Autumn Killing (27 page)

Where is everyone? Malin thinks. On the beach?

She pushes open the stiff door of the police station and steps in.

No chairs on the speckled floor of the entrance hall, just a noticeboard on one wall with posters showing the faces of terrorists.

Behind bullet-proof glass sits a young uniformed officer. He’s smoking, gives her a dismissive glance, as if he gets her sort in here all the time.

He must think I’m just another stupid tourist, Malin thinks. Probably thinks I’ve been mugged by Russians. Unless he thinks I’m a prostitute? Could he think that?

Malin goes up to the glass, holds up her police ID.

The policeman raises his eyebrows in an exaggerated, Latin gesture.

‘Aah, Miss Fors, from Sweden. We’ve been expecting you. Let me call for Mr Gomez who will assist you. He’ll be right out.’

Waldemar Ekenberg slams the car door shut and Johan Jakobsson rushes after him through the rain, in under the porch of the red-brick block of flats in the district of Gottfridsberg. The area was built in the forties, small flats with a lot of rooms, perfect homes for all the families who moved to the city to work for Saab, NAF and LM Ericsson.

Will this rain never end? Johan thinks, then for a few seconds the rain turns to snow inside him, to scentless chill, and he reflects upon the fact that we’re only at the start of the darkness, November, December, January, February, March, dark months that rip the souls from people’s bodies, kids kicking up a fuss on the hall floor, refusing to put their overalls and boots on, protesting against the itchy hats pushed down on their heads.

This morning had been really shitty.

The kids both had furious tantrums, God knows what got into them, and his wife was still cross because he hadn’t gone to Nässjö with them.

It was a relief to come to work.

A huge damn relief.

And now he watches as Waldemar taps the code into the keypad beside the door, pushes it open angrily as if he’s annoyed at this whole wretched autumn, and then they’re standing together in a stairwell that smells of damp, looking around, as if there were something there apart from peeling grey-green paint, a list of names, and a staircase made of speckled stone.

‘Fucking hell,’ Waldemar says, and Johan can’t tell if his colleague means the stairwell or the weather, but he guesses that Waldemar means the weather and says: ‘Yes, and we’re only at the start of it.’

Jonas Karlsson.

Third floor.

‘Right at the top,’ Waldemar says, and Johan thinks that his swollen, closed eye tells you all you need to know about how brutal Waldemar can be.

Thirty seconds later they are standing in front of a grey-brown door listening to a doorbell ring inside, then footsteps as someone slowly approaches the front door.

Jonas Karlsson. He was at the wheel in that car accident they found in the archive. Jerry in the car, on the Fågelsjös’ land, as it was then. A young man named Andreas Ekström died, and a girl named Jasmin Sandsten was handicapped for life.

Nice to get away from the paperwork, Waldemar thinks.

Sven Sjöman this morning: ‘Dig about in that accident. See if it stirred things up, it’s happened before.’

People’s pasts, Johan thinks. Shackled to them, walled up inside their memories.

Jonas Karlsson.

What happened on that New Year’s Eve almost thirty years ago was by all accounts an accident, but how much must you have regretted it since that night? Do you feel responsible for a young man’s death, a young woman left severely handicapped? And, if so, what has your life been like since then?

The door opens.

A man with thinning hair and a bulging gut under a wine-red lambswool sweater looks at them wearily, doesn’t say hello, just gestures them in with his right hand.

Puffy cheeks, but a sharp nose, and Johan thinks that thirty kilos and twenty years ago Jonas Karlsson was probably pretty good-looking. A faint smell of alcohol on his breath.

‘Take your shoes off. You can sit down on the sofa,’ and Jonas Karlsson seems to enjoy giving them orders, there’s a force in his voice that’s lacking in his bearing.

‘I need a piss, then I’ll be with you,’ and Karlsson disappears into the toilet as Waldemar and Johan sit down on the white sofa in the living room, feeling the blue and white striped wallpaper closing in on them.

Neat and tidy. But not much furniture, and a big flat-screen television.

A typical bachelor pad, Johan thinks, and if their files are accurate, Jonas Karlsson ought to be forty-three years old, but he looks considerably older, tired and worn out. In one corner sits a drinks cabinet, its door ajar, an ashtray with a few cigarette butts on the table, but no pervasive smell of smoke.

