Текст книги "Autumn Killing"

Автор книги: Mons Kallentoft

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

27

Rented flats.

The logo of Stanga Council on the noticeboard by the front door.

Malin didn’t notice the housing association sign the first time they were here, took it for granted that a man like Axel Fagelsjo would own his own apartment.

What sort of contacts would you need to get a rented flat on Drottninggatan with a view of the Horticultural Society Park? Either way, I live in a rented flat, Axel Fagelsjo lives in a rented flat.

The building’s lift is broken so Malin and Zeke have to take the stairs up to the apartment on the fourth floor.

Malin is out of breath.

Feeling sick, but if you feel sick as often as I do, she thinks, then feeling sick becomes a natural state. She knows why her body is protesting, alcohol functions just like any other drug, when your body wants more it lets you know, protesting noisily that the pleasure-fuel had stopped flowing. Her body is taking last night’s abstinence as an insult.

Taking flight in drink.

Breathing, deep, breathless breaths, and she loses count of the number of steps, and she tries to concentrate on the Fagelsjo family instead.

They were forced to sell.

It wasn’t time.

Maintain the facade.

And they wanted to buy back the castle.

But where did the money come from? Sven has just called. Didn’t manage to get it out of Fredrik Fagelsjo, who had lost vast amounts. And Petersson had merely laughed at Axel Fagelsjo’s proposal.

How to proceed?

Get your son to kill Petersson so you can buy back the castle and land from the dead man’s estate, at whatever cost? Or kill him yourself in a fit of rage?

Malin looks at Zeke, can see he’s thoughtful as they pant their way upstairs in their dripping raincoats, knows he’s thinking the same thing as she is, he’s not stupid, and through the windows of the stairwell they can see the rain hammering down, large drops, small drops, all about to be smashed on the tarmac below.

But are the Fagelsjos, father and son, murderers? Malin feels uncertainty wrench at her stomach, an uncertainty bordering on disbelief.

They are standing outside Axel Fagelsjo’s apartment.

Zeke nods to her, says: ‘Let’s see what he’s got to say.’

Malin rings the bell, and they hear it ring on the other side of the heavy, brown-painted wooden door, then footsteps, and they glimpse an eye peering through the peephole before the footsteps go away again,

Malin rings again.

Twice, three times. Five minutes, ten.

‘He’s not going to open up,’ Zeke says, and turns away.

Axel Fagelsjo has sat down in his leather armchair, looking into the fire crackling in the hearth, feeling its heat against his feet.

They’re here again, the police.

It was bound to happen.

Do they know about the financial affairs yet? Fredrik’s mess? Maybe even the attempt to buy back the castle? They must do, Axel Fagelsjo thinks. And they’re stupid enough to put two and two together in the most banal way possible.

But sometimes the truth is banal, often the most banal thing imaginable.

Like when Fredrik told him, he was sitting in this very chair, albeit out at the castle, and he had felt like ripping the head off his offspring, saw his son lying on his back whimpering like a worthless cockroach, and he had no choice but to get a grip on things himself.

Bettina, I did what I had to, what I promised you.

I stared at myself in the mirror, looked at the portraits on the wall, saw the derision in my forefathers’ eyes, the love in yours. I saved our son. But the feeling in that room, impossible to get around: You’re no son of mine. You can’t be.

They hadn’t spoken to each other for a month. Then he had phoned Fredrik, summoned him, and his son had wept at his feet again, clinging onto the doorframe like a wretched beast.

Derision and shame.

Love can encompass those feelings as well. But if we don’t take care of each other, who else is going to?

I promised your mother that I would love you, look after you, both of you, on her deathbed. Did you hear? Were you eavesdropping outside her sickroom that last night? That’s the only thing that has ever made me weak, Bettina, your illness, your blasted suffering, your terrible torment. And I trusted you, Fredrik. Against my better judgement. And now you’ve been so damn stupid, driving your car while you were drunk and trying to escape the police. Drawing everyone’s attention to us when there was no need. You should have stopped the car, taken your stupid punishment. We can deal with things like that. But sit there in your cell and feel the consequences of your actions. Your children, my grandchildren, I don’t recognise myself in them. But perhaps that’s because of their mother? That woman has never liked me, no matter how I’ve tried.

