There was only one thing that spoke in his favor. He didn’t squeal. They did not have any details beyond the sparse information in the German papers. The only thing they really knew was that he had thrown himself in front of a train at the Frankfurt Central Station when he had realized that he was surrounded by German police and would soon be apprehended.
That was well done. Both Slobodan and Armas thought so. Slobodan had even anonymously sent a thousand dollars to his family. A negligible amount in the context, but a fortune for Angel’s family.
He closed the folder.
“You,” he said. “Do me a favor and stay away from e-mail. Even if you delete everything, there is always something left.”
“There is?”
Armas shook his head. Sometimes Slobodan seemed like a complete idiot and amateur.
“Sure, the cops can dig out old messages. It takes them five minutes.”
“Okay, I’ll get rid of it,” Slobodan said and gestured to the computer. “Buy a new one before you leave, since you understand these things.”
Armas gave one of his rare smiles. Slobodan chuckled. Suddenly Armas realized why he had been able to stand this fat slob for so many years.
The telephone rang. Slobodan answered.
“No, not in here. We’ll do it in the kitchen,” he said and hung up.
“It is Gonzo,” Slobodan explained. “He’s in the bar. He wants to talk.”
Armas shook his head.
“We are done talking,” he said.
It was Armas who had fired him, and when Slobodan had asked why, Armas had not provided a real answer. He didn’t like it, but he trusted Armas’s judgment.
“We can at least hear what he wants,” Slobodan said and heaved himself up out of the chair.
Armas gave him a look, and this look was something Slobodan would later recall. What had it meant? It was not the usual trace of arrogance and irritation in the habitually so expressionless face, but something else. Was it fear? Slobodan did not think so, neither then nor later. Perhaps Armas felt as if Slobodan was rejecting his assessment that Gonzo had to go?
That had always been Armas’s weak point. He could take much, but the few times that Slobodan criticized him, he became hurt, grew silent and withdrawn. It was an almost frightening reaction, coming from him. Slobodan liked it much better when he got angry.
“He probably wants to talk nonsense like always,” Slobodan said.
They took Gonzo out to the kitchen. Armas sat down in a chair. Gonzo did not look as confident as usual. In fact, he seemed to have shrunk.
“Well, what do you want, Mr. Gonzo?”
“It’s not fair,” the waiter said, glancing quickly at Armas.
“That is finished,” Slobodan said. “It is not anything to talk about.”
“He’s firing me only because he…”
“Shut up!” Armas yelled.
Gonzo momentarily lost his balance, as if the gust of air from Armas had hit him square in the chest.
“One more fucking word out of you and you know what happens!”
Armas had stood up and looked even taller than usual.
“You’d better be going,” Slobodan said and put his hand on Gonzo’s shoulder, pushing the door open and leading him out of the kitchen.
When the swinging doors had come to a complete standstill, Slobodan turned.
“What was all that about?”
“He is a little shit,” Armas said.
“Can that be a problem?”
“Yes, but only for himself,” Armas said and Slobodan heard him try to adopt a slightly lighter tone.
What had Gonzo done to upset Armas so much? Good waiters did not grow on trees, and the Dakar was understaffed. Now they had to take on an untrained waitress. All they needed was for Tessie to get sick for a day or two and service would collapse. Armas knew all this and had fired Gonzo anyway.
The reason must be personal. If it had been anything to do with the job, if Gonzo had cheated with the tips or swiped a bottle of hard liquor, Slobodan would have heard about it.
Slobodan had the question on the tip of his tongue but held it back, afraid of hurting his partner.
Eight
The party at the far end of the restaurant was singing so loudly they could hear it all the way in the kitchen. Johnny smiled to himself, leaning with the torch over a crème brûlée so that Pirjo would have time to pee.
“It is the medicine,” she said apologetically.
Johnny wondered what kind of medication an eighteen-year-old girl needed, but had not asked, only waved encouragingly.
It had been a full-speed start. The day after Johnny had met Slobodan for the first time, and the other chefs Feo and Donald, he found himself in the kitchen at Dakar, with his knives wrapped in a kitchen towel, full of anticipation but also a little tense about a new workplace and new routines.
He would help out, above all with the cold food and desserts, the presentation and general kitchen organization.
Feo was the one who seemed the most open and talkative. Almost as soon as they met, he had started talking about the woman he had met in Algarve, how he had served her, fallen in love, saved up money, and traveled to Sweden for better or for worse, stepped off at Arlanda with a note in his wallet with her name on it and the city where she had said she lived.
With the help of a friendly man outside the railway station in Uppsala he had located the woman’s name in the telephone directory.
“Now I am very happy,” he said and Johnny saw that he really meant it.
“It will be a boy!” Feo laughed as he chopped celery. “I promise you!”
He radiated joy, and not only because he was going to be a father. He performed his work in the kitchen with a degree of accuracy that testified to a deep-seated sense of personal satisfaction. Many times that day Johnny found himself staring at his colleague.
Feo’s joie de vivre also found expression in his body movements, which could have been a disaster in such a narrow space, where his long legs and windmill arms always appeared to be in motion. But like a professional dancer, he was coordinated and in complete control.
He had brought his love of fish and shellfish from Portugal. The most wonderful sauces were magically transfigured by his fish broth.
Donald, who was the head chef, was much more restrained. He had wished Johnny welcome but not said much else. He always worked at the meat stove and disliked, not to say hated, Slobodan Andersson.
“The lying poodle is a miscreant, a spectacularly failed combination of Skåne and Belgrade,” he said when Johnny asked how Dakar’s management worked.
“Slobodan is a pig, but a good pig,” Feo objected. “He is perhaps not… what do you say about dogs that do their business inside?”
“House-broken,” Johnny suggested.
“Exactly. Slobban is perhaps not house-broken, but he makes things happen.”
As he talked he put a couple of pieces of halibut into the frying pan. Donald stood frozen at the stove. A fillet was sizzling in the pan. Tessie requested another order of halibut. Donald nodded, and Feo laughed.
“Yes, please, another halibut. Hello there, Tessie!” he yelled out after Tessie, who left as quickly as she came in. Donald shot him a sharp look.
Johnny smiled to himself. He thought that he would enjoy working in Dakar’s kitchen. He had not thought about Sofia in Jönköping for several hours.
“How long has Tessie been working here?” he asked Feo.
“She started at about the same time as me. She is from New York.”
“Long Island,” Donald added.
Feo grinned.
“She is never in love, that is her biggest problem,” he continued. “She needs a man.”
Pirjo returned from the bathroom. Tessie came in with two new orders.