Autumn Killing (48 page)

I crawl across the gravel, the pain in my head and my guts feels like the final pain of all, spreading through my whole body like an ancient wind.

He’s killing me, I manage to think, as I crawl under the chain around the moat, and I imagine I see a stone hit the surface of the water.

Is that blood running over my eyes?

I’m the boy again, I’m the man. I’m with Katarina beside calm water, possibly a river, and I anoint her back with oil and she whispers words of an extinct language in my ear.

The wind owns me now. And I fall, I’ve stopped breathing by the time I hit the water in the moat and at last the shiny blades of the lawnmower have fallen silent and I open my new eyes.

‘I killed your son,’ Anders Dalström screams, ‘and I’m going to kill you!’

He’s tied Axel Fågelsjö to a chair and he watches as the old man tries to pull himself free, a peculiar mixture of loathing and resignation in his eyes, the fear they betray, the fear that comes of not knowing what’s happening.

‘The same way you killed my father.’

‘I’ve never killed anyone.’

‘You killed him.’

Anders Dalström can see Axel Fågelsjö trying to say something else, trying to shout, but no sound comes out of his mouth.

He pulls a scrap of cloth from his bag, ties it tightly around the old man’s head, letting it slip deep into his mouth, it feels good to pull it tight, see the pain in his eyes, feel the waves of calm flow through his body.

He wanted to give the old man an explanation.

Force him to listen to it.

‘What sort of father do you think he was after you killed him? He hunted me with that camera, hunting me and trying to destroy me, as if he hated me for the life I still had ahead of me, as if I
were
his pain.’

Axel Fågelsjö squirms on his chair, trying to get loose, unless he wants to say something? Ask for forgiveness?

Hardly.

And Anders Dalström punches him in the cheek with a clenched fist, feels the pain spread through his knuckles and hands, and the violence is nice and soft, makes the evil disappear.

So he punches again, and again and again. The snakes move, the boys in the school playground, Dad’s blows, the snakes have their faces now, the excrement in the toilet, the pain of never experiencing any reliable love.

Pain, pain, pain.

All the pain of the world. All the world’s fury gathered in those blows. The fury that must have given Jerry Petersson forty stab wounds to his torso. How many will I get?

Who is he? Axel Fågelsjö thinks.

Bettina, who is he?

His confused talk. About snakes, and faces, but at the same time, in the middle of all the madness, he seems to know what he wants, who he is.

Against his will, Axel Fågelsjö gives in to his fear again and tries to get free, wants to run, escape, but he’s stuck fast, won’t get anywhere, so he may as well take the blows, try to make sense of this, and if it’s true that he killed my son, he’ll get what’s coming to him, I promise myself that, I promise all of those who have gone before me.

The room.

It’s beautiful and familiar, one of my rooms, no one else’s.

Bettina. Your ashes are scattered in the forest.

He’s stopped hitting me now, just sitting on a chair by the wall and he seems to be gathering his strength to say something.

‘Listen, old man.’

Anders Dalström gets up and goes over to Axel Fågelsjö in the middle of the cold room.

‘What you did to me, to my dad, would be reason enough for me to kill your son.’

He puts his fingers in Axel Fågelsjö’s nostrils and twists them upwards, and Axel Fågelsjö grunts with pain. Anders Dalström feels like pulling his nose right off his face, wants to feel warm blood on his fingers, feel the last cold-blooded, blind creatures slithering out of him.

‘And do you know what?’ he shouts. ‘I like using my body to show how powerful I am. Violence has spawned me, can’t you understand that?

‘I took him outside his house. Beat him to death there, then I drove him to the chapel.

‘I want you to know that.

‘What did you care about me? What Dad did to me when the pain in his eye and in his head took over?’

Then Anders Dalström strikes again, but he gets scared when he feels the old man’s chin against his knuckles.

The snakes are moving again. There are more than ever, and they’re swimming through his veins, drinking his blood.

He’s mad, Axel Fågelsjö thinks, as he tries to escape the pain by remembering, by keeping his consciousness clear.

For a moment he thinks that he would actually like to be beaten to death by this maniac, because then I can finally be with you, Bettina. I was with you, in the forest, on the morning of the first murder.

So hit me.

Let me go to the woman I love.

And Axel knows who the young man in the room is now.

The son of that hopeless farmhand whose eye he blinded.

