AUTUMN KILLING

by KALLENTOFT MONS

  Tove pokes at the mushrooms.

  ‘Something wrong with the pizza?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You normally like pizza.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with it.’

  ‘But you’re not eating.’

  ‘Mum, it’s too fatty. I’ll get spots, and I’ll get fat. I had one on my chin last week.’

  ‘You won’t get fat. Neither your dad or I . . .’

  ‘Couldn’t you have made something?’

  And Tove looks at her as if to say: I know what you’re doing, Mum, I know what it’s like being grown-up, don’t try lying to me, or convincing me that you can handle it.

  Malin pours some more wine from the box she bought on the way home the other day. Third or fourth, no, fifth glass, and she can see Tove wrinkle her nose.

  ‘Why do you have to drink tonight? Now that I’m here, like you wanted?’

  Malin is taken aback by her question, so straightforward and direct.

  ‘I’m celebrating,’ Malin replies. ‘That you’re here.’

  ‘You’re really messed up.’

  ‘I’m not messed up.’

  ‘No, you’re an alcoholic.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  Tove sits in silence, poking at the pizza.

  ‘Let’s get one thing straight, Tove. I like a drink. But I’m not an alcoholic. Got that?’

  Tove’s eyes turn dark.

  ‘So stop drinking, then.’

  ‘This isn’t about that,’ Malin says.

  ‘So what is it about?’

  ‘You’re too young to understand,’ and Tove’s eyes flash with distaste and Malin wants to cut the shame from her own face, carve the words ‘You’re right, Tove’ in her forehead, then one of her hands starts to tremble and Tove stares at the hand, looking scared, but says nothing.

  ‘How’s school?’ Malin goes on.

  ‘Dad says you’re . . .’

  ‘What does he say?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Tell me what he says.’

  Her voice too angry from all this tiredness, and the lamp above the worktop flickers twice before the light settles again.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You’re ganging up on me, the pair of you. Aren’t you?’

  Tove doesn’t even shake her head.

  ‘He’s turning you against me,’ Malin says.

  ‘You’re drunk, Mum. Dad was the one who thought I should come round.’

  ‘So you didn’t really want to come?’

  ‘You’re drunk.’

  ‘I’m not drunk, and I’ll drink as much as I like.’

  ‘You should—’

  ‘I know what I should do. I should drink the whole damn box. You’ve decided to live with your dad, haven’t you? Haven’t you?’

  Tove just stares at Malin.

  ‘Haven’t you?’ Malin screams. ‘Admit it!’

  Malin has got up, standing in the kitchen and looking angrily but beseechingly at her daughter.

  Without changing her expression at all, Tove stands up and says in a calm voice, looking directly into Malin’s eyes: ‘Yes, I’ve made up my mind. I can’t live here.’

  ‘Of course you can, why on earth wouldn’t you be able to?’

  Tove goes out into the hall and puts on her jacket. Opens the front door and walks out.

  Malin downs her glass of wine out in the hall.

  Then, as she hears Tove’s footsteps on the stairs, she throws the glass at the wall and shouts after her daughter: ‘Wait. Come back, Tove. Come back!’

  Tove runs down Storgatan towards the river, past the Hemköp supermarket and the bowling alley, and she feels the raindrops and wind in her face, how nice the cold is, dissolving her thoughts and how the dampness in the air means that the tears on her cheeks don’t show.

  Bloody Mum. Bloody sodding Mum. Only thinking about herself.

  Dad’s working tonight. I could have stayed at home on my own. I can do that now, I want to, I should have.

  I hope he’s at the fire station. Bloody Mum.

  Her heart is thudding in her chest. Trying to get out, and her stomach clenches and she just wants to get away from the autumn, away from this shitty little city.

  Up ahead, on the other side of the bridge, she can see the fire station. It’s glowing in the light from the tall, yellow street lamps.

  She runs inside.

  Gudrun in reception recognises her, looks worried, asks: ‘Tove, what’s happened?’