Fredrik.

Maybe it would have been better if you were retarded?

The police, that strong, intelligent, worn-out woman, and him, that obviously tough man, I didn’t let them in. If I’m going to tell them anything else, they’ll have to force me with all the means at their disposal.

Fredrik and Katarina.

You do whatever you like now, don’t you? Don’t they, Bettina?

Well, let’s see what happens. Even if Fredrik tells them everything, what will those police officers do with the information? Even if they both seem to be made of sterner stuff than you, beloved, derided son.

Katarina.

I don’t need to worry about her. She does as I say. Always has done. She’s the accepting sort.

Axel Fagelsjo gets up. Goes over to the window overlooking the Horticultural Society Park. Is that someone standing under the bare trees in the rain?

Is someone standing there looking up at me? Or do my eyes deceive me?

Fredrik Fagelsjo has asked to see Sven Sjoman.

Has asked him to sit down on the bunk in his cell again, and says in a voice full of resignation: ‘You don’t have to believe me, but I had nothing to do with the murder of Jerry Petersson. I don’t think anyone in the family did. But this is the story, as I see it.’

Fredrik takes a deep breath before going on: ‘When Father got depressed after Mother’s death, I was given access to the family fortune, to take care of day-to-day expenses. That made sense, because I work at a bank and know about finances.’

Fredrik falls silent, as though he is having second thoughts.

‘What do you do at the bank?’ Sven asks. ‘You’re a financial advisor, aren’t you?’

‘I work with business customers. We’re often involved when small businesses around here change ownership. I work with the financing of that.’

‘Do you enjoy it?’

‘Well, it may not be quite what I used to dream about,’ Fredrik says. ‘But it’s a decent bank job, considering that it’s in Linkoping. Anyway. Mum’s death hit Father hard. He gave me power of attorney to look after the finances until he felt better.’

‘And you started to get involved in stock options?’

‘Yes,’ Fredrik says, leaning back against the wall of the cell, and then he started to explain about the poor condition of the castle, about his father’s relatively poor finances, about his mother’s death, and how he started dabbling in options until everything got out of control once he had access to the family fortune, but he had meant well.

Fredrik’s voice starts to fade, and Sven wonders whether he’s about to start crying, but he manages to hold back his tears if that was the case.

‘So Father was forced to let the right sort of people know that Skogsa was for sale, and that was when Petersson popped up. Him, of all people. It was only thanks to my and Dad’s contacts at the bank that we were able to stave off bankruptcy until the deal was concluded.’

‘The bank had no responsibility?’

‘No, I conducted all my dealings with the family fortune as a private individual. It was simply hushed up. And Father sold Skogsa to save me from bankruptcy. He promised Mum on her deathbed that he’d look after me and Katarina, no matter what it cost. And that’s what he did.’

‘It must have been hard,’ Sven says.

‘It was hard for Father,’ Fredrik replies, leaning forward. ‘But for me? I was just worried about Father. That might be hard to understand, but it’s the truth. Father is Skogsa.’

‘And after that? More recently? You tried to buy back Skogsa, didn’t you?’ Sven asks.

‘Yes.’

‘How? Where did the money come from?’

‘We came into an inheritance. The Danish side of the family. An elderly countess who had been a successful industrialist left enough of a fortune that even we inherited a very large sum of money.’

‘And then you decided you wanted to buy back the castle?’

‘Petersson just laughed at Father’s offer.’

‘Did you confront Petersson yourself?’ Sven asks, and Fredrik seems to hesitate before replying.

