Текст книги "Autumn Killing"

Автор книги: Mons Kallentoft

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

44

Thursday, 30 October

Zeke Martinsson looks at the clock at the top corner of the screen.

8.49. Still relatively calm in the station, everyone must be busy somewhere else. No morning meeting today, they went through everything in enough detail yesterday, everyone knows what they’ve got to do.

Malin should have been here long ago. They ought to be well on their way to Soderkoping by now.

Where are you, Malin?

Down in the gym? Hardly.

Has something come up to keep you away? Doesn’t seem likely.

Did you feel like giving in to the pain yesterday?

To drink?

Gunilla wondered why he got home so late, even though he’d called to say he’d be working. He stood in the kitchen and lied straight to her face without a moment’s hesitation, and without managing to feel any shame. Instead he felt sorry for her, for having a man who could betray her without hesitation after so many years of marriage. And he had fallen asleep quickly, imagining Karin Johannison’s thighs around him.

Zeke looks around at his colleagues. Some in uniforms. Some without. Focused yet somehow aimless. What do you all want, really?

Malin doesn’t know what she wants, yet she still does it every day. Here, in this open-plan office she gets straight down to the task of trying to make people believe that no harm can come to them.

So where are you, Malin? Zeke’s phoned three times, twice on her mobile and once on her landline, but no answer. Maybe she’s at Janne’s?

No answer at Janne’s either.

Hogfeldt?

Too complicated. I don’t know anything about what they get up to.

‘Where’s Malin? Shouldn’t you be in Soderkoping by now?’

Sven Sjoman’s tired, somehow compressed voice as he calls from the lift door.

Zeke gets up.

Gives Sven a look, and Sven frowns and looks as if he’s thinking that she might have messed up badly, maybe we should have taken her problems even more seriously?

The two detectives meet in the middle of the room.

Look at each other.

‘I think she’s at home,’ Zeke says.

‘Let’s go,’ Sven says.

Zeke rings Malin’s doorbell and hears the angry signal on the other side of the door.

Sven standing silently beside him, wearing one of the force’s dark-blue padded raincoats.

No talking in the car.

What would they say?

Zeke rings again.

Again.

Sven opens the letterbox and peers in, and the sound of heavy breathing, a sleeping person’s movements, seeps out to the stairwell.

‘Have you got a skeleton key?’

‘I keep one on my key ring,’ Zeke says.

‘She’s lying on the hall floor.’

Zeke shakes his head, suppresses the instinctive anxiety gripping his stomach and focuses on action.

She’s breathing.

Asleep.

Could be injured.

‘Give me the key,’ Sven says, and a few seconds later the door is open and they see Malin on the hall floor, a white T-shirt pulled up above her navel, little pink hearts on her underwear.

No blood.

No bruising, no wounds, just the sound of heavy, longed-for sleep, and a strong smell of alcohol.

An empty tequila bottle.

The Correspondent next to her head.

They kneel at her side, look at each other, no need to ask the question that’s going through both their heads.

What are we going to do now?

Turn off the rain. It’s too cold. And it’s drumming on my skin in a bloody annoying way, and what on earth’s that, so cold against my legs?

I don’t want anything to do with this, and who are those people talking?

Janne.

Yell: ‘Daniel, fucking stop doing that!’

Fucking stop.

And the drops keep drumming and they’re icy cold and what am I doing outside with no clothes on in this weather and what are they saying?

Sven. Zeke.

What the hell are you doing here?

‘Hold onto her.’

‘Sit still.’

Fabric against my body. Zeke’s face, his shaved head, and he looks focused, Sven, are you there, and I see the bathroom now, the shower, I can feel it against my head and shit, shit, the water’s cold, and I see them now, both of them, I’m sitting in the bath and they’re showering me and my T-shirt’s clinging to my body and my knickers, the stupidest pair I’ve got, they hardly even cover the hair down there, and just stop. .

‘Stop it, I know what your fucking game is!’

She flails with her arms.

Tries to force the shower-head away.

Drops.

But the liquid ice, the small sharp needles batter her, forcing her back.

‘Let me sleep, you bastards!’

The dressing gown is warm against her skin and the coffee slipping down her throat is hot. Her head is throbbing, and Malin wonders if she’s seeing double, with two Svens and two Zekes and she wants to scream out loud, or drink more, but the look in their eyes holds her back.

Sven on a chair by the window. Zeke standing by the sink, looking first at the broken Ikea clock and then at a pigeon that settles on the windowsill for a few seconds before flying off towards the church tower.

Say something.

Tell me off.

Tell me I’m a bloody awful person.

A weak-willed drunk, just someone else who can’t resist the slightest internal demon.

Call me a shit. An arsehole.

But neither of her two colleagues says anything.

They’ve forced her to take two aspirins and two hydration tablets, and now she knows they’re expecting her to finish the coffee.

They go out into the hall, she can hear them talking. Hears Sven say: ‘I’ll keep an eye out, keep her on her feet, we can’t manage without. .’

Zeke: ‘She needs a detox clinic.’

Is that really what he says? I must have heard wrong. He’d never say something like that.

They come back. They stand beside her in the kitchen without speaking.

And when the coffee is finished Sven says: ‘Get some clothes on, then you and Zeke get over to Soderkoping. You’ve got a job to do.’