  ‘Is Dad here?’

  ‘He’s upstairs. Go straight up.’

  Five minutes later she’s lying in the darkness with her head in her dad’s lap on the bed in his room. He’s stroking her cheek, telling her that everything will be all right. Then the light goes on and the alarm starts to howl.

  ‘Shit,’ Dad says. ‘Probably another flood. I’ve got to go. I don’t want to, but I’ve got to.’

  ‘I’ll stay here,’ Tove says, as her dad kisses her on the cheek.

  Soon the room is dark and silent and she tries to think about nothing.

  She sees herself standing on the edge of an immense plain in the darkness. She has no map, there are no lights in sight, but she still knows how to proceed. She just knows what she has to do, the certainty like a steady note inside her, entirely free of the sounds of childhood.

  Her vision clouded by the cheap wine.

  Malin is lying on her bed, listening to the raindrops drumming persistently on the window behind the blinds. She’s tried calling Tove, but her mobile is switched off.

  She closes her eyes,

  Faces drift through her mind.

  Tove. Mum. Dad. Janne.

  Just go, Tove. Live where you like. I don’t care.

  She can’t handle their mocking smiles so she forces them away and then sees Daniel Högfeldt’s face, his lips are moist and she feels her crotch contract inside her jeans; the drink has made her horny, it’s difficult to resist but not impossible, and then she sees Maria Murvall running through her closed room.

  Fågelsjö.

  The living and the dead, the soulless.

  Jochen Goldman.

  The thug that Waldemar kept going on about back at the start.

  Andreas Ekström’s mother. Jasmin Sandsten’s mother in another tragic room.

  Jonas Karlsson. Were you blackmailing Petersson? Did you want to be like him? But seeing as there was probably only one killer, it can’t be you. We checked, and you’ve got a cast-iron alibi for the night of the second murder.

  Anders Dalström, Andreas Ekström’s friend. Could he have found out who was driving and murdered him for the sake of his lost friendship?

  Fredrik Fågelsjö. How does all this fit together? The threads of different lives singing in the darkness. Black birds squawking at them through the rain.

  The bed, the world, spins around and around. What is it I’m missing? she thinks. What is it I’m not seeing?

  How much wine have I drunk? Two glasses? Five? I’m probably OK to drive. Of course I can drive. There won’t be any patrols out at this time of night, will there?

  You get out of your car in front of the castle, Malin.

  A beautiful castle, but your drunken eyes can’t tell.

  It could never be my castle, but I wanted what I thought was there.

  The green lanterns are hanging darkly along the moat, the imprisoned souls of the prisoners-of-war are whispering, their mouths glowing.

  You were lucky on your way out here.

  No mishaps, no pedestrians to hit, no patrols wanting you to blow in a tube.

  I feel for you, Malin. You poor, wretched wreck of a human being, who can’t even handle your love for your own daughter.

  The doors to the castle are locked.

  Malin has brought with her the bottle of vodka she bought at the same time as the wine box, drinking straight from the bottle as she walks around the castle towards the chapel.

  The raindrops seem to be leaping from the skies
as if from a burning building.

  Her cotton jacket, the thin one that she for some reason put on, is soon wet through and cold, and she coughs, stumbling along the edge of the dark forest towards the building.

  A son murdered and laid out naked upon the family vault. The upstart in the moat. Privilege. Denial. Degeneration, and a party one cold New Year’s Eve. History like a pressure cooker for people’s souls.

  The door to the chapel is locked. She doesn’t have a key, so she stands in the archway by the door looking in at the icons, or the place where the body lay. She drinks from the bottle, two warming mouthfuls, missing the sweet, nuanced taste of tequila.

  But the rawness of the vodka matches this moment better.

  The forest behind the chapel seems to be moving. Evil is on the move, slithering, and all the windows of the castle seem to be lit up, skulls grinning in the recesses, laughing at all her shortcomings, well aware that the dead, and death, always win.

  What am I doing here?

