Mons Kallentoft - Autumn Killing

Daniel leans back in his seat. Sees the bald detective that he knows is called Zeke go over to Malin.

Daniel closes his eyes. Gets ready to play at being the tough reporter when he tries to get something out of the other officers.

As Malin and Zeke approach the car the dog stands up on the back seat. Its cropped stump of a tail is wagging, and it’s staring greedily at the bowl of water in Zeke’s hand. But when they open the doors the dog backs away. It lies down on the floor behind the driver’s seat and seems to be waiting for something. Zeke gives him the water and they can hear it lapping at it.

‘Let’s get it to Borje,’ Malin says.

‘OK,’ Zeke replies.

Malin goes for the passenger seat. Zeke can do the driving.

The dog whimpers in the back seat.

Daniel Hogfeldt’s naked body.

What’s wrong with me? Malin thinks.

The red-painted cottage sits beside the road leading up towards Skogsa, not far from the turning to Linkoping. The forest around the cottage opens up to give space for a field that looks more like a large vegetable patch. They’ve stopped on their way back to the city, something inside Malin told her that they ought to talk to the person living there, that they shouldn’t leave it to the uniforms.

‘The dog will be OK.’

Malin has one hand on the car door.

But before she can open it the cottage door flies open.

Malin jerks back. Zeke throws himself down, already outside. The barrel of a shotgun is pointing right at them, and behind it stands a short, grey-haired old woman.

‘So who are you?’ she croaks in a hoarse voice.

Malin backs away a bit further, and from the corner of her eye she can see Zeke feeling for his pistol.

‘Easy, easy,’ Malin says. ‘We’re from the police. Let me show you my ID.’

The old woman looks at Malin.

Seems to recognise her.

Lowers the gun.

Says: ‘I recognise you from the local news. Come in. Sorry about the gun, but you never know what you’re going to get around here.’

Inside the car the dog has started barking again.

‘Hang your coats in the hall. Coffee? It’s lunchtime, but I haven’t got anything to offer you.’

The old woman, who’s just introduced herself as Linnea Sjostedt, leads them into the kitchen.

The way she walks makes me look like an invalid, Malin thinks, the thought of lunch making her feel sick.

The old woman puts the shotgun down on a rustic table standing on a yellow and green, almost certainly home-woven, rag-rug. An old Husqvarna stove. Collectable plates on the walls.

An old person’s smell, sour but not unpleasant, and a strong sense that time will have its due, no matter what anyone might want.

‘Sit yourselves down.’

For the old woman the business with the shotgun is already long forgotten, but Malin can still feel the adrenalin pumping in her veins, and Zeke’s clothes are wet from the grass he landed on. They watch her put an old-fashioned coffeepot on the stove and take out some blue-flowered cups.

‘You can’t go around pointing guns at people like that,’ Zeke says as he sits down.

‘Like I said, you never know what you’re going to get around here.’

Uncomfortable ladder-backed chairs, hard on the backside.

‘Do you mean anything in particular?’ Malin asks.

‘Who knows what evil might come up with. Something must have happened, seeing as you’re here.’

‘Yes,’ Malin says. ‘Jerry Petersson, the new owner of Skogsa, has been found dead.’

Linnea Sjostedt nods.

‘Murdered?’

‘We believe so,’ Zeke replies.

‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ the old woman says, pouring out the coffee.‘I haven’t got any cake. It makes me fat.’

‘So we’re wondering if you saw anything unusual yesterday, or last night, or this morning. Or anything else you thought was odd recently?’

‘This morning,’ Linnea says, ‘I saw Johansson and Lindman heading towards the castle. It must have been about half past seven.’

Malin nods.

‘Anything else?’

Malin takes a sip of the coffee.

Boiled coffee.

So strong it makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

‘Sometimes, when you’re as old as I am,’ Linnea Sjostedt says, ‘you don’t always know if you’re dreaming or if what you see or think you see has really happened. I’m sure about Johansson and Lindman, because I’d already had my first cup of coffee by then, but could I have seen something before that? I’m not sure.’

‘So you did see something before that, Linnea?’

Malin is making an effort to sound serious. As if dreams really did exist.

‘Well, I think I saw a black car driving towards the castle at the crack of dawn. But I’m not sure. Sometimes I dream that I’ve got up, and this could have been one of those dreams.’

