Autumn Killing

30

Monday, 27 October

Early morning.

The world grey-blue like a newborn infant outside the windows of the open-plan office.

Sven Sjoman looks out over the empty chairs and desks, breathes in the smell of paper and lingering sweat. The light from the fluorescent tubes overhead merges with the grey light from outside. Sven thinks about how many detectives he has seen come and go through the course of his career. Malin is one of the best, possibly the best of them all. She understands about listening to the silent voices of an investigation, weaving together the choir of hunches and words into a clear truth.

But it’s taking its toll on her.

The conversation with her husband, or ex-husband, yesterday. Janne. A decent fellow. He called again, worrying about her.

I’m worried as well, Sven thinks. But now I’ve finally had an idea about what I can do without her realising that I’m trying to help her. If she suspected, she’d be furious. Maybe refuse to go. But at least Janne thought it was an excellent idea.

Everything seems to affect Malin badly right now. Everything’s on the surface, and gets scorched by the slightest touch.

Johan, Zeke, Borje, Waldemar.

Borje at home with his wife, the next attack of her MS will in all likelihood mean death.

It’s taking its toll on Borje. But Borje doesn’t seem to be affected by everything the way that Malin is. He seems to have an ability to take pleasure in what he has with his wife, in what he has had.

Waldemar. He’s going to go mad in that room full of paper. But I can probably use his questionable talents. I’m not in favour of the way he conducts police business, his brutality, but not so stupid that I can’t see the value of it at times. That’s why I didn’t veto his transfer from Mjolby. God knows where he got those latest bruises, but he doesn’t complain, and if you work the way that Waldemar does, you have to take the knocks.

Petersson. Who knows what might be lurking under his unturned stones? Give people a whiff of money and they’re capable of almost anything.

Sven pulls in his stomach, sighs, thinks about his brother, self-employed, when he was about to start another business, and how he guaranteed the loan himself and had to sell his house in Karlstad to repay the bank when the business went bankrupt.

Several years later his brother got rich when he sold his next company. Sven asked for his money back, and they were standing on the terrace of his brother’s house, and his brother replied, with a blank look on his face: ‘That was business, Sven. You took a gamble and you lost. Let’s not get apples and pears mixed up now.’

Sven stayed to dinner, that evening.

But he hasn’t spoken to his brother since then.

He opens the Correspondent on his desk. The speculation in the paper points in the same direction as their own. The Fagelsjos, Goldman. Business.

Money, fraternity.

Who could have got so angry, or upset, or disappointed with Jerry Petersson that he ended up in the castle moat, beaten to death and stabbed, among the walled-in prisoners-of-war?

The others look as tired as me, Malin thinks as she looks around at the detectives who have gathered for the first meeting of the week in the preliminary investigation into the murder of Jerry Petersson.

The time is 8.30.

Johan Jakobsson has dark rings under his eyes. Waldemar Ekenberg is ragged from smoking, Lovisa Segerberg looks as if she slept badly in her hotel; they probably have lousy beds in the Hotel du Nord down by the station. Sven Sjoman is the only one who looks alert. Karim Akbar is sitting listlessly at the end of the table, but his shiny grey wool suit is as well pressed as usual, and the pinkish-red tie has been chosen with care.

Silence has descended on the room. The sort of silence that can occur in a room full of detectives searching their minds for a sense of where to go next, waiting for something that is hidden to reveal itself before their eyes.

They’ve been through the Fagelsjos’ lies about their finances, that Fredrik Fagelsjo had lost money on bad investments and had to sell up. And that they had come into an inheritance and tried to buy the estate back, but that Petersson had turned down the offer, in spite of it being a good deal. That Axel Fagelsjo had refused to let Malin and Zeke in, but that Katarina had spoken to them, and that Fredrik had spoken openly and admitted that he had gone out to see Petersson the evening before the murder, but claimed that nothing had happened apart from him confronting Petersson and demanding to be allowed to buy the castle back.

‘If he was there the previous evening, he can’t have killed Petersson then, Karin’s reports says he died in the early hours of the morning and that the blow to the head killed him outright,’ Sven said. ‘From what we know about Petersson’s last twenty-four hours, he doesn’t seem to have met anyone apart from Fredrik Fagelsjo. He only made one call on his mobile, and that turned out to be to his cleaner. A Filipino woman with a solid alibi, and who hadn’t been there for a week.’

‘If Fredrik did kill him,’ Malin said, ‘then he must have gone back the next morning. But his wife has given him an alibi. But we’ve got no way of knowing, that could just be a married couple’s alibi.’

‘And the Filipino cleaner?’ Waldemar asked. ‘Could she have any crazy relatives?’

