The Demon of Dakar (25 page)

Lindell had chosen a black
dress and a cropped white jacket.

“Let the sleuthing begin,” Görel said, when they met up on the main square.

Lindell had picked up Erik at day care and driven him directly to Görel’s sister’s house, where Erik was going to spend the night. Then she had driven home to change.

The rain came without warning. It poured down and splashed over the streets.

“Where did the clouds come from?” Görel said, perplexed.

Ann Lindell stared at the sky. They had taken shelter in a doorway on Svartbäcksgatan.

The shower stopped as abruptly as it had started. Uncertain as to whether they could trust in the powers above, they half-ran down the street.

As they drew closer to Dakar, and the sun peeked out from between the clouds, they slowed down and adopted a leisurely pace.

Lindell had said nothing to Görel about her reasons for the visit, but she was sure that her friend understood that there were hidden motives for Lindell’s generous proposition.

“I’m paying, just so you know,” Lindell repeated as they entered the restaurant.

“Sure,” Görel said. “I have no problem with that.”

The dining room was half full. A waitress approached them as soon as they came in and showed them to a table by the window. Lindell looked around.

“The sleuthing starts right away,” Görel observed.

At the very back of the room, partly concealed by a pillar, there was a man who immediately attracted Lindell’s interest. She let her gaze brush past him and then she pulled the menu that the waitress had provided toward her.

“I’m having lamb,” Görel said without prompting. “I have it so rarely.”

Lindell studied the menu and tried to recall where she had seen the man before. She knew that she had encountered him in the world of law enforcement but could not place the face.

“What are you going to have?”

“I don’t know,” Lindell said, not feeling particularly hungry. “Fish … maybe the Zander.”

The waitress returned and took their drink orders. Lindell kept herself to light beer, while Görel asked for a glass of white wine. She immediately took a long sip.

Lindell leaned forward. The man had leaned back and was now almost completely blocked by the pillar. Suddenly she got it. He was a fellow
criminal investigator from Västerås: Axel Lindman, and they had met at a function at the Police Academy some six months or so ago.

“Have you zeroed in on someone?” Görel inquired, having noted Lindell’s distractedness.

“No, it’s just a colleague who tried to pick me up at a workshop.”

“You mean the guy in the dark blue suit and yellow tie, the one drinking red wine?” Görel asked.

Lindell gave Görel a quizzical look.

“He looks nice enough. He came on to you? And you froze up like an ice queen, of course. Is he married?” Görel watched the man discreetly, as she sipped a little more wine.

“I don’t think so.”

“Then there’s nothing to hold you back, is there?”

“He’s not my type.” Lindell did not like the turn their conversation had taken.

“Cheers,” she said and raised her glass.

Görel drank more wine, found that she had finished her glass, but continued unabashedly.

“And what exactly is your type? Don’t say Edvard, because I’ll throw up. Can’t you stop thinking about that country bumpkin once and for all?”

She had raised her voice and the couple at the next table looked up with interest.

“He’s lumbering around on Gräsö Island with a ninety-year-old crone,” Görel said, raising her glass as a signal to their waitress to bring another before she went on. “He is and always will be a boring old fart. It was amusing and charming several years ago, but you are living here and now. There are loads of great men, including that cutie over there for starters, but you’re clinging to the memory of a socially handicapped bumpkin. It’s pathetic!”

Lindell’s first reaction was one of anger, but then she felt something more akin to embarrassment, which she tried to conceal when she saw her friend’s look of satisfaction. Her intended protest sputtered out as the waitress returned at that moment and placed a new glass of wine in front of Görel.

“I’ll have one as well,” Lindell said.

“Aren’t I right?” Görel picked up again after the waitress had gone. “It’s sick that you still feel guilty that you had Erik. If I’m going to be completely honest, I felt sorry for you at first, but now I don’t know. You are good-looking and personable—no, don’t start contradicting me—you have a job, a completely wonderful son, and you must be in good shape financially because you never splurge on anything. What are you waiting for? For Edvard to come riding in on his white steed? He never will.”

