AUTUMN KILLING Read online

  Can you?

  Malin is standing at the counter in the 7-Eleven on Ågatan.

  Her hair is wet with rain and her underwear is cutting into her buttocks, it feels as disgusting as the bloody weather outside. She found a pair of old stone-washed jeans and a pink top at the back of the wardrobe in the flat. They must be ten years old, but they’ll have to do. H&M isn’t open yet and she’ll have to pick up her things from Malmslätt when she has time. That’s what she’s going to do: pick up her things, and Tove, and reconstruct life the way it was before they moved back in together, before she put Tove’s life in danger.

  A toothbrush, deodorant, toothpaste and coffee are on the counter in front of her, the fat cashier looks sleepy as he rings up her purchases.

  ‘Playing away?’ he asks.

  Playing away. Did the ice hockey team have an away match last night?

  Then she realises what he means, and feels like punching him in his fat face, but just shakes her head.

  ‘OK, no away match. Just a late night, I guess. When I feel the way you look, I don’t bother getting out of bed.’

  ‘Just cut the crap and take the money.’

  The cashier throws out his hands.

  ‘Just trying to have a laugh. That normally helps. Sorry.’

  Malin grabs her change and walks the hundred metres back to the flat through the rain.

  Soon she’s in the shower.

  Water colder than the rain envelops her skin.

  Driving out the evil.

  Helping it freeze.

  Don’t think about what happened yesterday, she tells herself, just drink the coffee in the mug on the soap-rack and pretend the headache pills you found in the medicine cabinet are having some sort of effect.

  Her skull is thudding.

  Tove can move in later this week. Maybe even tonight.

  I’m working today. But nothing’s going to happen that can take my mind off this damn headache, is it?

  7

  Göte Lindman, just turned fifty-two, runs a hand over his wet, shaved head. He’s only been inside Skogså Castle once before.

  At the age of eight he stood with his father in Axel Fågelsjö’s study and listened as Fågelsjö dictated the terms of that summer’s work, and the future, in return for them being allowed to rent an old soldier’s cottage over in the far south-west corner of the estate.

  ‘When I call, you come.’

  Lindman imagines he can hear the count’s voice, the harshness and violence concealed in it, as he and Ingmar Johansson, a few years older than him, walk along the corridor on the first floor, looking at the bare, grey stone walls and the peculiar pictures that adorn them every five metres or so.

  ‘He’s got a dog,’ Lindman says. ‘But it can’t be here, or we’d have heard it by now.’

  ‘A yappy beagle,’ Ingmar Johansson mutters.

  It’s more than forty years since Lindman was here with his father.

  His own dealings with the Fågelsjös were managed through the solicitor’s office in the city, and thankfully he only leased land from them these days, having bought himself a farmhouse outside Bankekind.

  He had been informed by a solicitor when the sale of Skogså was already a fact. His tenancy would continue as before.

  They walk past room after room.

  Peering in, padding about on wooden floors, stone floors, metre after metre of unused space. They had arrived in Lindman’s black Saab, now parked beside Petersson’s Range Rover out in the courtyard. The door to the castle was unlocked and the alarm was flashing green. They hesitated before coming in, not wanting to upset the castle’s new owner.

  Petersson had appeared in Lindman’s yard one day, standing next to his Range Rover with a broad smile, wearing that stupid yellow coat. The wind was blowing his mane of bleached hair, and Lindman had realised that the visit could only mean trouble.

  ‘You know who I am?’ Petersson had asked, and Lindman had nodded in reply.

  ‘Any chance of coffee?’

  Another nod.

  And then they had sat at the kitchen table eating Svetlana’s cakes and drinking freshly made coffee, and Petersson had explained that things would continue exactly as before, but that he had one demand: when he wanted to go hunting, they would come, no matter how bad the weather was, no matter what else was going on.

  ‘When I call, you come. Got it?’

  Ingmar Johansson peers into the castle kitchen.

  Copper saucepans hanging in gleaming rows from the ceiling. Even in the dim morning light they’re sparkling. The entire kitchen is new, white marble on the walls and floor, shiny steel appliances, a two-metre long stove with ten gas rings.

