AUTUMN KILLING

by KALLENTOFT MONS

  ‘I know,’ Malin says.

  ‘And Anders Dalström has alibis. He’s supposed to have been working on the nights of both murders.’

  ‘I’ll call and check again,’ Malin says.

  ‘Let’s go in person,’ Zeke says. ‘Make sure they check properly.’

  The staff nurse in Björsäter old people’s home shows Malin and Zeke into the nurses’ office, tucked away in a corner of a well-lit room with a view of a recently planted forest of fir trees. There’s a colourful embroidery on the wall, presumably made by the residents in occupational therapy.

  ‘No,’ the nurse says, ‘Anders isn’t working today. He mostly works nights.’

  Malin nods.

  She paces restlessly up and down the small, windowless room, looking at the bottles of pills lined up behind locked glass doors.

  ‘I did call and ask before,’ Malin says. ‘But we’d like to ask again: was he working the night between Thursday 23 October and Friday 24? And the night between Thursday and Friday last week?’

  The nurse pulls a folder from a low shelf.

  Opens it and checks carefully, as if to demonstrate that she is taking Malin’s question seriously.

  ‘According to the rota, he was working both nights.’

  ‘According to the rota?’

  ‘Yes, sometimes they swap without telling me. It’s against regulations, but as long as everything works . . .’

  ‘Could you do me a favour?’ Malin says. ‘Can you check to see if he swapped shifts with anyone on either of those nights?’

  The nurse nods.

  ‘Yes, but I’ll have to call the other night staff. Most of them will be asleep now. Is it urgent?’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Zeke says.

  Five minutes later the nurse holds out her hands in defeat.

  ‘No answers from any of them. They’re all asleep. Can I call you back later this afternoon?’

  ‘Yes, please do,’ Malin says.

  ‘Do you have any idea where Anders might be?’

  ‘He wasn’t on duty last night. But he’s probably at home.’

  ‘I was there an hour or so ago. He wasn’t there.’

  ‘Have you tried his mobile?’

  ‘No answer,’ Malin says.

  ‘No? You could try asking his dad. He lives in sheltered accommodation in the city. His dad’s blind, Anders visits him fairly often.’

  ‘Which home is he in?’ Zeke asks.

  ‘Serafen.’

  Serafen, Malin thinks.

  The same place as the blind Sixten Eriksson whom Axel Fågelsjö beat up. Malin and Zeke exchange glances.

  ‘Do you know his father’s name?’

  ‘Sixten,’ the nurse says. ‘Sixten Eriksson.’

  64

  Sixten Eriksson is sitting on the sofa in his room at Serafen, staring into his darkness, unable to see the cheap reproductions on the walls. The smell of tobacco is even more pronounced than it was last time.

  He doesn’t want to face us, Malin thinks, even though he can’t see anything.

  She and Zeke had discussed the possibilities in the car on the way to Anders Dalström’s house after their visit to Björsäter.

  ‘That definitely gives him another motive,’ Zeke had said.

  ‘Getting revenge for what happened to his father by murdering the son of the man who committed the offence.’

  ‘But why now?’ Zeke asked.

  ‘Maybe he’s got a taste for violence, like I said, if Petersson’s murder was a blackmail attempt that got out of control. If you’ve killed once, you can kill again. You’ve crossed a line. And maybe he thought he could confuse us even more, and that would help him get away with it.’

  ‘Don’t you just love human beings?’ Zeke said.

  ‘And no one knows where he is.’

  Anders Dalström wasn’t home this time either. They’ve already called the station. Sven said they’d put out a call for him to be brought in, seeing as they needed to talk to him even if it didn’t lead to anything.

  And now Sixten Eriksson’s darkness. On his own. No sign of Anders Dalström here either.

  ‘I made up the bit about Evaldsson. Sven, too,’ Sixten Eriksson says. ‘Anders took his mother’s name, Dalström. I don’t know anything about what he might or might not have done, but I’d never set the police on him no matter what’s happened. Of course I’m protecting him, I’ve always protected him.’