“He wanted to take me to Thailand a couple of years ago,” Lindell said.

“But then he picked someone else, didn’t he?”

Lindell received her wine. The evening was not progressing as she had planned. She was at Dakar in order to establish a better sense of the restaurant and thereby of Slobodan Andersson, but now she was sitting here holding back the tears.

“It’s easy for you to talk,” she said. “You have everything you want. You’ve never been a single mom.”

“Erik is no barrier to meeting someone, when are you going to get that through your head? Hundreds of thousands of people are single parents and they meet new partners.”

Lindell looked around the room. More and more guests arrived and the bar area was crowded. She studied the backs of the men by the counter. They were standing there like a herd of animals at the watering hole, shoulder to shoulder, talking, laughing, and drinking.

“I got together with Charles,” she said.

“And left, after a while,” Görel said.

She’s going to have to control her drinking, Lindell thought. She decided to try to steer the conversation to something else. If Görel were provoked, she would become increasingly aggressive, and Lindell could only guess at what kind of truths would start flying out of Görel’s mouth if she really got going. Lindell knew she meant well and that there was a great deal of truth to what she said, but at the same time she felt unjustly attacked.

“I’m here for professional reasons,” Lindell said quietly.

“Don’t you think I realize that?”

At that moment the restaurant owner stepped into the establishment. He walked with rapid steps to the bar, taking advantage of a temporary opening in the herd in front of the bar, and sat down. The short, stocky legs dangled from the bar stool. The bartender immediately placed a beer in front of him.

He sat with his back to Lindell and Görel. The latter gently turned her body and glanced toward the bar.

“Is that him?”

Lindell nodded and watched as Slobodan Andersson let his gaze wander around the room. Suddenly his gaze fixed on a booth near the Västerås detective’s table. There were two men sitting there. One was Konrad Rosenberg, whose snapshot she carried in her purse and had briefly sighted in a questioning room several years ago. The other man was unknown, and sat with his back partly toward her. She estimated his age at around fifty. He had dark hair and was well dressed, especially in comparison to his dinner companion.

The men were intent in conversation and Lindell did not think they had noticed Slobodan, who quickly slid off his bar stool and left the room. His beer was left on the bar.

Lindell’s gaze followed him as he left. Görel sat with the glass of wine in her hand, watching the events.

“He left,” she commented unnecessarily. “Should we follow him?”

Lindell chuckled and shook her head. She wondered who Konrad Rosenberg’s companion was. Apparently they had a great deal to discuss.

“I have to go to the ladies’ room,” she said and stood up.

In order to get there she had to pass the booth with Rosenberg and the unknown, as well as her colleague’s table. She noticed his quick glance as she approached and how he subsequently stared down at the table. When she was a couple of meters away, he looked up and raised his hand as if he was engaged in a discussion.

“No, no, I don’t know her,” he said in a loud voice, and looked at Lindell for a second with complete indifference and emphatically shook his head, before he looked back at his dinner companion, a woman of around thirty-five.

Lindell swept past the table and into the bathrooms, convinced that
her colleague had not wanted her to make herself known. Her immediate reaction was one of surprise, before she pieced it together. She felt certain that Axel Lindman had recognized her but had not wanted to establish any contact. There could only be one reason: he was on a case. Because surely it couldn’t be the case that her colleague was afraid that she would embarrass him in front of his lady friend? No, Lindell decided that Axel Lindman must be undercover.

Was it Rosenberg who was the object of interest? Or the dark-haired man? Or perhaps someone completely different? Slobodan? For a second, she considered getting in touch with the crimes call center, having them call Västerås and see why Lindman was in Uppsala, but then she quickly realized that this information could not be produced by a simple phone call.

