Autumn Killing dimf-3

by Mons Kallentoft

  ‘What about his relatives?’ Sven goes on. ‘Is there really no one apart from the father?’

  ‘Looks like it,’ Johan says. ‘According to the population records.’

  ‘Girlfriends?’ Malin asks. ‘He can’t have lived out there all on his own, can he? Old girlfriends? Friends? Most perpetrators of this sort tend to belong to the victim’s closest circle of acquaintances. Any lovers?’

  ‘Not that we’ve found so far,’ Johan says.

  ‘And no one’s contacted us,’ Sven says. ‘You know how hard it is, trying to piece together someone’s life story.’

  ‘Maybe he was the sort who used to pay for his fucks?’ Waldemar says, and Malin’s first instinct is to tell him to show some respect, but something makes her think that Waldemar might be right, in which case no one from Jerry Petersson’s past would be coming forward. No prostitute would dare to identify herself, in the light of the sick legislation covering the subject in Sweden. A lot of men who pay for sex could actually get almost any woman they wanted. But they’re still drawn to undemanding, simple sex, free from any romantic entanglement.

  ‘The people we’ve spoken to only knew him professionally. He seems to have been careful to keep his private life private,’ Johan says.

  A loner, Malin thinks. An eccentric loner in the biggest fucking castle in Ostergotland. But no one, no one wants to be alone. Do they?

  ‘He wasn’t married,’ Sven says. ‘Could he have been homosexual?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ Malin says. ‘Have we spoken to Petersson’s father?’ she goes on. ‘He might know something. About Petersson’s sexuality, and a lot of other things besides.’

  ‘No,’ Sven says. ‘He’s only been informed of what’s happened so far. Malin, you and Zeke get on with that once you’ve tried calling Jochen Goldman.’

  ‘So soon?’ Zeke says. ‘His son only died yesterday.’

  ‘We can’t afford to wait.’

  Malin nods in agreement.

  Thinks with distaste about the coming visit. If there’s anything that’s hard to stomach when you’ve got a hangover, it’s the smell of incontinence pads and catheters.

  Aleryd Care Home.

  The last stop on the line. Maybe he’s even in one of the dementia wards?

  ‘What else?’

  Sven’s voice, alert.

  ‘Malin, anything?’

  He’s looking at her with an expression that says he knows how hungover she is, but that he’s not going to let it affect her work.

  She shakes her head.

  ‘We spoke to a Linnea Sjostedt,’ Zeke goes on. ‘An old lady who lives in a cottage on the Skogsa estate. She threatened us with a shotgun when we stopped to talk to her.’

  ‘She did what?’ Sven says, and Malin sees Waldemar grinning.

  ‘Yes, she seemed scared,’ Zeke says. ‘She said you never know what you’re going to get out there. Well, she’s right about that.’

  ‘She soon calmed down,’ Malin says. ‘She saw a dark vehicle leave the estate sometime late at night. Well, she thinks she did. She wasn’t sure if she was dreaming or not.’

  ‘Dreaming?’

  ‘Yes, she says she has a bit of trouble distinguishing between dream and reality.’

  Sven shakes his head.

  ‘What sort?’

  ‘She didn’t know.’

  ‘We’ll have to make a note of it. What does Axel Fagelsjo drive?’

  ‘A black Mercedes,’ Malin replies.

  A dark car.

  She could have seen Axel Fagelsjo. Or Johansson and Lindman as they arrived, Malin thinks. Or someone else. One of the children? Maybe Katarina Fagelsjo has another car? Someone from Petersson’s past? Goldman?

  ‘Have we had any tip-offs from the public?’

  Waldemar sounds hopeful.

  But Sven shakes his head.

  ‘We’ll have to keep working on what we’ve got for now. And hope the general public comes up with something now it’s out in the media and Karim has put out an appeal.’

  ‘The Correspondent’s gone big on this today,’ Johan says. ‘The national media too. Murder, car chase, Fredrik Fagelsjo in custody.’

  ‘Anything we don’t already know?’ Sven asks.

  Johan shakes his head.

  ‘We’re bound to get something about his business dealings,’ Lovisa says. ‘Even if it’s anonymous. That’s if there’s anything there.’

