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 Sjoman 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 Aleryd 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.’
Gote 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 Skogsa from the Fagelsjo family. The article in the
‘I read that as well,’ Malin says, remembering that it was Daniel Hogfeldt 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 Fagelsjos must have been at having to sell the estate. It had been in the family for, what, almost five hundred years?’
Fagelsjo, she thinks. One of the most famous noble families in the area. The sort of family that everyone knows something about. Without ever really knowing why.
‘We’ll have to question the Fagelsjos about the circumstances surrounding the sale,’ Sven says. ‘Find out which members of the family were involved.’
‘The family consists of a father and two children. A son and a daughter, I think,’ Zeke says.
‘How do you know that?’ Malin asks.
‘That was in the
‘Children’s names?’
‘No idea.’
‘That should be fairly easy to find out,’ Waldemar says.
‘You’ll have to share out the interviews between you,’ Sven says. ‘Get them done as soon as possible. I’ll arrange for checks at the houses around here, and we’ll put out a message in the local media that we want to hear from anyone who may have seen anything unusual in the area over the past twenty-four hours.’
‘If he was really rich,’ Malin says, ‘then this could have been a robbery. Someone who heard about the new millionaire in the castle and decided to have a go.’
‘Maybe,’ Sven says. ‘The doors were open, after all. But from what we’ve seen so far, nothing seems to be missing in here. And Karin found his wallet in that yellow raincoat. The knife wounds to his torso suggest the sort of violent rage you don’t often see in robberies.’
‘No, I don’t get the feeling that this was a robbery or a break-in either. This is something else,’ Malin says.
‘What about Petersson’s business affairs?’ Zeke says. ‘If he was a bit sleazy, as the rumours seem to suggest, then there could be hundreds of people wishing him harm. People who were pissed off with him.’
‘That’s our most important line of inquiry right now,’ Sven says. ‘We need to try to find files and business records here in the house that might indicate how to proceed. What sort of dodgy dealings was he involved in? Any former colleagues? What about his business? Did he have anything going on at the moment that might have gone wrong? We need to do a serious background check on him. There must be loads of documented evidence. Waldemar, you and Jakobsson take that. Start by searching the castle for documentation once Forensics have cleared the rooms. We also need to find out if he had any sort of will. Who stands to inherit all this? That would be very interesting to know.’
‘Jakobsson’s not on today,’ Waldemar says.
‘Call him in,’ Sven says. ‘And you two, Malin and Zeke, start by questioning the two men who found him.’
They talk to Ingmar Johansson first.
The tenant farmer is slurping coffee on the other side of the table in the castle kitchen, running one hand through his blond hair at regular intervals, telling them how he was uneasy at first when he heard that the castle had a new owner, but that everything had seemed ‘fine’ once he’d had the chance to talk to Petersson.
‘He wasn’t planning to change the terms of our lease.’
‘No changes at all?’ Zeke says.
‘No, not really.’
‘Not really?’ Zeke wonders.
‘Well, he wanted me to go hunting with him whenever he felt like it.’
‘And you didn’t object?’
‘No, why should I? It does me no good if there’s too much game running around on the land I lease.’
‘How often were you supposed to do that?’ Malin asks.
‘Whenever he called.’
‘But how often?’
