AUTUMN KILLING

by KALLENTOFT MONS

  ‘You didn’t know anything about that?’ Malin asks.

  ‘I see what you’re getting at. I didn’t know. And I was here with Jasmin all last week.’

  Then the growl from Jasmin as her face contorts in unimaginable pain. She must have been very pretty once upon a time. Ingeborg wipes her grown-up daughter’s mouth.

  ‘Did Jasmin know Jerry Petersson before the evening of the accident? Do you remember?’ Malin asks, aware that she’s fishing, casting out nets and hooks, trying to catch underwater voices.

  ‘I don’t think so. She’d never mentioned him. But what do any of us know about the lives of teenagers?’

  ‘And the Fågelsjö youngsters? Did she know them?’

  ‘She was in a parallel class to Katarina Fågelsjö. But I don’t think they were friends.’

  ‘So you didn’t know anything about what happened that night?’ Zeke asks again. ‘That it might have been Jerry Petersson driving?’

  ‘What do you think?’ Ingeborg Sandsten said. ‘That Jasmin might have told me?’

  Two dozen heavy raindrops hit the windowpane like a salvo.

  ‘Deep inside her dreams Jasmin remembers what happened,’ she goes on. ‘Deep, deep inside.’

  The car pushes through the waterlogged landscape of Östergötland. Grey, lifeless forests, lonely grey fields, grey houses.

  Zeke’s hands firmly gripping the steering wheel.

  Malin takes a couple of deep breaths.

  ‘It was you who asked Sven to talk to me, wasn’t it?’ she asks.

  Zeke takes his eyes from the road for a moment. Looks at her. Then nods.

  ‘So are you angry now, Malin? I had to do something.’

  ‘You could have said something to me directly.’

  ‘And you’d have listened, would you? Sure, Malin, sure.’

  ‘You went behind my back.’

  ‘For your own good.’

  ‘You go behind a lot of people’s backs, Zeke. Think about what you could lose.’

  Zeke takes his eyes from the road again. Looks at her, before his hard green eyes fill with warmth.

  ‘Nobody’s perfect,’ he says.

  ‘Birds of a feather flock together,’ Malin retorts, then the sound of the car engine takes over and she swallows some saliva to suppress the lingering nausea.

  Her mobile rings when they’re about ten kilometres from Linköping.

  A number Malin doesn’t recognise. She takes the call.

  ‘This is Stina Ekström. Andreas’s mum.’

  ‘Hello,’ Malin says. ‘How are you?’

  ‘How am I?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Malin says.

  ‘You asked if I remembered anything particular about the time leading up to the accident. I don’t know if it means anything, but I remember one of Andreas’s friends from when he started high school. Anders Dalström. He and Andreas were friends, it started when we moved to Linghem and he started secondary school. I seem to remember that Andreas looked after him. But they didn’t see so much of each other when they started at different high schools. I remember him from the funeral. It looked like Andreas’s death hit him hard.’

  ‘Do you know where he is now?’

  ‘I think he still lives in the city. But I haven’t seen him for a long time.’

  ‘So they were friends?’

  ‘Yes, in secondary school out here.’

  Then Stina Ekström falls silent, but something stops Malin from ending the call.

  ‘We were angry back then,’ Stina Ekström goes on. ‘Jasmin’s parents were angry. We’d both lost our children, in different ways. But anger doesn’t get you anywhere. I’ve learned that all we have in the end is how we treat our fellow human beings. We can choose. To empathise, or not. It’s as simple as that.’

  45

  Follow the voices of the investigation, Malin.

  Follow them into the darkest of Östergötland’s forests if that’s where you hear them whispering. Snatch at every straw in the really hard cases.

  The dense forests around Malin and Zeke are suffering from the same loss of colour as the sky, as if the whole world has been adapted for the colour-blind. The leaves on the ground are black here, they’ve got none of their burning colours left. The smell of their decay almost seems to make its way inside the car, pungent and simultaneously ominous.

  Then she sees the little single-storey house in a patch of woodland a few kilometres south of Björsäter, its rust-red colour almost seething in the persistent rain and dead afternoon light.

