Mons Kallentoft - Autumn Killing

‘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.’

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?