Autumn Killing dimf-3

by Mons Kallentoft

  ‘Who bought it?’

  ‘I’m afraid. .’

  ‘There’s nothing to stop you telling us.’

  ‘I. .’

  ‘Now!’ Malin says. ‘Otherwise I’ll be on your backside like a tick from hell for the rest of your life. So, who bought it?’

  ‘Axel Fagelsjo himself, who else? We signed the contracts yesterday, and he got the keys to the front door as a symbolic gesture. We’ve put all of Petersson’s possessions in storage, and the art’s gone to Bukowski’s auction house. He laughed at that business with the keys, said he’d kept several sets. And I don’t think Petersson ever changed the locks.’

  ‘He’s bought back the castle,’ Malin says.

  Zeke keeps his hands on the wheel, staring ahead at the road as they drive out of the city, out into the dark countryside.

  ‘That was quick work.’

  ‘An old fighter,’ Malin says, as they head towards the castle way above every speed limit.

  They must be there.

  Fields.

  Forest.

  What’s on the move out there? What is it that clouds people’s minds? What drives them to do things that there are hardly any words for? Like the honour killing they’d investigated before this case.

  What makes a person not answer a call from her daughter? Malin shuts her eyes, sees Tove on the floor of that room with the mad woman bent over her. Sees a rape victim on a chair in a dark corner of a godforsaken room in a godforsaken hospital.

  Tove Fors.

  Fredrik Fagelsjo.

  Anders Dalstrom.

  Jerry Petersson.

  I know what unites you.

  I can do something for you, Tove. For me. For us.

  If I can’t manage to love you, who on earth could I manage to love?

  They’re the first car on the scene, and the castle rises up from the black earth, an ark for all the feelings human beings have ever felt.

  The green lanterns are glowing, spreading green light over the water in the moat. Unless the glow comes from the water itself?

  No car in front of the castle.

  And Malin runs up to the door, yanks at it, but it’s locked.

  Shit.

  They aren’t here.

  Zeke comes up behind her.

  ‘Doesn’t look like they’re here,’ he whispers, and Malin wonders why he’s whispering.

  ‘Damn. I was so sure.’

  Silence around them, except for the rustling of the forest.

  ‘He could have locked the door behind them with Fagelsjo’s key,’ Malin says.

  ‘Let’s go round,’ Zeke says.

  And they circle the castle, over to the chapel, deserted and shut up. The rain patters on their jackets and Zeke is moving stiffly in front of her.

  They’re walking in silence.

  Where’s the car? Malin thinks. They must be here.

  They turn a corner, and they can hear a car, maybe one of the patrol cars, coming up the drive, and now they can see light, a thin strip of light seeping out from the shutters on one of the cellar windows.

  They look at each other.

  Nod, wipe the rain from their faces, run to the front of the castle, the gravel and stones crunching under their feet.

  They see three uniformed officers getting out of a patrol car.

  ‘The door,’ Malin shouts. ‘They could be in there. In the cellar.’

  And a moment later the uniforms are throwing themselves at the door, but their efforts are wasted.

  ‘This is impossible,’ one of them shouts, and Malin orders them back, draws her pistol from its holster, and ignoring the risk of ricochets she kneels down at the side of the steps leading up to the doorway and shoots off the black-painted iron lock, probably several hundred years old, emptying her magazine, and the lock falls from its chiselled hole onto the stone steps.

  Malin is first inside.

  Rushing through the rooms.

  The kitchen like a shiny white slaughterhouse even in the darkness.

  She rushes down the steps into the cellar, expecting to see Axel Fagelsjo down there together with Anders Dalstrom. But what will the scene look like?

  The cellar is dark and cold and she’s having trouble breathing, she can feel the others behind her, their fear, their footsteps drumming rhythmically on the stone floors. She crouches as she goes through the passageways, kicking open the door to what must once have been a prison cell. Was this where the Russian prisoners-of-war were locked up before they were walled up in the moat?

