Autumn Killing

18

‘What the hell happened?’

Zeke’s hands are shaking slightly on the steering wheel as they drive back towards Linkoping, past the white-tiled block of flats in Skaggetorp and the big Arla dairy in Tornby. They pass one of the Correspondent’s reporters’ cars. Is that Daniel driving? They’re utterly tireless, those vultures.

‘I’ve no idea,’ Malin says. The adrenalin has dropped, her headache and angst are back, and a clearly intoxicated Fredrik Fagelsjo is safely installed in the back seat of the patrol car. Malin didn’t want him in the car with them, she and Zeke both needed time to calm down.

A van from the local television news.

‘But maybe,’ Malin goes on, ‘he’s involved in this somehow and he got it into his head that we know, and that’s why he tried to escape. And then realised how pointless it was out in the field, in all that rain.’

‘Or else he was just drunk and panicked when we tried to stop him,’ Zeke says.

‘Well, we’ll find out when we question him. But he could very well be our man,’ Malin replies, but she’s thinking that there’s something here that doesn’t add up, that the case can’t be that simple. Or can it?

Her mobile rings and she sees Sven Sjoman’s name on the display.

‘I’ve heard,’ Sven says. ‘Very odd. Could it be him? What do you think?’

‘Maybe. We’ll interview him when we get back to the station.’

‘Johan and Waldemar can do that,’ Sven says. ‘You two can try to get hold of Katarina Fagelsjo. Put her under pressure while her brother’s idiotic behaviour’s still fresh.’

Malin feels like protesting at first. Then she relaxes. If there’s anyone who can get anything out of Fredrik Fagelsjo, it’s Waldemar Ekenberg.

Fredrik didn’t say a word when they pulled him to his feet and led him back over the field. He maintained his silence as they put him in the patrol car.

‘OK. That’s what we’ll do,’ Malin says. ‘Anything else?’

‘Not much. Johan and Waldemar have called a number of people and companies whose names crop up in Petersson’s files. But it hasn’t led to anything.’

‘Any signs of a lover?’

‘No love at all,’ Sven replies.

Katarina Fagelsjo answered her phone.

Was prepared to see them, and now Malin and Zeke are heading along Brokindsleden in silence through the dim afternoon light.

They’re both trying to catch their breath, to get back to their normal energy levels before they see her.

They drive past the development of detached houses in Hjulsbro.

In Malin’s social studies textbook the area was mentioned as an upper-class reserve alongside the Upper East Side in New York City, but the upper-class don’t live here. More like the moneyed middle-class.

In Hjulsbro the doctors’ villas huddle together, nondescript from the outside, but large and tastefully furnished when you get inside. One of the most expensive and prestigious residential areas of the city, but still a bit feeble somehow, compared to Djursholm in Stockholm or Orgryte in Gothenburg.

As they drive through the area Malin can understand everyone who grows up in a provincial city and moves to a larger one as soon as they possibly can, a world with greater depths and heights than an ordinary, godforsaken Swedish city can offer, no matter how jumped-up it is.

Stockholm.

She lived there with Tove while she was studying at the Police Academy. In a sublet one-room flat in Traneberg, and all she can remember is studying and trips to the nursery, babysitters found in the local papers, young girls who were expensive and unreliable, and the fact that Stockholm didn’t have a damn thing to offer an impoverished single mother. The whole city felt shut off, as if all its opportunities and secrets could never be hers, and which seemed to mock her relentlessly as a result.

The exact opposite must have been true for Jerry Petersson.

Malin had been offered a post in Stockholm several times, most recently last summer when there was a vacancy in the Violent Crime Unit and the boss, someone called Kornman, had tried to headhunt her. He called her in person, said he was familiar with her work, and asked if she felt like expanding her territory.

Malin had a feeling they needed more women.

She’d just got the life she dreamed of with Janne and Tove, before everything went to hell. So she had turned the offer down.

And now, in the car, she’s cursing herself. A fresh start might be just what I need? Or would the big city break me? Mind you, a small city seems to be able to do that well enough.

Almost, anyway.

The radio is on.

She persuaded Zeke that they shouldn’t listen to his choral music, and he agreed to listen to good old local radio.

The final notes of Grand Archives’ ‘Torn Blue Foam Couch’ have just faded away, and now Malin can hear the low voice of her friend, radio presenter Helen Aneman.

She’s talking about their victim.

About Jerry Petersson, for whom no one seems to feel sorry, about whom no one seems to care much. And no one seems particularly upset about what’s happened.

But somewhere there’s someone who misses you, Malin thinks as she listens to Helen, and I’m going to make sure that person knows what really happened. Maybe your father, we’ll deal with him in the fullness of time. You had no brothers or sisters, and your mother’s dead, we know that much. Maybe a woman, or maybe even a child, even if you didn’t have any of your own.

‘One of the city’s wealthiest sons has passed away,’ Helen says. ‘The IT millionaire, according to the rumours the criminals’ friend, an exciting character that we might not get to know much about. He bought Skogsa a year or so ago, the famous seat of the aristocratic Fagelsjo dynasty. . Petersson may not have been the best-behaved person in the world, but surely he didn’t deserve a fate like that? What do you think? Call in if you’ve got anything to say about Jerry Petersson.’

A Madonna song.

‘American Pie’.

Zeke sings along. Maybe the song makes him think about Martin in Vancouver? About his grandchild? Or maybe they sing it in that choir he belongs to?

They’re past Hjulsbro now.

The suffocating, petit bourgeois enclave left behind.

Zeke accelerates and the car responds. They turn off.

Ahead of them she can see Landeryd Golf Club. The huge balloon-like building, home to the city’s driving range.

A golfer’s paradise in this autumn hell.

Where golf balls rain through the air.