Autumn Killing dimf-3

by Mons Kallentoft

  Then Stina Ekstrom falls silent, but something stops Malin from ending the call.

  ‘We were angry back then,’ Stina Ekstrom goes on. ‘Jasmin’s parents were angry. We’d both lost our children, in different ways. But anger doesn’t get you anywhere. I’ve learned that all we have in the end is how we treat our fellow human beings. We can choose. To empathise, or not. It’s as simple as that.’

  45

  Follow the voices of the investigation, Malin.

  Follow them into the darkest of Ostergotland’s forests if that’s where you hear them whispering. Snatch at every straw in the really hard cases.

  The dense forests around Malin and Zeke are suffering from the same loss of colour as the sky, as if the whole world has been adapted for the colour-blind. The leaves on the ground are black here, they’ve got none of their burning colours left. The smell of their decay almost seems to make its way inside the car, pungent and simultaneously ominous.

  Then she sees the little single-storey house in a patch of woodland a few kilometres south of Bjorsater, its rust-red colour almost seething in the persistent rain and dead afternoon light.

  The investigation’s latest voice belongs to Anders Dalstrom. Malin doesn’t yet know how he fits into the case.

  Follow the voices of the investigation until they fall silent.

  Then you follow them a bit further, and sometimes you might get a reward in the form of a connection, a context, the truth.

  That’s what people want from us, the truth, Malin thinks.

  No more, no less.

  As if the truth would make them any less afraid.

  They stop the Volvo in the raked gravel drive in front of the house. A red Golf is parked outside a workshop. If Skogsa was a box, Malin thinks, you could fit thirty houses like this one inside it.

  On the front door is a handwritten sign with Anders Dalstrom’s name. The door opens, and in front of them stands a man in jeans and a Bob Dylan T-shirt. His face is thin, but his nose is stubby and his cheeks covered with acne scars.

  ‘Anders Dalstrom?’ Zeke asks.

  The man nods, and his long black hair moves in the wind.

  ‘Could I have a glass of water?’ Malin asks when they enter the shabby kitchen.

  Dalstrom smiles: ‘Of course.’

  His voice is hoarse and gruff, wary but still strong and friendly. He hands Malin a glass with his right hand.

  Concert posters from EMA Telstar cover the walls of the kitchen. Springsteen at Stockholm Stadium, Clapton at the Scandinavium in Gothenburg, Dylan at the Ice Hockey Hall in Stockholm.

  ‘My gods,’ Dalstrom says. ‘I never quite made it.’

  Malin and Zeke are sitting on an old-fashioned kitchen sofa, slowly drinking freshly brewed hot coffee.

  ‘You play?’ Malin asks.

  ‘More when I was younger,’ Dalstrom replies.

  ‘You wanted to be a rock star?’ Zeke asks, and Dalstrom sits down opposite them, takes a deep gulp of coffee and smiles again. The smile makes his snub-nose look even smaller.

  ‘No, not a rock star. When I was younger I wanted to be a folk singer.’

  ‘Like Lars Winnerback?’ Malin asks, remembering the sold-out concert she attended at the Cloetta Center when the city’s most famous son came back to perform.

  ‘I’d have liked to be Lars Winnerback. But it never took off.’

  You’re still waiting, aren’t you? Malin thinks.

  ‘I’ve got a studio over in the workshop. I built it myself. Record my songs in there. But not that often these days. Work takes it out of me.’

  ‘What’s your job?’

  ‘I work nights at the old people’s home in Bjorsater, so I’m knackered all day. I worked last night, and I’m on again tonight.’

  Malin had begun their conversation by explaining to Dalstrom why they were there, and what they had found out about Jerry Petersson and the night of the accident, and what Andreas’s mother had told them. Maybe I should have held back, she thinks now. But her brain is too slow for that, and there are no reasons at all to suspect Dalstrom of anything.

  ‘Did you have any success?’ Zeke asks. ‘With your music?’

  ‘Not much. In high school I used to get asked to play at parties, but that stopped after graduation.’

  ‘Did you know Jerry Petersson back then?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘You weren’t at the same school?’

