The Demon of Dakar - Kjell Eriksson [129]
“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.