you is going to Rotebro?”

“That would be me,” Manuel said.

Beside himself with fatigue and confused by Ramon’s precise instructions, Manuel tried to memorize everything. He felt a teary gratitude for the help they received. He had never imagined how quickly it would go.

“I don’t know how we can thank you,” he said.

Ramon slapped his hand across the pocket where he had tucked the money.

“Now let’s get moving,” he said. “On with the wig!”

The last thing Ramon did was to show them how they could make coffee, and where bread, butter, and soda was stored.

The last thing he said before he and Manuel left the basement was a warning not to call anyone, not to leave the basement, and not to drink any alcohol.

When Manuel returned to the basement, Patricio was sleeping on a mattress in the inner of the two rooms. He woke up but immediately fell asleep again. Manuel opened a bottle of soda and drank greedily. He had been thirsty ever since the night before.

What is Eva doing now, he wondered sadly but immediately chastized himself. Why should he think of her? The important thing was to leave Sweden. Wasting thought on anything else was idiotic. He looked at Patricio who was muttering something in his sleep.

Manuel lay down on the floor and stretched out his exhausted body. We should shave, was the last thing he thought before he fell asleep.

It was five o’clock in
the morning when Sammy Nilsson and Ola Haver stepped into the Arlanda police headquarters. The combination of morning fatigue with the tension that had mounted the previous day meant that neither one of them was particularly talkative during the short ride to the airport.

Now they were greeted by a shamelessly alert colleague. He introduced himself as Åke Holmdahl. Sammy Nilsson had a vague memory of having seen him before. Maybe they had been at school at the same time?

“Hi there, Nilsson. So you’re still around.”
“Got no choice.”

“I see that the daily special is one or two Mexican delicacies. This should be a real pleasure. And your name is Haver?
Gud som haver barnen kär,”
Holmdahl quoted the well-known psalm “God who holds the children dear.” “But you must have heard that one before? Okay, let me tell you a little bit about how we’ve planned things out. We have people outside and in the hall, next to Avis as well as the check-in. Two officers have been stationed by the gate and two canine units are on call. All personnel have been briefed and instructed not to act until further orders. Maybe you saw them on the way in?”

Sammy Nilsson shook his head.

“Fantastic!” Holmdahl snorted. “But maybe you saw a car pulled over with engine troubles? That’s Olofsson. That’s usually his role. He will report to us if an Opel Zafira goes by. We have a couple of more cars in motion.”

Ola Haver nodded.

“Our Norrtälje colleagues are also in place. It’s their man, after all. If Alavez, number one or two, turn up we’ll nab him.”

Sammy Nilsson’s mood was gradually improving. It was as if his colleague’s enthusiasm and confidence were catching.

“Is there any coffee?” he asked.

“Are you kidding?” Holmdahl said, and Sammy Nilsson realized that even he had teenage children.

“Come with me and we’ll get you some. Have you had breakfast?”

Holmdahl led Nilsson and Haver to a small kitchen.

“The plane leaves at a quarter past eight, isn’t that right?” Ola Haver asked.

“BA to London and then on to Mexico City.”

Ola Haver gave a big yawn.

“I wish I had a ticket,” he said.

At half past nine they
concluded their failure. Manuel Alavez had neither returned the rental car nor checked in for the flight to London.

Åke Holmdahl was muted. Sammy Nilsson and Ola Haver were grumpy. They felt duped.

“We should have known,” Haver said. “He wouldn’t have been this stupid.”

“We’ll have to try something else,” Holmdahl said.

Sammy Nilsson suddenly remembered where he had seen him. The Arlanda colleague had worked in the patrol division at Uppsala for a brief period of time.

Both of the Uppsala detectives took the motorway north. They had already called a disappointed Ann Lindell and told her they had come up with nothing.

When they were just passed the exit to Knivsta, Lindell called back.

Sammy Nilsson answered and then pulled over by the side of the road, looked around and started to back up to the exit.

“What are you doing?” Haver said perplexed.

“We missed him,” Sammy Nilsson said. “I’ll bet you anything that Alavez was at Arlanda, but somehow he spotted our welcoming committee. The rental car has turned up in Rotebro.”