  ‘No. He and Andreas were at the Cathedral School. I went to Ljungstedt.’

  ‘So you didn’t know Jerry?’ Malin asks.

  ‘I just told you that.’

  ‘What about Andreas? His mum said you were good friends.’

  ‘Yes, we were. We used to stick together. Look out for each other.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Malin asks.

  ‘Well, we did stuff together. Used to sit next to each other in class.’

  ‘Did you grow up together?’

  ‘We were in the same class in Linghem. From year seven, when Andreas moved there.’

  Malin sees herself in the school playground in Sturefors with her classmates, most of them scattered across the country now. She sees the bullies, the boys who made a habit of attacking anyone with an obvious weakness. She can still remember the bullies’ names: Johan, Lass, and Johnny. She can still remember her cowardice, how she wanted to tell them to stop, but for some reason she always found an excuse not to.

  ‘But you grew apart when you started high school?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ Malin says. ‘That’s the impression I got from Stina Ekstrom.’

  ‘We still saw each other. It’s a long time ago. She must have forgotten.’

  ‘But you weren’t at the New Year’s Eve party?’

  Zeke’s voice hoarse, as rough as the rain outside.

  ‘No. I wasn’t invited.’

  Malin leans over the kitchen table. Looks calmly at Dalstrom. He seems to be trying to hide his face with his thin black hair.

  ‘His death hit you hard, didn’t it? It must have been tough, losing a friend.’

  ‘That was when I was most involved in music. But sure, I was upset.’

  ‘And now? Do you have many friends now?’

  ‘What have my friends got to do with this? I’ve got more friends than I have time to see.’

  ‘What were you doing on the night between last Thursday and Friday, and on Friday morning?’ Zeke asks as he puts his coffee cup on the table.

  ‘I was at work. You can ask the staff nurse, I’ll give you the number.’

  ‘We have to check,’ Malin says. ‘It’s part of the routine.’

  ‘No problem,’ Dalstrom says. ‘Do whatever you have to do to get hold of whoever killed Jerry Petersson. OK, it sounds like he was a bastard, and if he was driving that night then he deserved some sort of punishment. But getting murdered? No one deserves that, not for anything.’

  ‘So you knew?’ Zeke says.

  ‘Knew what?’

  ‘That Petersson was driving?’

  ‘I had no idea. You just told me. She did.’

  ‘Have you got the number of the hospital where you work?’ Malin asks as she glances at Zeke and drinks the last of her water.

  Darkness has fallen over Linkoping by the time Zeke drops Malin off outside her door in Agatan.

  Light is streaming out of the Pull amp; Bear pub, the noise filtering out to the street, and in just a few seconds I can be standing at the bar with an oak-aged tequila in front of me.

  ‘Go upstairs now,’ Zeke calls before he pulls away. Standing in the doorway, Malin checks her messages on her mobile: one from Tove, saying that she’s going back to Janne’s. It’s been a week since we last saw each other, Malin thinks. How did that happen?

  Malin called the staff nurse at Bjorsater old people’s home on the way back, and she confirmed Anders Dalstrom’s alibi, checking the rota to see that he had been working that night.

  Malin lowers her mobile, steps out into
the street and looks at the pub’s sign, radiating a soft, warm, enticing glow. Her hangover is still lingering in her body with undiminished force, and is now exacerbated by vast amounts of regret and longing and desire, but she still wants to go into the pub, to sit down at the bar and see what happens.

  Then the familiar sound of her mobile ringing.

  Dad’s name on the screen.

  She answers.

  ‘Hi Dad.’

  ‘So you got home OK?’

  ‘I’m home. I’ve been working today and yesterday.’

  ‘You realise Mum wondered where you got to?’

  ‘Did you explain?’

  ‘I said you got a call about work and had to rush off.’

  White lies.

  Secrets.

  So closely related.

  ‘How are things with Tove?’

  ‘She’s fine. Waiting for me up in the flat. I’m just outside at the moment. We’re about to have some supper, egg sandwiches.’

  ‘Send her my love,’ Dad says.

