Mons Kallentoft - Autumn Killing

She says this without irony, absolutely serious, and Malin sees herself in the young officer’s dedication. Admires it, but still feels like warning her that this job can consume your soul if you let it; it’s a thousand times easier to take refuge in other people’s misfortunes than it is to get to grips with your own, it’s a thousand times easier to hide in the dark than to see your own light.

‘What about their emails?’ Johan asks. ‘Their mobile phone records? Are we going to put in a request for those?’

‘It’s too soon for that,’ Sven says. ‘To get permission for that we need a more concrete connection to the murder. You’ll have to make do with checking Petersson’s records for now.’

‘What about his relatives?’ Sven goes on. ‘Is there really no one apart from the father?’

‘Looks like it,’ Johan says. ‘According to the population records.’

‘Girlfriends?’ Malin asks. ‘He can’t have lived out there all on his own, can he? Old girlfriends? Friends? Most perpetrators of this sort tend to belong to the victim’s closest circle of acquaintances. Any lovers?’

‘Not that we’ve found so far,’ Johan says.

‘And no one’s contacted us,’ Sven says. ‘You know how hard it is, trying to piece together someone’s life story.’

‘Maybe he was the sort who used to pay for his fucks?’ Waldemar says, and Malin’s first instinct is to tell him to show some respect, but something makes her think that Waldemar might be right, in which case no one from Jerry Petersson’s past would be coming forward. No prostitute would dare to identify herself, in the light of the sick legislation covering the subject in Sweden. A lot of men who pay for sex could actually get almost any woman they wanted. But they’re still drawn to undemanding, simple sex, free from any romantic entanglement.

‘The people we’ve spoken to only knew him professionally. He seems to have been careful to keep his private life private,’ Johan says.

A loner, Malin thinks. An eccentric loner in the biggest fucking castle in Ostergotland. But no one, no one wants to be alone. Do they?

‘He wasn’t married,’ Sven says. ‘Could he have been homosexual?’

‘We don’t know,’ Malin says. ‘Have we spoken to Petersson’s father?’ she goes on. ‘He might know something. About Petersson’s sexuality, and a lot of other things besides.’

‘No,’ Sven says. ‘He’s only been informed of what’s happened so far. Malin, you and Zeke get on with that once you’ve tried calling Jochen Goldman.’

‘So soon?’ Zeke says. ‘His son only died yesterday.’

‘We can’t afford to wait.’

Malin nods in agreement.

Thinks with distaste about the coming visit. If there’s anything that’s hard to stomach when you’ve got a hangover, it’s the smell of incontinence pads and catheters.

Aleryd Care Home.

The last stop on the line. Maybe he’s even in one of the dementia wards?

‘What else?’

Sven’s voice, alert.

‘Malin, anything?’

He’s looking at her with an expression that says he knows how hungover she is, but that he’s not going to let it affect her work.

She shakes her head.

‘We spoke to a Linnea Sjostedt,’ Zeke goes on. ‘An old lady who lives in a cottage on the Skogsa estate. She threatened us with a shotgun when we stopped to talk to her.’

‘She did what?’ Sven says, and Malin sees Waldemar grinning.

‘Yes, she seemed scared,’ Zeke says. ‘She said you never know what you’re going to get out there. Well, she’s right about that.’

‘She soon calmed down,’ Malin says. ‘She saw a dark vehicle leave the estate sometime late at night. Well, she thinks she did. She wasn’t sure if she was dreaming or not.’

‘Dreaming?’

‘Yes, she says she has a bit of trouble distinguishing between dream and reality.’

Sven shakes his head.

‘What sort?’

‘She didn’t know.’

‘We’ll have to make a note of it. What does Axel Fagelsjo drive?’

‘A black Mercedes,’ Malin replies.

A dark car.

She could have seen Axel Fagelsjo. Or Johansson and Lindman as they arrived, Malin thinks. Or someone else. One of the children? Maybe Katarina Fagelsjo has another car? Someone from Petersson’s past? Goldman?

‘Have we had any tip-offs from the public?’

Waldemar sounds hopeful.

But Sven shakes his head.

‘We’ll have to keep working on what we’ve got for now. And hope the general public comes up with something now it’s out in the media and Karim has put out an appeal.’

‘The Correspondent ’s gone big on this today,’ Johan says. ‘The national media too. Murder, car chase, Fredrik Fagelsjo in custody.’

‘Anything we don’t already know?’ Sven asks.

Johan shakes his head.

‘We’re bound to get something about his business dealings,’ Lovisa says. ‘Even if it’s anonymous. That’s if there’s anything there.’

‘If he was a bit shady, then he could have had contacts in the underworld here in the city,’ Waldemar says. ‘You’re sure you don’t want me to ask around among my contacts?’

‘You just want to avoid the paperwork,’ Sven says with a laugh. Then he’s serious again. ‘For the time being, you prioritise the paperwork, understood?’

Waldemar nods in response.

‘Malin,’ Sven goes on. ‘Call Goldman. See what he has to say, if that really is his number.’

Malin closes her eyes.

Fredrik Fagelsjo trying to run.

A body dumped in a moat. By Fredrik? Maybe, maybe not.

In some ways Petersson’s going to be left in the black water for ever.

