The Demon of Dakar (21 page)

“Has he been in touch with his mother?”

“He called but she cried the whole time.”

“What did he say to you?”

Patrik looked up. After a couple of seconds’ hesitation he told her that Zero had been selling drugs in Sävja for the past couple of months. There was a man who had turned up and given him the drugs to sell to his friends.

“You wouldn’t believe what he makes. It can be a couple thousand. He’s planning to go to Turkey and rescue his father,” Patrik said.

“What really happened that evening?”

“That man came by with more drugs but Zero didn’t want to keep
going. He was scared, but he didn’t say that. He started to pull some racist crap instead. The man made trouble and Zero punched him.”

“What about you? What did you do?”

Eva forced herself to remain calm. The least slip of the tongue or sign of being upset could result in Patrik clamming up.

“Helped Zero out,” he mumbled. “Then we took off.”

“That was when you came home bleeding?”

Patrik nodded. Eva could see that he was close to tears and felt an enormous gratitude in the fact that he was sitting there across from her, that he was talking, and that he could cry.

“And later, the next evening?”

“Another man came. We were up at the school, just hanging and talking. Then the other man came and started to talk. At first I thought it was a cop.”

“He was the one who was stabbed?”

“He started it!”

Eva nodded.

“Whose knife was it?”

“Zero’s.”

“Do you have a knife?” she asked, wishing she hadn’t the moment she saw Patrik’s expression.

The sound from the computer had stopped and Eva was convinced Hugo was listening.

“Forget it,” she said. “Go on.”

“He started in on Zero, said something about how he owed him money and stuff about, you know, what happens to people who don’t pay their debts. He was pretty scary.”

“What did Zero do?”

“Nothing! He was scared shitless, I could tell. Then the man wanted Zero to go with him to his car but he didn’t want to, he started to run. The guy caught up with him and pulled him down on the ground. The whole thing went so fast. Zero shook him off and then took out the knife. And then he was just lying there, the guy.”

“And this is what you told the police?”

Patrik nodded.

“Why didn’t you tell them this from the beginning?”

“I wanted to talk to Zero first,” Patrik said, and now his eyes were shiny with tears.

Eva stretched out her hand and put it on his arm.

“I’m glad you told me. I’m proud of you, you know that?”

After a couple of minutes
of silence, Patrik stood up, took his teacup and put it on the counter.

“Helen called,” he said. “She wanted you to get back to her.”

Eva glanced at the wall clock.

“I’ll do it tomorrow,” she said.

“She said you could call late. She sounded really worked up. She has some stuff she’s doing, I didn’t get what it was.”

Eva took the handheld phone with her into the bedroom and dialed Helen’s number.

It is like California, but
much smaller, Manuel thought. Even so he was pleased with his new location. The landscape constantly awakened memories of his brothers and their time in Anaheim, but he liked this place better than the last one and not only because of the connection with Armas.

Here his gaze did not get snared in brambles and stones. When he climbed up the steep ravine he could look out over wide swathes of good earth, and that had a calming effect.

He recognized the strawberry plants and they were still bearing fruit. The first morning he had been awakened by a tractor and the sound of voices. The evening before, he had wandered down the rows of plants and concluded that there were not many berries left and he was surprised that they still took the trouble to harvest them.

He had picked a few strawberries and put them in his mouth, but this reminded him too much of Angel and Patricio for him to really be able to enjoy the sweetness. How he longed for his brothers! This feeling tore at his heart like a furious animal. It had only gotten worse since he arrived in Sweden.

Slashing that gringo’s throat had not helped, if he had even imagined it would. The first night after he killed Armas and dragged him down to the river, in the hope that he would sink or float away, he had suffered hellish nightmares and woken innumerable times, alternatingly in a cold sweat and feverishly hot. He fell to his knees outside the tent and prayed to San Isidro for forgiveness,
ben ládxido zhhn
, to make his little heart bigger.

In the darkness of the night he thought he could see a beautiful woman with waist-length hair and copper-colored skin. She disappeared in the direction of the river with a taunting laugh. It was
matelacihua
and he chanted his prayers more intensely. The bad air surrounded him, constricted his chest, and threatened to suffocate him. He was afraid of losing consciousness only to wake up many miles away.

He knew that his crime was enormous. He had taken on the role of God. This was unforgivable.

The next day he had gone back to the river and discovered that the body was gone. It was as if part of his guilt had washed away with the water. He relaxed, turned his face up to the heavens, and spoke to Angel.

Now, some days later and in a new spot next to the same river, his guilt pricked him like tiny mosquitoes, but not more than he could wave away. He had done the right thing. It had been an act pleasing in the eyes of God to kill a
bhni guí’a
. The world was the better for it, and Manuel was convinced that Armas’s soul was now subjected to the torments of Hell.

What were the alternatives? he debated with himself. Should he have allowed himself to be killed like a dog? But the knife—why did he carry it in his pocket, if not to use it? Hadn’t he unconsciously prepared himself to kill when he took it out of the bag and slipped it into his pocket? Had he sensed Armas’s intentions as they drove to the river?