  ‘If he was a bit shady, then he could have had contacts in the underworld here in the city,’ Waldemar says. ‘You’re sure you don’t want me to ask around among my contacts?’

  ‘You just want to avoid the paperwork,’ Sven says with a laugh. Then he’s serious again. ‘For the time being, you prioritise the paperwork, understood?’

  Waldemar nods in response.

  ‘Malin,’ Sven goes on. ‘Call Goldman. See what he has to say, if that really is his number.’

  Malin closes her eyes.

  Fredrik Fagelsjo trying to run.

  A body dumped in a moat. By Fredrik? Maybe, maybe not.

  In some ways Petersson’s going to be left in the black water for ever.

  Together with the dozens, maybe hundreds of other ancient souls, shackled in stone and time, Malin thinks. Caught in their own misfortune, their fate impossible to escape or come to terms with.

  Loneliness runs like a red thread through human history, Malin thinks. It’s the underlying note of our stories.

  22

  Tenerife.

  Like a poem, a sketch within Malin.

  Scorched mountains, slumbering volcanoes, an eternally shining sun above a muddle of houses. Swaying palm trees, sunloungers in long rows along the beaches, pools casting glittering reflections on mutated liverspots, cancer forcing its way through the skin and on into the bloodstream, and in a few months the dreams are over, those dreams of eternal life in the sun.

  Fraying pictures from her parents’ paradise.

  The flat she knows her mother thinks is far too small, maybe that’s why she and Tove have only ever been invited out of politeness, because Mum thinks the place she’s found for herself in the sun is too meagre?

  Maybe Mum just wants to be left in peace. Ever since I first learned the word I’ve had the feeling that you’re avoiding me, that you’re pulling away. Are you ashamed of something, Mum, but don’t want to admit it? Are you trying to avoid me so you don’t have to see yourself in the mirror? Maybe it’s OK to do that with grown-up children, but not the way you did with me when I was four, when I somehow worked out that that was what was going on.

  And what would we say to each other, Mum? Malin thinks as she sits at her desk, surfing between various articles about Jochen Goldman.

  On several sites he’s described as the worst conman in Swedish history. It still isn’t clear how many millions he got away with when they emptied the Finera Finance company of all its assets. And by the time it was uncovered, Jochen Goldman had fled the country and his bourgeois roots on the island of Lidingo, the wealthy enclave on the edge of Stockholm.

  He managed to elude the police, and Interpol.

  Jochen Goldman, seen in Punta del Este in Uruguay.

  In Switzerland.

  In Vietnam.

  Jakarta. Surabaya.

  But always one step ahead of the police, as if they didn’t want to catch him, or else he had his own sources inside the force.

  Jerry Petersson had been his lawyer. His intermediary in his dealings with the authorities and media at home. Goldman had written two books during his ten years on the run. One book about how he emptied the business and claimed he had every right to do so, then another about life as a fugitive, and to judge from the reviews, Jochen Goldman had tried to portray himself as a capitalist James Bond.

  But he fell a long way short of that sort of style, Malin thinks.

  Before Goldman carried out his heist, he spent three years in prison for fraud. At the same time he was also convicted of making unlawful threats, actual
bodily harm, and extortion.

  Pictures of him on the run.

  A sharp nose in what was otherwise a round face, slicked back hair, playful brown eyes, and blond hair down to his shoulders. Big yachts, shiny sports cars made by Konigsegg.

  Then, once his alleged crimes relating to Finera Finance had passed the statute of limitations, he popped up on Tenerife. A report in the online version of the business daily, Dagens Industri, shows a smiling, suntanned Goldman beside a black-tiled pool with a view of the sea and the mountains. A shimmering white house in the background.

  Mum’s dream.

  This is what it looks like.

  White-plastered concrete, glass, maybe a garden with scrupulously neat plants, and bulging armchairs to lean back in and forget all the denial and bitterness.

  Finally she comes to an old report in the business weekly, Veckans Affarer.

  The tone is vague, hinting that Jochen Goldman may have disposed of people who got in his way. That people who had done business with him had disappeared without a trace. The article concludes by pointing out that these are rumours, and that the myth of Goldman survives and grows precisely through such rumours.

