Autumn Killing

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 of 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.