‘A black car?’

Linnea Sjostedt nods.

‘Any particular make or model?’

‘Maybe an estate car. It was big. I’ve never paid any attention to makes of cars.’

‘Do you rent this cottage from the estate?’ Malin asks.

‘No, thank heavens, my father bought it from the Fagelsjos in the fifties. I moved in twenty years ago when my father passed away.’

‘What about Petersson, what do you know about him?’

‘He called and introduced himself. Nice young man, even if he probably wasn’t always as nice as that. All that business with Goldman and so on.’

‘Goldman?’

‘Yes, Jochen Goldman. The one who conned all that money out of that financial firm up in Stockholm, several hundred million, then fled abroad. They’re supposed to have worked together. I read about it on the Net. Don’t you know anything, officers? That Goldman’s supposed to be a really nasty piece of work.’

‘Nasty?’ Malin asks.

Linnea Sjostedt doesn’t answer, just shakes her head slowly.

Embarrassing, Malin thinks. Put to rights by an eighty-year-old woman. But she was right, Goldman did feature in the article in the Correspondent, even if the focus was more on Petersson here and now, his plans for the castle and how he was supposed to have all but driven out the Fagelsjos.

But she remembers Jochen Goldman. How he emptied a listed company of money with the help of some French count, how he’s spent ten years on the run, getting loads of media attention, publishing books about his life evading the law, until now; for the past year or so, his crimes can no longer be tried thanks to the statute of limitations.

And none of them remembered the connection between the financial crook and their victim during their meeting in the castle?

Strange. But presumably their detective brains hadn’t woken up properly by then. Just as foggy as this autumn weather.

Irritated, Malin asks: ‘What were you doing last night and this morning?’

‘Inspector, do you really think I had anything to do with Petersson’s demise?’

‘I don’t think anything,’ Malin says. ‘Just answer the question, please.’

‘I got home at about four o’clock this morning. With Linkoping Taxis, so you can check that. I spent last night with my lover, Anton, he lives in Valla. You can have his number as well.’

‘Thank you,’ Zeke says, ‘but I don’t think that will be necessary. Is there anything else you think we ought to know?’

The old woman’s eyes sparkle.

She opens her mouth to say something, but changes her mind before any words pass her lips.

Zeke is about to start the car. He’s just patted the dog’s head, talking to it, calming it down, settling it back down on the floor again. It doesn’t seem to want to look at the forest and fields.

My brain isn’t working properly, Malin thinks.

It wants more drink.

Goldman.

One of the biggest fraud cases in Swedish history, and he managed to stay hidden until the time limit for charges being pressed had elapsed.

And Petersson had dealings with someone like that. They’ve got a lot to look into, there are masses of files in several rooms of the castle, and when there’s been a murder they can seize whatever they want, without the permission of the victim’s solicitor. If Jerry Petersson was in business with Goldman, how many others like him are there?

Malin looks out over the mist-shrouded field and forest and road. Thousands of different shades of grey blurring together. The wind is strong enough to send the leaves flying like flakes of copper across the green-black ground, swirling to and fro like metallic stars hanging in an absurdly low sky. In a clearing there are several ridges of deep-red leaves, like the blood pouring from Jerry Petersson’s body.

Must call Tove.

Malin tries to focus her gaze, but everything is floating in front of her eyes. The rear-view mirror. She doesn’t want to look in it, hates her swollen features, the reason why she looks like that, doesn’t want to see the shame etched in her forehead, in the tiniest corner of her face. The car seems to contract. She’s having trouble breathing. Wants to jump out. Tove. Janne. How are you ever going to forgive me?

Damn.

Just give me a fucking big drink. Now. I’m pouring with sweat. I know all the things I ought to do, but I can’t handle any of it.

‘Are you OK?’ Zeke asks.

‘Fine,’ she replies. Forces herself to think about their heaven-sent case.

A black car in a dream? Lindman’s? Johansson’s? But why?

Jochen Goldman.

The entire Fagelsjo family.

Avaricious bastards in general.

I wonder which one it’s worth annoying most?

15

The very thought of going through all the files is making Johan Jakobsson annoyed. How many have they carried into the room now?

Two hundred? Three hundred?

His light blue shirt is flecked grey with dust from all the carrying.