  The investigation’s latest voice belongs to Anders Dalström. Malin doesn’t yet know how he fits into the case.

  Follow the voices of the investigation until they fall silent.

  Then you follow them a bit further, and sometimes you might get a reward in the form of a connection, a context, the truth.

  That’s what people want from us, the truth, Malin thinks.

  No more, no less.

  As if the truth would make them any less afraid.

  They stop the Volvo in the raked gravel drive in front of the house. A red Golf is parked outside a workshop. If Skogså was a box, Malin thinks, you could fit thirty houses like this one inside it.

  On the front door is a handwritten sign with Anders Dalström’s name. The door opens, and in front of them stands a man in jeans and a Bob Dylan T-shirt. His face is thin, but his nose is stubby and his cheeks covered with acne scars.

  ‘Anders Dalström?’ Zeke asks.

  The man nods, and his long black hair moves in the wind.

  ‘Could I have a glass of water?’ Malin asks when they enter the shabby kitchen.

  Dalström smiles: ‘Of course.’

  His voice is hoarse and gruff, wary but still strong and friendly. He hands Malin a glass with his right hand.

  Concert posters from EMA Telstar cover the walls of the kitchen. Springsteen at Stockholm Stadium, Clapton at the Scandinavium in Gothenburg, Dylan at the Ice Hockey Hall in Stockholm.

  ‘My gods,’ Dalström says. ‘I never quite made it.’

  Malin and Zeke are sitting on an old-fashioned kitchen sofa, slowly drinking freshly brewed hot coffee.

  ‘You play?’ Malin asks.

  ‘More when I was younger,’ Dalström replies.

  ‘You wanted to be a rock star?’ Zeke asks, and Dalström sits down opposite them, takes a deep gulp of coffee and smiles again. The smile makes his snub-nose look even smaller.

  ‘No, not a rock star. When I was younger I wanted to be a folk singer.’

  ‘Like Lars Winnerbäck?’ Malin asks, remembering the sold-out concert she attended at the Cloetta Center when the city’s most famous son came back to perform.

  ‘I’d have liked to be Lars Winnerbäck. But it never took off.’

  You’re still waiting, aren’t you? Malin thinks.

  ‘I’ve got a studio over in the workshop. I built it myself. Record my songs in there. But not that often these days. Work takes it out of me.’

  ‘What’s your job?’

  ‘I work nights at the old people’s home in Björsäter, so I’m knackered all day. I worked last night, and I’m on again tonight.’

  Malin had begun their conversation by explaining to Dalström why they were there, and what they had found out about Jerry Petersson and the night of the accident, and what Andreas’s mother had told them. Maybe I should have held back, she thinks now. But her brain is too slow for that, and there are no reasons at all to suspect Dalström of anything.

  ‘Did you have any success?’ Zeke asks. ‘With your music?’

  ‘Not much. In high school I used to get asked to play at parties, but that stopped after graduation.’

  ‘Did you know Jerry Petersson back then?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘You weren’t at the same school?’

  ‘No. He and Andreas were at the Cathedral School. I went to Ljungstedt.’

  ‘So you didn’t know Jerry?’ Malin asks.

  ‘I just
told you that.’

  ‘What about Andreas? His mum said you were good friends.’

  ‘Yes, we were. We used to stick together. Look out for each other.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Malin asks.

  ‘Well, we did stuff together. Used to sit next to each other in class.’

  ‘Did you grow up together?’

  ‘We were in the same class in Linghem. From year seven, when Andreas moved there.’

  Malin sees herself in the school playground in Sturefors with her classmates, most of them scattered across the country now. She sees the bullies, the boys who made a habit of attacking anyone with an obvious weakness. She can still remember the bullies’ names: Johan, Lass, and Johnny. She can still remember her cowardice, how she wanted to tell them to stop, but for some reason she always found an excuse not to.

  ‘But you grew apart when you started high school?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ Malin says. ‘That’s the impression I got from Stina Ekström.’

  ‘We still saw each other. It’s a long time ago. She must have forgotten.’

