You’re saying the same as your father, Axel, Malin thinks. Has he told you what to say?
‘You didn’t want to take over?’
‘I’ve never had any ambitions of that sort.’
The balls are still whining around them.
Pointless projectiles.
What a stupid sport, Malin thinks, as Katarina adjusts the belt of her blue trousers, checks the collar of her pink cotton sweater and puts the club back in the bag.
‘We’ve heard rumours that you were forced to sell because of financial problems. Is that right?’
‘Inspector. We’re an aristocratic family that goes back several hundred years. Almost half a millennium. We don’t like talking about money, but we have never, I repeat never, had any financial problems.’
‘Can I ask what your job is?’ Zeke asks.
‘I don’t work. Since my divorce I’ve been taking it easy. Before that I worked in art.’
‘Art?’
‘I had a gallery specialising in nineteenth-century painting. Mainly reasonably priced Ostgota artists like Krouthen. But some more expensive ones as well. Do you know Eugene Jansson? He was my speciality, along with the female Danish national-romantics.’
Malin and Zeke shake their heads.
‘Did you used to know Jerry Petersson?’ Zeke asks.
‘No.’
‘Was your divorce recent?’ Malin asks.
‘No, ten years ago.’
‘Children?’
Katarina’s eyes darken, she seems to be wondering why this is important.
‘No,’ she replies.
‘You were the same age, you and Petersson,’ Malin says. ‘Did you go to the same school?’
Katarina stares out at the driving range.
‘We were at the Cathedral School. He was in the third year at the same time as my brother when I was in the first year.’
Malin and Zeke look at each other.
‘I remember him,’ Katarina goes on, still looking out at the driving range. ‘But we didn’t socialise. He didn’t belong to my social circle. But we probably attended a few of the same parties, that couldn’t be helped.’
No, Malin thinks. All manner of worlds collide in high school, whether you want them to or not. People might well end up at the same parties, but that didn’t necessarily mean any more than two strangers visiting the same bar today.
‘So who did you hang out with?’ Zeke asks.
‘A girls’ gang.’
‘So you never saw each other socially?’
Katarina looks at them again, and a flash of sorrow seems to cross her eyes.
‘What did I just say?’ she says.
‘We heard,’ Malin says.
Katarina’s thin lips contract to a narrow line.
‘And now Jerry Petersson’s sitting like some bloody Gatsby out in our castle.’
Sudden desperation in both voice and eyes.
‘He may well have sat there like Gatsby,’ Malin says. ‘But right now he’s lying on a mortuary slab over in the National Forensics Laboratory.’
Katarina turns away from them again, puts a ball on the tee, strikes at it furiously, and the ball flies off to the right.
‘What sort of car do you drive?’ Zeke says when she looks back at them again.
‘That’s my business,’ Katarina says. ‘I don’t want to be impolite, but that’s none of your business.’
‘There’s something you need to understand,’ Malin says. ‘As long as we’re looking for Jerry Petersson’s murderer, every single hair on your backside is our business.’
Katarina smiles and says: ‘OK, Inspector, calm down. Nice and calm. I drive a red Toyota, if it’s really so important.’
Malin turns away.
Walks out of golfing hell. She hears Zeke thank Katarina for her time. Thank God he doesn’t apologise for her behaviour.
‘Be nice to my brother,’ Katarina calls after them. ‘He’s harmless.’
‘Even if you have problems with people like that, you really have got to get a grip. You can’t talk to people that way. No matter how rough you’re feeling.’
Zeke is in the driver’s seat, telling her off as they drive out of the car park in Landeryd. The rain is still pouring from the sky, and the darkness of the approaching evening makes Linkoping another degree less welcoming.
‘I don’t feel rough,’ Malin says.
Then she nods.
‘You know what it’s like. Fucking awful people like that.’
And she knows that anger is a way of covering up insecurity, it’s kindergarten psychology, and she feels ashamed, and hopes Zeke can’t see her blushing.
‘She’s hiding something. Just like her father,’ Zeke says. ‘And possibly her brother too.’
‘Yes, she is,’ Malin says. ‘Maybe it’s a family trait, playing with the truth.’
‘Or else they just want to make our job as hard as possible,’ Zeke says.
They pass the villas of Hjulsbro once more, and the white blocks of rented flats with their balcony corridors opposite, on the other side of Brokindsleden. The rain is driving horizontally across the road, as if the wind and rain were trying to connect the different worlds.
‘We’ll just have to see if the interview with Fredrik Fagelsjo comes up with anything,’ Zeke says. ‘They’re probably in the middle of it by now, if he’s sobered up a bit.’
20
The hands on the clock in Interview Room One in the basement of Linkoping Police Station move silently.
One minute past six.
The greyish-black walls are covered with textured, soundproof panelling, and the halogen lamps are positioned so that they cast cones of light over the four chairs that are fixed to the floor around the oblong metal table. The chairs have only recently been fastened down, after too many suspects ended up smashing them into the walls.
A one-way mirror on one wall opens onto the observation room where Sven Sjoman and Karim Akbar are watching the people inside the room.
Johan Jakobsson is looking at Fredrik Fagelsjo. The blood test showed just under one part per thousand, but he seems to have sobered up rapidly. The look in his eyes in the dim light on the other side of the table is clear and alert. Beside Johan, Waldemar Ekenberg shifts on his chair, trying to get comfortable. Fagelsjo is dressed in a blue blazer and yellow shirt, and beside him sits his lawyer, a smart fellow named Karl Ehrenstierna whom Johan has met in other interviews, all of which have produced exactly nothing. We’ll see, Johan thinks, maybe we can outsmart you this time.
He starts the little tape recorder in the middle of the table.
‘Interview with Fagelsjo concerning the investigation into the murder of Jerry Petersson, as well as other offences. Friday 24 October, time 18.04.’
Up to now Fagelsjo has hardly said a word. He said yes when they asked if he wanted a lawyer present at