If he went to the police he would join Patricio in jail, he knew this. To be thrown in jail was nothing foreign to Manuel and his family. Zapotecs
had been persecuted in all ages in any manner of ways, and many were holed up in Oaxaca prisons. Eleven
campesinos
from a neighboring village had been taken away four months ago and subsequently imprisoned or killed. No one had heard from them again.

But these cases were grounded in defending their land and forests, in matters of autonomy and justice. Manuel had admittedly killed in self-defense, but he did not think anyone would believe him.

He lay in the river ravine in the shadow of fir trees that reminded him of cypresses. A couple of predatory birds hovered in the sky, just as in the valley at home. Would he ever see his village again?

He got to his feet quickly, in one movement, just like a startled animal, but it was only a lone man walking along the riverbank, a fishing pole in one hand and a bucket in the other. Manuel had seen him the day before. The man’s tall, gaunt body was topped by a small head with a face so wrinkled that Manuel was reminded of the old woman in his village who gathered bunches of
epazote
that she sold for fifty centavos apiece.

Did he sell the fish, or was it done only for enjoyment? Manuel knew so little about Sweden, about the people who lived in this country. He had read a little in a guidebook in a store in Mexico City, that was all.

He knew that there were many different types of Swedes but didn’t really care. His role here was not the eager curiosity of the tourist nor the systematic investigation of the ethnographer.

The fisherman disappeared behind a bend in the path and Manuel left his secluded spot. Ever since he had set fire to the short man’s house he had felt a growing anxiety. There were so many. He had aimed for Armas and the fat one, but in encountering the short one his task had suddenly increased. Although the short one had not been actively involved in the recruitment of Angel and Patricio, he was a link in the chain, and apparently an important one. He may even have been the brains behind the whole operation, and perhaps Armas and the fat one had simply been his errand boys?

The anxiety also stemmed from something Patricio had said to him in prison: “We could have said no.” That was true. Manuel had said no, and
had warned his brothers against going to Oaxaca, where they were going to stay in a hotel and receive new clothing. They could have spoken up, continued to cultivate their corn, which others now harvested.

But they had chosen to say yes. How far did their responsibility extend?

Manuel drew a deep breath, locked the tent with the little padlock, and then strolled up to the parking lot. He looked around before wandering out into the open. Some twenty cars were parked in the lot. His rental car did not stand out, it blended in with the others, but he felt like an exotic creature as he carefully made his way to it.

The parking lot was located at the edge of an arts and crafts village that appeared to have a steady stream of visitors. The place was ideal. He knew that no one would pay any attention to the car, even if it stayed there overnight. It could belong to one of the workers from the strawberry fields.

That morning he had bathed
in the river, scrubbing himself thoroughly, and relished it despite the cold temperature. He had swum back and forth, caressed by waterlilies and reeds, and thereafter dried in the sunshine back on shore.

He was a short, wiry man and there were those who misjudged his slight build. But he knew his own strength. Like all Zapotecs, schooled in farm labor, he was capable of working long and hard. He could carry a hundred kilos on his shoulders, clear the land with his hoe or machete for hours without tiring, take a break, eat some beans and
posol
only to resume his work, walk for miles up and down through valleys and over mountain passes.

He was the kind of man Mexico relied on, trusted. He would support himself, his family, and also take part and help add to other peoples’ riches and excess. He had erected all churches and monuments, put in roads along steep mountain ridges, cultivated corn, beans, and coffee, so why could he not be allowed to rest for a few minutes at an unfamiliar river, stretch out and let the sun dry his limbs?

Nonetheless his anxiety was there and he sensed its source: he had lost his ability to rest, to feel happy for the moment, to take pleasure in the small things and nurse his hope for the future. It was the “man from the mountain” who had taken from him these attributes so necessary for a Zapotec.

He despised himself, aware that his
ládxi
—his heart and soul—were lost. He had become exactly like them.

When he reached his car,
he tried to shake off the sombre mood of the morning, because it made his movements plodding and his thoughts dull. He needed all the sharpness he could muster. This foreign country was placing great demands on him, there were no resting places here, whether in time or space.

After a glance at the map he started the car, turned onto the main road, crossed a bridge, and drove toward Uppsala. The landscape was varied, with fields of wheat, newly harvested with the golden brown stubble that reached toward the horizon, and gracious mounds, shaped like women’s breasts, where the grazing cattle, fat and healthy, looked up unconcerned as he passed. His mood immediately improved.

On the horizon he could see the cathedral with the towers pointing up into the clear blue sky. Up in that sea of air, thousands of black birds were struggling in billowing formations against the blustery southeasterly wind. They, like Manuel, were on their way into town.

Right before he entered Uppsala from the north, he stopped and checked the map for the best way to “K. Rosenberg,” the name that he had seen on the short man’s door.

He parked the car outside a small mall, crossed the street, and took the final stretch to the building on foot.

