“No, nothing that gives us an identity,” Ottosson said. “I thought for a while that he did not come from Uppsala, that someone transported him here in order to dump him in the river.”
“But why there?” Lindell asked and then realized the ridiculousness of her question. Many times there was no rationality to a killer’s actions.
Ottosson shrugged.
“Perhaps our rounds in the city will give us something,” he said.
They had made copies of the murder victim’s photograph and detectives from the violence and intelligence units were looking up individuals who would perhaps recognize him. It was the usual roundup of drug users and petty thieves. Sometimes they were willing to drop a little information in the hopes that it made them look good or for the simple reason that a murder was a disturbance to their own business and they wanted a quick resolution.
The investigative team in the violent crimes division had discussed possible motives as a matter of routine. These were freewheeling speculations that perhaps did not yield much, especially since they did not know the victim’s identity, but that nonetheless set the machinery of their brains in motion. One tossed-out idea gave way to another that was rejected that led to a third possible explanation that was taken seriously. Everything mixed, became layered, was judged more or less believable. Together this resulted in a concoction of loose assumptions, out of which one could finally perhaps distill a motive and a perpetrator.
“It is the tattoo, or rather, its removal, that is the key,” Lindell said.
Ottosson agreed.
“Why does one get a tattoo?”
“To show one’s affiliation,” Lindell said. “A brotherhood.”
“It used to be a mark of class,” Ottosson said. “Only workers used to get tattoos. Now little girls have tattoos everywhere.”
“It functions as a kind of marking. You choose a design that says something about yourself or the life you lead, or with the direction you feel life should take.”
“Or it’s just a fun thing you do when you’re drunk,” Ottosson added.
“He doesn’t look the type.”
“Perhaps in his youth?”
Lindell shook her head.
“I can’t say why, but this guy is no common… alcoholic who likes to get loaded in Nyhavn.”
“But in his youth,” Ottosson insisted. “Perhaps he went to sea?”
“He did end up in the water finally,” Lindell said.
“And almost naked to boot.”
“I think that was done in order to humiliate him,” Lindell said. “Why would you otherwise take the trouble to remove his clothes?”
“Two possibilities,” Ottosson said, “either the clothes say something about the victim or else he was only wearing his underpants when he was killed.”
“A betrayed man who finds them naked in the bedroom and kills the lover?”
“Or a homosexual.”
Ottosson had trouble with the word bög, which was slang for “gay.” Lindell already knew this. He claimed it was denigrating, even though many homosexuals used the word themselves.
Lindell looked at the picture in the paper. She didn’t bother with the text. She had enough of an idea what it said.
“Going door to door in the area may still give us something. There were some houses in the area where no one answered yesterday.”
“Fredriksson and Riis are out there right now, but the victim may just as well have been thrown in from the other side of the river and floated across,” Ottosson said. “It’s not very wide. Or else he was dumped farther upstream.”“It would be strange if no one had seen anything. After all, it takes awhile to carry a body from the road across the meadow and into the river.”
“I think he was thrown in higher up,” Ottosson said.
They continued to speculate before Lindell got up from the table.
“I went to the hospital,” she said suddenly.
“How was she?”
“She was sleeping.”
Ottosson nodded.
“Have you talked to-”
“No,” Lindell said.
Sixteen
She was riding her bike into the wind. Eva regretted not having taken the bus, even though this way she was saving money and improving her fitness, maybe even losing a few pounds.
Her thoughts kept coming back to last night. Patrik would end up in trouble if he kept associating with Zero. She had not managed to get more out of him except that they had had a fight.
“Some idiots from Gränby,” he had said, but denied knowing them and he would not tell her what the fight had been about, more than that it was about “stuff.” Stuff could apparently refer to just about anything and it frightened Eva. Boys have always had fights, she told herself, but given what had happened in recent years, stuff could lead to a bad end, even to death. She remembered a shooting in Gränby several years earlier all too well. The accused, a teenager, was freed after the main witness had changed his story.
Patrik had denied that anyone from that gang had been involved in last night’s skirmish.
“It was some other idiots,” he said.
“Friends of Zero?”
“No, they were Swedes.”
“But you are a Swede and apparently friends with him.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
Eva couldn’t quite imagine what these adolescents’ lives looked like, how their loyalties worked, or even what the words they used meant. And now her main task, along with the work at Dakar, was to raise two teenagers, and that in an environment she had trouble understanding.
Patrik had promised to stay out of trouble and try to reduce his interactions with Zero, without causing the latter to feel betrayed.
“He would go crazy in that case,” Patrik said.
He had given her two promises, and Eva knew that both of them would be hard to keep.
The county was constructing little areas with park benches and flower beds up and down East Ågatan. It was being spiffed up and made more accessible. Perhaps they were hoping to achieve a more continental look in the inner city, where Uppsala residents and tourists alike could stroll under the chestnut trees and where lindens grew right next to the river.
Eva paused, in part because she was feeling hot and did not want to arrive at Dakar dripping with perspiration, in part because she wanted a chance to watch the workers. A couple of men were laying stones, roughly hewn rectangular pieces that were mortared together into a wall or bench if one so desired. The men had the aid of a backhoe, in whose claw the stones were directed into place. They adjusted the stones with metal tools. It looked astonishingly easy even though they were handling such weights. The machine was doing its part, of course, but Eva thought she could read a great satisfaction in their work in the men’s faces. One of them put his hand on a set stone, almost like he was petting it, as if to say, “Here you are now and it looks good,” before it was the next block’s turn.
Eva was struck by the durability of their work. Around the city there was stone in the paved streets, on the front of buildings, in bridges and ornamental structures in parks. No human force could shift these stones. Once a worker patted them into place they were set, testifying to his work.
She compared this to her own job, waitressing at Dakar. This left no visible traces more than for the moment, that was simply how it was, just like her earlier work at the post office. “The woman at the counter,” that was what she had been for many years, but God forbid she leave her place for a quick bathroom break or to sign a form in one of the inner regions of the office. Then there were immediate complaints.
The men coaxed a new block into place. The driver swung the backhoe to the side, allowing it to rest on the pile of stones. Perhaps they were going to take a break. One of the workers gave her a quick, curious look.
“It’s turning out well,” she said and climbed back onto the bike.