Autumn Killing

28

Ought to call Tove.

I’m her mum, Malin thinks.

Maybe she can come this evening.

It’s already long past lunch by the time Zeke and Malin go through the swing doors into the police station.

The open-plan office is Sunday empty, the rain like a never-ending wall outside the windows.

Ought to, ought to, ought to call Tove, but I’ve had my mobile switched off for hours now. I’m longing to get down to the gym.

How can I bear to let you out of my sight now, Tove? It was impossible for the first ten months after the catastrophe in Finspang. I was like a leech, at least that’s how it must have felt for you. To protect you, or to calm my own fears? My sense of guilt?

Malin sits down at her desk and switches on her computer, and Zeke does the same. It isn’t long before Sven Sjoman comes over to their desks. He tells them what Fredrik Fagelsjo has just said.

‘Could he have done it?’ Malin asks.

‘Who knows? Maybe they had a fight? And he killed Petersson by mistake?’

Malin looks at Sven, at the doubt that has started to take shape in his eyes. Maybe Fredrik Fagelsjo isn’t their man? She knows Sven must have considered this. But she also knows that he will carry on regarding Fagelsjo as their prime suspect until there’s any evidence to the contrary.

‘If Fredrik Fagelsjo murdered Petersson when he was there on Thursday evening, the timings don’t fit,’ Malin says. ‘According to Karin, the body had only been in the water for a couple of hours, four at the most. And he had been dead for a maximum of five hours, so after approximately four o’clock that morning. And Forensics haven’t found any traces of blood in Fagelsjo’s car, which they certainly ought to have done, because the perpetrator must have been covered in blood. The fact that the gravel in the tyres matches the gravel out at Skogsa is explained by the fact that he admits to having been there the previous evening, but it doesn’t tie him to the murder. Unless he’s lying about the times, of course.’

‘Do you think he could have gone back the following morning?’ Zeke asks.

‘I don’t know, but his wife has given him an alibi and we can’t force her to testify against her husband. She might just be trying to protect her family.’

‘I got the impression that he’s telling the truth,’ Sven says. ‘But you never know. He could have gone back. The dark car that old Mrs Sjostedt saw could have been his, even if she wasn’t quite with it.’

‘Who knows what he might have done,’ Zeke says.

‘Yes, to appease his father,’ Sven says. ‘He seems to be a real patriarch. Fredrik seems almost to forget that he has a family of his own when you talk to him about his father.’

‘A search warrant?’ Zeke asks. ‘To help us get a bit more clarity?’

Sven shakes his head.

‘We simply can’t get a search warrant for Fredrik’s home in connection with the murder at the moment. He’s in custody for other reasons, and Ehrenstierna would put a stop to that at once. If we did search his house in connection with those other offences, we wouldn’t be able to use anything we found in any eventual murder prosecution.’

‘What about Katarina Fagelsjo?’ Zeke says.

‘We can interview her again,’ Malin says. ‘That feels like a natural next step.’

She hears herself say the words, even though all she wants is to get down into the gym and beat the shit out of the punchbag.

‘Have we got her address?’

‘Yes,’ Sven says, ‘we’ve got it.’

Malin switches on her mobile.

No new messages.

Then she dials Tove’s number, but gets straight through to the messaging service.

Where are you? Malin thinks. Tove? Has something happened? And she sees the beast looming over Tove, and feels that she herself is the beast.

Tove, where are you?

‘It’s Mum here. Where are you? You have to realise that I worry. Call me when you get this.’

Tove lets herself be swallowed up by the darkness of the cinema. Filippa is sitting beside her and they’re both gawping at how handsome Brad Pitt is. She likes silly films, lots of kissing and cuddling and people in love in a nice way. Books are a different matter entirely, she likes the ones that everyone else thinks are difficult.

She tries not to think about Mum.

Doesn’t want to think about the fact that she’s probably not coming back to them, and about what she’s decided to do herself.

How can I tell Mum about it? She’ll be sad, she’ll go crazy, maybe do something really stupid. But like Dad said, I can’t live with her at the moment, not with her the way she is, when she can’t cope without a drink.

And then there’s what Dad is going to do today. Does he have to do it so soon?

Brad Pitt smiles.

His teeth are white.

Tove wants to sink into that whiteness, wrap it around all her feelings, leaving just the nice things.

Waldemar Ekenberg runs one hand over his ever more swollen bruises, and puts the other on Lovisa Segerberg’s shoulder, giving it a proper squeeze as he says: ‘I bet you’ve got softer bits on your body, Segerberg. Haven’t you?’

Lovisa feels like standing up and screaming at this evidently severely socially handicapped hillbilly cop to drop the sexist remarks, but she knows his type all too well: macho officers, of all ages, who can’t help making the most bizarre, insulting comments to and about female police officers.