  ‘Do you think your son could have murdered Fredrik Fågelsjö in revenge for what happened to you?’

  Malin tries to make her voice sound curious, gentle.

  But Sixten Eriksson doesn’t answer.

  ‘Could he have murdered Jerry Petersson? What do you think?’

  Zeke aggressive, pushy.

  ‘Pain needs a way out somehow,’ Sixten Eriksson says.

  ‘Has he said anything?’ Malin asks.

  ‘No, he hasn’t said anything.’

  ‘Do you know where he might be?’

  Sixten Eriksson laughs at Zeke’s question. ‘If I knew where he was, I wouldn’t tell you. Why should I? But he comes here fairly often. Aren’t children funny, no matter what their parents do to them, they still come running back for love and reassurance.’

  Malin and Zeke look into the old man’s blind eye and Malin thinks that it can see more than hers right now. His clouded lens seems to possess a certainty about how this autumn’s dark drama will end, that the man in front of them has delved deep into hate and evil through his own suffering.

  ‘So you used to hit him?’ Malin asks. ‘You used to beat Anders when he was small?’

  ‘Do you know what it’s like, not having any depth of perception?’ Sixten Eriksson asks. ‘Pain in your nerves that burns right into your brain, the whole time, day and night?’ He goes on: ‘I hope Axel Fågelsjö is suffering all the torments of hell right now, now that his son is dead. He can finally get his share of this life’s pain.’

  ‘Did you ask your son to kill any of the Fågelsjö family? Fredrik? Axel?’

  ‘No, but I’ve thought about it. I can’t deny it.’

  Searching through the shelves. My hands, Dad used to hit them with a ruler.

  Do you see my eye, boy?

  What do I need?

  Anders Dalström is moving through the aisles of the ironmongers’ store in Ekholmen shopping centre. The kebab he’s just eaten is gurgling in his stomach.

  Rope.

  Masking tape. The other people are looking at me, what do they want? The rifle’s in the car. I’m going to put an end to all this, and it will be a relief, the police will find him and wonder, utterly confused.

  I’m going to kill him. After all, it started with him, didn’t it? Maybe Dad will be pleased?

  Anders Dalström feels that the last of the snakes will soon be leaving him. Everything will be fine again, the way it should have been. Andreas, he thinks, can you see me now?

  I’m going to get rid of the root of all this evil.

  He pays. Gets in the car, heads off towards Drottninggatan.

  Some voices are like the crack of a whip, Malin thinks. They cut right into your most vulnerable areas.

  ‘Jochen Goldman here,’ the voice says for a second time.

  Bastard.

  Malin feels the phone against her ear, the rain on her hand as she stands in Djurgårdsgatan outside Serafen.

  But she also feels a peculiar warmth when she hears his voice. A warmth in completely the wrong parts of her body.

  His suntanned face by the edge of the pool. Hardness and softness in men like him and Petersson.

  ‘What do you want with me?’

  With her free hand Malin opens the car door, sinks into the seat, holds the phone tightly against her ear, listening to Jochen Goldman’s breathing.

  ‘The photographs,’ she goes on. ‘You took those photographs of my parents and sent them to me, didn’t you? You got someone to take them.’

  ‘What photographs?’

  She c
an see Jochen Goldman’s smile before her. The game it implies, we can have a bit of fun, can’t we, you and me?

  ‘You know which ones.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about any photographs. Of your parents? Why would I take pictures of them? I don’t even know where they live.’

  ‘Are you in Sweden?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you been in Linköping?’

  ‘What on earth would I want to go there for?’

  ‘Did you send Jerry Petersson a blackmail letter? Were you trying to get money out of him?’

  ‘I’ve got more money than I need. If that’s actually possible.’

  The skies have opened again. Hail, little white grains, are drumming rhythmically against the body of the car.

  ‘Are you listening to negro music?’

  ‘Hail,’ Malin says.

  ‘If I wanted anything done in Linköping, you hardly imagine I’d go myself?’