‘Do you think he drinks?’ Johan asks.

Before Waldemar can answer they hear Karlsson’s voice: ‘I drink far too much when I’m on a binge. But I hold it together.’ Then he sits down in front of them on an armchair by the window looking out onto the inner courtyard, the black and apparently dead branches of some birch trees swaying crazily in the wind and the intermittent rain. There’s a bookshelf full of DVDs, VHS tapes and boxes of Super 8 films with illegible handwritten labels.

‘Do you live here alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘No family?’ Waldemar asks.

‘No, thank God. So you want to talk about the accident?’

‘Yes,’ Waldemar says. ‘But first: do you wank with your right hand or your left?’

‘What?’

‘You heard.’

‘I’m right-handed, if that’s what you want to know.’

‘You’ve heard what happened to Jerry Petersson?’ Waldemar asks.

‘I read about it in the paper.’

‘We’re working on a fairly broad front at the moment,’ Johan says. ‘So we’re checking most people who’ve ever had anything to do with Jerry Petersson.’

‘I didn’t know Petersson,’ Karlsson says. ‘Not then, and not afterwards either.’

‘So how come you were in the same car that New Year’s Eve?’

‘We were heading back into the city. I’d borrowed Dad’s car, and Jerry asked if he could have a lift. That’s how I remember it. And I had space in the car. So why not? He offered me a hundred kronor, seemed desperate to get away from there.’

Exactly the same as in the file about the accident. Jonas Karlsson says the same things today as he did twenty-four years ago.

‘The party took place on the Fågelsjö estate, in some sort of parish house?’ Johan asks.

‘Yes, in a parish house that they built as a gift to the church, I think.’

‘And Petersson wanted to leave the party? Why do you think that was?’

‘I’ve got no idea. Like I said: I didn’t really know him. It was cold and late. I suppose he just wanted to go home?’

‘Did you know the Fågelsjö kids, do you still know them?’ Waldemar asks.

Karlsson shakes his head.

‘God, no. They were really stuck-up. I was in the parallel class to Fredrik Fågelsjö, and he was the one organising the New Year party. Sometimes he used to invite me and some of the others to make up the numbers.’

Johan nods.

‘And Petersson, was he friends with either of the Fågelsjö kids?’

‘No, I don’t think so. In some ways he was more like me. An ordinary working-class kid who was allowed to join in sometimes.’

‘And you weren’t friends, you and Jerry?’

‘No, I said that.’

‘And the others in the car? Were they friends with Jerry?’

‘Andreas Ekström was in Jerry’s gang. Jasmin Sandsten probably had a crush on Jerry, that’s probably why she wanted to come. I think most of the girls had a crush on him.’

‘So you think Jasmin Sandsten had a crush on Jerry Petersson?’ Johan asks.

‘I don’t know. All the girls seemed to be crazy about him. That’s what he was like.’

‘Jerry’s gang?’ Waldemar says.

‘He just had a lot of friends,’ Karlsson says, rubbing his top lip with one hand. Strange, Waldemar thinks. We haven’t found a single person who describes themselves as Petersson’s friend.

‘But he wasn’t friends with the Fågelsjös?’

‘No, not as far as I know. There was a group of rich kids, no one else was let in except when they wanted to make up the numbers.’

‘Can you tell us about that evening?’

Waldemar is making an effort to sound friendly, establish trust, and Johan is surprised at how genuine it actually sounds.

Karlsson clears his throat and seems to gather his senses before he starts talking again.

‘Like I said, Fredrik Fågelsjö had organised a New Year’s Eve party. I got invited, and was allowed to borrow Dad’s car to get there, as long as I promised not to drink. After midnight I wanted to go home, piss-ups like that are no fun if you’re not drunk as well.’

‘No, they certainly aren’t,’ Waldemar says.

‘And as I was about to leave, Jerry Petersson came over with Jasmin Sandsten and Andreas Ekström and asked for a lift. Andreas squeezed in the back seat with the girl, and Jerry sat in the front, and the rest is history. I was driving sensibly, but we still slid in the darkness and snow and ended up rolling over into a field. We had seat belts in the front, but not in the back, and they got tossed about like they were in a centrifuge before being thrown out of the rear window. Andreas died of head injuries, and Jasmin . . . well, she still isn’t right.’

‘The others had been drinking?’ Waldemar asks.