Once she raised a similar event with her boss, but she had just shaken her head and said: ‘If someone as attractive as you wants to be in the police, you’d better be prepared for a whole load of comments. Try to take it as a compliment.’

Lovisa is having trouble seeing the hand squeezing her shoulder as a compliment, and without saying anything she slides from his grasp and puts the papers in her hand on the desk.

She, Waldemar, and Johan Jakobsson have spent all day in paperwork Hades. And have only got through a fraction of the material.

But there’s one thing they can say with certainty: the tenancy agreements were legitimate, and the IT business seemed to be entirely above board. Petersson appeared to have got his fair share of the money, no more, no less. He had merely invested in the company, not acted as its legal advisor, so there was no question of bias. They hadn’t found a will, and during the course of the day Johan had made another twenty pointless calls to everyone from commercial lawyers whose names cropped up in the files to the carpenters, electricians and other workmen who had been employed by Jerry Petersson out at Skogsa. No one had anything interesting to say about him. He seemed to have managed all his business dealings in an irreproachable manner.

The clock on the yellow textured wallpaper says 2.25.

Lovisa looks at Johan, the pleasant, softly spoken officer out of the two she’s been set to work with. Competent and inoffensive.

Evidently Waldemar is also competent, and at lunch over at the National Forensics Laboratory she noticed how the other officers treated him with the respect the police usually reserve for officers who really know how to make things happen.

‘Time’s getting on,’ Waldemar says, settling down at his place at the table, in front of a screen showing the contents of Jerry Petersson’s hard-drives in neat folders.

‘I can’t think straight,’ Johan says. ‘So much fucking paper.’

‘The only thing I can see that could have a direct connection to the case,’ Lovisa says, ‘is the company Petersson owned with Jochen Goldman. The one dealing with the books and the income from interviews with Goldman. The company accounts look terrible. Maybe there’s more money somewhere, or else the interest or capitalisation value of Goldman’s celebrity status was a lot higher.’

‘Capitalisation value,’ Waldemar says. ‘You sound like a right nerd.’

‘We’ll mention it at the next meeting,’ Johan says.

‘The morning meeting first thing tomorrow,’ Waldemar says, and Lovisa thinks that no one could be less suited to paperwork than him.

Katarina Fagelsjo, dressed in dark jeans and a pink tennis shirt, is leaning back on a sofa that Malin knows comes from Svenskt Tenn and costs a fortune. The fabric of the sofa was designed by Josef Frank, old-fashioned black tendrils snaking through leaves in strong autumn colours against a pale blue background.

A fortune, she thinks. At least by my standards, and then she thinks how badly she fits in with this room, conscious of how cheap her H amp;M jeans look, her woollen sweater, how vulgar her sports socks are, and how scruffy she is as a whole compared to Katarina Fagelsjo. Malin feels like creeping along the walls, taking up as little space as possible, but she knows this won’t do, so she’ll have to hide her insecurity behind brusqueness.

A fragile wooden table in front of them, three cups of coffee that neither Malin, Zeke nor Katarina Fagelsjo have touched. The whole room smells of lemon-scented detergent and some expensive, famous perfume that Malin can’t place. Paintings on the walls. Classical, but with the same aura of quality as Jerry Petersson’s artworks. A lot of portraits of women by windows in bright light, women who all seem to be waiting for something. One painting in particular, of a woman by a window facing the sea, takes Malin’s interest. She reads the signature: Anna Ancher.

Through the large living-room windows Malin and Zeke can see the Stangan River flowing gently past, the raindrops forming small, fleeting craters as they hit the surface. On the other side of the river large villas clamber up the slope towards Tanneforsvagen, but it’s regarded as much smarter to live on this side of the river, closer to the centre.

As far as Malin can tell, Katarina lives alone in the large, modernist villa from the thirties beside the Stangan, and she’s in a more obliging frame of mind now than she was at the driving range.

‘Go ahead,’ she says with a smile. ‘I’ll answer as best as I can.’

‘Did you know that your father tried to buy back Skogsa from Jerry Petersson?’ Zeke asks.

‘I knew. And I didn’t approve.’

‘Why not?’

‘That’s a closed chapter for me. We have everything we could possibly need anyway. But obviously I couldn’t stop him trying. Jerry Petersson was the rightful owner of the castle. That’s all there was to it.’

‘And your brother?’ Malin asks, looking at Katarina, the way she seems to be struggling with something, and if Malin asks open questions she might start talking, revealing some secret that could take them forward.

‘He would probably have liked to see the castle bought back.’

‘Were you angry with him because of his investments?’

