The Demon of Dakar - Kjell Eriksson [99]
“I’m sorry if I’ve hurt your feelings,” Görel said. “I know I talk too much.”
“Don’t worry,” Lindell said, but knew it wasn’t true. She had been wounded by Görel’s presumptuous comments. Of course she should meet a man. Many evenings when she sat alone, she longed for the man of her life to walk in and settle in beside her on the couch. But who was Görel to come with her meddling opinions? She herself lived with her great love, and she should know better. You only met a man like Edvard once in your life. That he was a “socially handicapped bumpkin” didn’t matter. What did Görel, or anyone else, know about what he had meant to her? She could still almost recall the physical sensation of his hands on her body. He is a good man, she thought, and was suddenly very sad, a sorrow that quickly turned to anger when Görel made an attempt to pick up the check. Lindell grabbed it and took out her card.
“I’m paying,” she said curtly, and avoided her friend’s gaze.
They left Dakar in silence. It was only a little after nine. Lindman and his companion had left half a minute before. He had passed Lindell’s table without glancing at her.
Lindell saw them strolling up the street toward the main square. She was struck with doubts about her hasty exit. Would it have been better to linger at the restaurant and concentrate on Rosenberg? Then she would also not have had to rid herself of Görel in the rude way she was now forced to act.
“I think it’s best that we go our own way from here. I’m going to catch up with my colleague,” she said, and pointed at the man, “and it will just lead to talking a lot of shop and there’s no point …”
Görel didn’t listen any further. She twirled around on the spot and left Lindell.
Axel Lindman was looking at Lindell with amusement. His companion, who had simply introduced herself as Elin, was noticeably less amused at having to accept this third wheel. Maybe she had been nursing other ideas about the continuation of the evening that did not include sitting in a burger joint with a juice box in front of her.
“You seem like you’re on the go,” Lindman said. “What were you doing at Dakar?”
Lindell looked around. There were almost no other people sitting in the section where they were.
“I was scouting it out,” Lindell said. “The owner’s business partner was murdered recently. How about yourself?”
“We’re on an assignment from our Stockholm colleagues,” said Elin from Västerås, and made it sound as if they had been sent from the Vatican.
“It concerns a man called Lorenzo Wader,” Lindman said. “Does the name sound familiar?”
“Was he the one who was sitting opposite Konrad Rosenberg?”
“We don’t know Rosenberg,” Elin said.
“Then we complement each other,” Lindell joked, as Elin deliberately and with feigned lack of interest picked apart the straw.
Axel Lindman told her that Lorenzo Wader figured in an extensive investigation that spanned the jurisdiction of several authorities from Stockholm to Västmanland. Money laundering, art theft, fencing, and many other activities. The Stockholm crime unit had had their eye on Wader for the past six months and it was likely that he would recognize the Stockholmers. That’s why they had turned to Västerås.
Why not Uppsala? Lindell wondered, but thought of the answer almost immediately.
“He’s been staying at the Hotel Linné for the past four weeks,” Lindman continued. “Calls himself a businessman and lives fairly luxuriously. He seems—”
“Who is Konrad Rosenberg?” Elin interrupted.
“Excuse me, I didn’t catch your last name,” Lindell said.
“Bröndeman,” she said, and Lindell thought she caught a twitch of Lindman’s lips.
Lindell told them about Rosenberg. The Västerås duo listened without interrupting.
“Cocaine,” Lindman said when she finished. “Our Lorenzo is a man of many talents.”