  ‘I will, I’ll be back with her in a minute or so. I’ve another call, I’ve got to go, bye.’

  Malin puts the key in the lock.

  Opens the door.

  Post on the floor. Advertising leaflets from various discount warehouses.

  But beneath the leaflets.

  A white A4 envelope with her name written in neat capital letters in blue ink.

  No stamp.

  And she takes her post into the kitchen, tossing the adverts on the table, takes out a kitchen knife, opens the envelope and pulls out its contents.

  Pictures.

  Loads of pictures.

  Black-and-white pictures, and Malin feels herself going cold, then fear gives way to anger, which soon turns back into fear again.

  Dad outside their block in Tenerife.

  A grainy picture of Mum on the balcony.

  The two of them in the aisle of a supermarket pushing a trolley.

  Dad on the beach. On a golf course.

  Mum in a terrace bar, alone with a glass of wine. She looks relaxed, at ease.

  Pictures that look as if they’ve been cut from a Super 8 film.

  Pictures taken by someone spying, documenting, stalking.

  Black, black-and-white pictures.

  A message.

  A greeting passed on.

  Goldman, Malin thinks. You fucking bastard.

  46

  Sven Sjoman leans back on the wine-red leather sofa in the living room of his villa, pointing at one of the photographs that are spread out on the tiled coffee table. The grandfather clock in the corner has just struck eight, the sound echoing perfectly from the case he made himself. Hand-woven rugs on the floor, large, healthy pot plants hiding the view of the dark garden.

  Sven looks at Malin, who is leaning forward in the Lamino armchair opposite him.

  She called him, and he told her to come around at once.

  The photographs on the table. Carefully laid out with pincers. Sven’s finger in the air.

  ‘He’s trying to frighten you, Malin. He just wants to scare you.’

  And Malin gives in to panic: ‘Tove. What’s to say they’re not going to go for Tove?’

  ‘Calm down, Malin. Calm down.’

  ‘It can’t happen again.’

  ‘Think, Malin. Who do you think’s behind these pictures? What’s the logical answer?’

  She takes a deep breath.

  In the car she tried to think clearly, force her fear aside.

  She ended up back at her first instinct: ‘Goldman.’

  Sven nods.

  ‘This,’ he says, ‘plainly isn’t something we can ignore. But I don’t think you need to worry. It’s just Goldman playing one of those games that he obviously loves so much.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Who else could it be? It must be Goldman. He’s playing with us, enjoying the fact that he can scare you. And all the pictures are from Tenerife.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘You’ve met him, Malin. What do you think?’

  Jochen Goldman by the pool. The sea and the sky in competing shades of blue, his body down on the beach, the way you were playing with me, getting me where you wanted me. And here: the rain like castanets on the plastic roof of Sven Sjoman’s porch.

  ‘I think he’s bored. He just wants to show who’s in charge.’

  Sven nods.

  ‘But if there’s any truth in the rumours about what he does to people who get in his way, we have to be careful. Take this seriously.’

  ‘But what can we do?’ Malin says in a resigned tone of voice.

  ‘We’ll send the pictures to Karin Johannison. She can check for fingerprints and see if they can find anything else. But I doubt they’ll find much.’

  Sven pauses before going on: ‘You don’t think it could be anyone else? Someone you put away who wants to cause trouble?’

  In the car on the way to see Sven, Malin had thought through who might want to get back at her. There were a lot of names, but no one she thought would go as far as coming after the police officer who caught them.

  Murderers.

  Rapists.

  Muggers.

  A biker gang? Hardly.

  But it would make sense to check if anyone had been released and was putting some sort of warped plan into action.

  ‘Not that I can think of,’ Malin replies. ‘But we should check if anyone I put away has just got out.’

  ‘OK, we’ll do that,’ Sven says, and his wife comes into the room, says hello to Malin and asks: ‘Would you like a cup of tea? You look half-frozen.’

  ‘No, thanks, I’m fine. Tea stops me sleeping.’

  And Sven chuckles and his wife gives him a curious look, and Sven says: ‘Just a private joke,’ and Malin laughs, feeling it’s the only thing she can do.

