Mons Kallentoft - Autumn Killing

Axel heaves himself to his feet and stretches to his full height, shouting, throwing the words at them in a fury, drops of coffee and cake crumbs flying through the air.

‘What the hell gives you the right to come here and stir things up? You have absolutely no evidence of anything!’

Zeke’s steel eyes. His gaze boring deep into Axel’s eyes.

‘Sit down, old man. Sit down, and calm down.’

Fagelsjo goes over to the window facing the park and lets his arms drop to his sides.

‘I can confirm everything that Fredrik has told you, that I tried to buy back Skogsa. But we had nothing to do with the murder. You can go now. If you want anything more from me, you’ll have to call me to an official interview. But I promise you, there would be no point in that.’

‘How did it feel, when he turned you down?’ Malin asks.

Axel Fagelsjo stays by the window.

‘Were you angry with Fredrik?’ she goes on, and can see a silent rage taking over the count’s body, and she thinks: You’re not the one who should be angry, Jerry Petersson should be angry, and then she remembers what it was like at high school. There were people like Jerry Petersson there when she was at the Cathedral School, working-class boys who were bloody smart and talented and good-looking, who moved in the smart circles without ever truly being admitted to them, and she remembers that she thought those boys were rather tragic. She kept her distance from all that, she had Janne, but she still daydreamed of belonging to the innermost circle of the lovely, smart and self-proclaimed important students.

‘What were you really doing later that night?’ she asks aggressively. ‘Well? Did you go out to Skogsa to kill Petersson? Or to persuade him once Fredrik had failed? And it all went wrong? And you ended up killing him?’

The words are firing out of Malin.

She wants to lash the old man with her questions, scare the truth out of him. No fucking way I’m going to retreat from someone like you.

‘Or did you pay someone else to do it?’

‘Go now,’ Axel says calmly. ‘The same way you came. I’m tired of this damn Petersson.’

But I’m not tired of you, Malin thinks.

In the stairwell on the way down they meet a reporter and photographer who Malin knows are from the Aftonbladet evening tabloid.

‘Good luck with him,’ Malin whispers after the vultures. ‘Screw him properly.’

Sven Sjoman is eating the salad his wife put in his lunch box that morning.

Crab-sticks and rocket.

An artificial fishy smell hits his nose, reminds him of ammonia. He’s alone in the staffroom, hungry at eleven because he got up so early. The ugly metal chairs look as uncomfortable as they are, and along the long wall of the room hangs a hideous tapestry of Linkoping’s skyline on an autumn day like this one. Disproportionately large crows fly around the spire of the cathedral, and on the roof of Linkoping Castle sits a misshapen grey cat.

Salad is rabbit food.

Not food for a day like today. Today’s real root vegetable weather. Mash, and shiny, fatty pork belly.

He’s told Karim about the call from Interpol, and that Malin tried to call Goldman again.

Sven takes a last mouthful of the salad.

Thinks: What’s best, a short, happy life, or a long, miserable one?

At that moment he finally makes up his mind that a trip will do Malin good, even if it’s questionable that the state of the investigation justifies it. He’ll ask Karim to talk to her about it. That way she won’t be suspicious.

Waldemar Ekenberg walks over to Malin and Zeke as they sit at their desks eating sandwiches they bought at the Statoil petrol station on Djurgardsgatan.

‘Did you get anything out of Axel Fagelsjo?’

Malin shakes her head.

‘There’s something there,’ she says. ‘Something.’

‘You think so? Your female intuition?’ Waldemar says.

Malin gives him a weary look.

‘I wouldn’t mind eating my sandwich in peace,’ and as she says this Karim Akbar comes over to her desk.

He puts a hand on her shoulder, nods to Zeke and Waldemar, before saying: ‘Malin, what would you say to a trip to Tenerife? Have a chat with Jochen Goldman?’

Malin closes her eyes. Lets Karim’s suggestion sink in.

Sun.

Heat.

Mum, Dad, far away from Tove, Janne, all that.

‘What do you say? Put some pressure on him? He’s bound to be there,’ Karim says.

‘I’ll go,’ Malin says quickly. ‘Is this Sven’s idea? Because he thinks I need to get away? That’s it, isn’t it?’

‘You’re paranoid, Malin. The investigation requires you to go. And a bit of sun would do you good,’ Karim says. ‘Anyway, you’ve never been down to visit your parents, have you?’

Malin looks at Karim suspiciously. Gives him a stare that warns him that that’s none of his business.

‘Is Janne home?’ he goes on, and there’s an odd note in his voice, as though he’s dealing with a formality, and it annoys Malin.

She thinks she knows what he’s getting at.

‘Tove can stay. .’ and then she stops herself. Karim doesn’t know that they’ve separated, and he doesn’t need to know. Unless he does know already?

‘Janne can look after Tove,’ she says in the end.

‘Good,’ Karim says. ‘I’ll sort out a ticket for tomorrow. Make sure you’re packed. And be careful. You know what people say about him.’

Malin on her own beside the coffee machine in the staffroom. Holding her mobile. Wants to call Tove but knows she’s at school now, in a lesson, but she has to see her before she goes.