  They go through one, two, three rooms. All empty.

  Then a fourth door.

  Light coming from behind it.

  Malin presses the handle.

  What am I going to see?

  She opens the door.

  72

  Is he still here?

  Bettina, is that you?

  No, but is he still here?

  What was it he said?

  I didn’t understand.

  Someone’s coming now, is he coming back?

  He took his stinking fingers out of my nostrils, but the rag is still in my mouth. He didn’t cut me again.

  Ropes around my ankles and wrists. I try pulling this way and that, and I know he’s going to come back, I want to see you, Bettina.

  Or do I?

  I want to stay. I know what I’ve got to do, I can feel the light returning to my eyes now, I heard a door open, is that death or life coming in?

  Spare me.

  I’m a good person.

  The room is bathed in light from a spotlight in the ceiling.

  Malin sees him.

  He’s sitting still on a chair in the middle of the room, blood running from his head and nostrils.

  Axel Fagelsjo.

  Alone. No Anders Dalstrom.

  Fagelsjo. Not so imposing now, and Malin thinks that it makes little difference if he’s alive or dead, yet she still hesitates in front of him, approaching him slowly, is he dead, alive?

  Fagelsjo seems to be melting into the stone beneath him, his blood seems to be sucked up by the castle walls, and she can feel the heartbeat of history, pumping a strange music through her veins.

  Standing right in front of Fagelsjo now.

  She puts an arm on his shoulder.

  He squints. His eyes seem to clear.

  Malin waves the others into the room. No one else there, where’s Dalstrom?

  And Fagelsjo jerks.

  Coughs, wants the rag out of his mouth, and Malin looks around again, nothing, and she puts her pistol down on the stone floor, Zeke breathing heavily behind her.

  Then she takes the rag from Fagelsjo’s mouth as a uniformed officer cuts the ropes tying his wrists and ankles.

  He throws up his arms, as if with some peculiar, new-found power.

  Kicks his legs.

  His bloody sweater shudders, and Malin can see the fat moving beneath it.

  Then he moves, and stands up.

  Looks down at Malin.

  ‘The bastard didn’t have the nerve,’ Fagelsjo says. ‘He didn’t have the nerve.’

  He probably did have the nerve, Father.

  But he couldn’t, didn’t want to.

  I see you sit down again, defenceless, and not long ago you were experiencing the most profound of all fears, the feeling that is the only thing that exists on the boundary where life and death meet.

  You were there just now, and now you’ve been called back, but have you learned anything, Father?

  I don’t think so.

  I shall be buried in a few days’ time, Father, but you don’t care about that, or do you? The family vault is ready out in the chapel.

  There’s so much I don’t know about you, Father, and now Malin Fors and Zacharias Martinsson are standing by the door, they’re talking to their boss, wondering: where is Anders Dalstrom?

  You’re close now, Malin, but this drama isn’t over yet. There are still a few more moments of obscurity and clarity to come.

&nbs
p; You’ve found the knife, with the coat of arms on the shaft, the knife that perforated my body. Karin Johannison will let you know within a few days that it was the knife that inflicted my wounds.

  I’m tumbling around in my space, amused as I am by this relentless desire for events to play themselves out, come to a conclusion, so that a new beginning can finally have its beginning.

  There’s some justice in the position I’m in. I destroyed friendships, and many other forms of love, and I never took responsibility for that.

  But where is he now, Anders Dalstrom?

  You know, Malin. You know.

  Malin is crouching beside Axel Fagelsjo, who has sat down on the chair again, when she sees Waldemar Ekenberg and Johan Jakobsson coming over from the direction of the stairs.

  Axel Fagelsjo is carefully but firmly wiping the blood from his face, breathing slowly, saying: ‘He didn’t have the nerve. The bastard. But he knocked out several of my teeth.’

  ‘Did he say anything as he left?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you have any idea where he might have gone?’

