The Demon of Dakar

by Kjell Eriksson

  She realized that he was starting to develop new needs, that he was becoming more active, curious, and engaged in the world around him, but also more demanding. It was no longer enough for him to have a piece of paper and some crayons or Legos. He wanted Ann to be engaged, overwhelming her with questions and thoughts. Sometimes she was not equal to these demands, grew tired, wanted most of all to stretch out on the sand by the small forest lake, read or simply ruminate with her gaze fixed on the pair of ospreys sailing over the water. She could not hand Erik over to someone else. It was only the two of them.

  In the evenings after he fell asleep, she sat down with a bottle of wine in a rusty hammock with ripped cushions, slowly swaying back and forth, thinking about her life. Normally she resisted these thoughts, but it was as if this setting, the isolation in the cottage, and the complete contrast to her daily life forced her to reflect. Perhaps also Erik’s new needs meant that her future looked more uncertain than before. During those unusually sunny days in the cottage she saw her lone responsibility for his development in stark relief. He would start school within a few years and she could only imagine what that would involve. Thereafter he would shortly become a teenager and she would be approaching fifty.

  She read the first page of the medical examiner’s report of the autopsy. The man had bled to death after suffering a knife wound of eleven centimeters across his throat. He was dead before he hit the water. His age was estimated at between forty and fifty, he was one hundred and eighty-six centimeters tall and weighed ninety-two kilograms, was in good physical condition and without any distinguishing physical characteristics, except for what Lindell took to be the remains of a tattoo on his upper right arm. A patch of skin about five centimeters in diameter had been removed from the arm. What remained was a small dark line of about half a centimeter, which was what made her think there had once been an entire tattoo. There were two possible explanations to the flaying: to make the identification of the victim more difficult, or else the tattoo could have a direct link to the murderer.

  Lindell picked up the close-ups of the upper arm area.

  “What should we think?” Fredriksson said. “Was he murdered here or did he float here on the current?”

  “We have people on both sides of the river who are looking into it,” Lindell said, “but they haven’t found anything so far.”

  “But how likely is it that a corpse can float down along the river without someone seeing it?”

  “I don’t know, Allan,” Lindell said.

  She stared at the photograph.

  “Can’t you check with TattooJack or whatever their names are. There must be tattoo experts.”

  “This isn’t much to show them,” Fredriksson said.

  She pushed the photograph across the table without making eye contact.

  “Check it anyway,” Lindell said.

  “Sure, babe,” Fredriksson said.

  Lindell gave him a long look. Sammy shot her an amused glance but kept his mouth closed.

  “Anyone reported missing?”

  “Nada,” Sammy Nilsson said. “I’ve checked the records six months back. But I’ve put a notice on the Web. We’ll see what that brings.”

  If only the dead could speak, Lindell thought and smiled.

  “I don’t think he was a regular working stiff,” Sammy said.

  “You’re thinking of his hands?”

  Sammy nodded.

  “One of his thumbnails was black and blue,” Lindell said.

  “Which can happen to the manager of a golf course,” Ottosson said.

  “What about his teeth?” Lindell asked.

  “Good overall, according to the medical examiner, but some poorly executed dental work in his youth. Perhaps done overseas.”

  Lindell nodded.

  “We’ll have to hope for evidence recovered along the riverbank,” she said after a moment’s silence, and then got up from the table.

  “Is anyone hungry?” she asked, but did not wait for an answer. Instead, she whisked out of the room, after first snatching her pad of paper.

  “Why almost naked?” she said under her breath, while she took the elevator to the foyer of the new police station building. Though it had been inaugerated last fall, Lindell had not really grown accustomed to it yet. In spite of everything, she missed their old quarters. Of course, everything here was much airier and more functional, but something was missing. No one else had expressed any longing for Salagatan, so Lindell had kept her nostalgic musings to herself.