  But no sign of life.

  No Jerry Petersson. The owner of the land that he rents, just like Lindman, is nowhere to be seen.

  The call had come on Thursday evening.

  ‘I need you here tomorrow at eight o’clock. We’re going for deer. There are too many of them.’

  Like hell there were too many deer at Skogså. More like too few, but Petersson’s voice brooked no argument. And he had been clear about the terms of the arrangement.

  ‘It was definitely eight o’clock?’ Johansson said.

  ‘On the dot,’ Lindman replied.

  They had spoken on the phone just after their visits from Petersson. They had agreed that it could have been much worse, he might have wanted to introduce large-scale farming to the castle estate. Petersson hadn’t answered when Johansson asked him straight out about his plans for the farm, and just said he was there to talk about hunting.

  ‘Make sure you arrive on time.’

  Petersson had been firm on the phone.

  And here they both were.

  But there was no sign of Jerry Petersson.

  The steps are steep and dangerously slippery for wet boots. So they proceed carefully to the second floor, calling Petersson’s name, but their voices just rebound off the bare stone. Above them, in the twenty-metre high space above the stairs, hangs a crystal chandelier that must be several centuries old, adorned with over a hundred half-burned candles arranged in several ornate circles. On one wall hangs a mostly blue painting of a man squeezing suncream onto a woman’s back.

  Panting, they reach the second floor.

  ‘He ought to get a lift put in,’ Johansson says.

  ‘Expensive,’ Lindman replies.

  ‘He can afford it.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we start in the cellar?’

  ‘Sod that. He’s probably got a torture chamber down there. You know, iron maidens and a single chair in the middle of the room.’

  ‘Bloody hell. I had no idea you had that sort of imagination,’ Lindman says.

  They move through the rooms.

  ‘So he lives on this floor,’ Johansson says.

  ‘Bloody weird pictures,’ Lindman whispers as they emerge into a room containing several large photographs of a Christ-like figure immersed in a yellow liquid.

  ‘Do you think that’s piss?’ Johansson asks.

  ‘How the hell would I know?’

  A large sculpture of a pink and purple plastic bear with sabre-teeth decorated with jewels and eyes that look like diamonds shines at them from one corner.

  A painting of a Cambodian prisoner seems to want to chase them from the room.

  The furniture looks as if it was designed for a spaceship: straight lines, black mixed with white, shapes that Lindman recognises from the interior design magazines he usually looks at when he’s waiting to have his hair cut.

  ‘Bloody hell, the things people choose to spend their hard-earned money on,’ Johansson says.

  ‘Petersson? Petersson! We’re here!’

  ‘Ready for the hunt. Time to shoot some deer!’

  They stop, grinning at each other, then there’s a cold silence.

  ‘Where do you reckon he could be?’ Lindman asks, unbuttoning his green overcoat and wiping the sweat from his brow.

  ‘No idea. Maybe out on
the estate? Doesn’t look like he’s in the castle. He’d have heard us by now.’

  ‘But his car’s down there. And the doors were unlocked.’

  ‘Showy damn car, that.’

  ‘Maybe, but you’d still like one.’

  They’re both looking at a free-standing clothes rack holding ironed cotton shirts in all manner of colours.

  ‘What do you make of him?’ Johansson asks.

  ‘Petersson?’

  ‘No, God. Of course I mean Petersson.’

  Johansson looks at Lindman. At the bitter wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, at the deep furrows on his brow.

  Johansson knows that Lindman lived alone on his farm for many years after his wife left him fifteen years earlier. She’d been to a conference in Stockholm and came home crazy, saying she couldn’t bear living on the farm any more.

  Someone must have fucked the sense out of her up in Stockholm.

  But now he’d found a new one, a mail-order Russian.

  ‘What do I think of him?’ Lindman says, stretching the words. ‘Well, he doesn’t seem to want to mess with our arrangements. Then there’s this bullshit about us coming running whenever he calls. What can I say?’

  Johansson nods.

  ‘Did you know him before?’ Lindman goes on.

  Johansson shakes his head.

