The Demon of Dakar (23 page)

Barbro Liljendahl parked on the
street and the first thing she noticed was the Mercedes. Lindell had told her about Konrad Rosenberg’s car purchase. She also saw the scrape along the side that almost looked like a racing stripe.

Therefore she was not all too surprised by Rosenberg’s opening remark when she introduced herself as from the police.

“I’m grateful that you could come down here so quickly. You saw the car, didn’t you?”

“Someone else will have to take care of that,” Liljendahl said. “We have something else to talk about.”

The air in his apartment was smoky and stale, but it was surprisingly neat. They sat down in the kitchen. Konrad Rosenberg had a veteran criminal’s
gaze. He pretended to be relaxed but avoided looking her in the eye.

“Maybe we should talk a little about the Mercedes, after all,” Liljendahl said.

Konrad looked up and she noticed a glint of hope in his worn face. For a moment she could identify with him.

“It must be some kids,” he said and lit a cigarette.

“May I ask how you can afford such an expensive car?”

“I won on a race in Solvalla. And I’ve only ever driven junk cars before so I thought …”

“How much did you win?”

“A couple of hundred thousand,” Konrad said and coughed at same time, as if the amount caught in his throat.

“Do you gamble on a regular basis?”

“Every week. I am the best client at the gambling station, and sometimes I go down to Solvalla and sometimes up to Gävle. Do you bet on horses?”

Liljendahl shook her head and smiled at Rosenberg.

“Are you acquainted with Olle Sidström?”

Here Rosenberg displayed great finesse. He took a final drag of his cigarette and then carefully extinguished it in the overflowing ashtray.

“Yes, he’s come out with me a few times, but that was more in the old days. He gets so overbearing when he wins. You need to be discreet when you play.”

“Right now he’s not doing any gambling,” Liljendahl said. “He’s in the hospital.” “Oh?”

“Stabbed.”

Now Rosenberg’s defenses crumbled. Liljendahl watched as his wall came tumbling down, how his jaw slackened and how terror established its grip on him.

Attack, Liljendahl thought, nonetheless she held back and allowed time for Rosenberg’s bewilderment to take hold before she told him about Sidström’s condition. She described in detail what his chest looked like, the way his fear had manifested itself, and what an urgent need he had to talk to the police.

“What does this have to do with me?” Rosenberg tossed out and lit yet another cigarette. Liljendahl, who had encountered this question many times, smiled, but said nothing.

“If he says that I owe him money then he’s bluffing” was Rosenberg’s next tack. “He’s always been full of shit.”

“I am not here as an advocate for Sidström,” Liljendahl said. “I am investigating an attempted homicide and drug trafficking. I thought that, as an old addict, you would maybe have something to tell me.”

Rosenberg shook his head.

“I am a law-abiding citizen,” he said.

Liljendahl could not repress a look of merriment.

“And you have nothing to add,” she said.

“No, nothing.”

Before Barbro Liljendahl left Tunabackar
she stopped by the magazine store on Torbjörns Square and confirmed that Rosenberg was a heavy gambler and spent “a thousand or so” on horse bets and lottery tickets.

According to the manager, Rosenberg did “fairly well” and won small to “decent” amounts from time to time.

Liljendahl realized that she had to uncover something concrete in order to break Sidström and possibly confirm a link to Rosenberg. She felt very strongly that Rosenberg was hiding something. The nervousness he had displayed was not the usual stress all criminals showed in their confrontation with law enforcement. She had managed to unsettle him and it would be a good idea to pay another visit to Rosenberg in a day or two, keep the pressure on and maybe get him to make a mistake. He would never start to talk of his own accord. Only new information would bring this about, and lead to him selling information in order to save his own skin.

She also knew that the weak link in this chain was Zero. He was the one who had to start talking.

Lorenzo was not happy, but
the people around him did not usually notice a difference, since he was trained to maintain his composure. Olaf González was nonetheless experienced enough to take heed of Lorenzo’s right hand nervously pulling through his hair, smoothing it back.

