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Authors: Mons Kallentoft
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Correspondent
.
If it really is him.
The throbbing in her head. The dog’s barking. Two patrol cars had just arrived at the edge of the forest. No holding back with a suspected murder.
Jerry Petersson.
But who else could it be? Malin closes her eyes, feeling her headache, listening to the air, and she imagines she can hear the rain falling on an invisible body, someone whispering words she can’t understand, words that want to make the world comprehensible, easy to understand and absorb, but they vanish before she has time to work out what they mean.
The divers arrived thirty minutes later, and now their red emergency vehicle is parked alongside Zeke’s car, forensics expert Karin Johannison’s blue Mercedes, and Sven Sjöman’s red Volvo. The cars are parked in a clearing on the other side of the moat, a long way from Petersson’s Range Rover and the tenant farmers’ Saab. The journalists have started to appear, and they are standing in a huddle with cameras of all sizes, flashing as though they were some huge lightning-filled stormcloud. They’re shouting at the police, but are ignored.
They can smell something tasty, the reporters. Front pages. A paper-selling story that will appeal to people’s desire to read about death and violence from a safe distance.
Just like some shoddy thriller, Malin thinks. Life imitating art.
None of the police or fire brigade have driven up in front of the castle.
No one wants to spoil any tyre tracks, footprints or signs of a struggle on the gravel, or whatever else Karin Johannison can find. Malin can see Karin moving around the Range Rover, taking pictures, shaking her head, wiping the rain from her forehead. Even in a yellow raincoat, that woman still manages to look glamorous.
She nodded to Zeke when she arrived, and he pulled his dark-blue raincoat tighter round him.
The nod back took far too long, Malin thinks, knowing that it hides something she’d rather not know about, a truth made visible in the way that only a real hangover can give a new slant on things.
With listlessness comes clarity.
But what do I know about what they get up to? Maybe I’m just imagining it.
None of the firemen, the divers is anyone she recognises.
Thank God. But they must know who she is, they must know all about her and their colleague Janne.
Don’t think about yesterday.
Just thank God for this case. Think about the victim in the moat instead, whoever he is, however he got there. Malin watches as the divers, in their black frogmen’s outfits and yellow visors, lower themselves down from the bridge over the moat on thick ropes, their bodies slowly penetrating the surface of the black water.
Karin beside her and Zeke now.
The rain is horizontal, hitting them straight in the eyes, and over at the edge of the forest, two hundred metres away, on the far side of a meadow, there are low banks of fog.
‘Careful!’ Karin shouts as the divers approach the body. ‘As gently as you can.’ And they fasten a sling around the corpse, give the thumbs-up to a third fireman who is standing on the bridge with a winch, and then there is a whirring sound and the body in the water starts to rise, held carefully by the divers treading water.
‘What a shit morning,’ Zeke says.
Sven Sjöman, wearing a green raincoat, has joined them.
‘So, what do we think?’
‘Well, he didn’t jump in of his own volition,’ Malin says. ‘Or fall in. Grown men don’t often fall into water, unless they’re seriously drunk or have a heart attack or something like that.’
‘If it is Petersson, he’s somewhere around forty-five. Not many heart attacks at that age.’
‘No. He probably had some help.’
‘That seems most likely. We’ll know for sure when Karin’s got the body up.’
Malin nods.
‘If it is Petersson, and if he has been murdered, it’s every journalist’s wet dream.’
‘Careful!’ Karin calls as the rotating body is lifted clear of the water and
Correspondent
.
If it really is him.
The throbbing in her head. The dog’s barking. Two patrol cars had just arrived at the edge of the forest. No holding back with a suspected murder.
Jerry Petersson.
But who else could it be? Malin closes her eyes, feeling her headache, listening to the air, and she imagines she can hear the rain falling on an invisible body, someone whispering words she can’t understand, words that want to make the world comprehensible, easy to understand and absorb, but they vanish before she has time to work out what they mean.
The divers arrived thirty minutes later, and now their red emergency vehicle is parked alongside Zeke’s car, forensics expert Karin Johannison’s blue Mercedes, and Sven Sjöman’s red Volvo. The cars are parked in a clearing on the other side of the moat, a long way from Petersson’s Range Rover and the tenant farmers’ Saab. The journalists have started to appear, and they are standing in a huddle with cameras of all sizes, flashing as though they were some huge lightning-filled stormcloud. They’re shouting at the police, but are ignored.
They can smell something tasty, the reporters. Front pages. A paper-selling story that will appeal to people’s desire to read about death and violence from a safe distance.
Just like some shoddy thriller, Malin thinks. Life imitating art.
None of the police or fire brigade have driven up in front of the castle.
No one wants to spoil any tyre tracks, footprints or signs of a struggle on the gravel, or whatever else Karin Johannison can find. Malin can see Karin moving around the Range Rover, taking pictures, shaking her head, wiping the rain from her forehead. Even in a yellow raincoat, that woman still manages to look glamorous.
She nodded to Zeke when she arrived, and he pulled his dark-blue raincoat tighter round him.
The nod back took far too long, Malin thinks, knowing that it hides something she’d rather not know about, a truth made visible in the way that only a real hangover can give a new slant on things.
With listlessness comes clarity.
But what do I know about what they get up to? Maybe I’m just imagining it.
None of the firemen, the divers is anyone she recognises.
Thank God. But they must know who she is, they must know all about her and their colleague Janne.
Don’t think about yesterday.
Just thank God for this case. Think about the victim in the moat instead, whoever he is, however he got there. Malin watches as the divers, in their black frogmen’s outfits and yellow visors, lower themselves down from the bridge over the moat on thick ropes, their bodies slowly penetrating the surface of the black water.
Karin beside her and Zeke now.
The rain is horizontal, hitting them straight in the eyes, and over at the edge of the forest, two hundred metres away, on the far side of a meadow, there are low banks of fog.
‘Careful!’ Karin shouts as the divers approach the body. ‘As gently as you can.’ And they fasten a sling around the corpse, give the thumbs-up to a third fireman who is standing on the bridge with a winch, and then there is a whirring sound and the body in the water starts to rise, held carefully by the divers treading water.
‘What a shit morning,’ Zeke says.
Sven Sjöman, wearing a green raincoat, has joined them.
‘So, what do we think?’
‘Well, he didn’t jump in of his own volition,’ Malin says. ‘Or fall in. Grown men don’t often fall into water, unless they’re seriously drunk or have a heart attack or something like that.’
‘If it is Petersson, he’s somewhere around forty-five. Not many heart attacks at that age.’
‘No. He probably had some help.’
‘That seems most likely. We’ll know for sure when Karin’s got the body up.’
Malin nods.
‘If it is Petersson, and if he has been murdered, it’s every journalist’s wet dream.’
‘Careful!’ Karin calls as the rotating body is lifted clear of the water and
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