It was a shame, but these things happen.

He was an oaf, and maybe he got what he deserved.

And Fredrik? Did he get what he deserved?

No one tells me, or anyone in my family, what we deserve or don’t deserve.

Then he strikes again. With the butt of the rifle now. Burning pain, and I feel my teeth come loose, and my eyes feel like they’re going to burst from their sockets.

What happened to the farmhand? He sat in silence during the trial, I remember that, but what happened to him after that? Could he have been in pain, the way I’m in pain now? He was blinded in one eye, but that’s hardly a handicap worth making a fuss over, is it? Maybe he was bitter, but life is much easier if people know their place, no matter what that place is.

A knife now. A knife, and he shows me the coat of arms on the handle, Skogså, before he cuts my cheek.

It stings, and I scream.

Bettina, can I come to you now? Are you proud of me? I don’t want to end up in the chapel, I want to be with you, in the forest.

What does a castle mean, really? A few hectares of forest? Memories that no one cares about?

I’m going to put an end to this, Anders Dalström thinks. I’m going to do what I like, just as he has always done.

His face is yours, Father.

Are you one and the same?

But there’s no reason to hesitate. They never did when they managed to catch me in the school playground.

Blood is running from Axel Fågelsjö’s cheeks, and Anders Dalström wants to drive the knife into his fat gut, but he can’t, something’s holding him back, whispering ‘no’ into one ear. He throws the knife in the corner and puts his fingers in Axel Fågelsjö’s nostrils again, blocking them, then puts his other hand over his mouth, pressing the rag hard, and he knows that the old man can’t breathe now. That he must be screaming for air in there, and the cocky, arrogant look he had in his eyes just now is gone, replaced by something else, maybe some sort of primeval fear.

Monochrome flickering.

Something slithering over my body. It will be gone for ever.

Someone’s whispering something. Is that you, Andreas? Are you there?

Give me air.

I want more.

I want to see you, Bettina, Fredrik, but not just yet. Katarina. Where are you?

I’ve done wrong, I admit it, let go, forgive me, I’ve done wrong, but don’t let it end now, I want more life, I’m scared, I can feel the heat licking my ankles, I’m trying to scream for forgiveness, scream that I can love you and everyone else, that you have to let go, that it’s your only hope, and blood is pouring but you carry on, pressing your fingers deeper into my nose.

And I want air, give me air.

‘Mum?’

Tove’s voice a hammer-blow to her heart as Malin opens the door on her way out of the block on Drottninggatan.

Zeke beside her, restless, wanting to run to the car.

‘Tove.’

Can’t talk now, darling.

A quick run-through in Axel Fågelsjö’s apartment just now.

Where can Axel Fågelsjö and Anders Dalström be? In all likelihood, together.

Sven: ‘If Anders Dalström took Fredrik to the castle, he may have taken Axel Fågelsjö there as well. Zeke and Malin, get out there at once. Talk to Katarina Fågelsjö and anyone else connected to this. Dalström could be a danger to the public, we need to get hold of him as soon as possible.’

‘Mum, I was wondering if I . . .’

Malin hears her daughter’s voice as she’s running towards the car, not taking in what she’s saying, instead: ‘Tove, I’ve got to go.’

She clicks to get rid of Tove, but a moment later she wants to call back, has to apologise for the way everything turned out the evening she came around, when she just let her disappear, and she’s the world’s worst mum and sorry, because it isn’t so damn easy being human.

On the other side of Drottninggatan the Horticultural Society Park lies dark and cold and the rain is boring down from the sky now, restricting their visibility ahead and she wonders what Tove wanted, knows she ought to call back, maybe she needs me now, but instead Malin says: ‘OK, drive. Fast as you can. Quick!’

The car’s headlights are eager searchlights heading along the rain-tormented tarmac of Drottninggatan.

Malin’s mobile rings again. Tove? Not this time. Another number on the display.

‘Malin.’

‘Johan Stekänger here.’

The solicitor. Jerry Petersson’s executor. The man who found Fredrik Fågelsjö.

‘I wanted to tell you that the castle was sold yesterday. For twice as much as Petersson paid for it. Petersson’s father accepted the offer.’

‘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 Fågelsjö 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 Fågelsjö.

Anders Dalström.

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 Fågelsjö’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 Fågelsjö down there together with Anders Dalström. 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.

Is he still here?