  ‘They say he grew up in Berga. But I never read anything about his work. I don’t really care about crap like that.’

  Ingmar Johansson sees how the giant bear’s eyes sparkle. Could they actually be real diamonds?

  ‘He was pretty quick to get hold of this damn castle.’

  ‘Must have been a bitter blow for the count.’

  ‘Yeah, but it serves him right.’

  They stop in another of the rooms.

  Looking at each other.

  ‘Do you hear what I hear?’ Johansson asks.

  Lindman nods.

  Outside they can hear a dog barking furiously.

  Anxiously.

  ‘He’s upset about something,’ Lindman says. ‘No doubt about that.’

  They stand still for a moment before heading for one of the windows.

  A low cloud is dissolving into fog as it drifts slowly past the window, leaving small drops of moisture on the glass.

  They stand beside each other, waiting for the cloud or the fog to move. Listening to the dog, its anxious bark.

  Then they look out over the estate.

  The pine forest, the fir trees, the fields. Banks of fog are blocking their view down to the moat.

  ‘Beautiful,’ Johansson says. ‘Can you see the dog?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, you can see why the count loved this land.’

  ‘I bet he’s not happy in the city.’

  Johansson grins and looks away from the view. Down on the raked gravel in the courtyard stand the Range Rover and the car they arrived in.

  Then the fog drifts away from the moat. And there’s the dog, its dark shape jerking each time it lifts its head to the sky and barks.

  ‘That’s a warning bark,’ Lindman says. ‘A deer that’s fallen in the water?’

  The water in the moat is black, still. The green lamps along its edge are glowing faintly.

  But there’s something that’s not right. There’s something in the water that shouldn’t be there. Not a deer, Lindman thinks.

  The dog looks down, then barks desperately again.

  There’s something yellow floating in the blackness, a vague, almost pulsating yellow circle in his gradually deteriorating vision.

  ‘Johansson, what’s that floating down there in the moat? That light-coloured thing? That the dog’s barking at.’

  Johansson looks down at the water.

  Like a black snake held captive by ancient stone banks. Is that old story about the Russian soldiers true? he wonders.

  Some fifty metres away, on the surface of the moat, something pale, yellow, is moving slowly to and fro, a dark outline in the water, the shape, he recognises it instinctively, and wants to look away.

  A head.

  A body concealed yet still visible in the water.

  Blond hair.

  A face turned to one side.

  A mouth.

  He imagines he can see luminous fish, tiny sprats, swimming into the open mouth, a mouth that must long since have stopped gasping for air.

  ‘Fucking hell.’

  ‘Oh shit.’

  ‘Fucking hell,’ Johansson repeats, unclear about what to feel or do next, only knowing that he wants the dog to stop barking. That dog will be barking in his dreams until the end of time.

  8

  There’s something that’s no longer moving.

  Something that’s stopped for ever. Instead whatever it is that’s surrounding me is moving. I don’t have to breathe to live here, just like it was long ago, where everything began and I floated and tumbled inside you, Mum, and everything was warm and dark and happy apart from the loud noises and rough jolts that shook my senses, the little senses I had then.

  No warmth here.

  But no cold either.

  I can hear the dog. Howie. It must be you, I recognise your bark, even if it sounds like you’re so far away.

  You sound anxious, almost scared, but what would a dog like you know about fear?

  Mum, you taught me all about the fear to be found in pain. Am I closer to you now? It feels like it.

  The water ought to be so cold, as cold as the heavy hail that’s been firing from the skies all autumn.

  I try to turn around, so my face is looking up, but my body no longer exists, and I try to remember what brought me here, but all I can remember is you, Mum, how I rocked in time with you, just like in the water of this moat.

  How long am I going to be here?

  There’s a ruthlessness here, and I see myself reflected in that ruthlessness, it’s my face, my sharp, clean features, the nostrils whose flaring can scare people so, no matter who they are.

  Pride.

  Am I proud?

  Is that time past now?

  Now that everything’s still.

  I can float here for a thousand years, in this cold water, and be master of this land, and that’s just fine.

  The deer need to be culled.

  The hares need to be eradicated.

  People need to leave their warm, secure water.