‘I’ll be completely honest. I was there the evening before Petersson was found murdered. He let me in, and rejected my offer in no uncertain terms. He asked if I’d like a glass of cognac in the rooms where I’d grown up. His smile was so arrogant that I’d have killed him happily, but I didn’t.’

Fredrik pauses, folds his hands on his lap.

‘Mind you, I should have,’ he says eventually.

‘So you think you should have killed him?’ Sven asks.

‘Yes,’ Fredrik says. ‘I should have. But how often do we ever do what we ought to?’

‘What car were you driving when you went out there?’

‘My black Volvo. The one you’ve got impounded.’

‘Your wife said you were at home when we spoke to her.’

‘She was trying to protect me. That’s natural enough, isn’t it? Trying to protect your nearest and dearest?’

What we ought to do?

Hesitation, hesitation. That’s one of the many differences between me and you, Fredrik Fagelsjo. I never hesitated.

You people are so conceited.

What do we need people like you for? You try to lay claim to all the traditions of our world and believe that your heritage and wallets can solve all your problems, but you still don’t understand the ultimate power: saying no to money, no matter how large the amount.

I took great pleasure in laughing at the old man’s offer. In offering you a cognac.

How did you treat me? How do you treat each other? How do you think it feels to have forty stinging, open wounds in your soul?

Were you the person who came to me that morning, Fredrik? Scared and weak as you are, you tell your story. Where’s the nobility in that, in your story?

You were muttering.

The police officer almost embarrassed, but you didn’t notice that.

You wanted to prove to your father that you could increase your fortune. That you could, in front of your computer screen, do what your forefathers used to on the battlefields of old.

And you, Malin, what is it that you ought to do?

28

Ought to call Tove.

I’m her mum, Malin thinks.

Maybe she can come this evening.

It’s already long past lunch by the time Zeke and Malin go through the swing doors into the police station.

The open-plan office is Sunday empty, the rain like a never-ending wall outside the windows.

Ought to, ought to, ought to call Tove, but I’ve had my mobile switched off for hours now. I’m longing to get down to the gym.

How can I bear to let you out of my sight now, Tove? It was impossible for the first ten months after the catastrophe in Finspang. I was like a leech, at least that’s how it must have felt for you. To protect you, or to calm my own fears? My sense of guilt?

Malin sits down at her desk and switches on her computer, and Zeke does the same. It isn’t long before Sven Sjoman comes over to their desks. He tells them what Fredrik Fagelsjo has just said.

‘Could he have done it?’ Malin asks.

‘Who knows? Maybe they had a fight? And he killed Petersson by mistake?’

Malin looks at Sven, at the doubt that has started to take shape in his eyes. Maybe Fredrik Fagelsjo isn’t their man? She knows Sven must have considered this. But she also knows that he will carry on regarding Fagelsjo as their prime suspect until there’s any evidence to the contrary.

‘If Fredrik Fagelsjo murdered Petersson when he was there on Thursday evening, the timings don’t fit,’ Malin says. ‘According to Karin, the body had only been in the water for a couple of hours, four at the most. And he had been dead for a maximum of five hours, so after approximately four o’clock that morning. And Forensics haven’t found any traces of blood in Fagelsjo’s car, which they certainly ought to have done, because the perpetrator must have been covered in blood. The fact that the gravel in the tyres matches the gravel out at Skogsa is explained by the fact that he admits to having been there the previous evening, but it doesn’t tie him to the murder. Unless he’s lying about the times, of course.’

‘Do you think he could have gone back the following morning?’ Zeke asks.

‘I don’t know, but his wife has given him an alibi and we can’t force her to testify against her husband. She might just be trying to protect her family.’

‘I got the impression that he’s telling the truth,’ Sven says. ‘But you never know. He could have gone back. The dark car that old Mrs Sjostedt saw could have been his, even if she wasn’t quite with it.’

‘Who knows what he might have done,’ Zeke says.

‘Yes, to appease his father,’ Sven says. ‘He seems to be a real patriarch. Fredrik seems almost to forget that he has a family of his own when you talk to him about his father.’

