Mons Kallentoft - Autumn Killing

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 Fagelsjo, 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?

‘Anything else you need help with?’ Waldemar asks.

‘You mean, can I rescue you from Hades?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Dream on.’

‘What about you two?’

‘Me and Zeke?’

‘No, you and the King.’

‘I’m about to talk to Zeke now. We’ll see. We’ll probably have a meeting this afternoon.’

‘If anything’s come up,’ Johan says.

‘Have fun,’ Malin says.

‘Close the door behind you,’ Johan says.

‘We don’t want to lose any of the sweaty smell in here,’ Lovisa says with a grin.

Waldemar’s nostrils flare, he seems to be trying to find a killer comment, and flashes a smile full of nicotine-yellow teeth before he says: ‘Drive carefully, Malin.’

Malin’s mobile rings as she’s walking back to her desk.

She answers, doesn’t bother to check the display.

‘Malin.’

‘Hello, it’s me.’

Ten days since she left the house, ten days since she spoke to him, and all she wants to do is hang up.

‘Janne, listen, I’m pretty busy, can you call. .’

She stops, the anger in his voice makes her lose the ability to put one foot in front of the other.’

‘No, Malin. You need to listen. How the hell could you just let Tove leave like that last night? What the hell did you say to her? What did you do to her? She was in pieces. She came down to the station and she was a complete bloody wreck. Hitting me is one thing, but messing Tove up like that. .’

Words. She doesn’t want to hear them. Doesn’t want to think about it. Has thrust it aside until now.

‘I-’

‘Shut up! This is how it is: Tove lives with me. You don’t come out here. If you want anything to do with her, you call, but be bloody careful about what you say. Those are the rules until you get yourself sorted out. Got it?’

Can he do that? Malin thinks. Yes, it wouldn’t be hard to convince the authorities that I’m an alcoholic mother.

‘Go to hell,’ she says. ‘All the fucking way to hell.’

Tell me you love me, she thinks.

‘Malin,’ Janne says, no anger in his voice now. ‘Pull yourself together. Tove needs her mum. Get some help.’

Zeke isn’t at his desk when she gets back.

Her hands are shaking and she bangs them on the desk a few times to stop them, and to get rid of the anger.

How low have I sunk? I let Tove vanish into the night. Into everything that might be out there. And then I got drunk.

She looks out across the open-plan office. Forces her thoughts and feelings aside. Reboots herself.

‘Toilet,’ Zeke says when he comes back and Malin is sitting and waiting for him at her place at their desk. Waiting for them to get going with the practical business of the day, waiting to let work take over her mind and her feelings.

He looks at Malin, in the same way he did when she arrived at the station.

Amiably. Benevolently. But also anxiously. No irritation. Not a trace of it. Just sympathy. And she had turned away.

Zeke knows.

And he probably thinks the same as Sven. Let her finish this case, then she has to get help.

The look in his eyes is even more anxious now.

‘Has something happened?’ he asks. ‘You look-’

‘Shut up. Let’s get to work.’

I don’t want any help, Malin thinks. I just want Janne. Tove. Don’t I?

Our life together.

Is that what I want?

The look on the face of Viveka Crafoord the psychoanalyst, her words: ‘You’re welcome to a session on my couch whenever you want, Malin.’

Then Police Constable Aronsson comes over to their desk. A sheet of paper in her hand.

‘I’ve just got this from the archive,’ she says. ‘It took a while, but they seem to have checked in all the corners now. The only thing they’ve found about the Fagelsjo family. Apparently Axel Fagelsjo attacked one of his workers some time back in the seventies. Blinded him in one eye.’

‘He dragged me to the ground and whipped me. My back was stinging like it had been burned from the cracks of the whip, and when I turned round to get up the whip caught my eye.’

Another voice in the investigation’s choir.

Malin and Zeke are each sitting in an armchair in Sixten Eriksson’s flat in a block of sheltered housing, Serafen. From his living room he has a view of the Horticultural Society Park’s bald treetops moving gently in the wind. The rain has stopped temporarily.

Sixten Eriksson. The man Axel Fagelsjo beat up in 1973. The circumstances were described in the file they had received from the archive. Sixten Eriksson had been employed as a farmhand out at Skogsa, and managed to drive one of the tractors into the chapel. Axel Fagelsjo lost his temper and beat him so badly that he was left blind in one eye. He was only given a fine, and had to pay minimal damages to Sixten Eriksson.

Sixten Eriksson is sitting on the blue sofa in front of them with a patch over one eye, his other eye grey-green, almost transparent with cataracts. On the wall behind him hang reproductions of Bruno Liljefors paintings: foxes in the snow, grouse in a forest. The whole room smells of tobacco, and Malin gets the impression that smell is coming from Sixten Eriksson’s pores.

‘It felt like I was inside an egg that was breaking,’ Sixten Eriksson said. ‘I still dream of the pain to this day, I feel it sometimes.’

The nurse who let them in told them Sixten Eriksson was completely blind now that his other eye was afflicted by inoperable cataracts.

Malin looks at him, thinking that there is a directness about him, in spite of his darkness.

‘Of course I was bitter that Axel Fagelsjo didn’t get a harsher punishment, but isn’t that always the way? Those in power aren’t easily dislodged. They took one of my eyes, and fate took the other. That’s all there is to it.’

The court had given Axel Fagelsjo no more than a fine, and showed understanding for his anger: according to the files, Sixten Eriksson had been negligent with the tractor and had caused severe damage to the door of the chapel.

The old man couldn’t have taken revenge on Axel by murdering his son so much later, that much is clear, Malin thinks. But Axel Fagelsjo? He was guilty of extreme brutality then, so could he have done the same to his son?