Autumn Killing (13 page)

‘Are you happy here?’ Zeke asks, looking around at the spacious apartment.

‘Yes, I’m happy here. I’ve lived here since the sale. In fact, I’m so happy here that I’d like to be alone now, if you have no more questions.’

‘What sort of car do you drive?’

‘I have two. A black Mercedes and a red Toyota SUV.’

‘That’s all for now,’ Zeke says, getting up. ‘Do you know where we can find your children?’

‘I presume you have their telephone numbers. Call them. I don’t know where they are.’

In the hall Malin notices a pair of black rubber boots. The mud on them is still wet.

‘Have you been out in the forest?’ she asks Fågelsjö, who has followed them to the door.

‘No, just down to the Horticultural Society Park. That’s quite muddy enough for me at this time of year.’

When the front door has closed Fågelsjö goes down the corridor towards the kitchen.

He picks up the phone. Dials a number that he has managed to memorise with great difficulty.

Waits for an answer.

Thinks about the instructions that need to be given, how abundantly clear he will need to be for the children to understand. Thinks: Bettina. I wish you were here now. So we could deal with this together.

‘The best of both worlds,’ Zeke says as they head back to the car.

‘Sorry?’

‘He lives, or would like to live, in the best of both worlds.’

‘He’s lying to us about the sale, that much is obvious. I wonder why? I mean, it’s common knowledge that they’d fallen on hard times. It was in the
Correspondent
.’

Zeke nods. ‘Did you see how he clenched his fists when you asked about the sale? It looked like he could hardly keep his anger under control.’

‘Yes, I saw,’ Malin says, opening the passenger door of the car and thinking about the feeling she had that Fågelsjö was only pretending to be angry. Why? she asks herself.

‘We need to dig deeper,’ Zeke says, looking at Malin, who looks as if she’s about to fall asleep, or start screaming for a drink.

I’ve got to talk to Sven. She’s gone right under the ice this time.

‘Let’s hope that’s exactly what Ekenberg and Johan are doing right now, digging deeper.’

‘And Karim must be basking in the glow of the flashbulbs as we speak,’ Zeke says.

Karim Akbar is absorbing the flashbulbs, his brain whirring as the reporters fire off their aggressive questions.

‘Yes, he was murdered. By a blow from a blunt object to the back of the head. And in all likelihood he was also stabbed in the torso.’

‘No, we don’t have the object. Nor the knife.’

‘We’ve got divers in the moat right now,’ he lies. The diving is already finished. ‘We may need to drain it,’ he says. The water is probably gone by now. His massaging of the truth is silly really, the reporters can easily check the moat, but Karim can’t help it, wants to show the hyenas who decides the speed they go at.

‘At present we don’t have a suspect. We’re looking into a range of possibilities.’

The crowd of grey figures before him, most of them shabbily dressed, in line with all the clichés about journalists.

Daniel Högfeldt an exception. Smart leather jacket, a neatly ironed black shirt.

Karim can answer questions and think about other things at the same time, he’s done this so many times before.

Is that when it’s time to stop?

When autopilot kicks in?

When you start to mess about with the seriousness of the situation?

He can see himself standing in the room, like a well-drilled press officer in the White House, pointing at reporters, answering their questions evasively, all the while getting his own agenda across.

‘Yes, you’re right. There could be a number of people with reason to be unhappy with Jerry Petersson’s activities. We’re looking into that.’

‘And Goldman, have you spoken . . .’

‘We’re keeping all our options open at present.’

‘We’re appealing to members of the public who may have seen anything interesting that night between . . .’

Waldemar Ekenberg is leaning over the table in their strategy room, reading one of the files about Jochen Goldman.

Johan Jakobsson is slumped on the other side of the table, next to an IT expert who’s installing a monitor.

‘There’s an address and a phone number here. Vistamar 34. Belongs to a J.G.,’ Waldemar says.

‘Must be Jochen Goldman.’

‘This is from this year.’

‘What’s the context?’

‘Figures, some company.’

‘What’s the international dialling code?’

‘Thirty-four.’

‘That could be Tenerife, if he does live there. Vistamar. Definitely Spanish. Shall I call?’

‘Well, we want to talk to him.’

Johan leans back, reaching for the phone, makes the call.

‘No answer, but at least it rang. Doesn’t seem to have an answer machine.’

‘Did you expect him to? We’ll try again later.’

‘Malin’s parents live on Tenerife,’ Johan says.

‘Fucking hot down there.’

‘Maybe we should get Malin to make the call.’

‘What, you mean she should make the call because her parents live down there?’

Johan shakes his head.

‘Well, you’re getting to know her a bit now. She might get upset otherwise. She takes coincidences like that seriously.’

‘Yeah, she believes in ghosts,’ Waldemar says.

‘Hold off from making the call. Let her do it. If it is even Jochen Goldman’s number.’

Waldemar shuts the file.

‘I don’t get most of these figures. When’s the bloke from Eco getting here?’

An officer, they don’t yet know who, is supposed to be coming down by train the next day.

‘Tomorrow morning,’ Johan says.

Waldemar nods.

The Östgöta Bank at the corner of Storgatan and St Larsgatan. Just a stone’s throw from Malin’s flat on Ågatan, but the two buildings couldn’t be more different. Malin’s block is late modern, from the sixties, low ceilings with plastic window frames installed in the mid-seventies. The Östgöta Bank is a showy art nouveau building in brown stone with an ornate interior.

But the rain is the same for all buildings, Malin thinks as she pulls open the heavy door and steps into the large foyer, all polished marble and a ten-metre high ceiling. The reception desk for the offices upstairs is to the left of the cashiers, who are scarcely visible behind thick bullet-proof glass.

Malin and Zeke have called Fredrik Fågelsjö’s mobile, but there was no answer. They tried him at home, no answer there either.

‘Let’s go to the bank and see if he’s there,’ Malin had said as they drove away from Axel Fågelsjö’s apartment, and now a red-haired, hostile-looking receptionist the same age as Malin is staring at her police ID.

‘Yes, he works here,’ the receptionist says.

‘Can we see him?’ Malin asks.

‘No.’

‘I see. We’re here on important police business. Is Fredrik Fågelsjö . . .?’

‘You’re too late,’ the receptionist says neutrally, with a hint of triumph in her voice.

‘Has he finished for the day?’ Zeke asks.

‘He usually leaves at three on Friday. What’s this about?’

Never you mind about that, Malin thinks, saying: ‘Do you know where he might have gone?’

‘Try the Hotel Ekoxen. He’s normally in the bar there after work on Fridays.’

‘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 Tinnerbäck 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 Fågelsjö 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 Fågelsjö.

Is that you? Have you finished your Friday cognac?

‘I think Fågelsjö 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 Fågelsjö’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 Fågelsjö, 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.

Fågelsjö 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 Fågelsjö 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 Fågelsjö 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 Fågelsjö, 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.

Fågelsjö 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.

Fågelsjö is lucky with the lights as he heads across the roundabout on the E4. They pass the last blocks of flats in Skäggetorp 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 Fågelsjö 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 Fågelsjö 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 Fågelsjö 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, Fågelsjö 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 Fågelsjö’s car and the patrol car stops just behind them. Malin turns off the CD and the siren, and everything is suddenly strangely quiet.