The Demon of Dakar - Kjell Eriksson [161]
Sammy Nilsson looked at the plates, on which three letters formed the word RAR.
“What do you say, Ahlinder?”
“I’ll do an initial search and then we’ll tow it to Uppsala. If that’s all right,” he added.
“No problem for me,” the uniformed policeman said. “We’re just happy to be rid of it. Are there drugs in the car?”
Sammy Nilsson nodded. He circled the car and looked in through the windows but saw nothing of interest.
“When was it left here?” he asked.
“Late last night or this morning, if I have to guess,” Persson said. “I walked by here around seven o’clock last night and I don’t think it was here then.”
“Okay,” Nilsson said. “We’ll ask around. It’s possible someone saw something.”
He nodded at the small grocery store directly across the street.
“I’ll start there,” he said. “Ola, can you take the kiosk over there?”
One hour later, Nilsson and Haver decided to head back. A tow truck had already loaded up the Opel onto the flatbed for transport to Uppsala.
The door-to-door efforts in the neighborhood had already yielded results. It was the manager of the small grocery who, shortly before seven that morning, had observed a light-haired man next to the car. He had noticed that the man was wearing sunglasses even though it was not a sunny morning. As the grocer was setting up an advertisement on the sidewalk, he had seen the man walk toward the commuter train station.
That was all.
“Light-haired,” Sammy Nilsson said as they overtook the towtruck on the motorway. “Can it have been an accomplice?”
“If he had something to do with the car,” Ola Haver said. “We don’t know if he was the one who parked it there.”
“It’s thin,” Sammy Nilsson agreed. “But if the car really was left there early in the morning then it could work. Alavez parks the car, because he doesn’t want the car to be sighted near Arlanda, gets himself to the airport somehow, sees something that makes him suspicious, and skips the flight.”
“It doesn’t add up,” Haver objected.
“What?”
“It just doesn’t add up,” Haver maintained, without explaining what he meant.
“No, I know,” Sammy Nilsson said with resignation.
When they reached the police station there was a certain commotion in the division. Fredriksson and Bea were in Ottosson’s office.
“Has something happened?” Sammy asked, reading the excitement in their eyes.
“A guy who claims to be Armas’s son has just turned up,” Ottosson said. “Lindell is talking to him right now.”
“Did he seek us out of his own accord?” Haver asked.
“Is he blond?” Sammy wondered.
“No, he has a shaved head, and he came here on his own,” Ottosson replied.
“What did he say?”
“That he wanted to talk to someone who was investigating the murder of his father.”
“Does he speak Swedish?”
“English,” Ottosson said. “We’ll have to wait for Lindell’s report.”
Sammy Nilsson told him about the Opel in Rotebro and how little they had managed to find out. Maybe, just maybe, a blond man with sunglasses could be tied to the car.
“An accomplice,” Fredriksson said and Sammy sighed heavily.
Lindell came back ten minutes later. She shook her head as soon as she saw her colleagues gathered in the lunchroom.
“I need something strong,” she said and sat down.
“What did he say?”
Lindell told them that Armas’s son was thirty-two years old and named Anthony Wild. He was born in England. His mother was English, and missing for many years. Her son thought she was living in Southeast Asia. Armas and Anthony had never lived under the same roof. Armas left when the mother was pregnant, but they had intermittent contact. The last time was about a year ago. Anthony had been in Sweden once before. That was over twenty years ago when he had visited his father who lived in Copenhagen. They had taken the ferry across to Malmö for the day.
“Did you ask about the video?” Fredriksson interrupted.
Lindell smiled. Yes, Anthony had been an