Mons Kallentoft - Autumn Killing

If you investigate murders, you’re always close to violence, but some things, some voices, can only be heard when you’re alone.

The rain that’s been falling on the way out stops when she arrives. The house in the forest looks abandoned, no light from the windows in the clearing containing the main building and workshop. The little clearing is actually a meadow, surrounded by dense mixed forest, and the whole site is reminiscent of a miniature Skogsa, but with the pomp and power replaced by subordination and a palpable fear of the horrors that could be lurking in the darkness of the forest.

Anders Dalstrom isn’t home, Malin thinks. Probably at work, in the old people’s home. But doesn’t he work nights?

She gets out of the car. Does up her black GORE-TEX jacket.

Anders Dalstrom’s red Golf is missing from the drive.

Malin goes over the gravel and up the steps to the porch, where she peers inside the house and looks at the posters on the walls.

Quiet out here in the forest.

He probably wishes he had a girlfriend, or a family. The failed folk singer, what must it have been like, having to watch Lars Winnerback’s success? Forty years old and working in an old people’s home. Not much of a career. Does composing music out here in the forest give you peace? Was that why you moved here? Or are you bitter about other people?

But where are you now? Malin thinks. I only want to ask you some simple questions.

She knocks on the front door, rings the bell, but there’s no sign of him.

She tries to look in through the other windows, but the curtains are drawn.

Oh well. The car’s not there, after all.

She turns around and looks out at the forest, wondering where Anders Dalstrom might be. In the workshop? She walks over, but the doors are closed. Open them? No. Or should I? No, that would be too intrusive.

She looks over at the forest again.

He’s watching her from the edge of the forest. The woman, the female detective. She’s on her own. Why? He thought they always travelled in pairs, for security. Why did she go over to the workshop? Does she think the Golf’s in there? It’s at the garage. Is she looking for another vehicle?

Should I rush over to her?

What’s she doing here, now? She ought to be looking elsewhere. But she’s probably just here to ask some questions?

Now she’s looking towards the forest, in his direction, and he ducks down, feels the wet fir needles and fallen twigs embrace him as long locks of hair fall over his eyes.

Did she see me? She can’t have seen me. And what’s she doing now? She seems to be taking a photograph of the sign on my door with her mobile.

Was that someone over there at the edge of the forest?

Malin isn’t sure, as she puts her mobile away. Anders Dalstrom could have been out in the forest hunting or picking mushrooms or something like that, and might now be on his way home. But he’s seen me and doesn’t want to talk to me.

Her pistol.

She’s got it with her. She showed it at the talk that morning, aware that the sight of a real gun always arouses the interest of teenagers.

Something green amidst all that grey.

She sets off towards the edge of the forest, crossing the waterlogged meadow, feeling her boots getting wet, but she wants to know what it was she saw.

Then a movement, something sliding away through the forest.

A person. A fox?

Impossible to tell. Malin pulls her pistol from its holster under her shoulder. Heads towards the forest, towards the darkness among the trees.

Anders Dalstrom is snaking through the forest, his long hair wet with rain.

She mustn’t see me. What’s she doing here? How could I explain why I’m trying to hide?

But he knows where he can go. There’s a fallen tree just twenty metres in, and its exposed roots have left a hole, invisible if you don’t know it’s there.

I’m slithering like the young snakes inside me now.

Soaking wet. And cold, but none of that matters. Down into the hole. Hope the roots don’t rock back into it. Into the hole, pull fallen branches over it. Stop breathing.

Where is he? Or whatever that was?

Malin checks the floor of the forest for tracks, but can’t make out anything; the rain has beaten all the vegetation on the ground into a pulp.

The forest is silent and empty, except for the sound of her own breathing and the wind blowing through the treetops.

A fallen tree ahead of her.

She walks towards it.

Has someone been there? Is someone there? Then some heavy raindrops hit the back of her neck. She looks up. An owl is flying between the fir trees high above.

I must have been wrong.

No one here.

When Anders Dalstrom hears Malin’s car start up and drive off, he carefully crawls out of his hiding place, hurries over to the edge of the forest and reassures himself that he’s alone again.

Then he runs over to the house.

He’s weighed up his options, trying to understand what’s happening, wishing it could still all be stopped, but at the same time wanting it all to be over, once and for all, for the snakes to be forced from his blood, to feel the calm that follows a raised hand.