  Malin takes out the note with the number that might be Goldman’s.

  Nods to Zeke on the other side of the desk.

  ‘OK, I’m going to call our shadow now.’

  Waldemar Ekenberg is drumming his fingers on the desk in the cramped meeting room. He fiddles with his mobile, lights a cigarette without asking the newcomer Lovisa Segerberg if she minds, but she lets him smoke, carries on calmly reading a summary that she’s found in one of the black files.

  ‘Restless?’ Johan Jakobsson says from his place.

  ‘No problem,’ Waldemar says. ‘But I’m running out of cigs.’

  ‘They sell them in the canteen over in the courthouse, don’t they?’

  ‘That’s shut on Saturdays. I saw they had a special offer on boxes of ten packs down at Lucullus. Can I have fifteen minutes to pop down there?’

  Johan smiles.

  ‘Is that really a good idea? We need all three of us here, Waldemar. Come on, what the hell.’

  ‘You know how I get if I haven’t got any cigs.’

  ‘You can cadge one off someone, can’t you?’

  ‘Fuck, the air in here is terrible.’

  ‘Maybe because you smoke,’ Lovisa says from her chair.

  ‘Go on, then,’ Johan says. ‘But watch yourself, Waldemar. Watch yourself.’

  ‘I’m only going to buy cigs,’ Waldemar says with a grin.

  The Spanish number is engaged the first time Malin dials, but the second time the phone is picked up on the fourth ring, and a nasal, slightly hoarse voice says: ‘Jochen, who is this?’

  A voice from Tenerife. Clear skies, sun, a bit of a breeze. And no fucking rain.

  ‘My name is Malin Fors, I’m a detective inspector with the Linkoping Police. I was wondering if you had a moment to answer a few questions?’

  Silence.

  For a few moments Malin thinks Jochen Goldman has hung up, then he clears his throat and says with an amused chuckle: ‘All my dealings with the authorities go through my lawyer. Can he contact you?’

  The cat after the mouse.

  The mouse after a bit of string.

  You miss the game, Malin thinks. Don’t you?

  ‘That’s just it, the lawyer Jerry Petersson, the man who represented. .’

  ‘I know what’s happened to Jerry,’ Jochen Goldman says. ‘I manage to read the papers down here, Malin.’

  And you’ve still got your contacts, Malin thinks.

  ‘And you know why I want to ask you a few questions?’

  ‘I’m all ears.’

  ‘Were you in Tenerife on the night between Thursday and Friday?’

  Jochen Goldman laughs, and Malin knows the question is banal, but she has to ask it, and it’s just as well to get it out of the way.

  ‘I was here. Ten people can confirm that. You can’t think I had anything to do with the murder?’

  ‘We don’t think anything at this point in time.’

  ‘Or that we had a difference of opinion, Jerry and me, so that I sent a hit man to get my revenge? Forgive me if I can’t help laughing.’

  ‘We’re not insinuating anything of the sort. But it’s interesting that you should mention that.’

  Another silence.

  Flatter him, Malin thinks. Flatter him, then maybe he’ll drop his guard.

  ‘Looks like you’ve got a pretty nice house down there.’

  More silence. As if Jochen Goldman is looking out over his property, the pool and the sea. She wonders if her flattery makes him feel threatened.

  ‘I can’t complain. Maybe you’d like to visit? Swim a few lengths in the pool. I heard you like swimming.’

  ‘So you know who I am?’

  ‘You were mentioned in Svenska Dagbladet’s article about the murder. Someone googled you. Doesn’t everyone like swimming? I’m sure you look good in a bathing suit.’

  His voice. Malin can feel it eating into her. Next question: ‘So there were no problems between you and Jerry Petersson?’

  ‘No. You need to bear in mind that for many years he was the only person who stood by me and took my side. Sure, he got paid well for it, but I felt I could trust him, that he was on my side. I regard him, or rather regarded him, as one of my best friends.’

  ‘When did you stop regarding him as one of your best friends? Recently, or earlier?’