  ‘But you weren’t at the New Year’s Eve party?’

  Zeke’s voice hoarse, as rough as the rain outside.

  ‘No. I wasn’t invited.’

  Malin leans over the kitchen table. Looks calmly at Dalström. He seems to be trying to hide his face with his thin black hair.

  ‘His death hit you hard, didn’t it? It must have been tough, losing a friend.’

  ‘That was when I was most involved in music. But sure, I was upset.’

  ‘And now? Do you have many friends now?’

  ‘What have my friends got to do with this? I’ve got more friends than I have time to see.’

  ‘What were you doing on the night between last Thursday and Friday, and on Friday morning?’ Zeke asks as he puts his coffee cup on the table.

  ‘I was at work. You can ask the staff nurse, I’ll give you the number.’

  ‘We have to check,’ Malin says. ‘It’s part of the routine.’

  ‘No problem,’ Dalström says. ‘Do whatever you have to do to get hold of whoever killed Jerry Petersson. OK, it sounds like he was a bastard, and if he was driving that night then he deserved some sort of punishment. But getting murdered? No one deserves that, not for anything.’

  ‘So you knew?’ Zeke says.

  ‘Knew what?’

  ‘That Petersson was driving?’

  ‘I had no idea. You just told me. She did.’

  ‘Have you got the number of the hospital where you work?’ Malin asks as she glances at Zeke and drinks the last of her water.

  Darkness has fallen over Linköping by the time Zeke drops Malin off outside her door in Ågatan.

  Light is streaming out of the Pull & Bear pub, the noise filtering out to the street, and in just a few seconds I can be standing at the bar with an oak-aged tequila in front of me.

  ‘Go upstairs now,’ Zeke calls before he pulls away. Standing in the doorway, Malin checks her messages on her mobile: one from Tove, saying that she’s going back to Janne’s. It’s been a week since we last saw each other, Malin thinks. How did that happen?

  Malin called the staff nurse at Björsäter old people’s home on the way back, and she confirmed Anders Dalström’s alibi, checking the rota to see that he had been working that night.

  Malin lowers her mobile, steps out into the street and looks at the pub’s sign, radiating a soft, warm, enticing glow. Her hangover is still lingering in her body with undiminished force, and is now exacerbated by vast amounts of regret and longing and desire, but she still wants to go into the pub, to sit down at the bar and see what happens.

  Then the familiar sound of her mobile ringing.

  Dad’s name on the screen.

  She answers.

  ‘Hi Dad.’

  ‘So you got home OK?’

  ‘I’m home. I’ve been working today and yesterday.’

  ‘You realise Mum wondered where you got to?’

  ‘Did you explain?’

  ‘I said you got a call about work and had to rush off.’

  White lies.

  Secrets.

  So closely related.

  ‘How are things with Tove?’

  ‘She’s fine. Waiting for me up in the flat. I’m just outside at the moment. We’re about to have some supper, egg sandwiches.’

  ‘Send her my love,’ Dad says.

  ‘I will, I’ll be back with her in a minute or so. I’ve another call, I’ve got to go, bye.’

  Malin puts the key in the lock.

  Opens the door.

  Post on the floor. Advertising leaflets from various discount warehouses.

  But beneath the leaflets.

  A white A4 envelope with her name written in neat capital letters in blue ink.

  No stamp.

  And she takes her post into the kitchen, tossing the adverts on the table, takes out a kitchen knife, opens the envelope and pulls out its contents.

  Pictures.

  Loads of pictures.

  Black-and-white pictures, and Malin feels herself going cold, then fear gives way to anger, which soon turns back into fear again.

  Dad outside their block in Tenerife.

  A grainy picture of Mum on the balcony.

  The two of them in the aisle of a supermarket pushing a trolley.

  Dad on the beach. On a golf course.

  Mum in a terrace bar, alone with a glass of wine. She looks relaxed, at ease.

  Pictures that look as if they’ve been cut from a Super 8 film.

  Pictures taken by someone spying, documenting, stalking.

  Black, black-and-white pictures.

  A message.

  A greeting passed on.