  ‘No. Where would someone like that go?’

  The man before her looks huge on his chair, the look in his eyes tired but sharp as he says: ‘When animals are about to die, they go to places they’ve been before, places that are important to them.’

  ‘Did he have a rifle?’

  ‘How else do you think he got me down here?’

  ‘So you were here when he arrived?’

  ‘No, I was at home in the apartment, but I was about to come out here when he arrived. It was time to come home.’

  Malin jumps up and runs over to Zeke without paying any attention to Johan, Sven or Waldemar.

  ‘Come on!’ she yells. ‘I know where he is.’

  Zeke follows her without asking, and they rush towards the car over the moat where the water seems to be frothing with green bubbles. The rain is pounding the ground and soon they are in the Volvo, carrying them faster and faster through the darkness of the estate, imagining that they can see the spirits of those who have gone before them, drifting anxiously outside the car windows.

  They sit in silence.

  Behind them other cars with flashing blue lights.

  But no sirens.

  The sound of wind and rain and engines dominates the forest and fields.

  They pass Linnea Sjostedt’s cottage, a dull glow coming from the windows.

  They pass the building where the party took place that New Year’s Eve, turn once, twice, three times, and then the sharp bend by the field where Jerry Petersson and the others rolled over and over and over, bodies flying through the air, the winter night must have been shattered by the sound of metal crumpling, bodies breaking, beyond any hope of repair.

  A car some way out in the field.

  White, almost transparent rain in the beams of light from the headlamps.

  And at the boundary of light and darkness stands a man with a rifle in his hand.

  73

  Lights and sounds.

  Cars, spraying cascades of colour.

  I couldn’t kill the old man. But I could kill his son, I had that much in me. And it felt wonderful.

  I did it.

  I didn’t mean to kill Jerry Petersson, but can anyone say he didn’t deserve to end his days like that?

  It’s time for me to go. This is it. And this is a good place, Andreas, isn’t it?

  If you’re here, show me, because in that case I’ll stay. And stare straight into the yellow faces of the snakes.

  The lights.

  The cars.

  Shouting and people, that person moving towards me like a black silhouette over the waterlogged meadow.

  I can’t see the person’s face.

  But I know it isn’t you, Andreas.

  Out of the car.

  ‘I’ll take this on my own, Zeke.’

  The figure out in the field seems to be shaking, just like in the images of his life. His long black hair like a whip in the wind.

  And in his hand the rifle. A sporting rifle.

  Malin has drawn her pistol for the second time that day.

  Close to their prey now.

  Evil, confusion, fear, all within sight.

  He’s holding the gun along the side of his body.

  The others take cover behind the cars, Sven’s voice, anxious, concerned, but full of certainty: I can’t stop her from doing this, and now she’s walking towards the man in the field and the closer she gets, the clearer his contorted features become, the torment in his eyes. It’s as if he can’t see me, Malin thinks. As if he’s alone in the rain and wind and his gaze seems to be searching for something he’s been missing for a long time.

  I can’t see anything but darkness.

  Can only feel the sharp slithering of the snakes inside me, can only hear their whimpering. Feel Dad’s blows, hear their shriek as they chase me.

  You’re not here, Andreas.

  That’s enough for me, there’s nothing more for me to do here, and the cold rain that has pressed through all my clothes will never stop, nor will the darkness.

  I’m looking at the lights and the person coming towards me, she seems to be shouting but I can only hear an agitated rumbling, as if she wants something important.

  But I ignore her. Instead I put the barrel of the rifle in my mouth, and caress the trigger the way your finger often caressed it, Dad, before your eye was destroyed.

  I see her in front of me.

  But I can’t see you, Andreas. You’re not here.

  He’s raised the gun to his mouth.

  His finger’s on the trigger, careful yet without any uncertainty.

  ‘Don’t do it,’ Malin shouts. ‘It won’t make anything better.’

