The Demon of Dakar (33 page)

“I’ll go with Bea to track down Rosenberg,” Sammy said. “You take on the Stockholm colleagues who are working on this jewel, what’s his name? Lorenzo? Otto will have to check to see if there is more news on the escape. I looked in on him just now but he was just staring into space like some zombie.”

Lindell knew why, but did not want to say anything to Sammy Nilsson and take the edge off his enthusiasm.

“Sounds like a plan,” she simply said, and reached for the phone. “I’ll call Bea back.”

Zero nurtured a dream of
moving back to Kurdistan, the land that his father had described so many times. There were those who said that Kurdistan was only a dream, which made Zero laughed. When he was in the seventh grade, the teacher had said that this land did not exist. That made Zero angry. That was the time when Zero put up his hand and
asked when they were going to read about Kurdistan. After all, they had to study all the other countries, rivers, and mountain ranges.

“How can a land that exists not exist?” he had asked the teacher.

“I’m afraid that I don’t understand the question. We have to keep to …”

Maybe the teacher was convinced that Zero, who otherwise never raised his hand, was trying to mess with him, to cause trouble and confusion.

Zero stood up from his seat and walked out. Zero’s father was at home, reading. Zero asked him if the country existed. His father lowered the paper and looked at him.

“In here,” he said and thumped his chest, “Kurdistan is in here. If God wills it, we will move there and build a home. If we can only follow our hearts, I will drive a bus in Kurdistan.”

He drove a bus in Sweden, most often route 13.

“That is my lucky number,” he said, and laughed.

He could not understand the Swedes, a superstitious and unmodern people, and their fear of numbers. He loved buses, and liked to drive route 13.

Zero was afraid. It was
a feeling he had more often now. Mostly he was afraid his father would not make it back from Turkey. At night he dreamed that he rescued his father from prison. He would drive a bus up close to the prison wall, on which his father and his friends had climbed, and then they jumped down into the seats on the bus. When it was full, Zero drove the sixty or so Kurds to freedom. His father sat up at the very front and told him how to drive, pointing to the right and to the left, but never with irritation. His father glowed with pride and he turned to his friends, pointed to the driver, and said that it was his son who was driving. Not his oldest son, admittedly, but his bravest.

When Zero awoke he was happy at first, but then he grew afraid.

The fear he felt as
he stood in front of the Fyris movie theater was of a different order. Ever since the incident with the drug dealer outside the
Sävja school, Zero had moved around with great caution, had not attended school, had hidden himself from his brothers, and had only spoken to his mother on the phone and to Patrik in the community gardens.

That the man with the Mercedes found him, terrified him. The car had come gliding up, stopped, and waited for Zero, who was on his way to buy some food at the local grocery.

He understood that they must have great power. Not even his family knew where he was holed up. Was it Patrik who had squealed? Zero did not think so. It was most likely Roger who had been indiscreet. He drank alcohol and took pills every day and was in constant need of money. Zero did not like him, but was allowed to stay in his apartment in Gottsunda in return for running some errands. Maybe he had sold Zero’s location so he could get more alcohol and pills?

The man in the Mercedes said that everything would be all right, that the old debts were no longer an issue, and that he was forgiven. All they wanted was for him to meet with an important person and apologize.

He had never been to the Fyris movie theater before, did not even know that it existed, and he did not understand the point of the movies that they were advertising.

As arranged, Zero stood outside the movie theater for a while before continuing on up the hill. Up ahead he could see tall trees and he knew he was supposed to go to the graveyard.

He hesitated at the entrance. The graveyard lay before him in complete darkness. There was a strong wind that was causing the trees to toss back and forth as if they were worried about what was going to happen.

He slipped in through a space in the fence. Gravel crunched underfoot. A sudden crack brought him to a halt, but it was only a branch that had broken off and was bouncing down through the canopy before landing on a grave.

Zero walked on. Nothing had been said about who he was to meet or what was going to happen, but he was convinced he was being watched. He rued his decision. He did not like walking among the dead. There was another crack overhead and Zero was convinced he was going to be struck in the head with a branch or be crushed by a falling tree.

Then he saw someone, partly obscured by gravestones, walking toward him. He stopped a couple of meters from Zero, who could not tell what he looked like except that he was a large man wearing a dark coat and with a hat pulled low over his eyes.

“Zero?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“It’s good that you came.”

The stranger’s soft voice in the strong wind forced Zero to walk closer, but the man put up his hand and drew back behind a bush.

“This is for enough,” he said. “We can speak like this.”

“Who are you?”

“That doesn’t matter. I only want to ask you to do something.”

No, Zero thought, I don’t want you to ask me to do something. But he had no time to protest before the man spoke again. He had a different voice from Sidström, deeper and more firm.

“I want you to go to the police and tell them what has happened.”