Since his childhood, Konrad Rosenberg
always woke early. His inner clock started to ring as early as six. He didn’t like it, had never liked it, but it was the inheritance from Karl-Åke Rosenberg making itself felt. His father had gotten up at five every morning and started fussing, making coffee and rustling the newspapers. Since Konrad was the youngest, he slept in a pull-out sofa in the kitchen, so he had no choice but to be woken up.

The power of habit is great, and so even this morning he woke up early. It was half past five when he opened his eyes. He had to pee, and he had a pounding headache. He lay in bed a while longer and tried to fall back to sleep, then realized it was hopeless. At exactly six o’clock he got up and went to the bathroom.

The night before he had boozed it up, as thoroughly as in the good old days, but with the difference that this time he had drunk completely alone. This had perhaps contributed to the amount of alcohol he had managed to consume.

It was an unaccustomed feeling, almost solemn, to pour the first drink and raise his glass by himself. After the third one there was no solemnity left, only determined drinking. After the fourth one, Konrad started a long, embittered monolog about the “fat devil-chef” who believed he could lord it over Konrad Rosenberg.

Konrad had received a letter, not by ordinary mail but stuck in his mailbox. It was printed by machine and lacked a signature, but the content convinced Konrad of the identity of the writer. He assumed that Slobodan had hired someone to deliver the letter. He was simply too scared to show himself in Tunabackar.

Slobodan wrote that they could have absolutely no contact, no telephone calls, and could not allow themselves to be seen together. Slobodan
instructed Konrad to stay at home: “only go to the store and then straight home,” he wrote, as if Konrad were a child. He was not to place himself in “risky situations,” not to spend his evenings out, not to “get in touch with any of our shared associates” or engage in anything that could awaken the interest of “persons unknown to us who we do not wish to know better,” which Konrad assumed meant the police.

At first he thought it felt ridiculous and was actually tempted to defy the instructions and call Slobodan, but realized it was wiser to keep a low profile until the whole thing had died down. The fire was a real blow, but not a complete catastrophe. Konrad trusted completely in the fact that his brother would not say a word about Konrad using the house. His brother simply wanted to get the insurance money.

He turned on the radio but turned it off immediately. Normally he would have gone down to the newsstand and checked the program for the week’s harness-racing results, maybe gone downtown and frittered away a few hours. He considered calling Åke to see if he had heard anything more about the fire, but then concluded it would only make him nervous.

It was a little after eleven when the doorbell rang. Konrad jumped as if he had been struck in the back with a whip. He tiptoed over to the door and listened, at a complete loss as to who it could be.

His old drinking buddies, who were liable to turn up at any hours, had not shown themselves for months and no one else ever came to see him.

He put his ear to the door and thought he heard panting but decided it was his imagination. No one could breathe so loudly, but when he opened the mail slot with extreme care he heard the hissing sound more clearly.

The doorbell rang again. Konrad felt the sweat start to trickle down his back. His curiosity won out and he straightened his back.

“Who is it?” he called out.

“Mr. Rosenberg, something has happened to your car,” he heard a high-pitched voice say from the other side of the door.

He opened the door and there was an older man who Konrad thought lived in the building next door.

“Excuse me for disturbing you, but I saw—”

“My car?”

“Yes, isn’t it your Mercedes on the street? Someone has vandalized it.”

“Vandalized?” Konrad echoed stupidly, before slipping his shoes on.

As he ran down the stairs, leaving the asthmatic man behind, it struck him that it could be a trap and so he slowed down. But concern for his Merc drove him to a run.

Someone had pulled a sharp object along the full length of the car, from the hood all the way to the brake lights. Konrad stared at the almost completely level scratch, and when he circled the car he saw that the other side had suffered identical damage.

The neighbor arrived out of breath and explained that he discovered the whole thing when he came back from the store.

Konrad stood as if paralyzed, could not even manage a curse. His car, his Mercedes, vandalized by a couple of young hooligans.

“It’s terrible what they get up to these days,” the neighbor said. “They can’t even leave a beautiful car alone.”

Suddenly it struck Konrad that perhaps it was not the work of hooligans. He looked around. “That bastard is laughing somewhere,” he thought, and asked the neighbor if he had noticed anything suspicious on his way to the store. Yet another neighbor came up to them and in some way Konrad felt honored by the attention. He recalled that the first neighbor had referred to him as “Mr. Rosenberg.” Also, it felt good to have company, even if their average combined age was high.

“Call the police,” the neighbor said. “Even if they don’t do anything, you have to report it. I remember when someone drove into my Amazon, it was parked in the lot of Lagerquist’s hardware store. What I went through. There were papers to fill out, reports to file.”

Konrad listened with half an ear. The word
police
made him nervous and then increasingly infuriated.

“I wonder what it costs to have it repainted,” one neighbor speculated and Konrad’s anger increased further.

“I’m going up to make a call,” he said and left the two men on the sidewalk.

He sensed that this was
not a normal prank, but a calling card left by an unknown man who was apparently capable of anything. As he
walked slowly up the stairs his anger diminished and instead his anxiety grew. What kind of forces were at work? That Armas was murdered could be explained. Konrad and Slobodan had discussed various possible motives, but to burn down a house and above all to damage a car … it was so illogical that it was frightening.