  She continued to ply herself with questions during the rapid walk downtown. She followed Svartbäcksgatan along the river. Like in the area of Lugnet, where the corpse had been discovered, the wild ducks were chattering at the water’s edge and terns were screeching up above.

  The removed tattoo was important, that much was clear. If the victim had lived in Uppsala and was reported missing within the next day or two, and the identity could be determined, relatives and friends questioned, then it should not prove difficult to find out what the tattoo had looked like and perhaps where and by whom it had been done.

  Then the act of taking the trouble of removing it would be undermined. In addition, the maneuver would turn out to be a way of putting the tattoo in focus, giving it a gravity that it would otherwise not have possessed. In other words, in Lindell’s view, it was an irrational act.

  She glanced at her watch. None of the restaurants that she passed had appealed to her and now she was suddenly pressed for time. In the pedestrian zone she instead bought a “Kurt,” which was what one of her colleagues for some reason called a thick hot dog on a bun. She washed it down with a Festis fruit drink.

  As she stood in the street with people walking by, entertained by what she at first took to be a performance troupe but that turned out to be a group of devotees of the evangelical church Livets Ord, her thoughts about the removed tattoo returned and she became increasingly convinced that its removal was largely a symbolic act.

  She listened for a while to the heavenly choir and thereafter to a short testimonial by a member of the congregation. He was talking about Jesus, who else? He looked happy, almost ecstatic, as he triumphantly related how he had become a whole person through his Lord, Jesus Christ.

  “I lived in poverty …!” he shouted.

  “What do you make now?” someone in the audience shouted back.

  The speaker was momentarily thrown off-kilter, but then resumed his preaching.

  Lindell headed back to the station. Walking had become her way of trying to improve her condition. At her last checkup, the doctor had pronounced her fitness level terrible.

  This had the result that she often ate lunch on her own. None of her colleagues had any desire to rush around town at her speed.

  Back at her office, sweaty and barely full, she again rifled through the reports pertaining to the murder. What shall I call him for the moment? she wondered and picked a new notepad off the shelf.

  “Jack” she wrote spontaneously on the first page. It was a pad of graph paper but this did not distract her. She immediately started to write out her thoughts on the significance of the tattoo. So far it was the only thing she could write about. All other facts were stated in the autopsy report. In time they would also receive the forensic findings.

  Lindell produced half a page of notes in her, for her colleagues, illegible handwriting. Despite this meager start she felt pleased, optimistic even. Perhaps it was the warmth of late summer, perhaps it was simply the joy of feeling so strong, that the relationship with Charles Morgansson, the newcomer in the unit, that had ended in the spring was now definitely behind her, without pain. No doubts, no hard feelings, nothing unresolved between them, at least not from her side.

  They had met last fall and very carefully embarked on a relationship. Charles was a very sweet person, she said to those who asked, but too meek for Lindell’s taste. It took several months before they made love, and then it was not particularly passionate or even pleasurable
. It was as if he apologized every time he initiated anything, and that wasn’t often. Ann realized very early that he had problems. For a while she even suspected that he wasn’t attracted to women, but she eventually concluded that it was his previous relationship in Umeå that still troubled him. Something had gone wrong. Perhaps that was the main reason he had moved to Uppsala, even though he claimed that his involvement in a traffic accident was the cause. Lindell didn’t really want to know. She did not want to play therapist.

  Their brief and underwhelming liaison was a closed chapter, an experience that strangely enough had strengthened her confidence. Görel, her friend and Erik’s loyal babysitter, had tried to console her but Ann had dismissed her attempts.

  “If anyone needs consoling, it’s Charlie,” Ann said and Görel had told her she was merciless, but laughed.

  She had followed their whole story and was pleased deep down that it was over.

  “You don’t need a loser,” she said.

  “Agreed,” Ann said, “I need …”

  She could not bring herself to complete the sentence, because immediately an image of Edvard appeared. Edvard, her old love, gone from her life forever.