  I’m searching for a truth. Fleeing from another.

  She throws the bottle of vodka in the moat.

  Full again.

  The black water greedily swallows the bottle. No fish now.

  There’s a green glow from the cracks between the stones. Where does the light come from?

  She can feel how she’s losing her grip on the world, but the rain anchors her to reality, and she walks around the castle a few times to clear her head before getting back in the car to wait, listening to ‘non-stop music’, a numbing racket that almost makes her fall asleep. She looks over towards the forest. Between the trees, scarcely visible in the darkness, the young snakes are there again. The shapes are there, but she can’t hear their collective voice, if it’s actually there at all. Maybe they’ve said all they wanted to say?

  ‘I’m not scared of you,’ Malin shouts towards the forest. ‘Fucking bastard snakes.’

  She blinks, and the snakes are gone. All that’s left is darkness, and she almost misses the slithering creatures, doesn’t want to be without them. Then she hears the sound of a lawnmower, of feet trying to escape the blades.

  She puts her hands over her ears and the sound disappears.

  She feels almost sober a few hours later, as she turns the key in the ignition and leaves the castle and the spirits and souls behind her.

  She drives past the field where the accident must have happened. Stops, but doesn’t get out.

  The darkness and rain seem to shake figures out from the past, black souls that are still moving over the grass, the moss and the rocks, trying to escape what they are.

  She drives on.

  Increases her speed.

  On the approach to Sturefors she passes a warning triangle by the side of the road. A hundred metres further on she sees a police patrol car, its lights on.

  A uniformed officer she doesn’t recognise waves at her to pull over.

  She wants to put her foot down.

  Follow Fredrik Fågelsjö’s example.

  Get away, but she stops.

  The uniform raises an eyebrow when she winds down the window, an anxious look in his eyes.

  ‘Detective Inspector Fors,’ he says. ‘What are you doing out at this time of day?’

  He is a mask, Malin thinks. A talking mask, with thin skin stretched over his cheekbones.

  The uniform frowns.

  ‘I’m afraid I must ask you to blow into this.’

  56

  Saturday, 1 November

  An implacable Sven Sjöman is standing inside the door of his office, having just closed it hard behind him once he’d fetched Malin from her desk, where she had been sitting in her most respectable white blouse, which she had even managed to iron that morning. She doesn’t know where Tove got to last night, she probably got the first bus out to Malmslätt. She hasn’t checked with her or Janne yet, didn’t want to wake them on a Saturday morning or answer any difficult questions, and if she hadn’t got home, Janne would have called. There was never any question of her staying over, even if Malin would have liked her to. Or was there? She hadn’t spoken to Janne before Tove arrived, she took it for granted that they had talked to each other. I ought to call Tove, Janne – what if she didn’t get home?

  The look in Sven’s eyes.

  Have to deal with this first.

  He knows I got caught.

  And when she thinks about how Tove left yesterday she feels sick with herself, wants to disappear far away and never come back.

  The clock on the wall of Sven’s office says just after ten o’clock, no case meeting this morning seeing as they had one yesterday afternoon. Besides, it’s Saturday. But obviously a working Saturday, what with two fresh, unsolved murders.

  Sven looks at Malin for a long time before saying in a loud voice: ‘I hope you appreciate what a fucking mess you’ve got us all into. Got yourself into.’

  Malin wants to get up and shout at him that she couldn’t care less, that she isn’t asking for special treatment, but she stops herself, thinks better of it. Right now she just wants to cling on to what she still has.

  ‘I don’t know what got into me.’

  ‘One and a half parts per thousand, Malin. Drink-driving. The most obvious sign of an alcoholic. What the hell were you doing out there?’

  ‘I’m not an alcoholic.’

  ‘You don’t know what you are. Or what you’re doing.’

  ‘So charge me, then. Report me.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re saying. I’m not the only one risking my job for your sake.’

  Sven’s voice lacks the protective undertone that’s usually there, he’s giving her orders now and expects her to take responsibility, do what she has to do.

