“There was no trace of gunpowder on his hands,” Lindell said.
“He was found in the water,” Haver replied.
His smug expression had waned and he looked at Lindell with his former look of mutual understanding.
“Armas had no gun license,” Lindell said.
“How many gangsters do?”
“We have nothing on him.”
“He was a shady character, I am certain of it. This was an armed conflict with the owner of the tent.”
“Slobodan Andersson,” Lindell said thoughtfully, registering the fact that Haver was smiling almost imperceptibly.
“Should we put him under surveillance?”
“No sense,” Lindell said. “If he is involved in any funny business, he’ll be lying low right now. Armas was going to Spain, packed, exchanged money, was ready to leave, and the question is, was the meeting down by the river planned all along, or was it something that just happened?”
“Do we believe it really was a vacation trip, with a few Spanish restaurants planned in on the side, as Slobodan claimed?”
“That’s impossible to verify,” Lindell said.
She walked toward the door, but then turned again.
“Have you ever worked with Barbro Liljendahl?”
“Not really, we worked together a little before I started at violent crimes,” Haver said. “At the time she was a bit, what should I say, fussy. Why do you ask?”
“She’s in charge of a case of a stabbing in Sävja and had some idea that there was a connection to Armas since both crimes were knife-related. Do you happen to know anything about Konrad Rosenberg?”
Haver shook his head, closed a folder, and pushed the papers on his desk together.
“I don’t either. We need a Berglund for that,” Lindell said and went to her office, logged onto her computer, and looked up Konrad Rosenberg.
It was as if she and Haver were involved in two different investigations. Maybe his surprise song-and-dance number was a kind of protest at her way of leading the investigation?
She smiled to herself as Rosenberg’s history slowly printed out. A bullet in a tree was indisputably progress. Before she turned to Rosenberg, she dialed Fälth’s number and felt incredibly generous as she praised the technician for his fine work.
“One needs a Smålander for detail work,” she said. Smålanders were known for their attention to detail, and Lindell wondered if he picked up the compliment.
Thirty-One
A well-functioning restaurant kitchen is a strange creature, as sensitive as a mollusk, it reacts in self-defense with lightning rapidity at the smallest external interruption. Anyone who disturbs this vulnerable and sophisticated organism experiences this.
“We don’t have time for this shit,” Donald snarled.
Gunnar Björk pulled back quickly in order not to be in the way.
“This is a workplace, not a social club,” the chef continued.
Feo smiled, blinked at the union representative, and sat down on a stool with deliberation.
“And on top of everything this is the worst possible time,” Donald went on, unusually expressive, though without explaining why.
“What do you say, Eva?” Feo asked.
“I belong to a different union,” she said tentatively, uncertain of the atmosphere in the kitchen.
Gunnar Björk summoned up his nerve, encouraged by her words.
“Then we’ll arrange a transfer for you to Hotel and Restaurant,” he said and immediately started to dig in his briefcase.
“I will never join,” Donald said.
“Why not?”
Donald stopped short, turned to Feo, and bored his eyes into him.
“I hate all organizations, all collective pressure where everyone has to sing the same damn song in the same damn choir.”
“You can sing whatever you like,” the union rep said.
“You know what, if you want to agitate, then go do it in your spare time and not here!”
“But you agitate on the job,” Feo objected, and tried to catch Johnny’s gaze. He was standing right in the line of fire with a bunch of leeks in his hand.
Donald twirled around and gave Feo a hard look.
“Stop it! Get back to work.”
Johnny started to cut the leeks. The sound of the knife against the cutting board softened the effect of Donald’s wrath somewhat.
“I’ll come back at a different time,” Gunnar Björk said in a conciliatory tone.
Donald returned to preparing the meat.
“This land is free, isn’t it?” Feo said.
Donald shook his head and sighed heavily.
Johnny put the cut leeks into a bowl. Eva was standing in the doorway to the dining room.
“I’ll go help Tessie,” she said.
Feo stared at Donald for a minute before he also left.
Johnny took out more leeks. He loved leek rings and could go on chopping them forever.
“Lovely,” he muttered to himself. For the first time since coming to Dakar he experienced something of what he had been looking for: the joy of working a sharp knife on a chopping block. He was rested and sober. Two meters away, Donald started to whistle, as if his earlier irritation was already forgotten. The aroma of raw beef mingled with the pungent smell of onion. The fish broth was already starting to bubble and hiss and Donald reached out to turn down the gas flame.
“Ten leeks are enough, don’t you think?”
“That’s fine for now,” Donald said.
Johnny felt his coworker’s gaze like a radiator in his back.
“Do you know a chef called Per-Olof, nicknamed ‘Perro’?”
“The one who left for the States?” Donald asked.
Johnny nodded.
“Sure, we worked together at Gondolen for a year.”
“He’s good,” Johnny said. “He trained me at Muskot in Helsingborg.”
“Then you know Sigge Lång?”
“That was before my time,” Johnny said, “but I know who he is. He went to Copenhagen.”
“Didn’t he become head chef at some fish restaurant?”
The conversation went back and forth, about restaurants and cooks, owners and head chefs, while Donald prepared duck breast, veal, and lamb and Johnny laid out ingredients for the garnish, took out the butter, kept an eye on bread in the oven, and tidied up.
Dakar’s kitchen had been hit hard by Armas’s murder, and both of the cooks felt the need for casual chatter. Not because Armas had been particularly well-liked but because of the turbulence his death had caused. The police had questioned everyone, asked Donald to check the kitchen knives and make sure that none were missing. Donald tried to explain that every chef owned their own knives, and that it would never occur to them to contaminate them with human blood.
“And the rest are so worthless that we basically never touch them,” he explained further and refused to entertain the idea that anyone at Dakar was a murderer.
Feo returned to the kitchen.
“The cops are coming here again,” he said. “They are going to talk to Tessie and Eva.”
“Damn it, we have a job to do!” Donald exclaimed.
“As do they,” Johnny said calmly.
The police had searched every corner and taken a bag of papers from the small desk squeezed in behind the counter. The desk was Donald’s territory and it had upset him, though he had not said anything. He knew they would pay no attention to his objections anyway. Instead, the chef’s wrath had gone out over the rest of them and above all Johnny. It was as if Donald connected the murder with the arrival of the new cook.
Donald hated change and irritating elements that disturbed the balance of the kitchen. He did not grieve for Armas as such but for the work peace that had been lost.
Naturally there had been wild speculation about the motive of the murder. Feo had launched a theory that it was Slobodan who had taken out his companion. His coworkers listened in fascination as he embroidered a story that contained almost everything: black money, trade in prostitutes from the Baltic states, and Armas’s and Slobodan’s murky past.