  Görel realized that she was upset and guessed at the cause. She put an arm around Ann but was sensible enough not to make one of her sassy comments.

  Lindell called Erik’s day care and told Gunilla that she would be picking him up half an hour, or even a whole hour, later. The preschool teacher said that it was all right, but Lindell picked up a note of criticism in her gruff voice. The problem of parents not respecting the agree-upon dropoff and pickup times was something that came up at every parent-teacher meeting.

  Lindell ended the call with the same feeling she always had: that she did not take good enough care of her son. He received everything he needed, and in fact enjoyed day care, but the feeling of inadequacy plagued her. To be both a police officer and a single mother was not an easy combination, but she sensed this was probably true for any single working parent. There was simply no good solution to the problem. All she could do was make the best of it. Lindell never worked on the weekends and very rarely worked evenings.

  Ottosson, her immediate supervisor, was understanding and did everything in his power to make things easier for her. Without his support it would have been much harder, perhaps impossible, to continue in her current position.

  On several occasions, Ottosson had talked to her about the superintendent training course, but she had always rejected his suggestions. On top of which, the course was located in Stockholm. And why should she set her sights on courses anyway? She was happy where she was and had no desire to ascend the career ladder.

  After making a few more calls, she went to the lunchroom. Berglund was sitting with one elbow on his knee and his forehead cradled in his hand, as if he were nursing a headache. He was listening to Haver, who was telling him about his plans for his winter vacation. Lindell had time to hear that Haver was planning to travel to northern Italy with his wife, Rebecka, and their two daughters.

  “The alps are nice,” Berglund said, mostly in order to have something to say.

  Lindell saw that his thoughts were elsewhere and when she sat down he took the opportunity to change the subject.

  “Ann, do you remember Konrad Rosenberg?”

  Lindell took a slurp of her coffee, reflected, and then nodded.

  “Was he the one … it was something about fraud, credit cards, and drugs?”

  “Exactly,” Berglund said. “His name turned up in the investigation about the burglaries I’m working on. Not because I think he had anything to do with it, but, well, it turned up. Do you remember that he got a few years and went through detox?”

  Lindell nodded and suddenly felt a sense of satisfaction at recalling something that happened many years ago, as well as a great joy that Berglund had thought to ask her in particular. It was like a verification that she meant something, that the two of them had a shared past.

  Berglund was perhaps the colleague she was closest to. She felt secure with his calm temperament and loyalty. He was also a wise man, thoughtful, rarely judgmental, and free of pretension and desire for his own gain. He was an Uppsala native. In his youth he had been an active sportsman and had played both soccer and bandy. Later he had taken up orienteering and sat on the board of the club. Through his sport, his engagement in HSB, the housing cooperative, and his membership in the Mission church—something Lindell had found out about only recently and that surprised her, but also not—he had a number of threads connecting him with society. He functioned as a human seismograph that perceived the tremors in the city.

  The only area that was closed to him was the Uppsala of the youth, students and immigrants. There he felt lost and admitted it freely.

  “He has been clean for a number of years,” Berglund said, “but now it seems he is on the move again. One of the informants—’Sture with the hat’—I questioned about the burglaries named Rosenberg, though only in passing. When I asked further it turned out that Rosenberg is suddenly in the money, as Sture put it.”

  “I’ve met Sture, he was a real talker,” Haver inserted, “he only wanted to shine, appear interesting.”

  “Like so many others,” Lindell said.

  “It’s possible,” Berglund said.

  “Maybe it was a way of getting around the subject of the burglaries, or else he doesn’t know a thing but still wanted to seem helpful and have something to give you,” Haver went on.

  Berglund made a gesture to show that it was possible, but Lindell saw he had a different opinion.

  “He recently bought a brand-new Mercedes,” Berglund said. “I talked to a friend at the Philipson car dealership and, according to him, Rosenberg went straight for the luxury models.”

  “Did he pay in cash?”

  “Without bargaining.”

