Autumn Killing

19

The golf balls are whining through the air under the metal roof of the hangar-like building, several hundred metres long, bouncing high as they land.

Thirteen places.

The sound the clubs make when they strike the balls is like being hit over the ear.

A bucket of fifty balls costs two hundred kronor. An insignificant sum to anyone who belongs to any of the city’s golf clubs.

Putters.

Wooden clubs.

Jerry Petersson was struck on the back of the head with a blunt object, but hardly a golf club, Malin thinks as they approach the slender, tall figure of Katarina Fagelsjo.

‘I’m in thirteen. At the far end, next to the wall.’

No surprise when they called to say they wanted to talk to her, she knew what had happened, but could hardly be aware of what her brother has just done.

Aggressive swings, curses, balls hitting the walls and ceiling, and the noise is like the inside of a swimming pool, and there’s a similarly stale, damp smell, just without the chlorine.

People voluntarily spend the whole afternoon here, Malin thinks as she studies Katarina as she takes an apparently light and elegant swing. Her body is strong, and it’s clear that she possesses the self-confidence about herself and her life that everyone with her background has, imprinted on them from the day they open their eyes and see the world for the first time.

Katarina raises a metal club, takes aim and drops her shoulder, and the club makes a fine arc down towards the ball on the tee in the astroturf.

She must have a low handicap, Malin thinks. And she’s right-handed.

Katarina must have seen them from the corner of her eye.

She stops, turns around, looks at them, and steps down from the low platform she’s standing on. She holds out her hand, and Malin thinks that she must have been beautiful once, that she almost is now, with the same sharp nose as her brother, fine cheekbones, but there are too many wrinkles in her forehead, too much grey in her shoulder-length blonde hair.

Bitter wrinkles. Evidence of discontent around her mouth. Sad eyes, full of a peculiar longing.

She says hello to Malin first, then Zeke.

They show their ID.

Katarina runs a hand over her forehead and Malin thinks that she’s probably only five years older than me, she could have been in the same school as me, ahead of me, the same school as Jerry Petersson. If she didn’t go to a private school like Sigtuna or Lundsberg.

‘Can we do this here?’ Katarina asks, leaning her club on the ground. ‘Or shall we go to the restaurant?’

‘We can do it here,’ Malin says. ‘You know why we want to talk to you? We didn’t have time to say over the phone.’

‘Jerry Petersson. I can put two and two together.’

‘And the fact that your brother tried to drive away from us today.’

Katarina’s mouth drops open, her eyebrows rise briefly, but just a few seconds later she’s collected herself again.

‘My brother did what?’

Malin tells her about the car chase, how he tried to escape when they attempted to talk to him, and that he is now being questioned at the police station.

‘So he was leaving the Ekoxen?’ Katarina said. ‘He was probably worried you were going to get him for drink-driving. He’s been caught before, after a friend’s party three years ago, so this time he’d have ended up in prison.’

Drink-driving. Driving under the influence of alcohol. I did that yesterday, Malin thinks, batting the thought aside like a golf ball.

‘We caught him,’ Zeke says. ‘And he was drunk.’

‘Maybe he tried to escape because he had something to do with Jerry Petersson’s murder?’ Malin asks, hoping the direct question will provoke a reaction.

‘What, my brother kill someone? Hardly.’ Katarina’s face is completely blank as she waits for the next question, and Malin feels tired just looking at it. It’s almost five o’clock already, and even though Malin knows they need to get further with the investigation, all she wants is to be at home, having a shower, and then what?

Feel sorry for myself.

Fucking sorry.

Liquidly sorry.

Her headache has faded, but her body is screaming for more, her anxiety is like a fist around her heart. Have to get a grip on a hell of a lot of different things. Can I handle that?

And now this woman in front of me, stuck-up and stroppy, yet still somehow open and pleasant. Is that what they call social competence?

‘So you don’t believe that?’ Zeke asks.

‘My brother’s harmless. Maybe not entirely, but he’s certainly not violent.’

‘Can you tell us anything about him?’ Zeke asks.

‘He can do that better himself.’

Katarina pulls another club from her bag. Looks it up and down.

‘I’ll get straight to the point,’ Malin says, thinking: focus on Katarina herself instead.

‘What were you doing last night and this morning?’

‘My father was with me yesterday evening. We were drinking tea.’

‘He told us he left at ten o’clock. What did you do after he left?’

Katarina clears her throat.

‘I went to see my lover. Senior consultant Jan Andergren. He can confirm that I was there till this morning.’

She gives them a number, which Zeke taps straight into his mobile.

‘I like white coats,’ Katarina jokes. ‘But you should know that he’s only a lover, I’ve seen him a few times, and I’m not planning to see him many more.’

‘Why not?’ Malin says, and Katarina adopts an expression that seems to say: What business is that of yours?

‘Don’t you know? The golden rule for affairs. More than five times, and there’s a risk you start thinking it’s love.’

Don’t put on airs just because you’re fucking a doctor, Malin thinks. Don’t try acting the tease with me, Katarina Fagelsjo. I’m far too tired to put up with that.