‘A search warrant?’ Zeke asks. ‘To help us get a bit more clarity?’

Sven shakes his head.

‘We simply can’t get a search warrant for Fredrik’s home in connection with the murder at the moment. He’s in custody for other reasons, and Ehrenstierna would put a stop to that at once. If we did search his house in connection with those other offences, we wouldn’t be able to use anything we found in any eventual murder prosecution.’

‘What about Katarina Fagelsjo?’ Zeke says.

‘We can interview her again,’ Malin says. ‘That feels like a natural next step.’

She hears herself say the words, even though all she wants is to get down into the gym and beat the shit out of the punchbag.

‘Have we got her address?’

‘Yes,’ Sven says, ‘we’ve got it.’

Malin switches on her mobile.

No new messages.

Then she dials Tove’s number, but gets straight through to the messaging service.

Where are you? Malin thinks. Tove? Has something happened? And she sees the beast looming over Tove, and feels that she herself is the beast.

Tove, where are you?

‘It’s Mum here. Where are you? You have to realise that I worry. Call me when you get this.’

Tove lets herself be swallowed up by the darkness of the cinema. Filippa is sitting beside her and they’re both gawping at how handsome Brad Pitt is. She likes silly films, lots of kissing and cuddling and people in love in a nice way. Books are a different matter entirely, she likes the ones that everyone else thinks are difficult.

She tries not to think about Mum.

Doesn’t want to think about the fact that she’s probably not coming back to them, and about what she’s decided to do herself.

How can I tell Mum about it? She’ll be sad, she’ll go crazy, maybe do something really stupid. But like Dad said, I can’t live with her at the moment, not with her the way she is, when she can’t cope without a drink.

And then there’s what Dad is going to do today. Does he have to do it so soon?

Brad Pitt smiles.

His teeth are white.

Tove wants to sink into that whiteness, wrap it around all her feelings, leaving just the nice things.

Waldemar Ekenberg runs one hand over his ever more swollen bruises, and puts the other on Lovisa Segerberg’s shoulder, giving it a proper squeeze as he says: ‘I bet you’ve got softer bits on your body, Segerberg. Haven’t you?’

Lovisa feels like standing up and screaming at this evidently severely socially handicapped hillbilly cop to drop the sexist remarks, but she knows his type all too well: macho officers, of all ages, who can’t help making the most bizarre, insulting comments to and about female police officers.

Once she raised a similar event with her boss, but she had just shaken her head and said: ‘If someone as attractive as you wants to be in the police, you’d better be prepared for a whole load of comments. Try to take it as a compliment.’

Lovisa is having trouble seeing the hand squeezing her shoulder as a compliment, and without saying anything she slides from his grasp and puts the papers in her hand on the desk.

She, Waldemar, and Johan Jakobsson have spent all day in paperwork Hades. And have only got through a fraction of the material.

But there’s one thing they can say with certainty: the tenancy agreements were legitimate, and the IT business seemed to be entirely above board. Petersson appeared to have got his fair share of the money, no more, no less. He had merely invested in the company, not acted as its legal advisor, so there was no question of bias. They hadn’t found a will, and during the course of the day Johan had made another twenty pointless calls to everyone from commercial lawyers whose names cropped up in the files to the carpenters, electricians and other workmen who had been employed by Jerry Petersson out at Skogsa. No one had anything interesting to say about him. He seemed to have managed all his business dealings in an irreproachable manner.

The clock on the yellow textured wallpaper says 2.25.

Lovisa looks at Johan, the pleasant, softly spoken officer out of the two she’s been set to work with. Competent and inoffensive.

Evidently Waldemar is also competent, and at lunch over at the National Forensics Laboratory she noticed how the other officers treated him with the respect the police usually reserve for officers who really know how to make things happen.

‘Time’s getting on,’ Waldemar says, settling down at his place at the table, in front of a screen showing the contents of Jerry Petersson’s hard-drives in neat folders.