  “Have you talked to the drug squad?” Lindell asked.

  “No, it’s all a bit thin,” Berglund admitted.

  Haver snickered.

  Leave already for Italy with your Rebecka, Lindell thought impatiently, with a vague sense of envy.

  “But if you hear anything,” Berglund said in closing on the topic of Konrad Rosenberg, and then asked how things were going with the river murder.

  “We’re proceeding in the usual way,” Lindell said, “but there’s nothing so far. He’s not in our records, at any rate. We’ve checked the prints.”

  “Maybe he’s Russian?” Haver suggested.

  “It’s possible. What I’m wondering about the most, and I guess it’s the only thing we have to speculate about right now, is the tattoo that was removed. I think it’s some kind of symbolic act.”

  “That seems insane,” Berglund said, and Lindell knew her colleague had quickly arrived at the same conclusion as she had, the amatuerishness in bringing attention to the tattoo.

  “Maybe a red herring,” Lindell said. “I don’t know.”

  She took her coffee cup and returned to her office. The tattoo on the murdered man’s arm, plus the fact that he was basically naked, was a mystery. Maybe these details were connected? Had the murderer undressed him in order to check for tattoos? Ann Lindell had seen almost everything but was nonetheless confounded, the ritualistic aspect of the flaying being unexpectedly frightening. She was more and more convinced that this had not been an ordinary act of punishment in the criminal world, something many of her collagues had intimated.

  She wrote her thoughts down on her notepad, well aware of the fact that it was basically useless work, as her thoughts were in no way original. Her notes functioned more as a kind of therapy for the mind of a bewildered policewoman.

  Eleven

  Ann received a shock when she arrived home, dragging a tired and whining Erik, who immediately threw himself down on the floor in the hall and refused to take off his coat and shoes. She didn’t care, allowing him to sit there and stew, and simply went mechanically to the kitchen and got some crackers that she sl
ipped into his hand.

  The letter was lying on the doormat. A white rectangle against a green background. She thought it looked like a painting. She hesitated before picking it up. She recognized his handwriting. How could she forget it? His childish cursive, the sprawling style like that of a twelve-year-old. How many letters had she received from him? Perhaps one, and then a couple of postcards.

  She stared at the letter with a feeling of paralysis mixed with anger. Why is he writing? Now? About what? She tried to understand, find reasons for Edvard to take the trouble. He was no letter writer, and in view of his vacillating character he had had endless opportunity to change his mind, even before he put the letter in its envelope and affixed the stamp. Ann could picture him in her mind, hesitant, his tongue poised to seal it. Thereafter, when he was on his way to the mailbox on the island or in to Öregrund, he could have left it on the table, said to himself that there was no hurry, or left it, unconsciously or consciously, in the car. Then, above all, the postbox, what agonies he must have suffered. And at last, the terror once the letter had been posted and he returned to the house on the island.

  She bent down and picked it up. Erik had eaten up the crackers and was screaming for more. With the letter in her hand she pulled off his outerwear, stood him on his feet, dragged him into the kitchen, poured out some juice, and took out some chocolate-covered crackers.

  There was nothing she didn’t feel terrified about in the context of a letter from Edvard. There were evenings with half-drunk bottles of wine, warm nights and sticky sheets, mornings with a stiff body and a paralyzing feeling of meaninglessness, days at work, in front of the window facing east across the flat landscape, with the pointed spire of the Vaksala church as marker of the direction of her thoughts.

  It was all this, all these hours, that were Edvard. Then to get a letter, so unlikely, so unfairly unnecessary, for what good could come of this? The most innocent greeting would mean a taunt. Some kind of apology equally so, but what did he have to apologize for? She was the one who had caused the breech. That he had later met a woman on his unexpected Thailand trip was something she had sniffed out but had not confirmed. That was a long time after they had broken up, so he could not be blamed for it. She herself had become pregnant by another man, which was far worse.