Therefore, the tarp had caused him some consternation from the outset, and he had speculated about what the Gardenståhls had allowed to be erected in their space.
After a week, his curiosity had won over his desire not to be nosy, and when he had checked under the tarp, he had found a car.
“There’s something not right about it,” Algot Andersson said. “I thought I had better call in.”
“You did the right thing,” Lindell said, convinced that they had finally located Armas’s car.
Andersson had not made a note of the license plate number, but both the color and make corresponded.
The boat club dock was on the Fyris river, close to the southern industrial area and the area upstream from it where Armas had been found bobbing among the reeds.
“I’m still here and can check the license plate for you,” Algot Andersson offered. “Hang on!”
Lindell heard static on the line and imagined the man approaching the car with agile steps. She imagined him looking like an older version of Berglund.
“Hello,” he said, and quickly recited the number.
“I could kiss you,” she said.
She called Ryde at forensics, but it was Charles Morgansson who picked up.
“Eskil had to go to a funeral today,” he explained.
Lindell told him about the car find and the technician promised to go down to the Fyris river right away. Lindell, who had been planning to go down there herself but who definitely did not want to bump into her ex-lover, informed him that he would be working with Ola Haver.
“How is everything?” Morgansson asked.
She knew he didn’t mean work, but she still chose to tell him about the situation of the case. Morgansson took the hint and did not ask further questions.
Lindell called Haver, who was pleased to have a reason to leave the building. Thereafter she read Beatrice’s summary of Armas’s life. It had been lying on her desk for a day or so, but now she pulled herself together and read through the brief report.
Armas’s background was murky, to say the least. He was probably born to Armenian parents in Paris, but there was also information that suggested Trieste, Italy, as his birthplace.
He had claimed to have been born in 1951. He had come to Sweden eighteen years ago and immediately found work at the shipbuilding company Kockums in Malmö. In France he had apparently trained as a welder. After six months at the shipyard, he most likely left the country, but returned in 1970 and was hired at Club Malibu in Helsingborg.
Beatrice had put in a great deal of effort in tracing his career, but there were many gaps and questions. He was convicted of assault in the mid-seventies and was sentenced to eight months in prison. It was a matter of a fight in a nightclub. It was the only occasion on which he was seriously in trouble with the law.
After serving his sentence he again disappeared from view only to reemerge many years later when he moved to Uppsala at the same time as Slobodan Andersson.
His income the past several years had been even but not excessive. The most recent information indicated a taxable income of just two hundred thousand. He had been cited by the tax authority thirteen times, but all notations were in regards to small sums. Fourteen parking tickets and a speeding fine were also registered.
Lindell sighed. In spite of Bea’s efforts there was nothing to go on. Not a word of any son. No information that was useful in their current situation. Nothing.
Irritably, she tossed the report aside, took out her notebook, and flipped through her notes from the past few days but had no new ideas. And she knew why: her thoughts were at the Fyris river and Armas’s car. She should be there.
Given a lack of anything else to do, she called Barbro Liljendahl, who answered on the first signal.
“Great! I had been thinking of calling you. I’ve checked out Rosenberg. He is a regular at Dakar.”
This was not news to Lindell, who had seen him there in the company of Lorenzo Wader.
“How did you find out?”
“I talked to Måns Fredriksson. He works in the bar and is the son of my sister’s neighbor. I was over at my sister’s having a cup of coffee. She has a patio and the neighbor was sitting out on her patio with her son. We started to talk and I don’t know how it came up but we started talking about the Armas murder and then Måns told us that he worked at Dakar.”
Lindell chuckled. This is how it is, she thought, the harvest of fate.
“Måns said that Rosenberg and Slobodan Andersson know each other. Rosenberg tends to hang at the bar and talk a lot of nonsense. Måns doesn’t like him, I could tell.”
“How did you manage to get on to Rosenberg?”
“It was easy,” Liljendahl said, but did not reveal how she had done it.
“How is Rosenberg? What does he talk about?”
“Deals. He wants to give the impression that he is a successful businessman. Likes to brag. Always leaves a big tip, but in a way that draws attention to it.”
“Has the bartender seen Rosenberg and Slobodan together?”
“Definitely,” Barbro Liljendahl said. “They not only know each other, they are friends. At least that is Måns’s impression.”
“What did he say about your curiosity, I mean, how did you explain your interest?” Lindell asked; she had the feeling that her colleague was using Armas’s murder-a case that was not on her desk-as a way to get Rosenberg. Maybe also to show off.
“I lay very low,” Barbro Liljendahl said, most likely sensitive to the unspoken critique.
The hell you did, Lindell thought, but was nonetheless grateful for the information. That Konrad Rosenberg was no choirboy had already been established, but a connection between him and Slobodan Andersson was candy.
“Can there be drugs involved?”
“Why is someone like Slobodan tight with someone like Rosenberg? Drugs is the only thing he knows,” Liljendahl said.
Lindell took her words as a kind of redemption. The Armas investigation had never really gathered momentum, no self-evident motives had been uncovered, the background investigation was idling, no crucial witnesses had been heard from, and the questioning that had been undertaken had not really provided any breakthroughs. The only elements of interest thus far were the removal of the tattoo and the video.
Now Liljendahl’s words provided them with a background against which they could proceed. Drugs could be a motive to the murder. The tattoo was a piece of the puzzle, and probably also the video, but Lindell did not understand how they all hung together.
After the phone call, Lindell pulled out her notebook again, drew new circles and arrows, and tried to create a believable chain of events.
The telephone rang. She saw that it was Haver and answered.
“Clean as a whistle,” he said. “There was not a single thing in the car that gives us an idea. We’ll have to see if the technicians find anything. It seems Armas was packed and ready for Spain. Two small suitcases and a shoulder bag in the trunk. As far as I can tell they haven’t been touched. That speaks against robbery.”
Lindell heard voices in the background.
“Are you still at the marina?”
“Yes, but I’m leaving as soon as we’ve arranged for transportation. We’ll have to examine the car in the garage.”
“No traces outside the car?”
“Morgansson is looking into that right now, but it’s gravel so the prospects are minimal.”
They ended the call and Lindell continued to scribble in her notebook. Why was the car located so far from the murder scene? Did the killer drive it there? Or had they met there and gone to Lugnet together in the killer’s car? No, she reasoned, it was covered with a tarp. The killer had done everything not to connect it to the scene of the murder, where he had most likely camped, with the car. He wanted as much time as possible to go by before we found it. Lindell decided that the perp must have driven the car there after the murder and had then made his way back to the tent. Maybe he had an accomplice who had given him a ride back? So far everything had indicated a lone killer, but she could not completely rule out an accomplice.