‘Did you have any dealings with Petersson?’ Zeke asks.

‘None at all,’ she says hesitantly, before carrying on in a firm voice: ‘Fredrik and Father looked after all that. Why?’

‘The sale of the castle,’ Malin says. ‘You weren’t opposed to it?’

‘No. It was time. It was simply time to sell up. Time for the family to move on.’

You’re saying the same as your father, Axel, Malin thinks. Has he told you what to say?

‘You didn’t want to take over?’

‘I’ve never had any ambitions of that sort.’

The balls are still whining around them.

Pointless projectiles.

What a stupid sport, Malin thinks, as Katarina adjusts the belt of her blue trousers, checks the collar of her pink cotton sweater and puts the club back in the bag.

‘We’ve heard rumours that you were forced to sell because of financial problems. Is that right?’

‘Inspector. We’re an aristocratic family that goes back several hundred years. Almost half a millennium. We don’t like talking about money, but we have never, I repeat never, had any financial problems.’

‘Can I ask what your job is?’ Zeke asks.

‘I don’t work. Since my divorce I’ve been taking it easy. Before that I worked in art.’

‘Art?’

‘I had a gallery specialising in nineteenth-century painting. Mainly reasonably priced Ostgota artists like Krouthen. But some more expensive ones as well. Do you know Eugene Jansson? He was my speciality, along with the female Danish national-romantics.’

Malin and Zeke shake their heads.

‘Did you used to know Jerry Petersson?’ Zeke asks.

‘No.’

‘Was your divorce recent?’ Malin asks.

‘No, ten years ago.’

‘Children?’

Katarina’s eyes darken, she seems to be wondering why this is important.

‘No,’ she replies.

‘You were the same age, you and Petersson,’ Malin says. ‘Did you go to the same school?’

Katarina stares out at the driving range.

‘We were at the Cathedral School. He was in the third year at the same time as my brother when I was in the first year.’

Malin and Zeke look at each other.

‘I remember him,’ Katarina goes on, still looking out at the driving range. ‘But we didn’t socialise. He didn’t belong to my social circle. But we probably attended a few of the same parties, that couldn’t be helped.’

No, Malin thinks. All manner of worlds collide in high school, whether you want them to or not. People might well end up at the same parties, but that didn’t necessarily mean any more than two strangers visiting the same bar today.

‘So who did you hang out with?’ Zeke asks.

‘A girls’ gang.’

‘So you never saw each other socially?’

Katarina looks at them again, and a flash of sorrow seems to cross her eyes.

‘What did I just say?’ she says.

‘We heard,’ Malin says.

Katarina’s thin lips contract to a narrow line.

‘And now Jerry Petersson’s sitting like some bloody Gatsby out in our castle.’

Sudden desperation in both voice and eyes.

‘He may well have sat there like Gatsby,’ Malin says. ‘But right now he’s lying on a mortuary slab over in the National Forensics Laboratory.’

Katarina turns away from them again, puts a ball on the tee, strikes at it furiously, and the ball flies off to the right.

‘What sort of car do you drive?’ Zeke says when she looks back at them again.

‘That’s my business,’ Katarina says. ‘I don’t want to be impolite, but that’s none of your business.’

‘There’s something you need to understand,’ Malin says. ‘As long as we’re looking for Jerry Petersson’s murderer, every single hair on your backside is our business.’

Katarina smiles and says: ‘OK, Inspector, calm down. Nice and calm. I drive a red Toyota, if it’s really so important.’

Malin turns away.

Walks out of golfing hell. She hears Zeke thank Katarina for her time. Thank God he doesn’t apologise for her behaviour.

‘Be nice to my brother,’ Katarina calls after them. ‘He’s harmless.’

‘Even if you have problems with people like that, you really have got to get a grip. You can’t talk to people that way. No matter how rough you’re feeling.’

Zeke is in the driver’s seat, telling her off as they drive out of the car park in Landeryd. The rain is still pouring from the sky, and the darkness of the approaching evening makes Linkoping another degree less welcoming.

‘I don’t feel rough,’ Malin says.

Then she nods.

‘You know what it’s like. Fucking awful people like that.’

And she knows that anger is a way of covering up insecurity, it’s kindergarten psychology, and she feels ashamed, and hopes Zeke can’t see her blushing.

‘She’s hiding something. Just like her father,’ Zeke says. ‘And possibly her brother too.’

‘Yes, she is,’ Malin says. ‘Maybe it’s a family trait, playing with the truth.’

‘Or else they just want to make our job as hard as possible,’ Zeke says.

They pass the villas of Hjulsbro once more, and the white blocks of rented flats with their balcony corridors opposite, on the other side of Brokindsleden. The rain is driving horizontally across the road, as if the wind and rain were trying to connect the different worlds.

‘We’ll just have to see if the interview with Fredrik Fagelsjo comes up with anything,’ Zeke says. ‘They’re probably in the middle of it by now, if he’s sobered up a bit.’