Free Autumn Killing by Mons Kallentoft Page A

evade. The fear that you’re trying to escape too. That’s right, isn’t it?

11
    A large black-and-white photograph of silhouetted figures in a hammock hangs on the long wall of the library. It’s as if the people have stepped out of the picture and just left their shadows behind.
    Malin has no idea who the artist is, but it looks expensive, it has the reek of fine art about it.
    The ceiling must be ten metres high.
    Karin Johannison and two recently arrived colleagues have been through it and found nothing of interest, and now it’s their meeting room.
    The walls are clad in dark wood panelling and empty custom-made bookcases that probably once housed a collection of leather-bound volumes. Which authors? Rousseau? Hardly. Shakespeare? Definitely. Sven Sjöman has settled into one of the bowed, white, upholstered armchairs in the middle of the room. He looks tired and thin, Malin thinks, but if Sven looks tired, what must I look like?
    Zeke is sitting on a jagged modern chair on the other side of the rickety metal table. He’s taken off his raincoat, but there are still drops of rain on his shaven head. Waldemar Ekenberg has arrived as well, sitting on the sofa where Malin is evidently expected to join him. Waldemar smells of smoke, his eyes dark in the gloom of the library, and his long, skinny legs almost seem to disappear in the fabric of his loose gabardine trousers.
    ‘Sit down, Malin,’ Sven says, gesturing to the place beside Waldemar. ‘But take off that wet coat first.’
    Take my coat off. Does he think I’m five years old or something?
    ‘Of course I’m going to take my bloody coat off,’ Malin says, and Sven looks surprised at her anger and says: ‘Malin, I didn’t mean it like that.’
    She takes off her coat, sits down beside Waldemar and the smell of smoke from his clothes lifts her nausea to new heights.
    ‘Jerry Petersson,’ Sven says. ‘Murdered with extreme force. We can assume that for now until we get a more precise cause of death in Karin’s report. This is the first meeting, albeit rather hastily convened, of the preliminary investigation into the murder of Jerry Petersson.’
    The group of detectives sits in silence.
    The concentration and seriousness, the focus that’s always there at the start of each murder investigation, the feeling of urgency, that they have to get somewhere fast, because they know that for each day that passes, their chances of solving the case diminish.
    Sven goes on: ‘I got the station to do a quick check. Jerry Petersson was born in 1965, and, as far as we’ve been able to see, he only has one close relative, his father, who lives in Åleryd Care Home. A priest and a social worker are on their way to break the news to him. We’ll have to wait before we interview him. He’s an old man.’
    Göte Lindman and Ingmar Johansson had identified Petersson a short while before, out on the bridge over the moat. They weren’t in any doubt, and they’d both been strangely calm.
    ‘Any ideas about where to start?’ Sven says.
    The tone of Sven’s voice is interested, honestly questioning, but Malin knows that he’s about to carry on talking again.
    ‘OK,’ Sven says. ‘What do we know about Jerry Petersson?’
    ‘A lawyer, originally from these parts,’ Zeke says. ‘Studied in Lund, but worked in Stockholm. Made a fortune and moved back here when he got the chance to buy Skogså from the Fågelsjö family. The article in the
Correspondent
suggested that they’d fallen on hard times and had to sell. The reporter also hinted that Jerry Petersson had been involved in some dodgy dealings.’
    ‘I read that as well,’ Malin says, remembering that it was Daniel Högfeldt who had written the article. ‘He must have had some serious capital to be able to buy this place. And I can imagine how bitter the Fågelsjös must have been at having to sell the estate. It had been in the family for, what, almost five hundred years?’
    Fågelsjö, she thinks. One of