‘I can’t think straight,’ Johan says. ‘So much fucking paper.’

‘The only thing I can see that could have a direct connection to the case,’ Lovisa says, ‘is the company Petersson owned with Jochen Goldman. The one dealing with the books and the income from interviews with Goldman. The company accounts look terrible. Maybe there’s more money somewhere, or else the interest or capitalisation value of Goldman’s celebrity status was a lot higher.’

‘Capitalisation value,’ Waldemar says. ‘You sound like a right nerd.’

‘We’ll mention it at the next meeting,’ Johan says.

‘The morning meeting first thing tomorrow,’ Waldemar says, and Lovisa thinks that no one could be less suited to paperwork than him.

Katarina Fagelsjo, dressed in dark jeans and a pink tennis shirt, is leaning back on a sofa that Malin knows comes from Svenskt Tenn and costs a fortune. The fabric of the sofa was designed by Josef Frank, old-fashioned black tendrils snaking through leaves in strong autumn colours against a pale blue background.

A fortune, she thinks. At least by my standards, and then she thinks how badly she fits in with this room, conscious of how cheap her H amp;M jeans look, her woollen sweater, how vulgar her sports socks are, and how scruffy she is as a whole compared to Katarina Fagelsjo. Malin feels like creeping along the walls, taking up as little space as possible, but she knows this won’t do, so she’ll have to hide her insecurity behind brusqueness.

A fragile wooden table in front of them, three cups of coffee that neither Malin, Zeke nor Katarina Fagelsjo have touched. The whole room smells of lemon-scented detergent and some expensive, famous perfume that Malin can’t place. Paintings on the walls. Classical, but with the same aura of quality as Jerry Petersson’s artworks. A lot of portraits of women by windows in bright light, women who all seem to be waiting for something. One painting in particular, of a woman by a window facing the sea, takes Malin’s interest. She reads the signature: Anna Ancher.

Through the large living-room windows Malin and Zeke can see the Stangan River flowing gently past, the raindrops forming small, fleeting craters as they hit the surface. On the other side of the river large villas clamber up the slope towards Tanneforsvagen, but it’s regarded as much smarter to live on this side of the river, closer to the centre.

As far as Malin can tell, Katarina lives alone in the large, modernist villa from the thirties beside the Stangan, and she’s in a more obliging frame of mind now than she was at the driving range.

‘Go ahead,’ she says with a smile. ‘I’ll answer as best as I can.’

‘Did you know that your father tried to buy back Skogsa from Jerry Petersson?’ Zeke asks.

‘I knew. And I didn’t approve.’

‘Why not?’

‘That’s a closed chapter for me. We have everything we could possibly need anyway. But obviously I couldn’t stop him trying. Jerry Petersson was the rightful owner of the castle. That’s all there was to it.’

‘And your brother?’ Malin asks, looking at Katarina, the way she seems to be struggling with something, and if Malin asks open questions she might start talking, revealing some secret that could take them forward.

‘He would probably have liked to see the castle bought back.’

‘Were you angry with him because of his investments?’

‘So you know about that?’ Katarina acts surprised. ‘Naturally, it was a mistake that Father gave my brother access to the family capital. He’s never been particularly talented. But as to whether I was angry? No. Do you know about the Danish inheritance?’

Malin nods.

‘Do you think we got Petersson out of the way because he was the only thing standing between us and getting Skogsa back?’

Malin looks at Zeke, he’s gazing out of the windows, and she wonders what he’s thinking about. Karin Johannison? Maybe, maybe not. You’ve got a wife, Zeke, but who the hell am I to criticise anyone else? We share our secrets, Zeke.

‘You could have told us all this out at the golf club,’ Malin says.

‘At the driving range,’ Katarina corrects with a shrug.

‘Why do you think your brother tried to get away from us?’

‘He was driving under the influence. He couldn’t even handle a month in prison. He’s the timid sort. Like I said.’