On her way back from the ladies’ room she ignored him and instead focused on Rosenberg’s partner, whom she could now see from the front. He was leaning forward and saying something to Rosenberg, and Lindell picked up a streak of irritation beneath his well-polished exterior. Her intuition told her that the unknown man was very agitated and exerting a great deal of control in order not to show it.

For a while they ate
in silence. The fish fillet was done to a turn, the slightly sweet pepper sauce and the carefully sauteed rice, which Lindell at first thought was a fish stick, complemented the fish perfectly. There was much one could say about Slobodan Andersson, but the food at his restaurant was first class.

She drank a dry white wine from the Loire with her fish. It had been recommended by the waitress, and she could easily have ordered another glass if it hadn’t been for the difficulties that would create for her in maintaining her concentration.

She was having trouble focusing on Görel’s chatter, which jumped from her work to world politics with increasingly abrupt transitions.

Rosenberg and the unknown man continued their intense discussion. Axel Lindman and his companion had proceded to coffee. Lindell imagined that underneath his relaxed look, her colleague was attentive
to every word and slightest shift in atmosphere at the neighboring table, and she thought she could percieve the network of tension that stretched out into the dining room where three of the tables had become invisibly connected.

Slobodan’s hasty retreat was clearly connected to the presence of the two men. How should this be interpreted? Lindell believed he had not wanted to be seen by them. She pondered his motives, but there were too many unknown factors for her to understand why. Perhaps Axel Lindman was sitting on the answer.

“Let’s get the check,” she said and Görel looked astonished.

“Aren’t we ordering dessert?”

“I’m too full,” said Lindell, “and also too tired.”

“Are you in a bad mood?”

“No, of course not.”

She didn’t understand why she felt such reluctance to tell Görel that she wanted to leave Dakar shortly after Lindman and if possible find a way to talk to him. Curiosity at what he was doing in Uppsala and Dakar distracted her from listening to Görel.

She waved the waitress over, ordered two espressos, and asked for the check at the same time. She felt mean and unfair as she did so, knowing she had to ask Görel to drive home alone while she established contact with Lindman. Their conversation could wait until the following day, but she had the feeling that something was going on. She wanted to get answers to her questions this evening.

“I’m sorry if I’ve hurt your feelings,” Görel said. “I know I talk too much.”

“Don’t worry,” Lindell said, but knew it wasn’t true. She had been wounded by Görel’s presumptuous comments. Of course she should meet a man. Many evenings when she sat alone, she longed for the man of her life to walk in and settle in beside her on the couch. But who was Görel to come with her meddling opinions? She herself lived with her great love, and she should know better. You only met a man like Edvard once in your life. That he was a “socially handicapped bumpkin” didn’t matter. What did Görel, or anyone else, know about what he had meant to her? She could still almost recall the physical
sensation of his hands on her body. He is a good man, she thought, and was suddenly very sad, a sorrow that quickly turned to anger when Görel made an attempt to pick up the check. Lindell grabbed it and took out her card.

“I’m paying,” she said curtly, and avoided her friend’s gaze.

They left Dakar in silence.
It was only a little after nine. Lindman and his companion had left half a minute before. He had passed Lindell’s table without glancing at her.

Lindell saw them strolling up the street toward the main square. She was struck with doubts about her hasty exit. Would it have been better to linger at the restaurant and concentrate on Rosenberg? Then she would also not have had to rid herself of Görel in the rude way she was now forced to act.

“I think it’s best that we go our own way from here. I’m going to catch up with my colleague,” she said, and pointed at the man, “and it will just lead to talking a lot of shop and there’s no point …”

Görel didn’t listen any further. She twirled around on the spot and left Lindell.

Axel Lindman was looking at
Lindell with amusement. His companion, who had simply introduced herself as Elin, was noticeably less amused at having to accept this third wheel. Maybe she had been nursing other ideas about the continuation of the evening that did not include sitting in a burger joint with a juice box in front of her.

“You seem like you’re on the go,” Lindman said. “What were you doing at Dakar?”

Lindell looked around. There were almost no other people sitting in the section where they were.