“Are you a cop?”

The man let out a laugh.

“I want you to go to the police and tell them who is selling drugs in this town.”

“But that’s me!”

“Who is behind it?”

“I don’t know that.”

“But I do,” said the man, and Zero saw his teeth glimmer momentarily in the light.

“They will kill me.”

“No, they won’t. You will not have to appear in public.”

Zero did not know what he meant.

“No one will have to know that it was you,” the man clarified.

Zero stared into the darkness and tried to get a sense of what the man looked like. He was no
svartskalle
, he spoke like a Swede, almost like a teacher.

“I don’t want to,” he said.

“I think you do. You don’t want to hide any longer, do you? You only want to put this episode behind you.”

Zero tried to say something, but the man gestured with his hand and continued.

“I know what you are thinking. You are wondering how much you will get for your trouble. Shall we say five thousand kronor. Cash. Now.”

“I’ll get five thousand?”

“Yes, and another five thousand when everything is done.”

Zero was speechless. It was a dizzying sum. For ten thousand he could go to Turkey and visit his father. Maybe there would be enough money to buy him out of prison?

“What should I do?”

“Easy. You will go to the police and ask for someone who works with drugs, understand? Tell them that you have repented, and that you were pulled into the drug business against your will. You did not want to sell drugs. You were threatened. And now you want to talk.”

The man told Zero what he should tell the police. He went over this several times and asked Zero to repeat what he had said.

“But I’ll go to jail,” Zero objected.

“No,” the man said. “You are too young. The police won’t care about you. They want to catch the real bad guys. Understand?”

Zero nodded. He thought it was like in a movie. The police would be pleased and forget about him. And he would get ten thousand.

“I understand,” he said, and at that moment a new branch broke off and fell through the trees.

“K. Rosenberg” it said in ivory
letters on the noticeboard in the A-stairwell. Four flights of stairs, Sammy Nilsson observed.

He shot Beatrice a humorous look.

“Can you make it?”

Bea made a face and started to walk. Damn, they’re sensitive, he thought and followed.

The assignment of bringing someone in for questioning was routine for both of them, but even so the tension mounted at each floor they passed. Sammy Nilsson absently read the names on the doors they walked by: Andersson, Liiw, Uhlberg, Forsberg, Burman.

Bea stopped on the third floor and turned around.

“Will he resist?”

“I doubt it,” Sammy Nilsson said, but automatically checked with the weapon holster under his jacket with his hand. “Our Konrad is not known to be violent.”

They walked on up, taking a breather for a couple of seconds before Bea rang the doorbell. They listened at the door but heard nothing that indicated Rosenberg was home. Bea rang the doorbell a second time as Sammy Nilsson peered through the mail slot.

An hour later, after Sammy
had called Lindell and the district attorney, the chairman of the condo association, arrived. He carefully examined their police identification before he put a key in the lock and opened the door.

Konrad Rosenberg was sitting in the only armchair in the living room, a dark red monster of a chair with a nubby, worn cover. Sammy Nilsson thought he looked pleased, perhaps it was the angles of his mouth that created this impression.

On the floor below his arm was a syringe.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” said the chairman, who had snuck in behind the police.

“Get out!” Bea snapped, and he obeyed immediately.

Ann Lindell was on her
way to the day care when she was informed that Konrad Rosenberg was dead. She felt no grief, of course—she didn’t even know Rosenberg, and what she knew of him was hearsay. Nonetheless she shed a few tears because it was Berglund she immediately started to think about when Sammy Nilsson called and told her about the depressing scene in the shabby apartment in Tunabackar.

Rosenberg was in some way intimately connected to her colleague. Perhaps it was only the fact that Berglund so recently had talked about how the former drug addict appeared to have come into money, but perhaps it was deeper than this. Earlier in the day she had intended to call Berglund and ask how he was doing, but had lacked the courage. Then when Sammy delivered the news of Rosenberg’s death, she was overtaken with the enormity of grief, though not for Rosenberg—for how many people in depressing circumstances hadn’t she seen, and how much misery and death had she not had to deal with? No, it was the suddenness of death that rattled her.

It looked like an overdose, Sammy had said, but had added that nothing was certain. Lindell agreed. Nothing was more certain than death, and she increased her speed, performing an insane maneuver in order to get there faster.

The first thing she saw in the day care playground was Erik, who was kicking his way along on a tricycle. A couple of other children were nearby. Ann Lindell recited their names to herself: Gustav, Lisen, Carlos, and Benjamin.

Erik was wearing only a T-shirt. I hope he doesn’t catch a cold, she thought. But he was like that, it didn’t matter what you put on him, jackets and sweaters ended up being pulled off.

She walked up, lifted him off the tricycle, and took him into her arms.

“We’re going home,” she said.