Together with the dozens, maybe hundreds of other ancient souls, shackled in stone and time, Malin thinks. Caught in their own misfortune, their fate impossible to escape or come to terms with.

Loneliness runs like a red thread through human history, Malin thinks. It’s the underlying note of our stories.

Tenerife.

Like a poem, a sketch within Malin.

Scorched mountains, slumbering volcanoes, an eternally shining sun above a muddle of houses. Swaying palm trees, sunloungers in long rows along the beaches, pools casting glittering reflections on mutated liverspots, cancer forcing its way through the skin and on into the bloodstream, and in a few months the dreams are over, those dreams of eternal life in the sun.

Fraying pictures from her parents’ paradise.

The flat she knows her mother thinks is far too small, maybe that’s why she and Tove have only ever been invited out of politeness, because Mum thinks the place she’s found for herself in the sun is too meagre?

Maybe Mum just wants to be left in peace. Ever since I first learned the word I’ve had the feeling that you’re avoiding me, that you’re pulling away. Are you ashamed of something, Mum, but don’t want to admit it? Are you trying to avoid me so you don’t have to see yourself in the mirror? Maybe it’s OK to do that with grown-up children, but not the way you did with me when I was four, when I somehow worked out that that was what was going on.

And what would we say to each other, Mum? Malin thinks as she sits at her desk, surfing between various articles about Jochen Goldman.

On several sites he’s described as the worst conman in Swedish history. It still isn’t clear how many millions he got away with when they emptied the Finera Finance company of all its assets. And by the time it was uncovered, Jochen Goldman had fled the country and his bourgeois roots on the island of Lidingo, the wealthy enclave on the edge of Stockholm.

He managed to elude the police, and Interpol.

Jochen Goldman, seen in Punta del Este in Uruguay.

In Switzerland.

In Vietnam.

Jakarta. Surabaya.

But always one step ahead of the police, as if they didn’t want to catch him, or else he had his own sources inside the force.

Jerry Petersson had been his lawyer. His intermediary in his dealings with the authorities and media at home. Goldman had written two books during his ten years on the run. One book about how he emptied the business and claimed he had every right to do so, then another about life as a fugitive, and to judge from the reviews, Jochen Goldman had tried to portray himself as a capitalist James Bond.

But he fell a long way short of that sort of style, Malin thinks.

Before Goldman carried out his heist, he spent three years in prison for fraud. At the same time he was also convicted of making unlawful threats, actual bodily harm, and extortion.

Pictures of him on the run.

A sharp nose in what was otherwise a round face, slicked back hair, playful brown eyes, and blond hair down to his shoulders. Big yachts, shiny sports cars made by Konigsegg.

Then, once his alleged crimes relating to Finera Finance had passed the statute of limitations, he popped up on Tenerife. A report in the online version of the business daily, Dagens Industri , shows a smiling, suntanned Goldman beside a black-tiled pool with a view of the sea and the mountains. A shimmering white house in the background.

Mum’s dream.

This is what it looks like.

White-plastered concrete, glass, maybe a garden with scrupulously neat plants, and bulging armchairs to lean back in and forget all the denial and bitterness.

Finally she comes to an old report in the business weekly, Veckans Affarer .

The tone is vague, hinting that Jochen Goldman may have disposed of people who got in his way. That people who had done business with him had disappeared without a trace. The article concludes by pointing out that these are rumours, and that the myth of Goldman survives and grows precisely through such rumours.

Malin takes out the note with the number that might be Goldman’s.

Nods to Zeke on the other side of the desk.

‘OK, I’m going to call our shadow now.’

Waldemar Ekenberg is drumming his fingers on the desk in the cramped meeting room. He fiddles with his mobile, lights a cigarette without asking the newcomer Lovisa Segerberg if she minds, but she lets him smoke, carries on calmly reading a summary that she’s found in one of the black files.

‘Restless?’ Johan Jakobsson says from his place.

‘No problem,’ Waldemar says. ‘But I’m running out of cigs.’

‘They sell them in the canteen over in the courthouse, don’t they?’

‘That’s shut on Saturdays. I saw they had a special offer on boxes of ten packs down at Lucullus. Can I have fifteen minutes to pop down there?’

Johan smiles.

‘Is that really a good idea? We need all three of us here, Waldemar. Come on, what the hell.’

‘You know how I get if I haven’t got any cigs.’

‘You can cadge one off someone, can’t you?’

‘Fuck, the air in here is terrible.’

‘Maybe because you smoke,’ Lovisa says from her chair.

‘Go on, then,’ Johan says. ‘But watch yourself, Waldemar. Watch yourself.’

‘I’m only going to buy cigs,’ Waldemar says with a grin.

The Spanish number is engaged the first time Malin dials, but the second time the phone is picked up on the fourth ring, and a nasal, slightly hoarse voice says: ‘Jochen, who is this?’

A voice from Tenerife. Clear skies, sun, a bit of a breeze. And no fucking rain.

‘My name is Malin Fors, I’m a detective inspector with the Linkoping Police. I was wondering if you had a moment to answer a few questions?’

Silence.

For a few moments Malin thinks Jochen Goldman has hung up, then he clears his throat and says with an amused chuckle: ‘All my dealings with the authorities go through my lawyer. Can he contact you?’