  Goldman, Malin thinks. You fucking bastard.

  46

  Sven Sjöman leans back on the wine-red leather sofa in the living room of his villa, pointing at one of the photographs that are spread out on the tiled coffee table. The grandfather clock in the corner has just struck eight, the sound echoing perfectly from the case he made himself. Hand-woven rugs on the floor, large, healthy pot plants hiding the view of the dark garden.

  Sven looks at Malin, who is leaning forward in the Lamino armchair opposite him.

  She called him, and he told her to come around at once.

  The photographs on the table. Carefully laid out with pincers. Sven’s finger in the air.

  ‘He’s trying to frighten you, Malin. He just wants to scare you.’

  And Malin gives in to panic: ‘Tove. What’s to say they’re not going to go for Tove?’

  ‘Calm down, Malin. Calm down.’

  ‘It can’t happen again.’

  ‘Think, Malin. Who do you think’s behind these pictures? What’s the logical answer?’

  She takes a deep breath.

  In the car she tried to think clearly, force her fear aside.

  She ended up back at her first instinct: ‘Goldman.’

  Sven nods.

  ‘This,’ he says, ‘plainly isn’t something we can ignore. But I don’t think you need to worry. It’s just Goldman playing one of those games that he obviously loves so much.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Who else could it be? It must be Goldman. He’s playing with us, enjoying the fact that he can scare you. And all the pictures are from Tenerife.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘You’ve met him, Malin. What do you think?’

  Jochen Goldman by the pool. The sea and the sky in competing shades of blue, his body down on the beach, the way you were playing with me, getting me where you wanted me. And here: the rain like castanets on the plastic roof of Sven Sjöman’s porch.

  ‘I think he’s bored. He just wants to show who’s in charge.’

  Sven nods.

  ‘But if there’s any truth in the rumours about what he does to people who get in his way, we have to be careful. Take this seriously.’

  ‘But what can we
do?’ Malin says in a resigned tone of voice.

  ‘We’ll send the pictures to Karin Johannison. She can check for fingerprints and see if they can find anything else. But I doubt they’ll find much.’

  Sven pauses before going on: ‘You don’t think it could be anyone else? Someone you put away who wants to cause trouble?’

  In the car on the way to see Sven, Malin had thought through who might want to get back at her. There were a lot of names, but no one she thought would go as far as coming after the police officer who caught them.

  Murderers.

  Rapists.

  Muggers.

  A biker gang? Hardly.

  But it would make sense to check if anyone had been released and was putting some sort of warped plan into action.

  ‘Not that I can think of,’ Malin replies. ‘But we should check if anyone I put away has just got out.’

  ‘OK, we’ll do that,’ Sven says, and his wife comes into the room, says hello to Malin and asks: ‘Would you like a cup of tea? You look half-frozen.’

  ‘No, thanks, I’m fine. Tea stops me sleeping.’

  And Sven chuckles and his wife gives him a curious look, and Sven says: ‘Just a private joke,’ and Malin laughs, feeling it’s the only thing she can do.

  ‘I’d like a cup,’ Sven says, and his wife disappears into the kitchen and when she’s gone he asks Malin how she is.

  He asks the question slowly, in a voice Malin knows he wants to sound both sympathetic and hopeful, and she replies: ‘I had a bit of a slip-up last night. I’m sorry you had to see me like that this morning.’

  ‘You know I ought to do something?’

  ‘Like what?’

  Malin leans further forward over the table. Asks again: ‘Like what, Sven? Send me to rehab?’

  ‘Maybe that’s exactly what you could do with.’

  And Malin stands up, hissing at him angrily: ‘I’ve just had a threatening letter containing pictures of my parents taken in secret, and you’re talking about rehab!’

  ‘I’m not just talking about it, Malin. I mean it. Pull yourself together, or I’ll have to suspend you and get you checked in for some sort of treatment before you can come back to work. I’ve got strong grounds to force you to do that.’

  Sven’s voice without any softness now, the boss, the man in charge, and Malin sits down again and says: ‘What do you think I should do with Mum and Dad?’