Karlsson shakes his head.
‘God, no. They were really stuck-up. I was in the parallel class to Fredrik Fagelsjo, and he was the one organising the New Year party. Sometimes he used to invite me and some of the others to make up the numbers.’
Johan nods.
‘And Petersson, was he friends with either of the Fagelsjo kids?’
‘No, I don’t think so. In some ways he was more like me. An ordinary working-class kid who was allowed to join in sometimes.’
‘And you weren’t friends, you and Jerry?’
‘No, I said that.’
‘And the others in the car? Were they friends with Jerry?’
‘Andreas Ekstrom was in Jerry’s gang. Jasmin Sandsten probably had a crush on Jerry, that’s probably why she wanted to come. I think most of the girls had a crush on him.’
‘So you think Jasmin Sandsten had a crush on Jerry Petersson?’ Johan asks.
‘I don’t know. All the girls seemed to be crazy about him. That’s what he was like.’
‘Jerry’s gang?’ Waldemar says.
‘He just had a lot of friends,’ Karlsson says, rubbing his top lip with one hand. Strange, Waldemar thinks. We haven’t found a single person who describes themselves as Petersson’s friend.
‘But he wasn’t friends with the Fagelsjos?’
‘No, not as far as I know. There was a group of rich kids, no one else was let in except when they wanted to make up the numbers.’
‘Can you tell us about that evening?’
Waldemar is making an effort to sound friendly, establish trust, and Johan is surprised at how genuine it actually sounds.
Karlsson clears his throat and seems to gather his senses before he starts talking again.
‘Like I said, Fredrik Fagelsjo had organised a New Year’s Eve party. I got invited, and was allowed to borrow Dad’s car to get there, as long as I promised not to drink. After midnight I wanted to go home, piss-ups like that are no fun if you’re not drunk as well.’
‘No, they certainly aren’t,’ Waldemar says.
‘And as I was about to leave, Jerry Petersson came over with Jasmin Sandsten and Andreas Ekstrom and asked for a lift. Andreas squeezed in the back seat with the girl, and Jerry sat in the front, and the rest is history. I was driving sensibly, but we still slid in the darkness and snow and ended up rolling over into a field. We had seat belts in the front, but not in the back, and they got tossed about like they were in a centrifuge before being thrown out of the rear window. Andreas died of head injuries, and Jasmin. . well, she still isn’t right.’
‘The others had been drinking?’ Waldemar asks.
‘It was New Year’s Eve.’
‘Did anything particular happen at the party?’
Karlsson shakes his head.
‘Do you think about the accident much?’
Johan says the words slowly, and he sees Karlsson’s face tense and his pupils expand.
‘No. I’ve put it behind me. It was an accident. I was cleared of any responsibility and I didn’t feel that anyone blamed me for it. But sure, sometimes I think about Andreas and Jasmin.’
‘Were you friends with Andreas and Jasmin?’
‘Only superficially. We went to the same parties. Talked between classes.’
‘Did you have any contact with Petersson over the years?’ Waldemar asks.
‘Nothing. Not a thing. I haven’t spoken to him once. But it looks like things went well for him. No doubt about that.’
Waldemar rubs his knees, fiddling restlessly with his fingers.
‘Is it OK if I smoke?’
Karlsson nods.
‘If you let me have one.’
‘Can I ask what your job is?’
‘I’m a nurse. I work nights in the X-ray department.’
‘You never married? No kids?’
‘No, that’s not my thing.’
And the room fills with suffocating smoke, and Johan has to force himself not to cough before asking: ‘Do you feel guilty?’
Karlsson looks surprised at first, then thinks before he says: ‘Sometimes.’
‘What about the parents? Were they angry with you?’
‘I think they all accepted it was an accident, that things like that happen. I don’t know. I think Andreas’s parents managed to move on. I got that impression at his funeral.’
‘Was Jerry at the funeral?’ Johan asks.
‘No.’
‘Fredrik Fagelsjo?’
‘No, are you kidding?’
‘What about Jasmin’s parents?’
‘She was left a vegetable,’ Karlsson says. ‘I heard her dad took it hard. I think they got divorced.’
Johan doesn’t reply, looks out of the window, thinks about the father who lost his daughter that New Year’s Eve, sees his own daughter running through the house out in Linghem.
In a flowing white dress.
A daughter whose soul vanishes in a snow-covered field one night. A daughter who doesn’t stop breathing, and instead faces decades of suffering. What sort of emotions might something like that bring to life?
Zeke Martinsson puts his head in his hands, trying to shut out all the sounds of the police station. The noise and beeping that fills the open-plan office sometimes makes him so crazy he can’t think.
Malin in Tenerife.
Must have landed by now. What are the chances of her seeing her parents? God knows.
Zeke has just spoken to Axel and Katarina Fagelsjo about the accident. Sven Sjoman had already spoken to Fredrik Fagelsjo about it, in the presence of his lawyer. All the members of the Fagelsjo family say they can hardly remember the New Year’s Eve when the accident took place, it’s all in the past and none of them ever gave any thought to the fact that Jerry Petersson was the surviving passenger. Not when he popped up as a prospective buyer for the castle, and not when he was murdered.
As Axel Fagelsjo expressed it over the phone: ‘The people in the car were a long way outside our closest, central circle of acquaintances. The children used to invite them sometimes to help fill the rooms.’
Of course they remember. Of course they remember that Jerry was the passenger.
As Katarina put it: ‘I don’t remember that party at all. I have no memory of it whatsoever, it’s all a blank.’
There’s something that doesn’t fit here, Zeke thinks. He can feel that it’s important. But how?
Too much.
Too little.
Skogsa.
Always their castle, their estate.
A car spins off the road one New Year’s Eve and one young person dies, another is terribly injured. One of the people in the car, one of the survivors, is found dead many years later in a moat on the land that now belongs to him.
‘It’s all a blank.’
You’re lying, Zeke thinks. There’s nothing like death to make people remember things.