Wants to call Janne. But what would she say? She has to let them know she’s going. Call Daniel Hogfeldt and ask for a serious afternoon fuck session? Creep off to the Hamlet and have a stiff drink? Either of the two last ideas sounds wonderful. But she has to work, then pack.

Should I call Mum and Dad? Let them know I’ll be there tomorrow? Given their attitude to surprises, I’d cause chaos down there. But I ought to phone anyway. I’ll have to see them, even if I don’t want to, I haven’t told them about the separation, that Tove’s still living out at Janne’s, that she hasn’t moved back in yet, unless Janne’s said something, they might have called the house, Dad does that sometimes, but Janne wouldn’t have said anything, would he?

It’ll be nice to get away from this dump for a few days.

In one way, she thinks, you can see Jerry Petersson as the ultimate product of Linkoping, where the inhabitants lose their roots in their desire for money and ridiculous material status. Look at Mum, she’s never managed to have a home where she feels she belongs, I don’t think she has, Malin thinks, and then she thinks about Janne’s house, the flat, and it hurts and she brushes the thought aside, refuses to admit to herself that she’s like her mother in so many ways. Instead she thinks about the fact that you can see Jerry Petersson as the archetypal class traitor, someone who doesn’t know his place, who wants to become something he can never be. A handsome dog that will never win any competitions because he doesn’t have the right pedigree.

I hate the Fagelsjo family, she thinks. Everything they stand for. But I can’t bring myself to hate them as individuals. And she sees Katarina Fagelsjo on her sofa, her eyes, and she wonders where the sorrow in them comes from? Childlessness. Something else?

Malin picks up her coffee and sniffs the black liquid before heading back to her desk.

‘You didn’t get me one?’ Zeke says, looking at Malin’s cup.

‘Sorry,’ Malin says, sitting down as Zeke lumbers off towards the staffroom.

Malin enjoys the hot coffee, feeling the liquid sting her mouth, before she is brought back by Johan Jakobsson’s voice.

He’s holding a bundle of papers towards her.

‘Just got this from the ladies in the archive,’ he says. ‘It turns out that Jerry Petersson was involved in a car accident when he was nineteen. One New Year’s Eve. After a party. He was a passenger, in the front seat. The two in the back seat didn’t get off so lightly. One boy was killed and a girl suffered serious head injuries.’

Malin can’t remember ever hearing any reports of the accident, presumably she was too young to notice when it happened.

‘And do you know what makes it all the more interesting?’ Johan asks.

Malin throws out her hands.

‘The accident happened on Fagelsjo’s estate.’

Ostergotland, October

Eggs hatch.

Blind baby snakes peer out. More and more and more. They make my blood boil.

But let me start here: let’s pretend there’s a film.

A film about a person’s life, where every moment is captured from an illuminating angle.

My film isn’t black, white, or a thousand colours. It’s matt red and sepia-tinted, a slow journey through numbing loneliness.

I see thousands of people in the images.

They flicker past, but never return. Nothing and no one stays, it’s the loneliest of lonely films.

There’s no disgust in the people’s faces, merely, at best, a lack of interest. Most of them don’t see me. I am a person in the form of air, like a fading outline in a shifting landscape. I once had something to cling to, but I’ve taught myself to be free. But did I ever actually manage it? Maybe I just tell myself I did so that I can bear to go on.

And now? After what’s happened? Him, I don’t want to say his name, floating in the cold dark water. I have no illusions about forgiveness or understanding.

But the rage was wonderful. It was as if the snakes left me, ran out of my body and left me calm and powerful. It really didn’t matter what direction it was aimed in, but to say that he didn’t deserve it is wrong. I can do it again if need be, if only to experience once more that feeling of something evil disappearing out of me, the snakes calming down, and me, the person I could have been, should have been, there instead.

It was within me, the violence. And it comes from you, Father, you’re the man in the pictures, you’re hunting me, beating me, you don’t care about the others hunting me, beating me, making me the least significant person in the world, and no one, no one cares, no one comes to my rescue.

Except him. He comes.

The pictures shift.

I have a friend. A proper friend. He saves me.

Sometimes I work this autumn, in spite of what’s hunting me.

I can feel the warm breath of destruction against my neck. No matter what I do, I must protect myself, it’s the only way for us to survive.

They’re hunting me now, trying to find out who I am. But I shall evade them, it must be my turn now. I don’t regret anything, after all, I’ve simply restored a form of order. I possess both the fear of the hunter and of the hunted. In some ways I long for the violence to give me the feeling of calm again, even if I know that’s wrong.

I am all the nuances of loneliness that exist in the world, all the quiet, soundless fear.

Father.

You’re rushing around with your camera, a cigarette glued to your free hand. You raise your bitter, scared hand with nicotine-yellow nails. Strike nimbly at the body lying on the ground. I don’t want to be that body.

But you don’t exist, Father. In a way, I can put even that injustice right. I have been waiting beneath the trees, outside the doors of the heart of evil. Maybe this is my time, after all.

You boys who hate me without me knowing why, without you knowing why. You do not exist.