He reached the Knivsta exit, turned down, went under the E4, then drove up onto the motorway again, this time in a southerly direction.

They arrived just after Tomas Ahlinder from forensics in Uppsala. The Opel was neatly parked not far from the commuter train station. Next to the car was a policeman in uniform and a man in civilian dress, whom Haver and Nilsson assumed was a colleague.

The latter, who said his name was Persson, turned out to be the one who had noticed the car. He lived in Rotebro and every day he took the commuter train to his office in Kungsholmen, in Stockholm.

“Sometimes my brain works,” he said with a laugh. “I happened to see the APB yesterday. I remember thinking that it was an unusual make for a rental car. And then today I catch sight of a Zafira with a somewhat odd license plate number.”

Sammy Nilsson looked at the plates, on which three letters formed the word
RAR
.

“What do you say, Ahlinder?”

“I’ll do an initial search and then we’ll tow it to Uppsala. If that’s all right,” he added.

“No problem for me,” the uniformed policeman said. “We’re just happy to be rid of it. Are there drugs in the car?”

Sammy Nilsson nodded. He circled the car and looked in through the windows but saw nothing of interest.

“When was it left here?” he asked.

“Late last night or this morning, if I have to guess,” Persson said. “I walked by here around seven o’clock last night and I don’t think it was here then.”

“Okay,” Nilsson said. “We’ll ask around. It’s possible someone saw something.”

He nodded at the small grocery store directly across the street.

“I’ll start there,” he said. “Ola, can you take the kiosk over there?”

One hour later, Nilsson and
Haver decided to head back. A tow truck had already loaded up the Opel onto the flatbed for transport to Uppsala.

The door-to-door efforts in the neighborhood had already yielded results. It was the manager of the small grocery who, shortly before seven that morning, had observed a light-haired man next to the car. He had noticed that the man was wearing sunglasses even though it was not a sunny morning. As the grocer was setting up an advertisement on the sidewalk, he had seen the man walk toward the commuter train station.

That was all.

“Light-haired,” Sammy Nilsson said as they overtook the towtruck on the motorway. “Can it have been an accomplice?”

“If he had something to do with the car,” Ola Haver said. “We don’t know if he was the one who parked it there.”

“It’s thin,” Sammy Nilsson agreed. “But if the car really was left there early in the morning then it could work. Alavez parks the car, because he doesn’t want the car to be sighted near Arlanda, gets himself to the airport somehow, sees something that makes him suspicious, and skips the flight.”

“It doesn’t add up,” Haver objected.

“What?”

“It just doesn’t add up,” Haver maintained, without explaining what he meant.

“No, I know,” Sammy Nilsson said with resignation.

When they reached the police
station there was a certain commotion in the division. Fredriksson and Bea were in Ottosson’s office.

“Has something happened?” Sammy asked, reading the excitement in their eyes.

“A guy who claims to be Armas’s son has just turned up,” Ottosson said. “Lindell is talking to him right now.”

“Did he seek us out of his own accord?” Haver asked.

“Is he blond?” Sammy wondered.

“No, he has a shaved head, and he came here on his own,” Ottosson replied.

“What did he say?”

“That he wanted to talk to someone who was investigating the murder of his father.”

“Does he speak Swedish?”

“English,” Ottosson said. “We’ll have to wait for Lindell’s report.”

Sammy Nilsson told him about the Opel in Rotebro and how little they had managed to find out. Maybe, just maybe, a blond man with sunglasses could be tied to the car.

“An accomplice,” Fredriksson said and Sammy sighed heavily.

Lindell came back ten minutes
later. She shook her head as soon as she saw her colleagues gathered in the lunchroom.

“I need something strong,” she said and sat down.

“What did he say?”

Lindell told them that Armas’s son was thirty-two years old and named Anthony Wild. He was born in England. His mother was English, and missing for many years. Her son thought she was living in
Southeast Asia. Armas and Anthony had never lived under the same roof. Armas left when the mother was pregnant, but they had intermittent contact. The last time was about a year ago. Anthony had been in Sweden once before. That was over twenty years ago when he had visited his father who lived in Copenhagen. They had taken the ferry across to Malmö for the day.

