The Demon of Dakar - Kjell Eriksson [63]
In order to clear his head, he turned on the car radio, but then turned it off immediately. He didn’t like the music, and he didn’t understand the language.
Will the world be a better place if Slobodan dies? This was a question he had asked himself many times but had not been able to bring himself to answer.
He turned the radio back on again. Now an American melody that he recognized from California was playing and he let it stay on.
He had become a murderer but he regretted nothing. It was only in his dreams that he felt anguish.
Then he saw the fat man step out his front door and walk with short, hurried footsteps to a taxi, and get into it. Manuel started the car and followed.
He spread out the map in the passenger seat in order to follow the taxi’s route. It was driving north. Manuel was impressed and amazed at how disciplined the Swedes conducted themselves in traffic. The most remarkable thing was that they stopped for pedestrians. Manuel had been close to running over a couple of teenagers crossing the street right as he was driving by. He honked aggressively, scared and angry, but soon realized that this was the way traffic functioned. The slow ones had the right of way.
It was a short ride. Slobodan stepped out of the taxi in front of a three-story building. Manuel parked behind a van. Slobodan walked to the nearest door. As soon as he had walked in, Manuel ran up to it, stopped the door before it closed, and slid inside. He heard Slobodan panting in the stairwell and Manuel ran up to a landing with quiet steps, stopped, listened, and continued.
Suddenly the fat man stopped. Manuel heard his heavy breaths. He peered up the stairs and saw Slobodan’s hand on the railing. He was almost at the top now. Then he walked on. Manuel followed. Within himself he felt the hatred grow, how the muscles in his body tensed and how the sweat started to bead on his face. Despite his resolution not to hurt Slobodan Andersson, his bitterness rose up at the man who had devastated his family. Why should he be allowed to live when Angel had been forced to die for his greed?
Manuel knew he was the more supple and quick. He had lost the knife but could, if he wanted, kill Slobodan with his bare hands. He had the strength and the fury of the righteous. He made the sign of the cross and tiptoed on without a sound.
Slobodan came to a stop on the highest landing. Manuel counted the steps, six, plus as many again in the next section. Perhaps six, seven rapid steps in all. The whole thing could be over in a couple of seconds.
Suddenly there was the sound of a doorbell. Manuel instinctively crouched down. It was the door on the right. After ten, fifteen seconds a door opened and a man said something, then fell silent. A brief, whispered conversation in the foreign language ensued before the door closed and Slobodan and the other started to walk down the stairs. By then Manuel was already down at the front door. He continued down into the basement, where a door blocked his passage. The men came closer. Manuel pressed himself up against the door, and hoped for dear life that they did not have a reason to go to the basement. He counted the steps. Slobodan’s breaths and the other man’s high-pitched voice were now very close.
Manuel caught sight of them as they opened the front door and left.
He is a small man, Manuel thought and smiled to himself, short like a Mexican. They stepped into a Mercedes, with the short man behind the wheel.
The trip went beyond the city limits. Manuel had trouble orienting himself at first but recognized the roundabout at the southern edge of the city where he had come in on his way from Arlanda.
Slobodan and the “Swedish Mexican” went three-quarters of the way around the roundabout and Manuel followed the distance of a car’s length.
A great calm descended over him. How simple everything was.
Then the Mercedes turned onto a gravel road, crossed some railway tracks, and continued up to a small cottage at the