“Who?” he asked, and Gonzo wished he had an answer.

“There are a couple of possibilities,” he began gingerly, “either someone in the business that Armas went too far with, or someone from his past has turned up.”

When Gonzo found out that Armas had been murdered, his initial reaction had been to leave town. He was convinced that it was Lorenzo who was behind it, and since he was the only one who knew about Armas’s relationship with Lorenzo, he felt he was in a vulnerable position. Perhaps Lorenzo wanted to silence him in order to cover his tracks.

“That much I have figured out on my own,” Lorenzo said. “But since you worked closely with Armas, I would have expected you to have picked something up, for god’s sake.”

Lorenzo seldom cursed or raised his voice. They were sitting at Pub 19, each with a beer in front of him. It was half past six and there were only a few other people in the room. A couple of students were standing at the bar and a group of women, whom Gonzo assumed all worked together, had claimed two tables at the window looking out onto Svart-bäcksgatan. One of the women looked up and stared at them.

Gonzo chose not to answer. Whatever he said, it would most likely rub Lorenzo the wrong way. Gonzo wanted to stay on his good side. That was his only chance. Since he had been fired from Dakar there was no possibility of working for another restaurant in town—Slobodan would see to that—and so Lorenzo was his only hope.

Damn it, he thought, why did I have to go poking my nose in other peoples’ business? The first time Lorenzo contacted him, he assumed
that it was about work, that Lorenzo was fishing for information and was looking to establish contacts in the restaurant business. That was at least how he made it seem, that he was thinking of establishing himself in the city and needed “points of entry.”

Gonzo was flattered and saw before him the chance of advancement, and the very thought of walking into Slobodan’s office and tossing the keys on the table made him willingly tell everything he knew about Dakar and Alhambra. He did not feel disloyal because Armas and Slobodan had always treated him like shit. And then that Tessie bitch came along who thought she owned the place and could order him around like a house slave. What did she know about waitressing? He had worked his ass off for fifteen years while Tessie had taken it easy at some burger joint in Boston.

He had realized too late that Lorenzo was aiming higher than that. He wanted to break Armas and in this way weaken Slobodan and perhaps take over his restaurants. But there was also something more that Lorenzo was after. Gonzo had never managed to put his finger on what that was. This feeling had grown stronger during the past week. Lorenzo’s anxiety could not be explained in any other way. There was more at stake than two restaurants in Uppsala.

“What do the cops say?”

“They said nothing to me,” Gonzo said and recalled how the police had peppered him with questions about his disagreement with Armas and why he had quit Dakar. “They thought I had something to do with his murder.”

“And do you?”

Lorenzo smiled as he posed the question.

“Fuck you!” Gonzo exclaimed, and one of the youths at the bar turned his head to stare with curiosity at the duo tucked away in the corner.

Gonzo took a large gulp of beer. He kept his eyes closed as he drank but felt Lorenzo’s gaze. When he opened his eyes again he decided to tell him what he knew.

“I passed a package on to Armas,” Gonzo said, “but that turned out to be a mistake. He double-crossed me.”

“Stolen goods.”

Lorenzo nodded, posed no further questions, sipped some beer and smiled again.

“If you wish to join us when we sail, you will have to step on board soon,” he said.

“And what is the cargo?”

“To join the crew, one does not have to know the nature of the cargo,” Lorenzo said.

He stood up, pulled out a hundred kronor note, and tossed it on the table.

“Multiply that with a thousand,” he said cryptically, and left the pub.

Gonzo signaled to the bartender
that he wanted another beer, mostly to quell the temptation to stand up and follow Lorenzo. He stared at the bill and mentally added three zeros.

The beer was placed in front of him and at the same moment he saw an image from his childhood. A clothing line was suspended between two trees for his mother to hang the family’s laundry. His father’s colorful shirts were next to his own T-shirts and underwear, a red dress, and some sheets.

“How’s it going?”

Gonzo looked up bewildered.

“It’s fine,” he said.

