‘It’s Petersson,’ Karin says as she and Malin crouch over the body lying on the bridge spanning the moat. ‘I recognise him from pictures in the
‘We can ask one of the tenant farmers to identify him,’ Malin says. ‘But I recognise him too, so there’s hardly any point.’
Johansson and Lindman are waiting inside a patrol car. They’re planning to interview them properly once they’re done out here.
‘Apart from the wounds, he’s got a large bruise on the back of his neck,’ Karin says. ‘In all likelihood, the injuries to his torso are knife wounds. Everything suggests the sort of extreme violence that you almost only see when someone loses control. You can take it for granted that he didn’t inflict these wounds on himself. But I can’t say much more than that out here, we need to get him back to the city to see if I can get anything else from the body. It’s impossible to examine the ground out here. The rain has swept away any evidence. I might be able to find some traces of blood in the gravel, but it’s far from certain.’
The ambulance arrived a short while ago.
Driven by Stenlund, one of Janne’s former colleagues. He waved a cheery hello and asked how Janne was, and Malin replied that he was fine.
She looks at the corpse.
The open, almost magically blue eye looks as if it’s trying to escape its socket, and she feels sick, wants to get up, but looks up at Zeke instead.
‘What do you think?’
‘Someone stabbed him in a fit of rage, whacked him on the neck and dumped him in the water. Or the other way round.’
‘OK, from now on this is officially a murder investigation,’ Sven says.
Rage, Malin thinks. My hand raised against Janne, bloody hell, I was so angry, imagine if I’d had a knife in my hand, but don’t think, don’t think, say instead: ‘We need to examine the car and the surrounding area, the whole castle and the other buildings, just to see if we can find anything. Anything that suggests a struggle, or any other evidence, come to that. Anything that looks like the murder weapon. Chances are we’re looking for a knife, and a rock or something similar.’
‘OK,’ Sven says. ‘We have to marshal our forces, have an initial meeting before we get going. And we need to interview the two men who found him. Call in the rest of the team. Karin, can you give the OK for us to use one of the rooms inside the castle?’
Karin nods.
A car appears at the edge of the forest.
Another of the
Everything in due course, Malin thinks, feeling her stomach contract and wanting to throw up.
Malin walks over the gravel towards the doors of the castle, thinking about the hundreds of people who must have walked that path over the years. In fear or pride, tired, or with the elation that only owning considerable property can bring.
These people are like spirits anchored to the landscape, ghosts that don’t want to leave the ground and fly.
She had just closed Jerry Petersson’s open eye.
Wanted him to find peace, to stop having to stare at the world with a cold, dead gaze. It’s quite enough for those of us who are alive to have to see the world like that, she thought. Then she looked at him. His blank face, the exposed wounds on his reasonably toned body. Who were you? she wondered. What sort of person do you have to be to end up where you did? How did all this come to be yours? Who got so angry with you that he or she stabbed you over and over again?
Then she walked around the castle, finding a small chapel at the rear, but the door was locked. She peered in, and in the middle of the octagonal space was a raised dais that she assumed must mark the Fagelsjo family vault. Dozens of icons stared down from the walls at her, the gold surrounding the figures of Christ defying the darkness of the season, saying: ‘Beauty is possible’.
On the other side of the castle stood two big red Stiga tractors, equipped for cutting grass, silent, as if they’d been used for the last time, their blades removed.
Malin climbs the steps up to the castle, breathing in the morning air.
In spite of the nausea, she feels excited.
And that makes her ashamed. Thinks: you can feel ashamed of any emotion. Was it shame that killed you, Jerry? What were you ashamed of? If you were ashamed of anything at all. Maybe you have to be free from shame to own and live in a castle?
In the castle’s entrance hall a huge chandelier hangs oddly alone up above. As if it’s waiting to spread light, Malin thinks. And that painting on the wall. A man, a woman. A bit of suncream on her back. Love? Suppressed violence. Definitely.
That picture probably cost a fortune, Malin thinks.