  The breathalyser turned bright red last night on the way back from the castle.

  And the uniform and his colleague had looked at each other, made a call, as if something important was happening, as if they were trying to sort something out, then they told her they had spoken to Sven, and that they were both prepared to pretend nothing had happened. She had felt like telling them to go to hell out there in the cold, rainy darkness, but she had kept her mouth shut, in spite of how drunk she was, aware of the risk they were taking and that this must be utterly at odds with their sense of justice.

  But the solidarity of the force is stronger, the sense of standing together. Of standing above the law?

  ‘Everyone makes mistakes,’ one of the uniforms says.

  They had driven her and her car home, saying it was what Sven wanted, and she had woken up on time with only a mild hangover, driven to the station and sat at her desk, waiting for Sven to call her to his room.

  ‘I was trying to listen to the voices,’ she says, and Sven goes over to his desk, sits down and looks at her.

  ‘What voices, Malin?’

  ‘The voices of the investigation. The ones you always talk about. They’re there at the castle, the truth’s out there, I know it is, I just can’t hear the voices.’

  ‘I see, those voices.’

  ‘Yes, your voices. The ones you taught me about.’

  Sven mutters something, and Malin wonders if he’s going to draw a comparison between her and Fredrik Fågelsjö, the drink-driver in their case, but it’s unlikely that Sven would sink so low. He looks at her for a long while in silence before saying: ‘We’re not getting anywhere with the case.’

  ‘The rain’s making the truth slippery,’ Malin says.

  ‘What happened last night is history. I’ve spoken to Larsson and Alman. To them it’s as if it never happened. But there’s bound to be talk. And you need to keep quiet.’

  ‘Everyone here knows I drink sometimes.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes, I could tell from the way they reacted last night. That they were getting confirmation of something.’

  Sven doesn’t answer, just takes a deep breath and says: ‘I need you on this case right now. You’re the best I’ve got, you know that. If we weren’t in such a
bloody awful position, I’d suspend you, and you know that too. But right now I need you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Malin says.

  ‘Don’t thank me. Pull yourself together.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘No more false promises, Malin. Do you hear me? You only drive if you’re stone-cold sober. And once this case is solved I’m going to make sure that you get treatment. And you’re going to go along with it. Understood?’

  Malin nods.

  Looks around the room, a lost expression in her eyes.

  When Malin is about to leave Sven’s office he calls her back.

  ‘That talk,’ he says, and she stops and turns around.

  ‘What talk?’

  ‘The one at Sturefors secondary school that you’re supposed to be giving on Monday. Nine o’clock. You hadn’t forgotten?’

  Then she remembers. They discussed it several months ago and she said yes, feeling a peculiar urge to go back to her old school.

  ‘Haven’t I got more important things to be getting on with? Maybe we could postpone it?’

  ‘You’re going to give that talk, Malin.’

  Sven looks down at a sheet of paper on his desk.

  ‘And you’re going to do it perfectly. Show the schoolkids a good example. They could do with it. So could you. Take the day off tomorrow. Take things easy. Get some rest. And don’t touch the bottle.’

  Malin knocks on the door of paperwork Hades and hears a resigned: ‘Come in.’

  Waldemar Ekenberg’s tobacco-hoarse voice, then two other voices like faint echoes, a lively young woman and a man of her own age.

  Paper from floor to ceiling. Black files and folders.

  Enough for any brain to get lost in, to wither away in, and the room smells of damp and sweat and aftershave and cheap perfume, of weariness in the face of an impossible task.

  In spite of this, the three officers are working feverishly, hunting through hard-drives and files, and the calm but focused energy in the room cheers Malin up.

  ‘Nothing new,’ Johan Jakobsson says without looking up.

  Lovisa Segerberg shakes her blonde head.

  Waldemar looks up at her. What does his expression mean? Does he know, do they all know, about what happened last night?

  No. Or do they?

  Who cares?