The key in the lock.

Trembling hands.

It creaks and he thinks about oiling the lock, ought to have done so long ago.

The door opens and he runs into the living room and over to the gun cabinet.

He looks at the shotgun that he’s keeping here for Dad, the one Dad hasn’t been able to use for years, but which it would never occur to him to let his son use.

Malin is holding the wheel with one hand, and with the other she sends the photograph of the handwritten sign on Anders Dalstrom’s door to Karin Johannison.

‘Compare handwriting with blackmail letter. Asap. Call me when you know. MF.’

The rain fills the windscreen in front of her.

Soon she sees the silhouette of Linkoping ahead of her. The city seems to be sinking into its own sewers, a place that even the rats have abandoned.

63

Zeke is at his desk. His head slightly stubbly, black bristles sticking out in all directions like sharp quills.

‘Did you get anywhere?’ he asks as Malin sits down in her chair.

‘I don’t know,’ Malin replies. ‘Can you bear to hear what I’m thinking?’

‘I think so.’

Malin’s mobile buzzes. Karin? So soon.

The message on the screen glows up at Malin: ‘I’ll check at once. Karin.’

Zeke smiles.

‘From Karin?’

Malin smiles back.

‘How could you know that?’

‘Mysterious ways, Malin.’

‘Let’s get some coffee.’

They settle down at a corner table in the staffroom.

‘Well, let me start by saying that Christina Fagelsjo hasn’t managed to find Fredrik’s keys,’ Zeke says. ‘So it looks like he had them on him, and the murderer used his keys to open the chapel.’

Malin nods.

‘Anders Dalstrom,’ she goes on. ‘Andreas Ekstrom who died in the car accident was his only friend. He looked out for him, as Andreas’s mum put it. Think about it. It’s like his life stopped when Andreas died in the crash. What if he found out somehow that Jerry Petersson was driving? Maybe he met up with Jonas Karlsson in the pub and Karlsson told him the truth about that New Year’s Eve but couldn’t remember doing so afterwards? Unless he found out some other way. He might have accepted that it was an accident, but that would all have changed when he found out that Petersson was driving. Petersson was drunk, after all, which makes it a serious offence.’

‘So Dalstrom decided he wanted revenge?’

‘Well, possibly. Maybe he was bullied before Andreas turned up in his class. Maybe there’s a load of pent-up violence inside him that started to leak out? But he’d probably have preferred to blackmail Jerry Petersson for money. Maybe he went out to Skogsa that morning to put pressure on Petersson, and something went wrong and it got out of hand. And he ended up killing Petersson. What if Dalstrom felt that the violence made him feel stronger? That it gave him some sort of pleasure and he found he couldn’t stop once he’d started? That the aggression. .’

Zeke is looking sceptical, and says: ‘But why wait until now? Petersson had been living at Skogsa for eighteen months. And even if Karlsson only let the cat out of the bag fairly recently, Dalstrom doesn’t look like the vengeful type, Malin. He doesn’t seem energetic or courageous enough to blackmail anyone for money. Besides, I thought he seemed pretty good-natured.’

‘Maybe,’ Malin says. ‘But the victims of bullying, if that’s what he was, are often said to have a propensity for violence when they grow up. And what do we really know about him?’

Zeke nods.

‘That might be true,’ he says. ‘But what about Fredrik Fagelsjo? How do you explain that? Or was someone else responsible for his murder?’

‘I’ve been wondering about that,’ Malin says. ‘What if Anders Dalstrom murdered Fredrik for the simple reason that he wanted to divert attention away from himself and towards the family instead? After all, they had good reason to be pretty upset with Fredrik. That might explain the call Daniel got from an insistent informant.’

‘So it’s Daniel now, is it?’

‘Shut up.’

‘OK. But what call?’

Malin tells Zeke about the conversation, but he just raises his eyebrows.

‘It’s still too vague,’ he says. ‘Could anyone really commit two murders on such flimsy grounds?’

‘People have killed for less. And he might have developed a taste for violence after the first murder. Maybe violence gave him the outlet he needed. And the different methods could be explained by the fact that he felt more confident once he’d got away with the first one?’

‘So you’re seriously suggesting that Anders Dalstrom carried out what looks like a ritual murder of Fredrik Fagelsjo just to save his own skin? And all because he’s discovered some sort of necessary violence inside himself?’

