Autumn Killing

36

The sea is shimmering in shades of blue that Malin has never seen before, and the sun appears to see its task today as erasing the boundaries between the elements. Malin can feel her dress sticking fast to her lower back, as the warm wind wraps itself around her body in a soft, undemanding embrace.

She looks at her showy surroundings.

The pool terrace has been built on a cliff some hundred metres above a deserted beach of black sand.

The pool.

Lined with black mosaic, and Malin thinks a swim would be nice as she looks at the man in the water, swimming length after length without paying any attention to the visitors who have just arrived.

The terrace must be at least four hundred square metres, and Malin and Inspector Jorge Gomez, wearing a crumpled beige linen suit, are sitting under a parasol at a teak table towards the edge of the terrace. On the other side of the pool, in front of the enormous cube-like house, two big-chested blondes are lying on sunloungers, tapping at their mobile phones and adjusting their outsized sunglasses, while three gorillas in jeans peer out of a living room whose large glass doors have been opened onto the terrace.

A modern castle, Malin thinks. A secluded setting, but only ten kilometres or so from the clamour of Playa de las Americas.

A modernist dream.

White and steel, with the sun to heat it. This must have been the sort of thing you were dreaming about, Mum?

The man in the pool carries on swimming, and small waves spread out to the black edges of the pool, running over, and one of the big-chested blondes gets up and waves across to them, and Gomez waves back.

He drove Malin out here, not saying much, only that they were aware of Jochen Goldman’s questionable past but that there were a lot of far worse crooks on the island, people who really had been convicted of murder and didn’t just have a dodgy reputation, and that they naturally left him alone seeing as there was no current warrant for his arrest.

‘He’s not one of the noisy ones,’ Gomez said in broken English. ‘Not like the Russians. We keep them on a short chain.’

‘Do you think he’ll let us in?’

‘If he’s home, I expect he will.’

Ten minutes later they were standing outside the gates, the black Seat in neutral, as a male voice said over the loudspeaker: ‘Drive up to the house and someone will meet you there.’

They were met by a young woman wearing a dress, and she showed them to the table on the terrace, and said before disappearing inside the house: ‘Mr Goldman will be with you shortly.’

Doing the crawl.

Water.

Goldman in the pool.

One arm in front of the other. And Malin sees the muscles in his arms working, feels how much she wants to get in the pool, feel her own body fight against the water, forcing back the pleasant, soft barrier it constitutes.

The muscular yet still fat body is full of energy as the suntanned Jochen Goldman heaves himself out of the pool, accepts a towel from one of the gorillas, then heads towards them with a smile, and wet, bleached hair.

The towel around his neck. A heavy watch on one wrist, skin the colour of bronze, and a thick gold chain around his neck. His teeth whitened, unnaturally bright for a man of forty-five who, in all likelihood, hasn’t led the most sedate of lives. A murderer? The sort of man who gets rid of people? Impossible to tell.

Malin feels no fear of him. She feels something else.

Jochen Goldman stops ten metres away from them, puffing out his bulging stomach, drying his hair with his right hand before fastening the towel around his waist.

He holds out his hand to Malin.

She takes it, and the handshake is as firm as his smile feels untrustworthy, and Malin sees that he must have had several bouts of plastic surgery during his years on the run, he has just a few wrinkles around his eyes, and cleaner features and a more pointed nose than in the old pictures from the papers. Jochen Goldman sits down in a chair beside them and one of the gorillas comes over with a pair of sunglasses with diamond-studded frames, and Malin smiles, saying: ‘Nice sunglasses’, then she introduces herself: ‘Malin Fors, detective inspector with the Linkoping Police. We spoke on the phone. This is my Spanish colleague Jorge Gomez,’ and Gomez nods towards Goldman, who raises his head slightly in return.

‘I’d be grateful if you could take off the sunglasses. So I can see your eyes when we talk.’

‘They’re from Tom Ford. You’ve got taste,’ Goldman says, taking off the glasses. ‘So you were the one who called about Jerry?’

You know I was, Malin thinks, and Goldman smiles in amusement.

‘And now you’ve come all this way just to have a chat with me.’

Malin realises that nothing in the world will make Goldman tell her more than he’s already decided to say, so she gets straight to the point.

‘We have reason to believe that you knew that Jerry Petersson once tried to give you up when you were on the run.’

Another smile, and his brown eyes sparkle against the sun as he says: ‘Of course, I knew that. I found out through my source in Interpol. I only just got away that time.’

‘Did you want revenge?’

‘No, I got away, didn’t I? And why would I want revenge now, several years later? I’ve never trusted Jerry completely. He wasn’t the type who inspired total confidence, and in a situation like mine it made sense to take precautions.’

‘But you said you were friends?’

‘We were. I still had more confidence in him than most people.’

Malin nods.

She can see the drops of water slowly drying on Jochen Goldman’s skin, as he leans back, legs wide apart, shamelessly making the most of the day as though it were his last.

