“Why don’t you think so?”
“The subject. The sign in the middle. It doesn’t look Swedish. The dragon is so. . Asian. Is the guy Asian?”
It took a second before Irene understood that he was talking about the victim. “No. A dark-haired European,” she answered.
The tattoo artist took a thorough look at the picture before he handed it back with a shake of his head.
“Sorry. The only thing I can say is that it takes time to complete a tattoo like that. It isn’t something you do during a coffee break.”
“Like the shit you’re scratching on me?” asked the man in the tattoo chair.
All three of them let out a roar of laughter. Irene took the opportunity to put away the picture and leave. Just as she opened the door and was about to step out onto the sidewalk, she heard the man in the visitor’s chair exclaim, “Damn! Now I know who she is! Do you remember that row out in Billdal for-”
Quickly, Irene closed the door and hurried toward her car.
Tattoo Tim was closed. The parlor never opened before one o’clock according to the piece of cardboard taped on the inside of the glass door. On the other hand, it didn’t close before nine. Irene decided to eat lunch before she met Tim.
On Linnégatan there were all sorts of cozy restaurants. Irene decided on a little Italian pub. While she was waiting for the food at a table by the window she looked out at the heavy traffic on Linnégatan and the new houses built in Art Nouveau style on the other side of the street. Elegant shops were located on the ground floors.
The fresh pasta came with a ham and cheese sauce that smelled wonderful. A crisp salad and an ice-cold light beer completed her meal. She had declined the waitress’s suggestion of a drink before the meal. She’d felt strongly tempted for just a second, but then thought better of it. An investigator couldn’t go around breathing alcohol fumes on the people she was trying to interrogate. It didn’t instill confidence.
She had lingered over coffee and had several refills so it was almost one thirty when she arrived at Tim’s tattoo parlor again.
A girl in her early teens was sitting with her mouth wide open. A young man with dyed black hair down to his waist had a firm grip on her tongue, which he’d wrapped in a piece of cloth. With a large tonglike instrument, he punched a hole in the tongue.
“Aaggg,” said the girl.
The man let go and gave the girl a hand mirror. She held it in front of her face and stuck out her tongue. A round glittering silver ball was located a little way in on it.
“Aagsome,” the girl said, delighted.
“Cool,” the young man agreed.
A few bills were exchanged and the girl sailed out through the door. Now Tim noticed Irene, who had been watching him.
He was short and skinny. On his feet he wore heavy black leather boots that must have added several inches to his height. His black leather pants were snug around his skinny thighs and held up with a wide belt. It was a good thing the pants were tight or they might have been pulled down by the weight of the belt. It was decorated with large pointy rivets and had a skull for a buckle. His leather vest was also heavily supplied with metal rivets. Under it, he was wearing a dirty T-shirt that bore the words “Fuck you.” His arms were covered in tattoos, and what could be seen of his neck was adorned by them. An Indian band in red and black was tattooed across his forehead. He wore at least ten rings in different sizes in each ear. At angles in his eyebrows he had inserted several silver rods that seemed to be held in place by small silver plates on either side of the insertion points.
But it was his mouth area that took Irene’s breath away. It looked as though he had an extra mouth of sharp spikes surrounding his real mouth. Anyone who was tempted to kiss him for the sake of adventure might have to reconsider.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I’m Detective Inspector Huss. I’d like to ask you something.”
She started to take out the picture of the dragon and the character when his husky voice rose to a falsetto and he shouted, “Get out! This is my store. Out!”
“Why? I just want to ask for your help.”
In order to pique his curiosity, she added, “It has to do with a murder.”
He didn’t take his eyes off her but he didn’t say anything. Encouraged, Irene said, “You’ve probably heard about the body parts we found at Killevik. We don’t know who the victim is, but it’s a man, and he has this tattoo on his right shoulder.”
She held out the paper to Tim, who willingly accepted it. He was startled by the image. After a long inspection he said, “Damn fine work.”
“Could anyone in Göteborg have made it?”
He shook his head. “Hardly.”
“I spoke to the guy at MC-tattoo. He said that the tattoo appears to be Asian. Do you think so, too?”
“Exactly. Japanese.”
Irene was surprised.
“Not Chinese?”
“No. It’s Japanese.”
He handed the paper back and his body language said that the audience was over.
“THE TATTOOis unusual and very well done. This kind takes several days to do and was probably not done in Sweden. The theme is Asian and one of the guys said probably Japanese. Have I forgotten anything?” Superintendent Andersson summed up.
The superintendent, Irene, Jonny, and Hannu were sitting in Andersson’s office. It was almost five o’clock and they were going over what the day had provided in terms of new information.
“The character is Japanese,” said Hannu.
“Are you sure?” asked Jonny.
The others looked at Jonny reproachfully. Only he would question Hannu’s information. If Hannu said that the character was Japanese, then it was.
“Yes. It’s the sign for ‘man.’ ”
“Man,” the superintendent repeated thoughtfully.
“Why would you tattoo the sign for man?” asked Irene.
“He might have been so feminine that he was forced to. Like product information. At least for Japanese.” Jonny grinned.
Irene had grown very tired of Jonny’s ridiculous jokes a long time ago. She ignored his remark and continued, “But the dragon is special and well drawn. It should lead us to more information.”
She felt elated. The tattoo could bring them a bit closer to discovering the victim’s identity. Or could it? When she thought about it she became uncertain. They didn’t know who the man was or his nationality. They didn’t know where the tattoo was made. They didn’t know where or how the victim had died. The thought of not wanting to know flew through her brain for a second, but naturally she did want to know. She was, after all, a police officer.
“One of the parlors I went to thought that the dragon could have been drawn in Copenhagen or London,” said Jonny.
“Otherwise, it was done somewhere in Asia,” the superintendent said gloomily.
“But we know that the man wasn’t Asian. Maybe that points to its not having been made in Asia,” Irene objected.
“The way people get around these days, we can’t rule anything out,” said Jonny.
Andersson thought for a moment before he said, “I think it’s time to release the picture of the tattoo to the papers. They’ll get it tonight, so it will appear tomorrow. Someone may recognize it since it’s so unusual.”
“It’s strange that no one has missed him. A young man in his prime,” Irene said.
“He probably isn’t Swedish,” Jonny added.
“We should send the dragon out via Interpol. He may have been reported missing in another country,” Andersson said. “I’ll contact Interpol tomorrow afternoon if the papers don’t draw a response.”
Before Irene went home for the day she made a call to Tommy to see how he was doing. His ten-year-old daughter answered. “Persson.”