Slobodan stared thoughtfully at Manuel for a few seconds before he stood up and left the room. Manuel heard the sound of liquid pouring into the toilet bowl and how the fat one splashed water, snorted, and talked loudly to himself. Finally there was some rinsing and a short laugh.
When the restaurant owner returned he looked decidedly more alert. The thin hair had been water combed back over his head and several drops of water glittered on his cheek.
He glanced quickly at the double bed, the sheets lay wrinkled and bunched up at its foot, so he shook his head and sat down in the other armchair.
“So, let’s do business,” he said and smiled broadly.
Manuel longed for his tent by the river. He was tired and stiff and feared what was to come. Did he have enough power to stand up to Slobodan Andersson?
“Fifty thousand,” he said and knew in the moment what he should do. Patricio would get money and Slobodan would be punished without Manuel having to exert any extra effort.
“Why should I trust you?”
“You trusted my brothers.”
“How much do you have?”
Manuel measured with his hands.
“Two kilos, maybe more, I don’t know.”
“If it is Angel’s package it is around two kilos,” Slobodan said. “And you are charging fifty thousand dollars? Do you understand what that means?”
Manuel shook his head.
“It is worth perhaps a million Swedish kronor. I can make five hundred kronor per gram. So far I have paid out one hundred thousand dollars and with your fifty thousand that comes to more than one million kronor. I get the money back and that is good, but I deserve a small profit,” he went on in a conciliatory tone, “I could perhaps scrape together twenty-five thousand. That is a fortune to you.”
Manuel calculated feverishly in his mind but there were too many numbers.
“My family has suffered a great deal,” he said.
They negotiated a little longer and finally agreed that Manuel would get forty thousand. Manuel was sweating, while Slobodan appeared to be enjoying himself. He got to his feet with some effort, walked over to Manuel, and stretched out his hands as a sign that they were in agreement. Manuel hesitated for a second before shaking the hand of the man of the mountain.
Have I sold my soul now, he asked himself.
As Manuel stepped out onto the street below Slobodan Andersson’s apartment, he stumbled momentarily as if he had been struck, steadied himself by pressing his back up against the wall and brought his hands over his face. A woman who was walking by stared at his with undisguised curiosity and distaste.
“Filthy scum!” she hissed.
It was a little after nine o’clock. Manuel walked in the direction of Dakar where his car was parked, completely wrung out and empty inside.
Forty-Five
Detective Inspector Erik Schönell was deathly tired of American action films. Luckily, he only needed to watch a few seconds of the start of each film, fast-forwarding to check out a couple scenes further on, before he could eject the videotape from the player. The problem was that there were one hundred and twenty-two movies in Armas’s video library.
Now he was done and he had found nothing notable in the collection. There was definitely no Mexican connection, if you didn’t count the murder of a Mexican family that occurred in one of the films.
The porn flick that had been found on the top of Armas’s television was the only jarring element. Schönell had earlier watched several minutes of it and thought it was most likely shot somewhere in the Mediterranean region, perhaps Spain. The plot was very simple: a party of four golf players with athletic builds suddenly realized they were gay and devoted several days to traditional swinging and putting, with intermittent bouts of intense copulation in the sand traps and on the fairways. The dialogue was thin and scanty. The sex scenes were mechanical and without finesse. It was, in other words, a traditional porn flick.
“A hole by any other word,” Schönell, who was an avid golfer himself, muttered, and inserted the tape into the player.
He leaned back in his chair but then stood up and closed the door, adjusted the volume and sat back down again. On his initial viewing he had seen something that in a vague way awakened his interest. There was something in the film that nagged at him but he was unable to put his finger on it. Given that Lindell believed the videotapes could have an implication for the investigation-she had not elaborated on her interest in the Mexico angle-Schönell was determined to do a thorough job. No one would be able to claim that he had been sloppy. Most of all he did not want this Lindell at violent crimes to be able to find fault with him.
The movie went on. Schönell checked the time and wished he had gotten himself a cup of coffee and a sweet. When one of the golf players inserted a club handle into the backside of his opponent, Schönell sighed heavily.
The camera focused on the penetrated man. Sweat ran down his face and several fine pieces of gravel had stuck to his forehead. He rolled his eyes and pretended to be enjoying himself, though surely no one found pleasure in a five iron back there, Schönell thought. Then Schönell stiffened, fumbled for the remote control, played back the same scene and paused the picture at the moment when the man in the bunker turned his upper body and looked back at his partner.
Schönell reached for the phone and dialed Lindell’s number. She promised to come by at once. Erik Schönell whistled smugly. I should have asked her to bring me a cup of coffee, he thought, and studied the picture on the screen.
There was a knock on the door several minutes later. Schönell opened and pointed at the television without a word. The satisfaction in seeing Lindell’s chin fall, and her hand rise up at the frozen image was worth all the time spent watching bad movies with Bruce Willis and Sandra Bullock.
“Holy shit!” Lindell exclaimed.
“Isn’t it great?” Schönell said.
“Good work.”
This was exactly what Schönell wanted to hear.
“It took awhile,” he said, “but I had the feeling there was something here.”
Then he discarded his indifferent attitude and eagerly explained how many hours he had spent watching the videos, and how something about the porn film had nagged at him, and how he had watched it over and over again until he finally spotted the likeness.
Lindell laughed and added a comment about his doggedness to her earlier praise.
“Let’s call Otto. Do you have any coffee in here?”
“I’ll get it,” Schönell said and rushed out into the corridor.
Schönell’s office quickly became crowded. Whether it was the promise of seeing something awesome or Lindell’s enthusiasm that had lured their colleagues was of no importance to Schönell, who basked in the glory. People came and went and the speculation went into overdrive.
“I bet it’s a case of blackmail,” Fredriksson said, and that appeared to be the theory that found the most support.
Lindell did not say much, but studied the image with extreme care, seeing in the man’s eyes a desire to please but also the opposite, a kind of defiance. She estimated his age at between twenty and twenty-five. He had brown eyes and a wide forehead. But what clinched it was the small mouth and the cruel angle of the thin lips.
The man could have been Armas’s twin. Lindell was willing to bet good money on his being the son of the murdered man. The question of which direction this find was going to take the investigation was already being discussed, even though his identity had not been confirmed.
“This video may have nothing at all to do with the case,” Sammy Nilsson threw out.
Ottosson shook his head.
“It has a connection to Armas, and therefore to the case,” he said. “It has some sort of bearing on the crime. Well done, Schönell!” he added, cast a final glance on the television screen, and left the room.