The Demon of Dakar - Kjell Eriksson [29]
“The alps are nice,” Berglund said, mostly in order to have something to say.
Lindell saw that his thoughts were elsewhere and when she sat down he took the opportunity to change the subject.
“Ann, do you remember Konrad Rosenberg?”
Lindell took a slurp of her coffee, reflected, and then nodded.
“Was he the one … it was something about fraud, credit cards, and drugs?”
“Exactly,” Berglund said. “His name turned up in the investigation about the burglaries I’m working on. Not because I think he had anything to do with it, but, well, it turned up. Do you remember that he got a few years and went through detox?”
Lindell nodded and suddenly felt a sense of satisfaction at recalling something that happened many years ago, as well as a great joy that Berglund had thought to ask her in particular. It was like a verification that she meant something, that the two of them had a shared past.
Berglund was perhaps the colleague she was closest to. She felt secure with his calm temperament and loyalty. He was also a wise man, thoughtful, rarely judgmental, and free of pretension and desire for his own gain. He was an Uppsala native. In his youth he had been an active sportsman and had played both soccer and bandy. Later he had taken up orienteering and sat on the board of the club. Through his sport, his engagement in HSB, the housing cooperative, and his membership in the Mission church—something Lindell had found out about only recently and that surprised her, but also not—he had a number of threads connecting him with society. He functioned as a human seismograph that perceived the tremors in the city.
The only area that was closed to him was the Uppsala of the youth, students and immigrants. There he felt lost and admitted it freely.
“He has been clean for a number of years,” Berglund said, “but now it seems he is on the move again. One of the informants—’Sture with the hat’—I questioned about the burglaries named Rosenberg, though only in passing. When I asked further it turned out that Rosenberg is suddenly in the money, as Sture put it.”
“I’ve met Sture, he was a real talker,” Haver inserted, “he only wanted to shine, appear interesting.”
“Like so many others,” Lindell said.
“It’s possible,” Berglund said.
“Maybe it was a way of getting around the subject of the burglaries, or else he doesn’t know a thing but still wanted to seem helpful and have something to give you,” Haver went on.
Berglund made a gesture to show that it was possible, but Lindell saw he had a different opinion.
“He recently bought a brand-new Mercedes,” Berglund said. “I talked to a friend at the Philipson car dealership and, according to him, Rosenberg went straight for the luxury models.”
“Did he pay in cash?”
“Without bargaining.”
“Have you talked to the drug squad?” Lindell asked.
“No, it’s all a bit thin,” Berglund admitted.
Haver snickered.
Leave already for Italy with your Rebecka, Lindell thought impatiently, with a vague sense of envy.
“But if you hear anything,” Berglund said in closing on the topic of Konrad Rosenberg, and then asked how things were going with the river murder.
“We’re proceeding in the usual way,” Lindell said, “but there’s nothing so far. He’s not in our records, at any rate. We’ve checked the prints.”
“Maybe he’s Russian?” Haver suggested.
“It’s possible. What I’m wondering about the most, and I guess it’s the only thing we have to speculate about right now, is the tattoo that was removed. I think it’s some kind of symbolic act.”
“That seems insane,” Berglund said, and Lindell knew her colleague had quickly arrived at the same conclusion as she had, the amatuerishness in bringing attention to the tattoo.
“Maybe a red herring,” Lindell said. “I don’t know.”
She took her coffee cup and returned to her office. The tattoo on the murdered man’s arm, plus the fact that he was basically naked, was a mystery. Maybe these details were connected? Had the murderer undressed him in order to check for tattoos? Ann Lindell had seen