‘So you know about that?’ Katarina acts surprised. ‘Naturally, it was a mistake that Father gave my brother access to the family capital. He’s never been particularly talented. But as to whether I was angry? No. Do you know about the Danish inheritance?’

Malin nods.

‘Do you think we got Petersson out of the way because he was the only thing standing between us and getting Skogsa back?’

Malin looks at Zeke, he’s gazing out of the windows, and she wonders what he’s thinking about. Karin Johannison? Maybe, maybe not. You’ve got a wife, Zeke, but who the hell am I to criticise anyone else? We share our secrets, Zeke.

‘You could have told us all this out at the golf club,’ Malin says.

‘At the driving range,’ Katarina corrects with a shrug.

‘Why do you think your brother tried to get away from us?’

‘He was driving under the influence. He couldn’t even handle a month in prison. He’s the timid sort. Like I said.’

‘Do you live here alone?’ Malin asks.

‘Yes. I’ve lived alone since the divorce.’

‘And your lover? The doctor. Does he usually stay here?’

‘What’s that got to do with you?’

‘Sorry,’ Malin says. ‘Nothing. It’s nothing to do with us.’

‘There’s no love there,’ Katarina says. ‘Just really good sex. A few more times. The sort of thing a woman needs every so often. You know what I mean, don’t you?’

A text message from Tove.

‘Got your message. Was at the cinema.’

Of course.

She was going to the cinema.

What should I reply?

She replies: ‘Great! Now I know.’

No: ‘Are you coming around later?’

Zeke behind the wheel. On the way to her flat to drop her off.

Can’t deal with anyone but herself tonight. If that.

Skirts.

Tops.

Sandals.

A photograph album.

Malin’s life in a big heap on the hall floor when she went into the flat.

Bags and boxes full of her clothes, shoes, books and things. Neatly piled up, and when Malin realised what was in front of her in the flat she felt like crying, and she sat down on the hall floor, but however much she tried to squeeze out some tears, none came.

My things, the person I am. No, not the person I am, more like a receipt for the pointless person I’ve become.

Janne had turned up with her things from the house during the day, using her spare key to get in, then dropping it through the letterbox afterwards. She would have liked to pick up her things herself, would have liked them to be at home when she went, him and Tove, and they would have asked her to sit down at a ready-laid table and would offer her some hot stew that would take the edge off all the chill and rawness, the thirst and confusion.

Now, instead, this pile of life. In this shitty-fucking-tiny-musty-raw-damp-lonely flat.

Did Tove help Janne? Have they turned against me in tandem?

But what can I expect? I hit him. In front of Tove. How the hell could I? Am I any better than the father and brother in that honour killing?

God, how I miss you both. I miss you so much it crosses every boundary and you disintegrate and are replaced by something else.

But why isn’t Tove here? Tove, where are you? Your things? You could have brought it all at once, couldn’t you?

Malin sits with her back to the front door.

She has a bottle of tequila in her hand, but isn’t drinking. Instead she’s pulled out the files about the Maria Murvall case from the bags Janne left.

She reads.

Sees Maria Murvall sitting on the floor, like her, in another room. Alone, excluded, shut off, numb to the point of nothingness, maybe scared beyond the bounds of what the rest of us call fear.

Malin twists and turns all the facts in the case, as she’s done hundreds of times before.

What happened in the forest, Maria?

What were you doing there?

Who could hurt anyone the way he or she or it hurt you, where does that malice come from? Where do the sharp, living branches that ate their way into your genitals come from? The electrically charged spiders? The cockroaches with sharpened jaws that ate their way up your legs?

Evil is like a torrent, Malin thinks. Like tons of clay sliding down a hillside in a merciless autumn storm. A flood of death and violence wiping out every living thing in its path, leaving a desolate landscape behind it, ash lying in heaps on the ground, and we, the survivors, are forced to eat each other to survive.

Wrath summoned back. Set free.

Malin gets up, leaving the files and things in the hall. She goes into Tove’s room, sees the unmade bed, wishes Tove were lying there again, and she starts to cry when she realises that that bed, in many ways, is empty for good now, that she may never pick Tove up from the sofa in front of the television and carry her to bed, that the child Tove was has vanished, replaced by the young woman who measures everything around her, who evaluates and tries to stay as far as possible from any obvious pain. A person who doesn’t sleep a sleep of innocence.

In Malin’s dream, damp and darkness and cold become one and the same. They merge into a black light, and in the centre of that light is a secret, or possibly several secrets.

I loved, says a voice. Search in love. I hit, says the same voice. Search in the blows, another voice says in the dream. Young snakes, chopped to pieces by lawnmower blades move before her eyes, crawling out of the sewers in streets whose names she doesn’t know.

Then the voices fall silent, the mutilated young snakes vanish.