The Demon of Dakar - Kjell Eriksson [150]
Sammy Nilsson took the information on the rental car and then sat down.
“Did you hear about Berglund?” Sammy asked.
Lindell nodded.
“It’s too fucking depressing,” he went on. “There are so many dumb-asses running around healthy as can be, while someone like Berglund gets hit.”
“There is no justice,” Lindell said. “We already knew that.”
She waited a couple of seconds before she picked up the thread about the Alavez brothers again.
“Where would you pitch your tent?”
Sammy stared back at her for a second before he looked down at his notes. Lindell knew he wanted to talk more about their colleague and his brain tumor.
“Not in a camping area, that’s for sure,” Sammy said. “Is this a guy from the country or the city?”
“No idea,” Lindell replied. “What do you mean?”
“If he’s from some kind of city gang or drug cartel then he wouldn’t camp out. Too rustic. That type would check into a hotel.”
“We’ve checked them all,” Lindell said.
“Assumed name?”
“Possible, but if it really was brother Manuel who camped by Lugnet then that would seem to indicate a particular style. The question is just where he went after Lugnet.”
“Most likely close to the city,” Sammy Nilsson said. He stood up and walked over to the map of Uppland that Lindell had on the wall.
“Okay,” he resumed, “if you’ve killed someone south of the city then you probably don’t just set up camp on the opposite side of the river.”
“But what about local knowledge?”
“What would you do yourself?” Sammy Nilsson asked.
“Buy a map and try to figure out a good area.”
“What is good?”
“Far away from people.”
“But still fairly close to a road, wouldn’t you say?” Sammy Nilsson said, his back to Lindell, studying the map.
He moved his finger from the southern parts of the city north, tracing the E4 motorway with his index finger.
“Månkarbo,” he said suddenly and turned around, “that’s where I would swing up to the northwest.”
“Månkarbo?”
Sammy Nilsson nodded.
“You’ll have to do the rest of the orienting on your own,” he said with a grin.
Once he had left the room, Lindell went up to the map and located the small hamlet some twenty or thirty kilometers north of Uppsala.
She had a vague memory of Månkarbo as a small town with a painfully low speed limit, a couple of stores, and a gas station.
She went to Ottosson.
“A cement foundry,” he said, “and a mission house in the middle of the village. Why do you ask?”
“Just a guess by Sammy that the Alavez brothers may have gone north, and then he named Månkarbo of all places.”
“The foundry has been closed since God knows when, but the missionaries are probably still active. Do you think they’re camping?”
“Yes, or alternatively, that they are hiding out at some drug associate’s.”
“Do you think the brother was involved in the break out?”
“I do, actually,” Lindell said. “The visit in prison was perhaps a last instruction on how the escape was going to be executed. That Patricio Alavez playacted for the cameras has no significance. Maybe he had some last-minute hesitation because the escape was not proceeding as he had been instructed.”
“The hostage?”
“According to Norrtälje he was a peaceful sort and he may have objected to the amount of force that the taking of a hostage involves.”
“The Norrtälje police say that they spread out. At least two cars were left in the woods where they dumped the van. But why would any of them want to get to Uppsala? If they now—”
The telephone interrupted his train of thought. He lifted the receiver and listened for a minute, hummed in response a couple of times, thanked the speaker for the information and hung up.
“Björnsson and Brügger were apprehended one hour ago in Stockholm. The idiots tried to rob a post office. How stupid can you be? The Västerort police are going to get in touch right away if and when they uncover anything of interest.”
“Brilliant,” Lindell underscored. “Two down.”
“And our Mexican friends and the Spaniard remain,” Ottosson said cheerfully.
Police questioning of Slobodan Andersson was resumed after lunch.