‘Aronsson’s spoken to her,’ Sven said. ‘She’s clean as a whistle. Anyway, if that were the case, surely he’d have been robbed?’

Then they went through the rest of the case, but there wasn’t much new to report.

‘We’ve checked Petersson’s emails,’ Johan said. ‘And we received the log of telephone calls from Telia late yesterday. Both his mobile and landline. But we haven’t found anything unusual there, apart from the two calls from a phone-box out at Ikea.’

‘Is that so unusual?’ Karim asked.

‘No, but they’re the only calls where we don’t know who made them, and of course pretty much everyone has a mobile these days.’

‘Which phone-box was it?’

‘One out in the car park,’ Johan replied.

‘Is it covered by any of the security cameras?’

‘I’m afraid not, I checked. There’s no camera there. And the calls were made several months ago, so there’s next to no chance of finding any witnesses.’

Karim breaks the silence that has followed the run-through: ‘Any tip-offs from the public?’

‘It’s been remarkably quiet,’ Sven says. ‘I thought we’d get loads of calls about the things Petersson got up to, but maybe he was just the sort who left satisfied customers and people behind.’

‘Do people like that actually exist?’ Zeke asks.

‘No,’ Waldemar says.

‘And we haven’t found the murder weapon,’ Sven says.

‘Where do we go from here?’ Karim asks.

‘Well, the team in Hades will keep digging, trying to find out why the company Jochen Goldman and Petersson ran between them wasn’t more profitable,’ Sven says. ‘Malin and Zeke can try to talk to Axel Fagelsjo. Bring him in for questioning if he makes a fuss. After all, it isn’t that incredible that someone in that family killed Petersson so they could buy back the castle from his estate.’

‘Do you think they could have paid someone to do it?’ Malin asks.

‘Unlikely,’ Sven says. ‘But that did occur to me, even if there’s no evidence to suggest it.’

Malin nods.

‘Petersson’s father stands to inherit everything,’ she goes on. ‘Unless some unknown child or a wife pops up abroad.’

‘People have been killed for less,’ Waldemar says, and in his voice Malin can hear a longing, but she can’t grab hold of the feeling lurking at the back of Waldemar’s wishes.

Just as well, she thinks, looking at his bruise, which has turned orange and yellow around the edges, like an autumn leaf.

Sven picks up the phone on the third ring.

Number unknown on the display, yet the call has come straight through to his phone, bypassing reception.

The open-plan office is noisy now. The morning calm has gone, and the place stinks of coffee.

Police officers in uniform and plain clothes hurrying back and forth, talking into headsets, looking busy, stressed.

‘Sjoman.’

‘Sven Sjoman?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes, hello. This is Peter Svenungsson from Interpol up in Stockholm.’

‘Hello.’

‘I read on the Net about Jerry Petersson, that he’s been murdered.’

‘That’s right. A couple of men found him in the moat of the castle where he lived when they were about to go hunting.’

‘I’ve got something that might interest you.’

‘Go ahead. We’re grateful for any information.’

‘I’m sure you know that Petersson was Jochen Goldman’s lawyer while he was on the run. We only ever came close to catching Goldman once, we got a tip-off that he was in Verbier in Switzerland. The coffee was pretty much still warm in the pot when the local gendarmes got there, but he managed to get away again.’

‘And?’

‘Petersson gave us the tip-off. He called and told us where Goldman was.’

Sven can feel his heart skip a few beats.

‘Bloody hell.’

‘He didn’t give an explanation, and he was aware he was breaking his oath of confidentiality, but we promised he would stay anonymous.’

‘Thanks,’ Sven says. ‘Great. When did this happen?’

‘Three years ago this autumn. I remember it well. It was just before Goldman’s second book came out. If you want my opinion, I think you should check Jochen Goldman bloody carefully. If anything of that sort’s actually possible with that slippery bastard. He’s probably capable of waiting years for revenge until the right opportunity arises. And of course we all know the rumours about what he’s capable of.’

Sven is sitting on the edge of Zeke’s desk, pushed up against Malin’s.

‘So you think Goldman might have found out that Petersson gave him away, and he wanted revenge?’ Malin says, thinking that Sven seems to want to say something else, but won’t let it out.

‘That could fit,’ Zeke says.

Sven nods.

‘Goldman isn’t the sort to move on stoically and forget a betrayal. Don’t you think?’

Tenerife, Malin thinks. And sees her mum and dad on their balcony. Cardboard cut-outs, figures in an advertising brochure selling a happy retirement.

Sun, heat.

No clouds, no frost, no darkness, rain or hail.

Just light.

Just a beaming, wonderfully carefree life of the righteous. As the evangelical bastards who rented her flat might have put it.