“You’re leaving Dakar, I hear,” the bartender said.

Gonzo nodded, but the image of laundry was fixed in his mind. The clothes billowed gently in the breeze. It was the height of summer and Gonzo was standing in the open window on the second floor. For a moment he thought he could smell the laundry detergent.

The bartender looked at him devoid of expression, and then left the table. Gonzo drank some more beer and wondered why he was seeing laundry. He had not been back to Norway for several years. Was this vision a sign that he should leave Uppsala and go home? The house was still there and his mother was probably still hanging the laundry in the same place.

Gonzo finished his beer, stood up from the table, and walked briskly through the pub, suddenly extremely irritated at the women who were growing increasingly raucous. It was as if their laughter was aimed at him.

What the hell do those bitches know about Uppsala, he thought and glared at one of them as he negotiated his way through the narrow spaces between tables and chairs. She met his gaze defiantly as if she sensed his thoughts and wanted to express her resistance and disdain.

Once out on the sidewalk he could not decide which way to go. His own will had left him. He felt there was trouble brewing, a kind that was considerably worse than losing his job. An inner voice told him to go home, pool his assets, and book a ticket to Oslo. Maybe he could start over there, find a job and put Uppsala behind him forever. Another voice urged him to take revenge, even if Armas was no longer reachable. Slobodan was still there.

An old man was pushing a walker along on the other side of the street. A plastic bag hung from the handle. The old man was making his way forward with the utmost of effort. But still he smiled. Gonzo shook his head and turned left toward downtown.

There was nothing attractive about
the courtyard behind Dakar. There was a rusted Opel in one corner, three green garbage containers in the other, and a worn old bicycle in a deteriorating bike rack.

The asphalt was uneven and cracked and had undergone various rounds of repair. Even the weeds that stuck out of the cracks looked miserable and wilted in the still air. There was a strong smell of garbage, but this did not affect Manuel. He hardly noticed it. His whole attention was fixed on the red-painted door that bore the restaurant’s name in white.

He had been standing there for half an hour. Initially he had
approached the door purposefully but then stopped himself, his finger poised on the doorbell. He had lowered his arm, drawn back, and sat down on the bike rack. In this state of indecision, he experienced peace for the first time in this foreign land. Maybe it was precisely the smell of garbage and the baking sun that made him lean up against the wall and smile. He could easily recall and identify the smell as well as the warmth from his earlier life. There was comfort in this passive state of waiting. How many times had he not experienced this in California? The waiting for work, for someone to drive up in their pickup, roll down the window, and size him up without a word, along with the other men, evaluating their physical strength and stamina.

He wished that he could roll himself a cigarette and maybe share a beer with someone. When he closed his eyes he thought he could hear the quiet talk of the other men. Brief stories of villages and families that he had never heard of, but that nonetheless appeared as vivid as old acquaintances, about bosses you had to watch out for, slave drivers and racists, and about women, living and imagined. The men were never as bold, and at the same time as bare, in their longing and grief as when they were waiting for work.

And the hope that these men kept alive as they spoke. It was as if the silence threatened to burst their already frozen hearts.

Even then Manuel knew that it was all in vain. None of their dreams were going to come true, yet he allowed himself to be influenced by their delusionary hopes and plans for the future. He rarely participated in the discussions but he allowed the muffled voices to keep even his hope alive. Maybe it was the same for them? Manuel believed that even behind the most innocent and naive compatriot, there was a realist. They all took part in an enormous game of pretend that included millions of impoverished job seekers. They allowed themselves to be duped in the same way that they, for a few moments, let themselves be tempted by the tricks of the jesters and verbose fantasies of the fiesta.

Was it this that Angel and Patricio had no longer been able to bear? Manuel wanted to think so, that it was not pure foolishness that drove them to associate with drug smugglers, that they were not deluded but fully conscious of what they were doing. They did not let the quiet chatter
soothe them any longer. They knew that there was no future for a miserable and poor
campesino
who was waiting for work and happiness. They could not stand this farce, and decided instead to snatch a part of the fortune that the fat man’s drug trade created.