  ‘I’d like a cup,’ Sven says, and his wife disappears into the kitchen and when she’s gone he asks Malin how she is.

  He asks the question slowly, in a voice Malin knows he wants to sound both sympathetic and hopeful, and she replies: ‘I had a bit of a slip-up last night. I’m sorry you had to see me like that this morning.’

  ‘You know I ought to do something?’

  ‘Like what?’

  Malin leans further forward over the table. Asks again: ‘Like what, Sven? Send me to rehab?’

  ‘Maybe that’s exactly what you could do with.’

  And Malin stands up, hissing at him angrily: ‘I’ve just had a threatening letter containing pictures of my parents taken in secret, and you’re talking about rehab!’

  ‘I’m not just talking about it, Malin. I mean it. Pull yourself together, or I’ll have to suspend you and get you checked in for some sort of treatment before you can come back to work. I’ve got strong grounds to force you to do that.’

  Sven’s voice without any softness now, the boss, the man in charge, and Malin sits down again and says: ‘What do you think I should do with Mum and Dad?’

  ‘It might do you good, Malin. Get you back on track again.’

  ‘Should I tell them?’

  ‘Think about it. Once this case is cleared up.’

  ‘Can we ask the police in Tenerife to keep an eye on them? And on Goldman?’

  ‘That’s what we’ll do, Malin.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Wait and see, as far as you’re concerned. As for the rest, we’ll contact the local police on the Canary Islands. I presume you’ve got a contact there?’

  Malin feels the last remnants of the day’s nausea leave her body. Rehab.

  Over my dead body.

  Got it, Sven?

  Not a chance in hell. I was just a bit down. I’m dealing with it, you’ve got to believe me, Sven.

  A hand on Sven’s shoulder, a cup of tea on the table in front of him.

  ‘Your tea, Earl Grey, extra strong, just the way you like it.’

  The rain is tapping stubbornly at the car roof.

&nbs
p; Her stale breath fills the car as she pulls out her mobile and brings up Jochen Goldman’s number, but there’s no ringing tone, just a bleep followed by a message in Spanish, presumably saying that the person cannot be reached, or that the number is no longer in use, or something equally bloody irritating. Malin clicks to end the call, puts the mobile phone on the passenger seat, and wonders if it’s her or the damp air making the car smell of mould.

  She starts the car.

  Won’t tell Dad. Or Mum.

  She drives home to her empty flat, hoping that she’ll be able to sleep.

  Malin can’t sleep. Instead she looks out of the window, at the rain drawing jerky lines on the night sky.

  Her body is warm under the covers, calm, not screaming for alcohol or anything else. She dares to allow the extent of her longing for Janne and Tove into the room.

  She pulls the covers over her head.

  Janne is under there. And Tove as a five-, six-, seven-, eight-, nine-year-old, every age she has ever been.

  I love the idea of our love. That’s what I love. Isn’t it?

  A knock at the window.

  Twelve metres above the ground.

  Impossible.

  Another knock, the familiar sound of glass vibrating slightly.

  She stays where she is. Waits for the sound to stop. Is there something rustling out there? She pulls off the covers. Leaps the few metres to the window.

  Rain and darkness. An invisible body drifting above the rooftops?

  Drink. Drink.

  The words throbbing in her temples now. And then the knocking at the window, three long, three short, like a cry for help from some distant planet.

  Am I the one crying out? Malin wonders when she’s back under the covers a few seconds later, waiting for more knocking that never comes.

  I’m a long way away from you now, Malin.

  But still close.

  You know who was knocking, don’t you? Maybe it was me, unless it was just your alcohol-raddled brain playing tricks on you.

  Drink, Malin.

  Darkness is snapping at your throat and you’ve shown yourself to be weak.

  If only for alcohol, money or love.

  I myself gave up on love on that New Year’s Eve. After that, I focused all my attention on money. I knew even then, there in my student room in Lund where I can see myself huddled over my law books, that money was the only way I would ever find love. That’s why I so eagerly ran my fingers over the thin, soft paper of those law textbooks.