‘He wanted to sell books,’ he goes on. ‘His greed was amusing. He had just cashed in several hundred million from that IT company, but he still couldn’t help himself trying to increase the sales of the book.’

Out at sea a large cruise ship had appeared on the horizon.

The busty blondes had disappeared from the terrace now.

All that was left were the watchful eyes of the heavies from inside the living room.

‘You have a good life here.’

‘I work hard. But I’d like to have a woman here.’

‘You’ve got several,’ Malin says.

‘But no one like you.’

Malin smiles, feels Goldman’s eyes on her, and she wonders if she should adjust her dress, the wind has blown it up, but she leaves it where it is, she doesn’t usually take advantage like that, but this time she makes an exception. For herself, or to confuse Goldman?

I don’t care, Malin thinks, looking down at her skin.

Gomez is holding his mobile, and it buzzes as a text arrives.

‘So you’re saying you weren’t even angry with Petersson?’

‘No. If you don’t expect loyalty, you don’t get disappointed by betrayal. Don’t you think?’

‘I don’t know,’ Malin says, and she sees Janne in the hall of his house the first time he was about to go to Bosnia, the evening before his departure, and how she tried in vain to stop him packing his camouflaged rucksack.

‘It’s true.’

‘Did you carry on doing business with him?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Even though you didn’t trust him?’

‘He didn’t know that I knew. And one thing you need to understand, Malin, is that sometimes Jerry Petersson was exactly the sort of man you wanted on your side.’

‘Why?’

‘He had certain qualities. A ruthlessness that could be exploited.’

‘What do you mean by ruthlessness?’

Jochen Goldman raises his eyebrows, to indicate that he isn’t going to answer.

‘How did you get to know each other?’ Malin asks instead.

‘It was when I got into trouble on one occasion. My usual lawyer at the same firm was on holiday. I liked him at once. And when he set up his own practice, I went with him.’

‘Do you know why he set up on his own?’

‘He scared the others.’

‘Scared them?’

‘Yes, he was much smarter than them, so they had to get rid of him.’

Malin smiles. Goldman strokes his stomach and flares his nostrils like Tony Soprano.

‘Is there anything you think I should know? About your business dealings? About Jerry?’

‘No. Surely you should do some of the work for yourselves?’

Goldman smiles.

‘So you didn’t decide to get your revenge in retrospect, you didn’t send a hitman?’

Goldman grins at Malin as if she herself were a hired killer, but a welcome, anticipated one.

He puts on his sunglasses and tilts his head so that the sharp sparkle of the jewels’ reflections hits Malin’s eyes and she has to squint.

‘Don’t bore me, Malin. You’re better than that. Anyway, if I did do that, I’m hardly likely to tell you.’

Malin turns her face to the sea.

Thinks about Tove.

Wonders what she’s doing now.

Thinks about Mum.

About Dad.

About the fact that he’s probably looking forward to her visit later that evening.

‘Take a walk with me,’ Goldman says. ‘Let me show you the grounds.’

She follows him down a steep flight of steps that winds down towards the beach.

He’s still wearing his swimming trunks, and his brown body shines in the sun as he tells her about the Spanish architect who designed the house, that he has also designed a house for Pedro Almodovar in the mountains outside Madrid.

Malin says nothing.

She lets Goldman talk, thinks that they’re out of sight of the gorillas now and that Gomez is probably still sitting up on the terrace talking into his mobile.

Goldman asks if she’s read his books, and she says no, then realises that she probably should have.

‘You haven’t missed anything,’ he says.

He jumps down onto the black sand of the beach, rushes down to the edge of the water so as not to burn his feet on the hot sand, and Malin sits down on the bottom step, takes off her canvas shoes, then runs down to the water as well.

‘Take your clothes off. Have a swim. I can get a swimming costume for you. You have no idea how wonderful it is to lie on this beach and feel the salt crystallise on your skin.’

‘I can imagine,’ Malin says, and against her will she wants to lie on this sand with him beside her, looking at him, at the misdirected energy that forms him.

Goldman throws a stone into the water. It bounces across the surface.

‘That stone,’ he says, ‘that’s what I felt like for ten years.’

‘Self-inflicted,’ Malin says. ‘And you were richly rewarded for it.’

‘You’re harsh,’ Goldman says.

‘A realist,’ Malin replies. ‘Did Jerry Petersson ever mention a car accident he was in once?’ she goes on.

Warm water between her toes, a little bubbling, frothing wave rolling over the black sand.

‘It was when he was in his late teens, people died.’

Goldman stops.

Looks at her, and she can’t see his eyes behind the sunglasses, but she realises that he is about to tell her what they came down to the beach for him to say, what she has unconsciously been expecting him to say if she treated him like an ordinary person.

‘He bragged about it once. One New Year’s Eve in Punta del Este. That he was the one driving the car, that he was drunk, but managed to persuade someone else who was sober to say he had been driving. Jerry was proud as punch about it.’