“Did you ask about the video?” Fredriksson interrupted.

Lindell smiled. Yes, Anthony had been an “actor” for several years. He admitted to having participated in porn films and did not seem particularly embarrassed about it. In fact, he had bragged that he was one of the more successful ones in the business.

“What does he want?” Ottosson asked.

“To claim his inheritance, I’d say, even if he did also seem genuinely griefstruck. He returned several times to the question of how Armas had died. And then he wanted to talk to Slobodan. They had never met but Anthony knew that Armas and Slobodan had worked together for many years. Maybe he thought Armas owned part of the restaurants, what do I know?”

“Has he been to Mexico?”

Lindell felt as if she was at a press conference, where the questions came from all directions. This time it was Bea.

“Several times. He said that if you live in southern California you often travel down to what he called ‘Basha.’”

“Ba-ha,” Haver corrected.

“Ba-ha,” Lindell repeated in an exaggerated way, and then went on. “Wild had never been to Guadalajara or our friend the tattoo artist, and he did not know that Armas and Slobodan had been to Mexico.”

“How did he find out Armas was dead?”

“Through the film company. We made several inquiries with them and then we mentioned Armas’s death in order to create more urgency for them to give us a name.”

“Is he trustworthy?” Ottosson asked.

“He appeared honest to me. A little flaky, maybe. Not a wholesome person, as you would put it, Otto, but …”

“He’s an actor,” Sammy Nilsson reminded them.

“Does it make your mouth water?” Fredriksson asked.

Everyone looked at him in astonishment. It was a Sammy-comment that he had made and nothing that one would expect of someone normally so rigid about moral topics, and predictably enough he blushed deeply at his own spontaneous remark.

“Sure,” Sammy said, “with a delicious morsel like that around, of course I get a little peckish.”

Everyone laughed except Bea.

They continued to talk for a while longer. Naturally they would question Anthony Wild several more times. He was planning to remain in town for at least a week in order to go through Armas’s apartment and take care of the legal aspects of the inheritance. He was also going to visit Dakar and Alhambra to see the places where his father had worked. In addition, he had requested to visit the scene where his father had been killed.

They did not know if he would obtain permission to meet Slobodan, but Ottosson could not see any obstacles. There was a legitimate and reasonable interest on the part of the son to speak with the murdered father’s best friend, even if the latter was being held under arrest for a drug crime.

Ann Lindell withdrew to her
office. The conversation with Armas’s son had at first made her hopeful and then increasingly disappointed. Anthony Wild’s tactfully formulated and yet clearly stated critical comment about the murderer still remaining at large had struck her with unexpected force. All technical evidence, DNA, fingerprints, and tire marks were there. They had skillfully unraveled the question of the tattoo’s removal and clarified the Mexican connection. With the Mexican’s existence revealed, and now also documented on the Norrtälje prison’s videotape, she had assumed that Manuel Alavez would quickly be caught.

He had all the odds against him, and yet he was still at large. It contradicted all logic. Manuel Alavez was a statistical abnormality, a relationship that was strengthened when Patricio Alavez escaped and most likely joined forces with his brother.

Lindell had difficulties evaluating the find of the car in Rotebro. It
was natural to dump the car that Alavez most likely understood was hot, but how were they getting around now? Assuming they even had any plans, what were they? To leave the country? But how and when? Patricio had no passport and both brothers were wanted in all of Europe.

Her chain of thought was interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Yes!” she called out, more loudly and harshly than she had intended.

Ottosson opened the door a crack.

“The operation was a success,” he said.

It took a while until she realized he meant Berglund.

“Come in!”

Ottosson stepped inside, sat down, and told her that Berglund’s brain tumor had turned out to be benign and easy to remove. Berglund’s wife had called from the hospital.

“Thank God!” Lindell exclaimed. “Finally some good news.”

“Yes, isn’t it?” Ottosson said, who had grown teary by his own words.