Mons Kallentoft - Autumn Killing

‘Friday beer?’

‘More like Friday cognac,’ the receptionist says with a warm smile.

‘Can you describe him to us? So we know who we’re looking for?’

A moment later Malin is holding the bank’s annual report in her hand. The glossy, smooth, dark-blue paper feels as if it’s going to wear a hole in the palm of her hand.

The Ekoxen.

One of the smartest hotels in the city.

Maybe the smartest of all, situated between the Tinnerback swimming pool and the Horticultural Society Park, a white-plastered building that looks like a sugar lump. The hotel’s piano bar has a view across the pool and is one of the most popular watering holes in the city. But not for me, Malin thinks. Way too far up its own fucking arse.

They roll slowly down Klostergatan towards the hotel through restrained yet persistent rain. She’s holding the photograph in the annual report in front of her. To judge by the picture, Fredrik Fagelsjo is about forty. His face is thin, dominated by a narrow, straight nose and a pair of anxious green eyes. He’s thin, unlike his father, and the blue blazer he’s wearing in the picture looks new. His shoulders are hunched, almost as if he’s afraid of falling, and there’s something evasive and hunted about his whole bearing.

Zeke pulls up in front of the entrance to the hotel. In the rear-view mirror Malin sees a side door open and someone steps out.

Fredrik Fagelsjo.

Is that you? Have you finished your Friday cognac?

‘I think Fagelsjo just left through the back door.’

A black Volvo is parked right outside the other door, and before Malin and Zeke have time to react, the man they think is Fredrik has got in the car and driven off in the opposite direction to them.

‘Shit,’ Malin says. ‘Turn around.’

And Zeke spins the wheel, but at that moment a lorry turns into the road from the other direction and stops.

‘Fuck.’

‘I’ll try his mobile again.’

The lorry reverses out of their way and Zeke pulls onto the other side of the road and accelerates hard, and they head down towards Hamngatan at high speed, overtaking a rusty white Volkswagen.

‘He’s not answering,’ Malin says as they turn into Hamngatan. ‘I can see him,’ she says. ‘He’s stuck at a red light by McDonald’s.’

No flashing lights, Malin thinks, no sirens. Just pull up alongside and wave him over, all according to the rulebook. After all, we only want to talk to him.

Zeke puts his foot down and they pull up alongside what they think is Fredrik Fagelsjo’s car before the lights change. Hungry teenagers inside McDonald’s. People defying the worsening rain and crossing the square in the background.

Zeke blows the horn and Malin holds her police ID up to the window. Fredrik Fagelsjo, there’s no doubt that it’s him, looks at Malin, at her ID, and his face takes on a look of panic when Malin gestures that he should pull over and wait for them outside McDonald’s.

Fagelsjo nods, then looks straight ahead, and seems to put his entire weight on the accelerator pedal, and his Volvo shoots away as the lights go amber, pulling in ahead of them and burning off along Drottninggatan.

Shit, Malin manages to think. Yells: ‘He’s making a run for it. The bastard’s making a run for it!’

And Zeke spins the wheel and heads off after Fagelsjo along Drottninggatan, while Malin winds down the window and sticks the flashing light on the roof of the car.

‘What the hell?’ Zeke shouts. ‘Let command know over the radio. Get them to send more cars if we’ve got any.’

Malin stays quiet, wants to let Zeke concentrate on driving, as Fredrik flashes past the orange building that once housed the National Bank at what must be a hundred kilometres an hour, heading towards the Abis roundabout, past the old specialist food store.

What the hell is this? Malin thinks. Are you a panic-stricken murderer? Why the hell are you running from us?

A hundred metres ahead of them Malin sees some pedestrians throw themselves out of the way as Fagelsjo runs a red light. She feels the adrenalin pumping as she shouts instructions over the radio.

‘Driver refusing to stop. We’re following a black. . out towards the Berg roundabout, all available cars. .’

Zeke swerves past a few cars that have ended up between them and Fagelsjo, and their speed, one hundred and twenty now, in the middle of the city, makes Malin feel that the world as she knows it is dissolving into crazy lines and colours, and she feels violently sick now, her headache throbbing, but soon the adrenalin takes over again and the present becomes clear and focused.

‘He’s turning off past Ikea, out towards Vreta Kloster,’ Malin yells, and the sound of the racing engine blends with the siren in a strangely exciting symphony.

Fagelsjo drives past Ikea’s Tornby store, his car weaving as though he were drunk.

Maybe he is drunk, Malin thinks. He came out of the Ekoxen. She feels her nausea take hold of her stomach again, she feels like throwing up, but the adrenalin forces her stomach back down.

Zeke takes one hand off the wheel and presses the CD player, and German choral music, something from a Wagner opera, blasts through the car.

‘What the fuck?’ Malin yells.

‘It makes me drive better,’ Zeke grins.

Fagelsjo is lucky with the lights as he heads across the roundabout on the E4. They pass the last blocks of flats in Skaggetorp and are out in the country, surrounded by empty fields and small farms huddled down against the wind.

The message from control is scarcely audible over the voices of the choir.

‘Fredrik Fagelsjo lives out on the plain, off left from Ledberg. He could be heading home.’

He’s pulling away, Malin thinks. ‘Step on it!’ she yells. Could we really be getting somewhere? Did Fredrik Fagelsjo kill Jerry Petersson? Is that why he’s running?

