Autumn Killing

‘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 Fagelsjo down there together with Anders Dalstrom. 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.

72

Is he still here?

Bettina, is that you?

No, but is he still here?

What was it he said?

I didn’t understand.

Someone’s coming now, is he coming back?

He took his stinking fingers out of my nostrils, but the rag is still in my mouth. He didn’t cut me again.

Ropes around my ankles and wrists. I try pulling this way and that, and I know he’s going to come back, I want to see you, Bettina.

Or do I?

I want to stay. I know what I’ve got to do, I can feel the light returning to my eyes now, I heard a door open, is that death or life coming in?

Spare me.

I’m a good person.

The room is bathed in light from a spotlight in the ceiling.

Malin sees him.

He’s sitting still on a chair in the middle of the room, blood running from his head and nostrils.

Axel Fagelsjo.

Alone. No Anders Dalstrom.

Fagelsjo. Not so imposing now, and Malin thinks that it makes little difference if he’s alive or dead, yet she still hesitates in front of him, approaching him slowly, is he dead, alive?

Fagelsjo seems to be melting into the stone beneath him, his blood seems to be sucked up by the castle walls, and she can feel the heartbeat of history, pumping a strange music through her veins.

Standing right in front of Fagelsjo now.

She puts an arm on his shoulder.

He squints. His eyes seem to clear.

Malin waves the others into the room. No one else there, where’s Dalstrom?

And Fagelsjo jerks.

Coughs, wants the rag out of his mouth, and Malin looks around again, nothing, and she puts her pistol down on the stone floor, Zeke breathing heavily behind her.

Then she takes the rag from Fagelsjo’s mouth as a uniformed officer cuts the ropes tying his wrists and ankles.

He throws up his arms, as if with some peculiar, new-found power.

Kicks his legs.

His bloody sweater shudders, and Malin can see the fat moving beneath it.

Then he moves, and stands up.

Looks down at Malin.

‘The bastard didn’t have the nerve,’ Fagelsjo says. ‘He didn’t have the nerve.’

He probably did have the nerve, Father.

But he couldn’t, didn’t want to.

I see you sit down again, defenceless, and not long ago you were experiencing the most profound of all fears, the feeling that is the only thing that exists on the boundary where life and death meet.

You were there just now, and now you’ve been called back, but have you learned anything, Father?

I don’t think so.

I shall be buried in a few days’ time, Father, but you don’t care about that, or do you? The family vault is ready out in the chapel.

There’s so much I don’t know about you, Father, and now Malin Fors and Zacharias Martinsson are standing by the door, they’re talking to their boss, wondering: where is Anders Dalstrom?

You’re close now, Malin, but this drama isn’t over yet. There are still a few more moments of obscurity and clarity to come.

You’ve found the knife, with the coat of arms on the shaft, the knife that perforated my body. Karin Johannison will let you know within a few days that it was the knife that inflicted my wounds.

I’m tumbling around in my space, amused as I am by this relentless desire for events to play themselves out, come to a conclusion, so that a new beginning can finally have its beginning.

There’s some justice in the position I’m in. I destroyed friendships, and many other forms of love, and I never took responsibility for that.

But where is he now, Anders Dalstrom?

You know, Malin. You know.

Malin is crouching beside Axel Fagelsjo, who has sat down on the chair again, when she sees Waldemar Ekenberg and Johan Jakobsson coming over from the direction of the stairs.

Axel Fagelsjo is carefully but firmly wiping the blood from his face, breathing slowly, saying: ‘He didn’t have the nerve. The bastard. But he knocked out several of my teeth.’

‘Did he say anything as he left?’

‘No.’

‘Do you have any idea where he might have gone?’

‘No. Where would someone like that go?’

The man before her looks huge on his chair, the look in his eyes tired but sharp as he says: ‘When animals are about to die, they go to places they’ve been before, places that are important to them.’

‘Did he have a rifle?’

‘How else do you think he got me down here?’

‘So you were here when he arrived?’

‘No, I was at home in the apartment, but I was about to come out here when he arrived. It was time to come