  Inferences, intimations.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’m at the Grand in Stockholm. I’ve got a suite. I thought maybe you’d like to come along. We could have a nice time. Drink some champagne. Maybe take some pictures. Just the two of us. What do you say?’

  Malin clicks to end the call.

  Shuts her eyes.

  She’s not sure that Jochen Goldman really exists. That her parents exist. That there’s ever any explanation whatsoever for anyone’s actions.

  They drive past Axel Fågelsjö’s door on Drottninggatan. Neither of them sees the long-haired figure slide through the door like a shadow.

  Jochen.

  You and your nasty little games. You still got me in the end, didn’t you? You never forgive any transgression. Even though you commit a fair number yourself.

  I’m drifting over the plain and the forests now, over the castle and the field where the accident happened, I’m drifting over tenant farmer Lindman’s house, see his Russian wife quickly packing her bags, so quickly, heading for another man in another place, taking half, more than half, of what Lindman has, just as she planned right from the start.

  Lindman.

  I was the one who fucked his first wife when she was up in Stockholm for a conference. I found her at the bar in Baldakinen, and the way she screamed up in the office on Kungsgatan . . . Probably couldn’t bear the smell of manure after that.

  I was contacted. Like the blackmail letter promised.

  I remember that the phone ringing in advance of the conversation summoning me to the Ikea car park reminded me of those screams. As if the unassuming ringing wanted to burst my eardrums.

  65

  Linköping, September

  Jerry is standing beside his Range Rover in one of the central rows of the almost empty car park outside Ikea in Tornby, listening to the rain drumming on the car roof, and the persistent, relentless sound of the drops reminds him of the phone ringing, calling him here. The car park must have space for a thousand cars, but on one of the first properly rainy nights like this it’s almost empty. The retail lots glow in the darkness: Ica Maxi, Siba, Coop Forum.

  In the distance he can see the copper-green spire of the cathedral, the numbers on the clock shining through the veils of mist and low dark clouds of the evening.

  ‘Wait outside the car. I’ll be there at eleven o’clock.’

  Jerry looks at his watch, wipes the rain from his eyes, knows how to handle this.

  Then he sees a car turn into the car park, a red Golf that pulls up alongside him, and a man the same age as him gets out.

  Is that you, Jonas? Jerry thinks. Jonas Karlsson, you who saved me long ago.

  No. Not Jonas, someone else.

  Instead of waiting for the man in the green jacket to start talking, Jerry leaps at him, forcing him up against the door of the Range Rover, taking a stranglehold of his neck and snarling: ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Whoever the fuck you are. Do you think I’m going to take this sort of shit from anyone?’

  And the man in the green jacket sinks, his body slumping in fear, and he says: ‘I didn’t mean anything. Sorry. I didn’t mean it.’

  ‘What you wrote about that New Year’s Eve is wrong.’

  ‘Yes. I was wrong.’

  ‘How did you hear about it?’

  ‘A letter.’

  ‘Who from?’

  The hand gripping the man’s neck getting tighter, his voice getting weaker.

  ‘I don’t know. But the letter was postmarked in Tenerife.’

  Jochen.

  ‘And who are you?’

  ‘Someone who got in your way. You didn’t even notice.’

  The man in the green jacket says his name, and Jerry searches his memory but nothing springs to mind.

  ‘I don’t give a shit who you are.’

  With all his strength he throws the man in the green jacket to the ground. Kicks him, screaming: ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  And the man groans his name again, says: ‘Andreas Ekström was the only friend I ever had.’

  Jochen.

  Punta del Este. I should have kept my mouth shut. God knows how you got hold of this tragic loser. But if you want to you can find out anything, can’t you?

  More kicking. Hitting soft flesh beneath the green jacket, and it feels good.

  ‘And now you want money, do you? My money, is that it? Stay away from me. Otherwise this is going to turn out really fucking badly.’

  More groaning, the rain like a solid monochrome mass in the air.

  Jerry leaves the man behind him, in the rear-view mirror he sees him writhing on the tarmac, trying to get up.