‘It was New Year’s Eve.’

‘Did anything particular happen at the party?’

Karlsson shakes his head.

‘Do you think about the accident much?’

Johan says the words slowly, and he sees Karlsson’s face tense and his pupils expand.

‘No. I’ve put it behind me. It was an accident. I was cleared of any responsibility and I didn’t feel that anyone blamed me for it. But sure, sometimes I think about Andreas and Jasmin.’

‘Were you friends with Andreas and Jasmin?’

‘Only superficially. We went to the same parties. Talked between classes.’

‘Did you have any contact with Petersson over the years?’ Waldemar asks.

‘Nothing. Not a thing. I haven’t spoken to him once. But it looks like things went well for him. No doubt about that.’

Waldemar rubs his knees, fiddling restlessly with his fingers.

‘Is it OK if I smoke?’

Karlsson nods.

‘If you let me have one.’

‘Can I ask what your job is?’

‘I’m a nurse. I work nights in the X-ray department.’

‘You never married? No kids?’

‘No, that’s not my thing.’

And the room fills with suffocating smoke, and Johan has to force himself not to cough before asking: ‘Do you feel guilty?’

Karlsson looks surprised at first, then thinks before he says: ‘Sometimes.’

‘What about the parents? Were they angry with you?’

‘I think they all accepted it was an accident, that things like that happen. I don’t know. I think Andreas’s parents managed to move on. I got that impression at his funeral.’

‘Was Jerry at the funeral?’ Johan asks.

‘No.’

‘Fredrik Fågelsjö?’

‘No, are you kidding?’

‘What about Jasmin’s parents?’

‘She was left a vegetable,’ Karlsson says. ‘I heard her dad took it hard. I think they got divorced.’

Johan doesn’t reply, looks out of the window, thinks about the father who lost his daughter that New Year’s Eve, sees his own daughter running through the house out in Linghem.

In a flowing white dress.

A daughter whose soul vanishes in a snow-covered field one night. A daughter who doesn’t stop breathing, and instead faces decades of suffering. What sort of emotions might something like that bring to life?

Zeke Martinsson puts his head in his hands, trying to shut out all the sounds of the police station. The noise and beeping that fills the open-plan office sometimes makes him so crazy he can’t think.

Malin in Tenerife.

Must have landed by now. What are the chances of her seeing her parents? God knows.

Zeke has just spoken to Axel and Katarina Fågelsjö about the accident. Sven Sjöman had already spoken to Fredrik Fågelsjö about it, in the presence of his lawyer. All the members of the Fågelsjö family say they can hardly remember the New Year’s Eve when the accident took place, it’s all in the past and none of them ever gave any thought to the fact that Jerry Petersson was the surviving passenger. Not when he popped up as a prospective buyer for the castle, and not when he was murdered.

As Axel Fågelsjö expressed it over the phone: ‘The people in the car were a long way outside our closest, central circle of acquaintances. The children used to invite them sometimes to help fill the rooms.’

Of course they remember. Of course they remember that Jerry was the passenger.

As Katarina put it: ‘I don’t remember that party at all. I have no memory of it whatsoever, it’s all a blank.’

There’s something that doesn’t fit here, Zeke thinks. He can feel that it’s important. But how?

Too much.

Too little.

Skogså.

Always their castle, their estate.

A car spins off the road one New Year’s Eve and one young person dies, another is terribly injured. One of the people in the car, one of the survivors, is found dead many years later in a moat on the land that now belongs to him.

‘It’s all a blank.’

You’re lying, Zeke thinks. There’s nothing like death to make people remember things.

I’m crawling over the snow towards her, I think she’s dead, she’s not moving and I’m going to bring her back, I’m going to, I’m going to blow air into her lungs and bring her back to life. There’s blood trickling from her ears and the whole world, all the business of New Year’s Eve, is ringing inside me and I hear nothing, but I see, and the car’s headlights are flickering, pumping out their dead light that makes it look like Jerry is moving in slow motion, he’s running through screaming black and white images and the cold is here and a silence, a black silence that I know will follow me for the rest of my life.

Jasmin, was that your name?

Andreas? Where is he? Jerry is standing next to me as I crawl forward, he’s yelling something but I can’t make out what. I want to listen to him, show myself worthy of being his friend, there’s nothing I want more than to be his friend.