  As she shouts a powerful wind sweeps over the field, somehow making a rattling sound.

  He’s going to shoot, Malin thinks.

  But Anders Dalstrom doesn’t pull the trigger, instead he meets her gaze, and his eyes become calm, reassured by what is about to happen, and Malin shouts again: ‘There’s another way, there always is,’ and time becomes compressed and she sees Janne and Tove standing in front of her. They’re sitting watching television in the house out in Malmslatt, waiting for her to come back with her love, that must be it, they must be missing that. I want to understand, she thinks, what it is that stands between me and the love that I feel.

  ‘Don’t do it.’

  My voice a prayer now.

  Don’t do it.

  There’s always another way.

  ‘Don’t do it,’ she shouts at me. I can hear it now.

  But I want to do this, and I look out into the darkness, and I see a car roll and spin and the world tumbles into nothingness, it ends.

  Tell me, why should I stay?

  The barrel is cold and hard. A taste of gunmetal and iron.

  I’m going to do it now.

  And her mouth moves, but no words come out, but what is it I can hear, whose voice, and what’s it saying?

  Do it. Do it.

  You weak fucker. Do it!

  Pull the trigger and put a stop to this.

  Of course I was driving, but what difference does that make? You had no life before that, and afterwards you had a reason to believe in your own misery, and you never moved on from that.

  Hopeless.

  So do it, do it, do it, do it now, now, now!

  Away, away, away.

  Anders Dalstrom wants to wave his arms in the air, wave the disembodied voice and everything it’s saying away, even if it’s saying the words he most wants to hear.

  Do it.

  ‘Sit still. I’ve got the ruler. Hold your fingers out.’

  ‘Get him, get him.’

  Do it.

  I shall, I shall, but have I got the nerve?

  Go away!

  I want to do it myself.

  Do it, says the voice, don’t, says another, don’t do it, and whose face is that in front of me?<
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  He’s staring into thin air, as if he’s focusing on something just in front of my face, Malin thinks.

  I know what you’re looking for, she thinks, says: ‘He’s here. He wants you to stay.’

  And Anders Dalstrom stands still, stops shaking, just as if the film of his life had come to an end, then he moves his mouth, but Malin can’t make out his words, the noises coming out of the gap around the barrel are aimed at someone else.

  His finger on the trigger.

  Darkness like a wall behind him.

  What’s that in the darkness?

  Andreas? Is that you, are you there?

  Is that really your face floating in front of hers? In her face? In place of her face?

  What are you saying?

  ‘Anders, it’s me, but so much more,’ the voice says now.

  ‘I’m the one you need to listen to. No one else.

  ‘And I don’t want you here.

  ‘No.

  ‘You’re not done yet. The snakes will go. I promise.

  ‘The life you’ll lead might not be easy or enviable, but it will be your life.

  ‘You can see my face now. It’s me. Isn’t it? So take the barrel of the rifle out of your mouth. Otherwise I’ll disappear again.’

  It’s you, Andreas.

  And you’re telling me not to do it.

  I’m going to listen to you. How could I do anything else?

  Don’t do it.

  The blades of the lawnmower are finally silent, nothing chasing me any more, and one day, some day, love will come to me again, the love I sought and fled from.

  So don’t do it.

  For my sake. For Katarina’s. For everyone’s sake.

  Malin sees Dalstrom slowly take the barrel of the rifle out of his mouth, then with a quick jerk he throws the rifle out into the boggy ground of the meadow, then he puts his hands in the air and looks Malin right in the eye.

  What can you see? Malin thinks.

  Me?

  Someone else?

  She aims her pistol at the man in front of her.

  Feels the rain running under her collar and down her back, hears the sound of steps behind her.

  Then she sees two uniformed officers go over to Dalstrom, force his arms behind his back, with gentle smiles.

  An arm on her shoulder.

  Zeke’s voice in her ear: ‘You’re crazy, Malin. Crazy.’