  Back home in his big, empty castle he brings up a number on his mobile phone, wants to call the woman who is waiting to hear his voice.

  But the phone call is never made, and remains as inaudible whispering inside Jerry’s head. Instead the sound of rotating, hungry lawnmower blades takes over, the drumming of feet on the grass, feet that can never carry their body far enough or close enough.

  66

  Axel Fågelsjö hears the doorbell, vaguely, like a cry for help from an already long forgotten dream.

  Who the hell can this be? he thinks as he walks through the sitting room, past the portraits of his ancestors.

  The police again? Can’t they leave me in peace? Alone with all my mistakes and inadequacies, with all the love I’ve lost.

  Those damn journalists? He’d had to unplug his phone and disconnect the doorbell. But now he’s put them back in. He thought they’d got tired of him, the fourth estate.

  Grief.

  For you, Bettina, for our son. That’s all I’ve got left now.

  I want to be left in peace with it.

  The doorbell sounds shrill now. A salesman? A Jehovah’s Witness?

  Axel Fågelsjö looks through the peephole, but there’s no one there.

  What the hell?

  He looks again.

  The stairwell, empty and silent. Is someone after me now? he has time to wonder before the door flies open, hitting him in the forehead and making him stagger backwards.

  Lying on the parquet floor, he finds himself staring into the barrel of a rifle. He sees long black hair and a pair of eyes full of longing, desperation and loneliness.

  The house in the clearing is still silent and dark.

  Now that daylight is no longer lighting up the façade it looks even more anxious, as if it were on the point of collapsing under the weight of all the sorrows it has been forced to contain.

  Malin and Zeke stop the car. Anders Dalström’s red Golf is still not there.

  They get out, and Malin takes a deep breath, trying to work out if there’s anyone apart from them there.

  ‘He isn’t here,’ she says. ‘Where the hell could he be?’

  They go up the steps, look through the window in the front door.

  A computer is flickering on the table in the living room.

  Malin checks the door handle. Unlocked.

  ‘We ca
n’t go in,’ Zeke says. ‘We need a warrant.’

  ‘Are you kidding?’

  ‘Yes. I’m kidding, Fors. The door’s open. Obviously we suspect a break-in.’

  They go inside.

  The gun cabinet in the living room.

  Malin goes over and finds it unlocked. A solitary shotgun inside. Rifle ammunition on the floor, but no rifle.

  Has he got another gun? Malin wonders, then says: ‘Wherever he is right now, he could be armed.’

  She goes into Anders Dalström’s bedroom. The blinds are closed and the room is dark and cold, damp.

  A film projector has been set up on a bench, reels of film scattered across the floor, unrolled.

  A film is sitting in the projector. Without thinking, Malin switches it on, and on the white wall she sees a boy moving across a grass lawn, running, screaming soundlessly as if he’s running from something, as if there’s a monster holding the camera, ready to catch him if he trips or runs too slowly.

  Then the boy stops. Turns towards the camera, trying to look beyond its lens, cowering as if preparing to be hit, the black pupils of his eyes like little planets of fear.

  The reel comes to an end.

  Zeke has crept in behind Malin, put a hand on her shoulder and says: ‘I could have done without seeing the look in his eyes.’

  They leave the room. In the living room, the computer screen is showing the online telephone directory, and Zeke reads out loud: ‘Axel Fågelsjö. 18 Drottninggatan. What the hell is he up to?’

  ‘Axel Fågelsjö,’ Malin says. ‘Do you think he’s going straight to what he thinks is the source of the evil? The man who beat up his father and turned him into an abusive parent?’

  Zeke’s face is half illuminated by the glow of the screen, raindrops glistening on his head.

  ‘So you’re sure now?’

  ‘Yes, aren’t you?’

  Zeke nods.

  ‘Should we call for back-up at Fågelsjö’s apartment?’

  ‘Yes, we’d better,’ Malin says.

  ‘I’ll call,’ Zeke says, and Malin hears him talking to the duty-desk, then he gets put through to Sven Sjöman.