  ‘What do you think, Malin? Recently. Very recently.’

  ‘In that case, I’m sorry for your loss,’ Malin says. ‘Will you be coming up for the funeral?’

  ‘When’s it going to be?’

  ‘The date hasn’t been set yet.’

  ‘He was my friend,’ Jochen Goldman says. ‘But I’ve got other things to do apart from grieve. I don’t believe in looking backwards.’

  ‘Do you know of anyone else who might have had any reason to want to harm Jerry Petersson? Anything you think we should know?’

  ‘I mind my own business,’ Jochen Goldman says. Then he adds: ‘Was there anything else?’

  ‘No,’ Malin says, and the line goes quiet, and the fluorescent light above her head starts to flicker, as though it is flashing Morse code from the past.

  One of your best friends, Jochen?

  What do you know about friendship and trust?

  Nothing.

  But what do I know?

  Not much, I have to admit, but there’s one thing I do know, and I’ve known it since the very first time we met: I wouldn’t want to be standing in your way if you thought you’d been let down.

  I felt drawn to you from the start. I was appointed to represent you when you were accused of beating up one of the partners in the business, when he had a heart attack. And I realised I enjoyed your company, basking in the reflected glory of your Jewish chutzpah, your cheekiness. It was like you gave the finger to everyone who got in your way, no matter who they were.

  But friends, Jochen?

  Come off it.

  You could well be the only person I’ve met in the last few years who’s actually frightened me.

  Neither of us was, or still is, in your case, the sort who paid the slightest attention to friendship. That sort of thing’s for queers and women, isn’t it?

  Your ruthlessness. Your contacts.

  We were both smart. But maybe you got the better of me in the end? Or did I get the better of you? Maybe we did have a sort of friendship, the sort where two people devour each other’s souls, getting close to the other and seeing themselves reflected in each other’s shortcomings and successes, making them their own. Maybe it was that rarest sort of friendship, truly equal, and therefore so fragile? Why cling to something when there’s not really anything to lose?

  Two men.

  Our paths crossed, we were fated to meet, and we had in common the fact that we weren’t going to let anything or anyone stand in the way o
f what we wanted. But you were more stupid and more courageous than me, Jochen, and I had more money than you, but what did that matter? I was envious of your ruthlessness, even if it sometimes scared me.

  Jochen, I see your suntanned body on the shiny chrome sunlounger beside the black chlorinated water.

  I see Malin Fors at her desk.

  She has her head in her hands, wondering how she’s going to get through the day. Then she thinks about me. The way I was lying face down in the moat, dead, I’ve accepted that now, and the sight of me there, or being lifted up through the air with my body punctured by senseless brutality won’t leave her alone, but it gives her something to think about, and that makes it irresistible to her.

  Violence offers her some resistance. She hopes it can tell her something about who she is.

  She needs me. She suspects as much.

  Or else she already knows all too well. Just as I know what the boy suspected when the rays of the low autumn sun hit his eyes.

  23

  Linkoping, spring 1974 and onwards

  The light pulsates in the eyes of the boy who owns the playground of Anestad School.

  The previous week the retirement age in Social-Democratic Sweden was lowered to sixty-five, and a few months ago the Mariner 10 spacecraft flew past Mercury and sent pictures of the lonely planet back to earth.

  Here and now, in the school playground, in the sharp rays of the sun, the verdant foliage of the birch trees rustles and the boy runs after the ball, catches it with one foot, spins around and then kicks the white leather ball with his toes and the ball shoots off towards the fence where Jesper is standing, ready to fend it off, but something goes wrong. The ball hits his nose and the blood that gushes out of his nostrils a moment later is a deeper, livelier red than the colour of the bricks in the walls of the low school building.

  Eva, the teacher, saw what happened and rushes over to the boy. Yelling, she grabs his arm and shakes him before comforting the crying Jesper. She seems to want to scold rather than offer comfort, and she shouts right in the boy’s ear: ‘I saw that, Jerry, I saw that, you did that on purpose’, and he gets dragged away, he knows he didn’t hurt anyone on purpose, but maybe he ought to, he thinks as the door of the classroom closes and he is expected to wait for something, but what?