Lindell became unsure for a moment. Perhaps the man in the video was not a son at all, it could as well be a nephew or some other relative, but now she could not back down in front of Slobodan.
“Let’s drop this,” she said lightly. “We can talk about Mexico instead.”
Slobodan was caught off-guard. The generously proportioned body trembled and he tried to smile but failed miserably. His gaze shifted between her and the door, as if he was considering running out of the room.
“Why that?”
“The tattoo Armas had means something, doesn’t it? You were with him in Guadalajara. And that’s in Mexico.”
Lindell had to concentrate to pronounce the words correctly. Slobodan said nothing, so she carried on.
“That’s why we need to talk about Mexico. Why did Armas choose a Mexican god and what could it mean to the person who killed him?”
“I have no idea. How would I…”
“You have to focus,” Lindell interrupted him. “What connection did the two of you have to Mexico?”
“Okay, we were there,” Slobodan said compliantly, “but that doesn’t mean anything. It’s possible that Armas got a tattoo there, I can’t really remember. We partied some and I was probably not…”
He fell silent. Lindell studied the sweaty man in front of her as if he were a new apparition, someone who had slipped into her office and whose identity she was trying to figure out.
“What were you doing in Mexico?” she said, breaking the silence that for Slobodan, Lindell assumed, must have felt like a decade.
He suddenly became enthusiastic and leaned forward.
“We had some cash flow problems, you have probably already established this. We were maintaining a low profile, I admit this freely, but we kept our side of the bargain. The tax authorities received their due, didn’t they? And when times are tough you try to live cheaply and Mexico is affordable. You can find a hotel room for ten dollars. No luxuries, but you can survive.”
“But then you came back?”
Slobodan nodded. His breathing was labored after his speech.
“And kept your side of the bargain. But the question is where the money came from. Did you find bagfulls of dollars in Mexico?”
“You don’t know how all this hangs together, I take it. I am an experienced restauranteur and there are those who are willing to invest a sum. I have good friends who were willing to pony up.”
“In Mexico?”
“No, in Denmark and Malmö. And then we won at a casino in Acapulco. Armas put in quite a bit as well. I believe he received an inheritance or something.”
“Okay, so you suddenly got some money and returned, we’ll leave it at that for now. Could something have happened in Mexico that later led to Armas’s death? Did you meet anyone who since then may have had a reason to hold a grudge against Armas?”
“Who would that be?”
“That’s what I’m asking you,” Lindell said.
Slobodan shook his head.
“Are you threatened?”
He looked up as if he had had a new insight.
Slobodan Andersson left a stench of sweat in his wake. Lindell stood up and opened the window, at the same time helping a bumblebee find its way to freedom. She could not understand how it had gotten in. The bumblebee made a couple of circles outside the window before it set off and disappeared. To the east, Lindell observed.
She stood there at the window. She had not yet exhausted all of the details the new view from her window afforded. She followed pedestrians and cars below, discovered buildings and rooftops, looked out over the cityscape and recalled with some nostalgia the view from her old office in the former police building on Salagatan. Not because it was more beautiful, in fact it had been mostly of concrete, but she associated the view with old cases and perhaps even with Edvard and Gräsö. That was where they had met, not for the very first time, because that had been at a crime scene where Edvard was the one who had discovered the body, but later. She remembered his first visit and the impression he had made, so different from other men she had met.
She erased him again and let her gaze travel across the Uppsala roofs.
Other people created things, roofs and building fronts, for example, while she herself gathered information and testimony, ruminated over the origins of the frustration and violence she encountered in her work. There were no easy answers, that was the only conclusion she had drawn.
Sometimes she chastised herself with the fact that she thought too much, that she made things difficult for herself. Didn’t these thoughts block effective investigative work? No, that isn’t true, she countered, quite the opposite: our thoughts are too limited. Many times she had heard other people speak out, it could be at day care or on the radio, and she thought: we should bring that into our work, we need this knowledge.
Insufficient staff and lack of time was the noose from which they hung. A noose that was slowly strangling Lindell and her coworkers. With enough personnel-and not necessarily police officers-they would be able to solve most crimes, and above all help prevent them from occurring in the first place.
It could have been so different. Everyone knew it, few spoke about it and hardly anyone fought for a better system. Habit had become the modus operandi.
She left the window, sat down at her desk, and called Ottosson to report on her talk with Slobodan. After that, she called Beatrice, who had managed to reach the company that had produced the films but had not been able to get in touch with anyone who was able or wanted to talk about the people involved. She promised to continue her investigations.
“Mexico,” Lindell mumbled, after having hung up the receiver.
What did the tattoo mean, and above all, its removal? The motive must have been personal, she thought again. What had Armas, and maybe also Slobodan, done in Mexico that could arouse such feelings? Was there love involved? She had the thought that perhaps Armas had ducked out of a relationship, made a woman pregnant and then left. Revenge took the form of an angry relative who had looked him up in order to deliver justice, perhaps get him to pay compensation. In this light, the feathered snake could act as a symbol.
The question was if the murderer had known that Armas had the tat too, or if it had been discovered by accident. In the first case Armas must have known the killer, or perhaps the betrayed woman had been able to describe the tattoo in order to establish a way to identity Armas.
Ann Lindell turned and twisted the questions. Her conclusion in all cases was that Slobodan knew more than he was telling. She was convinced that he knew more than he was letting on. She was convinced that he was aware of the tattoo’s history, where and in what context it had been acquired. His sweat-drenched face and apparent restlessness corroborated this.
But where was the connection between the video and the tattoo? The porn film had been produced in California, but had it been shot there? Was it Mexico? Schönell had guessed the Mediterranean, but the landscape featured in the film-golf courses and beaches-could surely be found as well in Mexico. Wasn’t Acapulco, which Slobodan had talked of, a tourist resort on the coast?
If it was Armas’s son who was penetrated with the golf club and Armas felt it was embarrassing, which was likely, given the homophobia that Slobodan and others had recounted, what more had Mexico to do with this other than as a possible location for the shoot?
Had Armas and his son bumped into each other in Acapulco?
There were too many questions. Lindell felt a need to discuss it with someone, but first she wanted to let all the new information sink in.