The Demon of Dakar - Kjell Eriksson [113]
“You don’t know how all this hangs together, I take it. I am an experienced restauranteur and there are those who are willing to invest a sum. I have good friends who were willing to pony up.”
“In Mexico?”
“No, in Denmark and Malmö. And then we won at a casino in Acapulco. Armas put in quite a bit as well. I believe he received an inheritance or something.”
“Okay, so you suddenly got some money and returned, we’ll leave it at that for now. Could something have happened in Mexico that later led to Armas’s death? Did you meet anyone who since then may have had a reason to hold a grudge against Armas?”
“Who would that be?”
“That’s what I’m asking you,” Lindell said.
Slobodan shook his head.
“Are you threatened?”
He looked up as if he had had a new insight.
Slobodan Andersson left a stench of sweat in his wake. Lindell stood up and opened the window, at the same time helping a bumblebee find its way to freedom. She could not understand how it had gotten in. The bumblebee made a couple of circles outside the window before it set off and disappeared. To the east, Lindell observed.
She stood there at the window. She had not yet exhausted all of the details the new view from her window afforded. She followed pedestrians and cars below, discovered buildings and rooftops, looked out over the cityscape and recalled with some nostalgia the view from her old office in the former police building on Salagatan. Not because it was more beautiful, in fact it had been mostly of concrete, but she associated the view with old cases and perhaps even with Edvard and Gräsö. That was where they had met, not for the very first time, because that had been at a crime scene where Edvard was the one who had discovered the body, but later. She remembered his first visit and the impression he had made, so different from other men she had met.
She erased him again and let her gaze travel across the Uppsala roofs.
Other people created things, roofs and building fronts, for example, while she herself gathered information and testimony, ruminated over the origins of the frustration and violence she encountered in her work. There were no easy answers, that was the only conclusion she had drawn.
Sometimes she chastised herself with the fact that she thought too much, that she made things difficult for herself. Didn’t these thoughts block effective investigative work? No, that isn’t true, she countered, quite the opposite: our thoughts are too limited. Many times she had heard other people speak out, it could be at day care or on the radio, and she thought: we should bring that into our work, we need this knowledge.
Insufficient staff and lack of time was the noose from which they hung. A noose that was slowly strangling Lindell and her coworkers. With enough personnel—and not necessarily police officers—they would be able to solve most crimes, and above all help prevent them from occurring in the first place.
It could have been so different. Everyone knew it, few spoke about it and hardly anyone fought for a better system. Habit had become the modus operandi.
She left the window, sat down at her desk, and called Ottosson to report on her talk with Slobodan. After that, she called Beatrice, who had managed to reach the company that had produced the films but had not been able to get in touch with anyone who was able or wanted to talk about the people involved. She promised to continue her investigations.
“Mexico,” Lindell mumbled, after having hung up the receiver.
What did the tattoo mean, and above all, its removal? The motive must have been personal, she thought again. What had Armas, and maybe also Slobodan, done in Mexico that could arouse such feelings? Was there love involved? She had the thought that perhaps Armas had ducked out of a relationship, made a woman pregnant and then left. Revenge took the form of an angry relative who had looked him up in order to deliver justice, perhaps get him to pay compensation. In this light, the feathered snake could act as a symbol.
The question was if the