Malin nods.

‘Is that really enough, Malin? The body was lying naked on the family vault. We haven’t seen many cases worse than that.’

‘There’s still a piece of the puzzle missing,’ Malin says. ‘Maybe I’m completely wrong. It’s like I’m having trouble thinking straight. Too much shit floating about.’

‘There’s still a slim chance that it was the Fagelsjos. Fredrik could have murdered Jerry, and Axel and Katarina could have had Fredrik killed. Or Goldman might have sent a hitman. Or it could be something else entirely.’

‘I know,’ Malin says.

‘And Anders Dalstrom has alibis. He’s supposed to have been working on the nights of both murders.’

‘I’ll call and check again,’ Malin says.

‘Let’s go in person,’ Zeke says. ‘Make sure they check properly.’

The staff nurse in Bjorsater old people’s home shows Malin and Zeke into the nurses’ office, tucked away in a corner of a well-lit room with a view of a recently planted forest of fir trees. There’s a colourful embroidery on the wall, presumably made by the residents in occupational therapy.

‘No,’ the nurse says, ‘Anders isn’t working today. He mostly works nights.’

Malin nods.

She paces restlessly up and down the small, windowless room, looking at the bottles of pills lined up behind locked glass doors.

‘I did call and ask before,’ Malin says. ‘But we’d like to ask again: was he working the night between Thursday 23 October and Friday 24? And the night between Thursday and Friday last week?’

The nurse pulls a folder from a low shelf.

Opens it and checks carefully, as if to demonstrate that she is taking Malin’s question seriously.

‘According to the rota, he was working both nights.’

‘According to the rota?’

‘Yes, sometimes they swap without telling me. It’s against regulations, but as long as everything works. .’

‘Could you do me a favour?’ Malin says. ‘Can you check to see if he swapped shifts with anyone on either of those nights?’

The nurse nods.

‘Yes, but I’ll have to call the other night staff. Most of them will be asleep now. Is it urgent?’

‘Yes, it is,’ Zeke says.

Five minutes later the nurse holds out her hands in defeat.

‘No answers from any of them. They’re all asleep. Can I call you back later this afternoon?’

‘Yes, please do,’ Malin says.

‘Do you have any idea where Anders might be?’

‘He wasn’t on duty last night. But he’s probably at home.’

‘I was there an hour or so ago. He wasn’t there.’

‘Have you tried his mobile?’

‘No answer,’ Malin says.

‘No? You could try asking his dad. He lives in sheltered accommodation in the city. His dad’s blind, Anders visits him fairly often.’

‘Which home is he in?’ Zeke asks.

‘Serafen.’

Serafen, Malin thinks.

The same place as the blind Sixten Eriksson whom Axel Fagelsjo beat up. Malin and Zeke exchange glances.

‘Do you know his father’s name?’

‘Sixten,’ the nurse says. ‘Sixten Eriksson.’

64

Sixten Eriksson is sitting on the sofa in his room at Serafen, staring into his darkness, unable to see the cheap reproductions on the walls. The smell of tobacco is even more pronounced than it was last time.

He doesn’t want to face us, Malin thinks, even though he can’t see anything.

She and Zeke had discussed the possibilities in the car on the way to Anders Dalstrom’s house after their visit to Bjorsater.

‘That definitely gives him another motive,’ Zeke had said.

‘Getting revenge for what happened to his father by murdering the son of the man who committed the offence.’

‘But why now?’ Zeke asked.

‘Maybe he’s got a taste for violence, like I said, if Petersson’s murder was a blackmail attempt that got out of control. If you’ve killed once, you can kill again. You’ve crossed a line. And maybe he thought he could confuse us even more, and that would help him get away with it.’

‘Don’t you just love human beings?’ Zeke said.

‘And no one knows where he is.’

Anders Dalstrom wasn’t home this time either. They’ve already called the station. Sven said they’d put out a call for him to be brought in, seeing as they needed to talk to him even if it didn’t lead to anything.

And now Sixten Eriksson’s darkness. On his own. No sign of Anders Dalstrom here either.

‘I made up the bit about Evaldsson. Sven, too,’ Sixten Eriksson says. ‘Anders took his mother’s name, Dalstrom. I don’t know anything about what he might or might not have done, but I’d never set the police on him no matter what’s happened. Of course I’m protecting him, I’ve always protected him.’