AUTUMN KILLING

by KALLENTOFT MONS

  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 Dalström 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?

  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 Dalström 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 Dalström 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 Dalström, 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.’

  Epilogue

  Linköping, Sävsjö, November

  Anyone who looks and listens can hear us.

  We’re all here, all us boys who have been captured by time.

  We’re drifting around you, together.

  We are everywhere and nowhere.

  We have the same voice, Jerry, Andreas and Fredrik, we’re a choir beyond your understanding.

  The man in the prison cell down there is alone, he’s about to go to court to be sentenced.

  At the same time, he can never be alone, because he knows who he is, why he did what he did.

  A murderer can be enviable. How odd is that?

  But there’s a lot that’s odd.

  And there are few people who look and listen.

  There are few who have the nerve to believe.

  Malin looks around the room. There’s an institutional atmosphere to the study centre that’s been turned into a treatment home for alcoholics who have crossed some sort of boundary for respectable behaviour.

  Six weeks here.

  Sven Sjöman was immovable.

  ‘I’m taking you out of active service. You’re on sick leave, and you’re going to go to this treatment centre.’

  He put the brochure on his desk, the nasty little pamphlet turned to face her.

  Like an advert for an activity holiday.

  Yellow-painted residential blocks around a white-plastered turn-of-the-century house. Birch trees in bloom.

  Snow outside at the moment, the rain of late autumn transformed into beautiful crystals.

  ‘I’ll go.’

  ‘You’ve got no choice if you want to remain a detective.’

  She called Janne. Explained the situation, like Sven wanted her to, and he didn’t sound surprised, maybe he and Sven had spoken to each other.

  ‘You know you’ve got a problem, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That you’re an alcoholic?’

  ‘I know I can’t handle drink, yes. And that I’ve got to—’

  ‘You’ve got to stop drinking, Malin. You can’t have so much as a drop.’

  Janne had let her see Tove. They met for coffee out in Tornby, then they went to H&M to get new clothes for both of them. In the café Malin apologised, said she’s been acting completely crazy recently, told her she was going to get help, as if that was news to Tove.

  ‘Do you have to be gone so long?’

  ‘It could have been even worse.’

  And Malin had felt like crying, and she could see Tove holding herself together. If that was what she was doing?

  It was as if a grown-up were sitting opposite Malin, a familiar stranger, someone who had changed, and they were sitting in the midst of retail mayhem trying not to be sad together. Of all the things a mother and daughter could do together, they were doing this.

  Tove had said: ‘It’ll do you good, Mum, you need help.’

  Do fifteen-year-olds say things like that?

  ‘I’ll be OK, you’ve got to try to get better.’

  Sick, in Tove’s eyes. But there is something sick about a parent who abandons their child.

  ‘I’ll be home before Christmas.’

  But this place.

  Sitting in groups and talking about how much they want a drink.

  Having individual sessions with someone who can’t get her to open up.

  Admit that she’s an ‘alcoholic’.

  Missing Tove so much it’s driving her mad. Feeling so ashamed she wants to turn her skin inside out. Trying to find ways to bear the shame.

  Hugs outside the house in Malmslätt when she dropped Tove off. Janne behind the illuminated kitchen window.

  ‘Be careful. Don’t let anything happen to you. It would kill me.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that, Mum, don’t say that. I’ll be fine.’

  Malin doesn’t miss Janne. Not missing missing him is the best thing about being here.

  Who wants to sit around talking about their destructive behaviour? Their patterns, the things that trigger the thirst. Their memories.

  Leave my memories the fuck alone.

  Don’t want to, don’t want to, don’t want to know.

  Dreams about a faceless boy. About secrets.

  Lies. Told to your face by well-meaning people. Sleepless nights, dreams about snakes being chased by lawnmower blades t
hrough sewers full of blue-stomached rat corpses.

  This all ends for the dead, but not for me. Unless perhaps it does?

  The images in the dreams are black-and-white, as if filmed on an old Super 8 camera, and sometimes there’s a boy in the pictures, a boy running over different grass to the lawn in the film on Anders Dalström’s bedroom wall.

  Yesterday I sat with the others. I said the words straight out: ‘I’m an alcoholic.’

  Dad phoned me here.

  He had heard from Janne where I was, why I wasn’t answering my phone at home or my mobile. He didn’t sound worried, just relieved, him too.

  ‘You weren’t doing too well when we met.’

  What are you hiding from me? The two of you. What is it I don’t know? Are you and Mum going to carry your secret to the grave?

  Are you hiding the reason I’m sitting here in a room in a treatment centre in the middle of the forest staring at a washed-out rag-rug?

  Malin curls up on the bed against the wall. Pulls her legs up and thinks about Maria Murvall, how she’s sitting on another bed in another room.

  What does this world want with us, Maria?

  I’m going to be home by Christmas. I’m going to handle not drinking. We’ll have a nice, peaceful Christmas. I’ve got to stay calm.

  The sofa in the television room is covered with green fabric.

  Malin is alone there, none of the other women with the same problem as her seem to be interested in what’s going on in the world.

  Anders Dalström’s trial starts today. The interviews with him, him saying it was like he had snakes inside him, and that they had somehow disappeared from him when he killed Jerry Petersson. He talked about calm. The sort of calm he wanted to experience again, and that made it easy to kill Fredrik Fågelsjö, but that the snakes refused to listen to any violence against Axel Fågelsjö.

  Börje Svärd’s wife, Anna, died earlier in the week, finally allowed to stop breathing, and Malin called Börje but got no answer, and she hasn’t tried again. But she knew he was going to keep Jerry Petersson’s dog, whatever its name was.

  She takes a sip of the tea she’s just got from the kitchen.

  Looks out of the window, the same darkness as before.

  Then the start of the evening news, a female voice and pictures.

  ‘The man who admitted murdering two people in Linköping this autumn, as well as the kidnap of a third person, was killed today during an attack in Linköping District Court. A man who has been identified as the victim of the kidnapping and the father of one of the murder victims had somehow managed to smuggle a sawn-off shotgun into the courtroom and . . .’

  Malin feels faint.

  She spills tea in her lap, but doesn’t feel the heat as she concentrates on the screen.

  Pictures from the courtroom.

  A commotion.

  She hears the shots. The screams.

  Then Axel Fågelsjö’s face, pale scars on his cheek.

  His head held down against the floor of the courtroom by two police officers.

  His face expressing conviction, determination, isolation and grief.

  A face, not a mask.

  You did it, Malin thinks. And I understand you.

  The monster above Tove. Ready to strangle her.

  If a parent doesn’t protect his or her child, who else will?

  My task is to protect Tove.

  There’s a place in this world for me as well, Malin thinks. She feels that everything’s going to be all right.

  About the Author

  Mons Kallentoft grew up in the provincial town of Linköping, Sweden, where the Malin Fors series is set. The series is a massive European bestseller and has been translated into over twenty languages. Before becoming a novelist, Mons worked in journalism; he is also a renowned food critic. His debut novel, Pesetas, was awarded the Swedish equivalent of the COSTA First Novel Award.

  Mons has been married to Karolina for over twenty years, and they live in Stockholm with their daughter and son.

  Also by Mons Kallentoft

  and in the Malin Fors series

  Midwinter Sacrifice

  Summertime Death

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