Somehow Malin has survived the drive, she has no idea how, and now, just before lunchtime, she and Zeke are standing in a room with flowery wallpaper in Soderkoping’s rehabilitation home. In front of them sits Ingeborg Sandsten in a deep-red armchair. Beside her lies Jasmin Sandsten in a blue wheelchair, and under a leaf-green blanket they can see her spastic body, twisted by years of involuntary muscle spasms. One of her brown eyes is open, the other closed, and her gaze betrays no sign of conscious life. Jasmin Sandsten breathes in heavy rattles and sometimes lets out a growling sound, and every time the sound escapes from her mouth her mother reaches over and wipes the saliva from the corner of her lips with her right hand.

A window in the background. A bare, wind-tormented tree, a desolate canal path that seems to be waiting for summer visitors on bikes and the canal company’s old white-painted passenger boats full of American tourists.

A mother who has never strayed from her daughter’s side, Malin thinks, feeling a deep respect for the two strangers in the room. Even if Jasmin doesn’t know what’s going on around her, she must know that she hasn’t been abandoned. Do you know, Malin thinks as she looks at the girl in the wheelchair, that you’ve got pure love on your side? Your mother is what people ought to be like. Isn’t she?

If Tove had ended up like this.

What would I have done? I can’t even bear to think about it.

‘We should have been in Tenerife,’ Ingeborg Sandsten said, laying her thin hands on her equally thin thighs. ‘At the Vintersol rehabilitation centre, but they turned us down at the last minute when they found out how badly handicapped Jasmin is. So we came here instead. This is very nice too.’

Malin’s first thought is: ‘What a coincidence. I’m just back from there,’ but that would have been an insult to the mother and daughter who never made it.

Ingeborg Sandsten’s face is thin and lined, showing signs of never-ending exhaustion, and the woman’s tiredness makes Malin feel more alert.

‘I’ve looked after Jasmin since the accident. I get money from the council to be her carer.’

‘Can she hear us?’ Zeke asks.

‘The doctors say she can’t. But I don’t know. Sometimes I think she can.’

‘Our colleagues spoke to your former husband yesterday,’ Malin says.

‘He’s still angry.’

‘Has he spoken to you? Have you heard what we suspect happened on the night of the accident?’

‘Yes, he called me.’

‘And what do you think?’

‘It might be true, but it doesn’t make any difference, does it?’

‘You didn’t know anything about that?’ Malin asks.

‘I see what you’re getting at. I didn’t know. And I was here with Jasmin all last week.’

Then the growl from Jasmin as her face contorts in unimaginable pain. She must have been very pretty once upon a time. Ingeborg wipes her grown-up daughter’s mouth.

‘Did Jasmin know Jerry Petersson before the evening of the accident? Do you remember?’ Malin asks, aware that she’s fishing, casting out nets and hooks, trying to catch underwater voices.

‘I don’t think so. She’d never mentioned him. But what do any of us know about the lives of teenagers?’

‘And the Fagelsjo youngsters? Did she know them?’

‘She was in a parallel class to Katarina Fagelsjo. But I don’t think they were friends.’

‘So you didn’t know anything about what happened that night?’ Zeke asks again. ‘That it might have been Jerry Petersson driving?’

‘What do you think?’ Ingeborg Sandsten said. ‘That Jasmin might have told me?’

Two dozen heavy raindrops hit the windowpane like a salvo.

‘Deep inside her dreams Jasmin remembers what happened,’ she goes on. ‘Deep, deep inside.’

The car pushes through the waterlogged landscape of Ostergotland. Grey, lifeless forests, lonely grey fields, grey houses.

Zeke’s hands firmly gripping the steering wheel.

Malin takes a couple of deep breaths.

‘It was you who asked Sven to talk to me, wasn’t it?’ she asks.

Zeke takes his eyes from the road for a moment. Looks at her. Then nods.

‘So are you angry now, Malin? I had to do something.’

‘You could have said something to me directly.’

‘And you’d have listened, would you? Sure, Malin, sure.’

‘You went behind my back.’

‘For your own good.’

‘You go behind a lot of people’s backs, Zeke. Think about what you could lose.’

Zeke takes his eyes from the road again. Looks at her, before his hard green eyes fill with warmth.

‘Nobody’s perfect,’ he says.

‘Birds of a feather flock together,’ Malin retorts, then the sound of the car engine takes over and she swallows some saliva to suppress the lingering nausea.

Her mobile rings when they’re about ten kilometres from Linkoping.

A number Malin doesn’t recognise. She takes the call.

‘This is Stina Ekstrom. Andreas’s mum.’

‘Hello,’ Malin says. ‘How are you?’

‘How am I?’

‘Sorry,’ Malin says.

‘You asked if I remembered anything particular about the time leading up to the accident. I don’t know if it means anything, but I remember one of Andreas’s friends from when he started high school. Anders Dalstrom. He and Andreas were friends, it started when we moved to Linghem and he started secondary school. I seem to remember that Andreas looked after him. But they didn’t see so much of each other when they started at different high schools. I remember him from the funeral. It looked like Andreas’s death hit him hard.’

‘Do you know where he is now?’

‘I think he still lives in the city. But I haven’t seen him for a long time.’

‘So they were friends?’

‘Yes, in secondary school out here.’

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.