  New days need to be born.

  And I shall be part of them all.

  Own them all.

  I shall lie here and see myself, the boy that I was.

  And I shall do so even if I’m scared. I can admit it now; I’m afraid of that boy’s eyes, the way the light opens the world up to him, in jerks, like the desperate bark of an abandoned dog.

  9

  Linköping and district, summer 1969

  The world comes into being through the eyes, because if you close them there are no images, and the boy is four years old when he learns to recognise his own eyes, pebble-sized deep-sea-blue objects set at perfect distance from each other in an equally perfectly shaped skull. Jerry realises what he can do with those eyes, he can make them flash so that remarkable miracles happen, and, best of all, he can get the nursery-school teachers to give him what he wants.

  His reality is still directly experienced. What does he know about the fact that on this very day, tons of agent orange and napalm are being dropped onto tropical forests where people hide in holes deep underground, waiting for the burning jelly to dig through the ground and destroy them?

  For him, warm is simply warm, cold is cold, and the black-painted copper pipe attached to an endless, rough, red, wooden surface is so hot that it burns his fingers, albeit not in a dangerous way, but in a way that’s nice and makes him feel both safe and scared; scared because the warmth in him awakens a feeling that everything can end.

  A lot happens in this life.

  Cars drive. Trains travel. Boats on the Stångån River blow their whistles.

  He li
es on the grass in the garden of his grandmother’s cottage, feeling the dense smell of chlorophyll possess him, seeing how the grass colours his knees and body green. In the evenings, when the midges attack, Daddy puts a bright yellow plastic bathtub on the grass and the water is warm on his skin and the air around him is cold, and then he runs alongside the howling grass-scented monster that gives off a sharp smell and Daddy sweats as he pushes it across the grass. The blades sniff out the boy’s feet, spraying grass cuttings from its broad maw; this isn’t a game and Daddy sees the look in his eyes but doesn’t let that put him off. Daddy turns the monster, chasing the boy through the garden, crying: ‘Now I’m going to cut your feet off, now I’m going to cut your feet off’, and the boy runs down to the edge of the forest, feels like running until the lawnmower can no longer be heard.

  But inside, in the kitchen with Mummy and Grandma, his eyes work and he realises it’s best to eat buns when they’re fresh, before the mould creeping up from the floor has a chance to make them taste spoiled.

  Daddy comes home to the cottage after work.

  With bags that clink. And then Mummy wants to sit still. She feels better after Daddy comes with the bags, Grandma too, and they are happy, but not properly happy.

  The sun disappears and the heat in the black-painted copper is exchanged for a metallic smell in the chilly stairwell and multicoloured glass marbles rolling in the sand of a sandpit, and then down into a hole, and someone’s in the way, another boy.

  Go away. You’re not supposed to be there. And Jerry’s hand flies up, strikes where he means it to, across the nose, and then the blood comes and the boy screams, the boy he’s hit screams out loud and he himself screams: ‘Plaster!’, not: ‘He hit me first.’ He regards himself as too good for a lie like that.

  In the world of direct experience there is a dead cat in a rubbish bin by the swings in the park. He once gave that cat some cream.

  There are feelings floating in the two rooms of the flat, there are questions directed at him. ‘Do you know that we live in Berga?’ ‘That Daddy works for Saab, putting together planes that can fly through the air faster than words?’ And he recognises the laughter, it lacks warmth, and they sit on the orange and brown patterned sofa, the one they make into his bed each night, and they pour out drinks from the bottles they always have in a bag. Then they talk louder, the air turns sweet and unpleasant, and they look at black-and-white people on a screen, and Mummy can get up in a way that she can’t otherwise, she can fly up from the sofa and they dance, she only does that when they’ve been drinking and he likes watching Mummy dance. But then Daddy starts chasing him, he’s the lawnmower trying to catch him and hit him on his arms and legs, and the boy is four years old, and creeps out of an unlocked front door, into the world outside that is full of life waiting to be conquered; a cat to be buried, a swing to be swung up to the sky, car and trains to be driven, people shouldn’t lie in vomit and pain, shouldn’t chase him anywhere.