The Demon of Dakar - Kjell Eriksson [26]
“Not born in Sweden, I mean,” Fredriksson said, his eyes twinkling at Lindell.
Lindell sighed, but it was more an expression of sympathy with Ottosson than exasperation. The spring had been catastrophic. Perhaps not from a weather perspective, which did not mean much to her, but professionally. Boring routine matters one after the other, with eruptions of youth violence in Gränby and Sävja, and a hooligan armed with a knife who had wreaked havoc in the downtown area for a few weeks, assaulting nighttime wanderers on their way home from the bars. He had been seized without drama, and by accident. It had turned out to be a mentally deranged individual who had been returned to the clinic from which he had come.
Summer had not been much better. She had spent her vacation at home, except for a weeklong visit to her parents in Ödeshög and a long weekend in a loaned summer cottage. That was the best of her four weeks off. Erik discovered insects, and together they immersed themselves in the lives of ants, beetles, and spiders. For him it was a new world while for her it was sheer antiphobia therapy.
She realized that he was starting to develop new needs, that he was becoming more active, curious, and engaged in the world around him, but also more demanding. It was no longer enough for him to have a piece of paper and some crayons or Legos. He wanted Ann to be engaged, overwhelming her with questions and thoughts. Sometimes she was not equal to these demands, grew tired, wanted most of all to stretch out on the sand by the small forest lake, read or simply ruminate with her gaze fixed on the pair of ospreys sailing over the water. She could not hand Erik over to someone else. It was only the two of them.
In the evenings after he fell asleep, she sat down with a bottle of wine in a rusty hammock with ripped cushions, slowly swaying back and forth, thinking about her life. Normally she resisted these thoughts, but it was as if this setting, the isolation in the cottage, and the complete contrast to her daily life forced her to reflect. Perhaps also Erik’s new needs meant that her future looked more uncertain than before. During those unusually sunny days in the cottage she saw her lone responsibility for his development in stark relief. He would start school within a few years and she could only imagine what that would involve. Thereafter he would shortly become a teenager and she would be approaching fifty.
She read the first page of the medical examiner’s report of the autopsy. The man had bled to death after suffering a knife wound of eleven centimeters across his throat. He was dead before he hit the water. His age was estimated at between forty and fifty, he was one hundred and eighty-six centimeters tall and weighed ninety-two kilograms, was in good physical condition and without any distinguishing physical characteristics, except for what Lindell took to be the remains of a tattoo on his upper right arm. A patch of skin about five centimeters in diameter had been removed from the arm. What remained was a small dark line of about half a centimeter, which was what made her think there had once been an entire tattoo. There were two possible explanations to the flaying: to make the identification of the victim more difficult, or else the tattoo could have a direct link to the murderer.
Lindell picked up the close-ups of the upper arm area.
“What should we think?” Fredriksson said. “Was he murdered here or did he float here on the current?”
“We have people on both sides of the river who are looking into it,” Lindell said, “but they haven’t found anything so far.”
“But how likely is it that a corpse can float down along the river without someone seeing it?”
“I don’t know, Allan,” Lindell said.
She stared at the photograph.
“Can’t you check with TattooJack or whatever their names are. There must be tattoo experts.”
“This isn’t much to show them,” Fredriksson said.
She pushed the photograph across the table without making eye contact.
“Check it anyway,” Lindell said.
“Sure, babe,” Fredriksson