‘Do you live here alone?’ Malin asks.

‘Yes. I’ve lived alone since the divorce.’

‘And your lover? The doctor. Does he usually stay here?’

‘What’s that got to do with you?’

‘Sorry,’ Malin says. ‘Nothing. It’s nothing to do with us.’

‘There’s no love there,’ Katarina says. ‘Just really good sex. A few more times. The sort of thing a woman needs every so often. You know what I mean, don’t you?’

A text message from Tove.

‘Got your message. Was at the cinema.’

Of course.

She was going to the cinema.

What should I reply?

She replies: ‘Great! Now I know.’

No: ‘Are you coming around later?’

Zeke behind the wheel. On the way to her flat to drop her off.

Can’t deal with anyone but herself tonight. If that.

Skirts.

Tops.

Sandals.

A photograph album.

Malin’s life in a big heap on the hall floor when she went into the flat.

Bags and boxes full of her clothes, shoes, books and things. Neatly piled up, and when Malin realised what was in front of her in the flat she felt like crying, and she sat down on the hall floor, but however much she tried to squeeze out some tears, none came.

My things, the person I am. No, not the person I am, more like a receipt for the pointless person I’ve become.

Janne had turned up with her things from the house during the day, using her spare key to get in, then dropping it through the letterbox afterwards. She would have liked to pick up her things herself, would have liked them to be at home when she went, him and Tove, and they would have asked her to sit down at a ready-laid table and would offer her some hot stew that would take the edge off all the chill and rawness, the thirst and confusion.

Now, instead, this pile of life. In this shitty-fucking-tiny-musty-raw-damp-lonely flat.

Did Tove help Janne? Have they turned against me in tandem?

But what can I expect? I hit him. In front of Tove. How the hell could I? Am I any better than the father and brother in that honour killing?

God, how I miss you both. I miss you so much it crosses every boundary and you disintegrate and are replaced by something else.

But why isn’t Tove here? Tove, where are you? Your things? You could have brought it all at once, couldn’t you?

Malin sits with her back to the front door.

She has a bottle of tequila in her hand, but isn’t drinking. Instead she’s pulled out the files about the Maria Murvall case from the bags Janne left.

She reads.

Sees Maria Murvall sitting on the floor, like her, in another room. Alone, excluded, shut off, numb to the point of nothingness, maybe scared beyond the bounds of what the rest of us call fear.

Malin twists and turns all the facts in the case, as she’s done hundreds of times before.

What happened in the forest, Maria?

What were you doing there?

Who could hurt anyone the way he or she or it hurt you, where does that malice come from? Where do the sharp, living branches that ate their way into your genitals come from? The electrically charged spiders? The cockroaches with sharpened jaws that ate their way up your legs?

Evil is like a torrent, Malin thinks. Like tons of clay sliding down a hillside in a merciless autumn storm. A flood of death and violence wiping out every living thing in its path, leaving a desolate landscape behind it, ash lying in heaps on the ground, and we, the survivors, are forced to eat each other to survive.

Wrath summoned back. Set free.

Malin gets up, leaving the files and things in the hall. She goes into Tove’s room, sees the unmade bed, wishes Tove were lying there again, and she starts to cry when she realises that that bed, in many ways, is empty for good now, that she may never pick Tove up from the sofa in front of the television and carry her to bed, that the child Tove was has vanished, replaced by the young woman who measures everything around her, who evaluates and tries to stay as far as possible from any obvious pain. A person who doesn’t sleep a sleep of innocence.

In Malin’s dream, damp and darkness and cold become one and the same. They merge into a black light, and in the centre of that light is a secret, or possibly several secrets.

I loved, says a voice. Search in love. I hit, says the same voice. Search in the blows, another voice says in the dream. Young snakes, chopped to pieces by lawnmower blades move before her eyes, crawling out of the sewers in streets whose names she doesn’t know.

Then the voices fall silent, the mutilated young snakes vanish.