A patrol car drives up alongside, but Zeke gestures to it to pull back, and when they reach the Ledberg junction Fagelsjo lurches left but manages to straighten the car out and continue at an ever-increasing speed out towards a small cluster of houses surrounded by thin trees, maybe two kilometres further out on the plain in the direction of Lake Roxen.

Zeke’s forehead is sweating. Malin can feel him taking shallow, stressed breaths, and she pulls her pistol from its holster as the road curves towards the group of houses. A large brick villa, painted yellow, in a clump of trees. A proper upper-class mansion, and, a hundred metres further on, Fagelsjo swings off again, down a driveway.

They follow him, and, seventy metres in front of them he has stopped in front of a crooked red-painted barn surrounded by bare bushes and maples. He leaps out of the car and runs over into the barn.

Zeke pulls up behind Fagelsjo’s car and the patrol car stops just behind them. Malin turns off the CD and the siren, and everything is suddenly strangely quiet.

Over the radio Malin says quietly: ‘Get out and cover us when we follow him inside the barn.’

The gravel and mud outside the barn sticks to their shoes. Malin looks towards the building, feels the rain getting harder as they walk the few metres from the car to the barn door. Behind them is the villa, built in the Italian style, presumably Fagelsjo’s home. If he’s got a family, they don’t seem to be in. The two uniforms have taken out their Sig Sauers, taking cover behind the car doors, ready to open fire if anything goes wrong.

Zeke beside her, both of them holding their pistols in front of them as Malin kicks open the door of the barn and shouts: ‘Fredrik Fagelsjo. We know you’re in there. Come out. We just want to talk to you.’

Silence.

Not a sound from the manure-stinking building.

Trying to run, Malin thinks, would be the most stupid thing you could do. Where would you go? Goldman. He stayed on the run for ten years. So it is possible. But you’re hiding in there, aren’t you? Waiting for us. You might be armed. People like you always have at least a hunting rifle. Are you waiting for us with a gun?

Talking to herself like that helps her stay focused, and stops the fear from taking over. Into the darkness now, Malin. Whatever’s waiting inside.

‘I’ll go first,’ Zeke says, and Malin is grateful. Zeke never backs down when it comes to the crunch.

He steps inside the barn and Malin follows him. Black and dark, with a smell of fresh manure and some other indefinable animal waste. There’s light from one corner, opening onto a field, Zeke runs towards it and Malin follows.

‘Shit,’ Zeke yells. ‘He must have gone straight through.’

They rush over to the open door.

Some hundred metres away, down in the field, through the rain and fog, Fagelsjo is running, dressed in brown trousers and what must be a green oilskin. He stumbles and gets up, runs a bit further, past a tree that’s still got a few leaves.

‘Stop!’ Malin shouts. ‘Stop, or I’ll shoot.’

Which she wouldn’t do. They’ve got nothing on Fagelsjo, and running from the police isn’t sufficient justification for firing.

But it’s as if all the air goes out of him. He stops, turns around, raises his empty hands and looks at her and Zeke, who are slowly approaching him, weapons drawn.

He’s swaying back and forth.

You’re drunk, Malin thinks, then shouts: ‘Lie down. Lie down.’

And Fredrik Fagelsjo lies down on his stomach in the mud as Malin puts a pair of handcuffs on his wrists behind his back. A filthy, green, classic Barbour jacket.

He stinks of alcohol, but says nothing, maybe he can’t talk with his face on the ground.

‘What the hell was all that in aid of?’ Malin says, but Fagelsjo doesn’t reply.

‘What the hell happened?’

Zeke’s hands are shaking slightly on the steering wheel as they drive back towards Linkoping, past the white-tiled block of flats in Skaggetorp and the big Arla dairy in Tornby. They pass one of the Correspondent ’s reporters’ cars. Is that Daniel driving? They’re utterly tireless, those vultures.

‘I’ve no idea,’ Malin says. The adrenalin has dropped, her headache and angst are back, and a clearly intoxicated Fredrik Fagelsjo is safely installed in the back seat of the patrol car. Malin didn’t want him in the car with them, she and Zeke both needed time to calm down.

A van from the local television news.

‘But maybe,’ Malin goes on, ‘he’s involved in this somehow and he got it into his head that we know, and that’s why he tried to escape. And then realised how pointless it was out in the field, in all that rain.’

‘Or else he was just drunk and panicked when we tried to stop him,’ Zeke says.

‘Well, we’ll find out when we question him. But he could very well be our man,’ Malin replies, but she’s thinking that there’s something here that doesn’t add up, that the case can’t be that simple. Or can it?

Her mobile rings and she sees Sven Sjoman’s name on the display.

‘I’ve heard,’ Sven says. ‘Very odd. Could it be him? What do you think?’

‘Maybe. We’ll interview him when we get back to the station.’

‘Johan and Waldemar can do that,’ Sven says. ‘You two can try to get hold of Katarina Fagelsjo. Put her under pressure while her brother’s idiotic behaviour’s still fresh.’

Malin feels like protesting at first. Then she relaxes. If there’s anyone who can get anything out of Fredrik Fagelsjo, it’s Waldemar Ekenberg.

Fredrik didn’t say a word when they pulled him to his feet and led him back over the field. He maintained his silence as they put him in the patrol car.