The Demon of Dakar - Kjell Eriksson [160]
Manuel lay down on the floor and stretched out his exhausted body. We should shave, was the last thing he thought before he fell asleep.
Sixty-Five
It was five o’clock in the morning when Sammy Nilsson and Ola Haver stepped into the Arlanda police headquarters. The combination of morning fatigue with the tension that had mounted the previous day meant that neither one of them was particularly talkative during the short ride to the airport.
Now they were greeted by a shamelessly alert colleague. He introduced himself as Åke Holmdahl. Sammy Nilsson had a vague memory of having seen him before. Maybe they had been at school at the same time?
“Hi there, Nilsson. So you’re still around.”“Got no choice.”
“I see that the daily special is one or two Mexican delicacies. This should be a real pleasure. And your name is Haver? Gud som haver barnen kär,” Holmdahl quoted the well-known psalm “God who holds the children dear.” “But you must have heard that one before? Okay, let me tell you a little bit about how we’ve planned things out. We have people outside and in the hall, next to Avis as well as the check-in. Two officers have been stationed by the gate and two canine units are on call. All personnel have been briefed and instructed not to act until further orders. Maybe you saw them on the way in?”
Sammy Nilsson shook his head.
“Fantastic!” Holmdahl snorted. “But maybe you saw a car pulled over with engine troubles? That’s Olofsson. That’s usually his role. He will report to us if an Opel Zafira goes by. We have a couple of more cars in motion.”
Ola Haver nodded.
“Our Norrtälje colleagues are also in place. It’s their man, after all. If Alavez, number one or two, turn up we’ll nab him.”
Sammy Nilsson’s mood was gradually improving. It was as if his colleague’s enthusiasm and confidence were catching.
“Is there any coffee?” he asked.
“Are you kidding?” Holmdahl said, and Sammy Nilsson realized that even he had teenage children.
“Come with me and we’ll get you some. Have you had breakfast?”
Holmdahl led Nilsson and Haver to a small kitchen.
“The plane leaves at a quarter past eight, isn’t that right?” Ola Haver asked.
“BA to London and then on to Mexico City.”
Ola Haver gave a big yawn.
“I wish I had a ticket,” he said.
At half past nine they concluded their failure. Manuel Alavez had neither returned the rental car nor checked in for the flight to London.
Åke Holmdahl was muted. Sammy Nilsson and Ola Haver were grumpy. They felt duped.
“We should have known,” Haver said. “He wouldn’t have been this stupid.”
“We’ll have to try something else,” Holmdahl said.
Sammy Nilsson suddenly remembered where he had seen him. The Arlanda colleague had worked in the patrol division at Uppsala for a brief period of time.
Both of the Uppsala detectives took the motorway north. They had already called a disappointed Ann Lindell and told her they had come up with nothing.
When they were just passed the exit to Knivsta, Lindell called back.
Sammy Nilsson answered and then pulled over by the side of the road, looked around and started to back up to the exit.
“What are you doing?” Haver said perplexed.
“We missed him,” Sammy Nilsson said. “I’ll bet you anything that Alavez was at Arlanda, but somehow he spotted our welcoming committee. The rental car has turned up in Rotebro.”
He reached the Knivsta exit, turned down, went under the E4, then drove up onto the motorway again, this time in a southerly direction.
They arrived just after Tomas Ahlinder from forensics in Uppsala. The Opel was neatly parked not far from the commuter train station. Next to the car was a policeman in uniform and a man in civilian dress, whom Haver and Nilsson assumed was a colleague.
The latter, who said his name was Persson, turned out to be the one who had noticed the car. He lived in Rotebro and every day he took the commuter train to his office in Kungsholmen, in Stockholm.
“Sometimes my brain works,