Johan surveys the meeting room in the heart of the police station. Burps and gets a taste of the mince he had for lunch.

The windowless room, with its grey-white textured wallpaper and basic shelving, is going to be their strategy room for the duration of the investigation into the murder of Jerry Petersson.

Two hard-drives.

A successful working life gathered together in a corner of the police station. Grim, Johan thinks, but he is also rather glad that something’s actually happening today. They hadn’t even reached Nassjo and his parents-in-law when Sven Sjoman rang, told him what had happened and asked if he could come in.

‘I’m on my way. I’ll be there in an hour or two.’

His wife had been furious, and he didn’t really blame her. She had reluctantly driven him to Skogsa, then turned back towards Nassjo on her own with the children.

Even all the impending paperwork is preferable to hobnobbing with the oldies in Nassjo. They have far too many opinions about things in general, and about Johan’s family in particular, for him to enjoy their company.

Everyone should mind their own business.

It is much better that way.

The files of documents and the hard-drives full of more documents are all concerned with instances of people minding their own business, Johan is certain of that. Who knows what they might find here? And what might that lead to? Or else they’ll find nothing. It’s not against the law to have a dodgy reputation.

The files are marked by year, and occasionally by name.

So far they’ve only taken a quick glance at a couple of them, but Jerry Petersson seems to have been a meticulous record-keeper, and every document appears to be in exactly the right place. This won’t make his and Waldemar Ekenberg’s job any less wide-ranging, but it will make it a fraction easier.

The names on the files.

He doesn’t recognise them, apart from one: Goldman. A mocking shadow who almost seems to be a fictional character, even though he really does exist. Malin called and mentioned the connection to Goldman, and now the files with his name on are on the table in front of Johan. There must be at least thirty of them, full of the specific details of avarice.

Malin’s voice. It sounded rough, in the way that only alcohol can make a voice rough. And she sounded tired and sad. She’s been looking more and more tired, and Johan has often felt like asking how she is, but Malin Fors isn’t the kind of person with whom you exchange small talk about feelings.

The door of the room flies open with an angry bang.

In the doorway stands Waldemar, weighed down by two boxes.

Files, documents, computer disks.

This is ideal for me, Johan thinks, but Waldemar sees the job as a punishment, and maybe it is on some level: Sven wants to keep their renowned loose cannon under control. His reputation is deserved, Johan has seen him use physical force to get information out of people. Once Waldemar shoved the barrel of his pistol deep into the throat of a suspect to make him tell the truth. But violence can work. In the short term. In the end it always ends up biting its own tail.

Waldemar drops the boxes unceremoniously in a corner of the room.

Stretches his back.

Huffs and puffs, mutters something about needing a fag, then he sits down on one of the chairs around the table, and Johan sees the uncomfortable back of the chair bow under his colleague’s weight.

‘Christ, look at all this fucking work in here.’

‘If we’re lucky, something will come up to save us going through most of it,’ Johan Jakobsson says.

He remembers clearing out his parents’ flat four years ago, when Dad died just months after Mum. The way he had hunted through all their papers, looking for something that he reluctantly had to admit was probably money, a banker’s draft for a large sum of money, a lottery win, the only way his parents would ever have managed to get a large amount of money.

But there was no money. And he was ashamed.

‘Do you believe that?’ Waldemar says.

‘No.’

‘What’s to say that this Petersson wasn’t a fucking crook? He could have had contacts in the underworld. We ought to check. I could head out and make a few inquiries.’

‘We need to concentrate on the paperwork,’ Johan says wearily.

Waldemar pulls out a packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and holds it towards Johan.

‘Want one? You don’t mind me smoking in here, do you?’

The room is full of retch-inducing cigarette smoke.

Smoking isn’t permitted anywhere in the police station, but Johan couldn’t say no. Didn’t want to look like an asthmatic weakling in front of the tough guy.

Why, Johan wonders, do I give a shit what he thinks?

But I do.

They leaf through a few files at random. They’ve ordered extra screens from the techs so they can go through the contents of Petersson’s hard-drives here in the room.

Where to begin?

No idea, and Waldemar seems to think the same, saying: ‘There’s so fucking much of it. We need help. And it’s all going to be financial stuff that I honestly won’t have a clue about. Do you know about stuff like that?’