Angel used to ask why the white men were rich and why the Indians lived worse than dogs. Manuel’s talk about five hundred years of oppression and extortion did not impress him.

“But there are more of us,” he would object. “Why do we accept the white man taking the best for himself?”

Manuel knew that all Angel dreamed of was a woman to share his life. Where and under what circumstances did not matter. His brother had an uncomplicated attitude to life; he wanted to love and be loved. Manuel had always imagined Angel as the father of countless offspring, small chubby Zapotec children in a village like all the others.

Why should he talk politics when he couldn’t understand it? Why ponder the injustices of life when all he wanted was a woman’s embrace?

Almost an hour had gone
by when a man suddenly appeared in the courtyard. It was only as he approached the red door that he noticed Manuel. He jumped but then smiled and said something that Manuel did not understand.

Manuel nodded and asked in English if he worked at Dakar.

“Are you Spanish?” the man asked.

“Venezuela,” Manuel answered.

“A friend of Chávez,” the man said, in a strange kind of Spanish.

“No,”
Manuel replied.

“Your president, I mean. Forget it,” he added, when he saw Manuel’s look of incomprehension. “My name is Feo and sure, I work here.”

“Are you from Spain?”

“Portugal,” Feo said.

Manuel stared at him. Feo took out a set of keys.

“Are you waiting for someone?”

Manuel shook his head. “I’m looking for work,” he said.

Feo put a key in the lock but did not turn it. Manuel felt the tense feeling from California, and got to his feet.

“At Dakar? Do you have any experience?”

“I can work,” Manuel said hastily. “I am used to everything. I can work hard and long.”

Feo studied him. Manuel stood with hanging arms, met his gaze, and thought of Angel. He decided to go to Frankfurt to see where his brother had met his death. Perhaps there were some stones on the railway tracks with dried blood? Perhaps someone had seen him run?

“You’ll have to speak to the owner,” the Portuguese man said. “He isn’t here, but come in and wait. You look like you could use a Coke.”

He unlocked the door and let Manuel go in first, locked the door behind him and Manuel was struck by how cool everything was. There was a faint smell of cleaning solution and food.

Feo put a hand on his shoulder.

“You look like you could use a Coke,” he repeated.

Manuel looked around him as if he were expecting to be ambushed at any second. Feo brought him out to the bar, took out a Coca-Cola, and held it out with a smile.

There was a clatter of pots from the kitchen and a radio playing Bruce Springsteen. Manuel was thirsty but did not manage to swallow more than a mouthful.

“Come along and meet the chef,” Feo said.

Manuel accompanied Feo to the kitchen. As Feo was introducing him, Manuel wondered why he was being treated so kindly. He watched the Portuguese and heard him explain in Swedish why the stranger was here. Donald gave him a cursory glance and nod but then immediately turned back to his work. In front of him lay herb-stuffed lamb roulade that he was slicing into portions, then weighing and stacking them in a plastic container. Manuel drew in the smell.

“You speak English?” Donald asked.

Manuel nodded.

“Damn, you speak English with an Indian accent,” Feo said and thumped Donald in the back.

“Do you have a work permit?”

“No,” said Manuel.

“Then it will be difficult. Slobban, the guy who owns this place, is pretty particular about things like that.”

“No problems,” Feo said.

“You are from Venezuela?” Donald continued. “Where did you learn English?”

“I have worked in California.”

“Grapes of Wrath,”
Donald said in Swedish, and smiled unexpectedly.

He finished slicing the lamb.

“A novel” was his reply to Feo’s quizzical look, and then switched back to English again. “I’ll talk to Slobban because we do need a dishwasher. If you have worked in the States then it will be like a vacation to wash dishes at Dakar.”

Manuel listened in fascination to the chef. His English really was funny.

“But I think we can arrange a couple of hours every evening,” Donald explained. “Do you think it smells good?”

“Yes, very,” Manuel said.