The Demon of Dakar - Kjell Eriksson [42]
“The philosopher Lindell in action!”
She turned around. Ottosson was standing there with a coffee mug in his hand. She had not heard him enter. She smiled but did not like being interrupted in her thoughts. If it had been anyone other than Ottosson she would have registered her dissatisfaction.
As it was, she told him what she had been thinking. Ottosson refilled his mug and sat down.
“You are right,” he said when she had finished, “but you’re also wrong. A kitchen, a little refuge, even if it is dingy and small, stands for security. Or it should. To have a roof over your head, warmth, and food on the table are the preconditions for becoming someone else, if you know what I mean. We are always striving for …”
He trailed off, as if he couldn’t manage to finish his train of thought, or as if he did not himself fully understand, or was unable to formulate, what he meant.
“Man is a strange creature,” Ottosson resumed, and employed a worn cliché that only expressed their usual frustration.
“Hasn’t anyone called in?” Lindell asked.
Normally the phone at the station would ring off the hook after a murder had been committed. Spontaneous tips that in most cases did not lead to anything.
“No, nothing that gives us an identity,” Ottosson said. “I thought for a while that he did not come from Uppsala, that someone transported him here in order to dump him in the river.”
“But why there?” Lindell asked and then realized the ridiculousness of her question. Many times there was no rationality to a killer’s actions.
Ottosson shrugged.
“Perhaps our rounds in the city will give us something,” he said.
They had made copies of the murder victim’s photograph and detectives from the violence and intelligence units were looking up individuals who would perhaps recognize him. It was the usual roundup of drug users and petty thieves. Sometimes they were willing to drop a little information in the hopes that it made them look good or for the simple reason that a murder was a disturbance to their own business and they wanted a quick resolution.
The investigative team in the violent crimes division had discussed possible motives as a matter of routine. These were freewheeling speculations that perhaps did not yield much, especially since they did not know the victim’s identity, but that nonetheless set the machinery of their brains in motion. One tossed-out idea gave way to another that was rejected that led to a third possible explanation that was taken seriously. Everything mixed, became layered, was judged more or less believable. Together this resulted in a concoction of loose assumptions, out of which one could finally perhaps distill a motive and a perpetrator.
“It is the tattoo, or rather, its removal, that is the key,” Lindell said.
Ottosson agreed.
“Why does one get a tattoo?”
“To show one’s affiliation,” Lindell said. “A brotherhood.”
“It used to be a mark of class,” Ottosson said. “Only workers used to get tattoos. Now little girls have tattoos everywhere.”
“It functions as a kind of marking. You choose a design that says something about yourself or the life you lead, or with the direction you feel life should take.”
“Or it’s just a fun thing you do when you’re drunk,” Ottosson added.
“He doesn’t look the type.”
“Perhaps in his youth?”
Lindell shook her head.
“I can’t say why, but this guy is no common … alcoholic who likes to get loaded in Nyhavn.”
“But in his youth,” Ottosson insisted. “Perhaps he went to sea?”
“He did end up in the water finally,” Lindell said.
“And almost naked to boot.”
“I think that was done in order to humiliate him,” Lindell said. “Why would you otherwise take the trouble to remove his clothes?”
“Two possibilities,” Ottosson said, “either the clothes say something about the victim or else he was only wearing his underpants when he was killed.”
“A betrayed man who finds them naked in the bedroom and kills the lover?”
“Or a homosexual.”
Ottosson had trouble