“I’m sorry if I’ve hurt your feelings,” Görel said. “I know I talk too much.”
“Don’t worry,” Lindell said, but knew it wasn’t true. She had been wounded by Görel’s presumptuous comments. Of course she should meet a man. Many evenings when she sat alone, she longed for the man of her life to walk in and settle in beside her on the couch. But who was Görel to come with her meddling opinions? She herself lived with her great love, and she should know better. You only met a man like Edvard once in your life. That he was a “socially handicapped bumpkin” didn’t matter. What did Görel, or anyone else, know about what he had meant to her? She could still almost recall the physical sensation of his hands on her body. He is a good man, she thought, and was suddenly very sad, a sorrow that quickly turned to anger when Görel made an attempt to pick up the check. Lindell grabbed it and took out her card.
“I’m paying,” she said curtly, and avoided her friend’s gaze.
They left Dakar in silence. It was only a little after nine. Lindman and his companion had left half a minute before. He had passed Lindell’s table without glancing at her.
Lindell saw them strolling up the street toward the main square. She was struck with doubts about her hasty exit. Would it have been better to linger at the restaurant and concentrate on Rosenberg? Then she would also not have had to rid herself of Görel in the rude way she was now forced to act.
“I think it’s best that we go our own way from here. I’m going to catch up with my colleague,” she said, and pointed at the man, “and it will just lead to talking a lot of shop and there’s no point…”
Görel didn’t listen any further. She twirled around on the spot and left Lindell.
Axel Lindman was looking at Lindell with amusement. His companion, who had simply introduced herself as Elin, was noticeably less amused at having to accept this third wheel. Maybe she had been nursing other ideas about the continuation of the evening that did not include sitting in a burger joint with a juice box in front of her.
“You seem like you’re on the go,” Lindman said. “What were you doing at Dakar?”
Lindell looked around. There were almost no other people sitting in the section where they were.
“I was scouting it out,” Lindell said. “The owner’s business partner was murdered recently. How about yourself?”
“We’re on an assignment from our Stockholm colleagues,” said Elin from Västerås, and made it sound as if they had been sent from the Vatican.
“It concerns a man called Lorenzo Wader,” Lindman said. “Does the name sound familiar?”
“Was he the one who was sitting opposite Konrad Rosenberg?”
“We don’t know Rosenberg,” Elin said.
“Then we complement each other,” Lindell joked, as Elin deliberately and with feigned lack of interest picked apart the straw.
Axel Lindman told her that Lorenzo Wader figured in an extensive investigation that spanned the jurisdiction of several authorities from Stockholm to Västmanland. Money laundering, art theft, fencing, and many other activities. The Stockholm crime unit had had their eye on Wader for the past six months and it was likely that he would recognize the Stockholmers. That’s why they had turned to Västerås.
Why not Uppsala? Lindell wondered, but thought of the answer almost immediately.
“He’s been staying at the Hotel Linné for the past four weeks,” Lindman continued. “Calls himself a businessman and lives fairly luxuriously. He seems-”
“Who is Konrad Rosenberg?” Elin interrupted.
“Excuse me, I didn’t catch your last name,” Lindell said.
“Bröndeman,” she said, and Lindell thought she caught a twitch of Lindman’s lips.
Lindell told them about Rosenberg. The Västerås duo listened without interrupting.
“Cocaine,” Lindman said when she finished. “Our Lorenzo is a man of many talents.”
“We only have a suspicion of crime when it comes to Rosenberg and even less when it comes to Wader,” Lindell said, “but it certainly looks interesting.”
She wished that Lindman would elaborate on the background but sensed resistence from Elin Bröndeman.
“Who’s in charge of the investigation in Stockholm?” Lindell asked, in the hopes that it was someone she knew.
“Eyvind Svensson,” Lindman said with a laugh.
He looked around the establishment and then fixed his gaze on Lindell, as if he wanted to bring the discussion of their Uppsala assignment to an end.
“Apart from this, how is everything?”
Axel Lindman had a roguish glint in his eye as if he had resumed the innocent flirtation from the police workshop.
“Everything is fine,” Lindell said absently, suddenly thinking of Görel, how she had left without a word.
Then Görel’s words about Edvard came back. “A socially handicapped bumpkin” and a “boring old fart” was what she had called him. What right did she have to speak about him that way? It was as if her assessments washed over onto Ann herself. The criticism had hit her harder than she wanted to admit, or that she had shown. Of course she had described Edvard in similar terms, but he was so much more. What did Görel know about that? Nothing!
She got up from the table, thanked them politely, and left her bewildered colleagues sitting at the table. All that remained was a box of orange juice.
Forty-Two
The waitress gave him a coffee refill. Lorenzo Wader smiled at her and praised the food, while he scrutinized the man on the other side of the table. Rosenberg was aware that he was being evaluated and felt as if he were on the edge of a cliff.
“Yes, it was very good,” Rosenberg told the waitress, as if he wanted to avoid Lorenzo’s gaze. “Are you new here?”
“I started a week ago. I’m still getting used to it.”
“You are doing a fine job,” Lorenzo extolled. “Slobodan has a real ability to find good staff,” he went on generously.
As she left the table he nodded and repeated how delicious the dinner had been. Rosenberg could not figure him out. One second he looked dangerously ferocious, only to be smiling the next.
“What I don’t understand,” Lorenzo said, “is how Armas could deliver the goods in such a secure fashion. I have trouble imagining him running around town and handing it out himself.”
Against his better judgment, Rosenberg had let slip that Armas dealt with the cocaine, perhaps through a muted need to be of service, to shine as brightly as Lorenzo, who already appeared to know how everything hung together.
“Some people are prepared to do whatever it takes to make a buck,” Rosenberg said.
“Are you?”
The question came quickly and demanded an equally rapid answer.
“It depends,” Rosenberg said, and heard as he said it what a lame answer it was. “If the risks are small and the rewards are good enough,” he added.
“There is always the danger that one ends up with a knife in one’s back,” Lorenzo said and sipped the coffee.
Konrad took an overly large gulp of his drink, and started to cough.
“Give me some names,” Lorenzo said, unaffected by the coughing fit, and put up a hand when Rosenberg made an attempt to protest. “I know that you have been in the industry and I don’t care about that, but if we are going to be friends then you have to help me.”
Rosenberg cursed his decision to accept Lorenzo’s invitation to dinner, and that he had chosen Dakar as their meeting place did not make things better. Not to be friends with Lorenzo would mean trouble, he realized, and the alternatingly jovial and satanic Stockholmer was a considerably greater threat than Slobodan. Was it Lorenzo who had had Armas killed? This thought struck him with full force as he stared at Lorenzo’s slender hands and ring-laden fingers.