distant cannon-fire, as if it were inside a pressure cooker.
The dog was standing by the edge of the moat when they arrived. Barking like crazy, but it didn’t object when it was led to the car, just carried on barking.
Bang, bang.
What can that eye in the water see now? What was the last thing that eye saw?
The bobbing motion of the head, the little snake-like fish around it, the throbbing in Malin’s own head: two things that will give this day its very own insane structure and logic.
Skogså Castle. She’s driven past the end of the drive many times, but she’s never seen the castle before, never had any reason to drive into the forest and out across the fields. But she’s seen pictures of it in a book about Swedish castles and manor houses in her parents’ apartment by the old Infection Park. A fuck-off great stone box, jam-packed with snobbery, even if there’s something restrained about the building itself. The lines are straight, practically no ornamentation; humility in the face of the dramas that have unfolded here over the years.
Malin is crouching at the side of the moat. Large, smooth rocks that must have come straight from the quarry slope steeply down into the water, the green light from the lanterns reflected in its surface. The fish down there, hundreds of them, not much bigger than sprats, blacker than the water as they move around the body.
Malin has pulled the zip of her GORE-TEX jacket right up, the hood tight around her head, three layers underneath and still she’s freezing, feeling the heavy raindrops hammering the fabric. Zeke had the coat in the car, making a comment about her ancient sweater when he picked her up, asked if she’d bought it at the Salvation Army. When he saw her jeans he grinned: ‘Eastern European fashion’s the next big thing, is it?’
But he didn’t remark upon the fact that he was picking her up from the flat, even if he must have wondered what she was doing there.
The cold helps her head to clear.
Helps her gaze focus, so she can concentrate on the corpse floating on the surface, on the blond hair, on the eye staring up at them.
Zeke by her side.
Wide awake. Curious.
‘How the hell are we going to get him out?’
‘We’ll have to get divers from the fire brigade.’
The report of the body had reached the police station at a quarter past eight. Malin had heard the phone ringing when she got out of the shower and it had had an unmistakable note of urgency, as if the phone had its own consciousness and could change the way it sounded according to the circumstances.
Zeke’s voice: ‘Some farmers have called in to say that they’ve found a man murdered out at Skogså Castle.’
She had thrown on her clothes and they had set off south towards Skogså. He had commented on her breath and told her she looked terrible, wondered if she’d been drinking, but she just said she’d had a couple of glasses of tequila yesterday evening, joking that he must have a very sensitive nose.
They had been the first unit on the scene, and as they arrived and parked at the edge of the forest, the large castle doors had opened and out came the two men that she now knows are the tenant farmers, Ingmar Johansson and Göte Lindman.
They had waited where they had been told while she and Zeke looked at the scene and led the dog away, carefully, without contaminating the crime scene. The pair had explained that they were supposed to be hunting deer with Jerry Petersson, but that he hadn’t met them at the agreed time, and that they had found him, or at least what they assumed to be his body, down in the moat.
‘I mean, you can’t really see for sure,’ Johansson had said.
‘But it’s him,’ Lindman had added. ‘He had a coat just like that.’
The corpse in the water.
Jerry Petersson.
Hotshot lawyer. Businessman. The slightly dodgy commercial lawyer who had made a fortune in Stockholm and moved back home when he got the chance to buy Skogså Castle. Malin had
The dog was standing by the edge of the moat when they arrived. Barking like crazy, but it didn’t object when it was led to the car, just carried on barking.
Bang, bang.
What can that eye in the water see now? What was the last thing that eye saw?
The bobbing motion of the head, the little snake-like fish around it, the throbbing in Malin’s own head: two things that will give this day its very own insane structure and logic.
Skogså Castle. She’s driven past the end of the drive many times, but she’s never seen the castle before, never had any reason to drive into the forest and out across the fields. But she’s seen pictures of it in a book about Swedish castles and manor houses in her parents’ apartment by the old Infection Park. A fuck-off great stone box, jam-packed with snobbery, even if there’s something restrained about the building itself. The lines are straight, practically no ornamentation; humility in the face of the dramas that have unfolded here over the years.
Malin is crouching at the side of the moat. Large, smooth rocks that must have come straight from the quarry slope steeply down into the water, the green light from the lanterns reflected in its surface. The fish down there, hundreds of them, not much bigger than sprats, blacker than the water as they move around the body.
Malin has pulled the zip of her GORE-TEX jacket right up, the hood tight around her head, three layers underneath and still she’s freezing, feeling the heavy raindrops hammering the fabric. Zeke had the coat in the car, making a comment about her ancient sweater when he picked her up, asked if she’d bought it at the Salvation Army. When he saw her jeans he grinned: ‘Eastern European fashion’s the next big thing, is it?’
But he didn’t remark upon the fact that he was picking her up from the flat, even if he must have wondered what she was doing there.
The cold helps her head to clear.
Helps her gaze focus, so she can concentrate on the corpse floating on the surface, on the blond hair, on the eye staring up at them.
Zeke by her side.
Wide awake. Curious.
‘How the hell are we going to get him out?’
‘We’ll have to get divers from the fire brigade.’
The report of the body had reached the police station at a quarter past eight. Malin had heard the phone ringing when she got out of the shower and it had had an unmistakable note of urgency, as if the phone had its own consciousness and could change the way it sounded according to the circumstances.
Zeke’s voice: ‘Some farmers have called in to say that they’ve found a man murdered out at Skogså Castle.’
She had thrown on her clothes and they had set off south towards Skogså. He had commented on her breath and told her she looked terrible, wondered if she’d been drinking, but she just said she’d had a couple of glasses of tequila yesterday evening, joking that he must have a very sensitive nose.
They had been the first unit on the scene, and as they arrived and parked at the edge of the forest, the large castle doors had opened and out came the two men that she now knows are the tenant farmers, Ingmar Johansson and Göte Lindman.
They had waited where they had been told while she and Zeke looked at the scene and led the dog away, carefully, without contaminating the crime scene. The pair had explained that they were supposed to be hunting deer with Jerry Petersson, but that he hadn’t met them at the agreed time, and that they had found him, or at least what they assumed to be his body, down in the moat.
‘I mean, you can’t really see for sure,’ Johansson had said.
‘But it’s him,’ Lindman had added. ‘He had a coat just like that.’
The corpse in the water.
Jerry Petersson.
Hotshot lawyer. Businessman. The slightly dodgy commercial lawyer who had made a fortune in Stockholm and moved back home when he got the chance to buy Skogså Castle. Malin had
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