Mons Kallentoft - Autumn Killing

Malin jumps up and runs over to Zeke without paying any attention to Johan, Sven or Waldemar.

‘Come on!’ she yells. ‘I know where he is.’

Zeke follows her without asking, and they rush towards the car over the moat where the water seems to be frothing with green bubbles. The rain is pounding the ground and soon they are in the Volvo, carrying them faster and faster through the darkness of the estate, imagining that they can see the spirits of those who have gone before them, drifting anxiously outside the car windows.

They sit in silence.

Behind them other cars with flashing blue lights.

But no sirens.

The sound of wind and rain and engines dominates the forest and fields.

They pass Linnea Sjostedt’s cottage, a dull glow coming from the windows.

They pass the building where the party took place that New Year’s Eve, turn once, twice, three times, and then the sharp bend by the field where Jerry Petersson and the others rolled over and over and over, bodies flying through the air, the winter night must have been shattered by the sound of metal crumpling, bodies breaking, beyond any hope of repair.

A car some way out in the field.

White, almost transparent rain in the beams of light from the headlamps.

And at the boundary of light and darkness stands a man with a rifle in his hand.

73

Lights and sounds.

Cars, spraying cascades of colour.

I couldn’t kill the old man. But I could kill his son, I had that much in me. And it felt wonderful.

I did it.

I didn’t mean to kill Jerry Petersson, but can anyone say he didn’t deserve to end his days like that?

It’s time for me to go. This is it. And this is a good place, Andreas, isn’t it?

If you’re here, show me, because in that case I’ll stay. And stare straight into the yellow faces of the snakes.

The lights.

The cars.

Shouting and people, that person moving towards me like a black silhouette over the waterlogged meadow.

I can’t see the person’s face.

But I know it isn’t you, Andreas.

Out of the car.

‘I’ll take this on my own, Zeke.’

The figure out in the field seems to be shaking, just like in the images of his life. His long black hair like a whip in the wind.

And in his hand the rifle. A sporting rifle.

Malin has drawn her pistol for the second time that day.

Close to their prey now.

Evil, confusion, fear, all within sight.

He’s holding the gun along the side of his body.

The others take cover behind the cars, Sven’s voice, anxious, concerned, but full of certainty: I can’t stop her from doing this, and now she’s walking towards the man in the field and the closer she gets, the clearer his contorted features become, the torment in his eyes. It’s as if he can’t see me, Malin thinks. As if he’s alone in the rain and wind and his gaze seems to be searching for something he’s been missing for a long time.

I can’t see anything but darkness.

Can only feel the sharp slithering of the snakes inside me, can only hear their whimpering. Feel Dad’s blows, hear their shriek as they chase me.

You’re not here, Andreas.

That’s enough for me, there’s nothing more for me to do here, and the cold rain that has pressed through all my clothes will never stop, nor will the darkness.

I’m looking at the lights and the person coming towards me, she seems to be shouting but I can only hear an agitated rumbling, as if she wants something important.

But I ignore her. Instead I put the barrel of the rifle in my mouth, and caress the trigger the way your finger often caressed it, Dad, before your eye was destroyed.

I see her in front of me.

But I can’t see you, Andreas. You’re not here.

He’s raised the gun to his mouth.

His finger’s on the trigger, careful yet without any uncertainty.

‘Don’t do it,’ Malin shouts. ‘It won’t make anything better.’

As she shouts a powerful wind sweeps over the field, somehow making a rattling sound.

He’s going to shoot, Malin thinks.

But Anders Dalstrom doesn’t pull the trigger, instead he meets her gaze, and his eyes become calm, reassured by what is about to happen, and Malin shouts again: ‘There’s another way, there always is,’ and time becomes compressed and she sees Janne and Tove standing in front of her. They’re sitting watching television in the house out in Malmslatt, waiting for her to come back with her love, that must be it, they must be missing that. I want to understand, she thinks, what it is that stands between me and the love that I feel.

‘Don’t do it.’

My voice a prayer now.

Don’t do it.

There’s always another way.

‘Don’t do it,’ she shouts at me. I can hear it now.

But I want to do this, and I look out into the darkness, and I see a car roll and spin and the world tumbles into nothingness, it ends.

Tell me, why should I stay?

The barrel is cold and hard. A taste of gunmetal and iron.

I’m going to do it now.

And her mouth moves, but no words come out, but what is it I can hear, whose voice, and what’s it saying?

Do it. Do it.

You weak fucker. Do it!

Pull the trigger and put a stop to this.

Of course I was driving, but what difference does that make? You had no life before that, and afterwards you had a reason to believe in your own misery, and you never moved on from that.

Hopeless.

So do it, do it, do it, do it now, now, now!

Away, away, away.

Anders Dalstrom wants to wave his arms in the air, wave the disembodied voice and everything it’s saying away, even if it’s saying the words he most wants to hear.

Do it.

‘Sit still. I’ve got the ruler. Hold your fingers out.’

‘Get him, get him.’

Do it.

I shall, I shall, but have I got the nerve?

Go away!

I want to do it myself.

Do it, says the voice, don’t, says another, don’t do it, and whose face is that in front of me?

He’s staring into thin air, as if he’s focusing on something just in front of my face, Malin thinks.

I know what you’re looking for, she thinks, says: ‘He’s here. He wants you to stay.’

And Anders Dalstrom stands still, stops shaking, just as if the film of his life had come to an end, then he moves his mouth, but Malin can’t make out his words, the noises coming out of the gap around the barrel are aimed at someone else.

His finger on the trigger.

Darkness like a wall behind him.

What’s that in the darkness?

Andreas? Is that you, are you there?

Is that really your face floating in front of hers? In her face? In place of her face?

What are you saying?

‘Anders, it’s me, but so much more,’ the voice says now.

‘I’m the one you need to listen to. No one else.

‘And I don’t want you here.

‘No.

‘You’re not done yet. The snakes will go. I promise.

‘The life you’ll lead might not be easy or enviable, but it will be your life.

‘You can see my face now. It’s me. Isn’t it? So take the barrel of the rifle out of your mouth. Otherwise I’ll disappear again.’

It’s you, Andreas.

And you’re telling me not to do it.

I’m going to listen to you. How could I do anything else?

Don’t do it.

The blades of the lawnmower are finally silent, nothing chasing me any more, and one day, some day, love will come to me again, the love I sought and fled from.

So don’t do it.

For my sake. For Katarina’s. For everyone’s sake.

Malin sees Dalstrom slowly take the barrel of the rifle out of his mouth, then with a quick jerk he throws the rifle out into the boggy ground of the meadow, then he puts his hands in the air and looks Malin right in the eye.

What can you see? Malin thinks.

Me?

Someone else?

She aims her pistol at the man in front of her.

Feels the rain running under her collar and down her back, hears the sound of steps behind her.

Then she sees two uniformed officers go over to Dalstrom, force his arms behind his back, with gentle smiles.

An arm on her shoulder.

Zeke’s voice in her ear: ‘You’re crazy, Malin. Crazy.’

Epilogue

Linkoping, Savsjo, November

Anyone who looks and listens can hear us.

We’re all here, all us boys who have been captured by time.

We’re drifting around you, together.

We are everywhere and nowhere.

We have the same voice, Jerry, Andreas and Fredrik, we’re a choir beyond your understanding.

The man in the prison cell down there is alone, he’s about to go to court to be sentenced.

At the same time, he can never be alone, because he knows who he is, why he did what he did.

A murderer can be enviable. How odd is that?

But there’s a lot that’s odd.

And there are few people who look and listen.

There are few who have the nerve to believe.

Malin looks around the room. There’s an institutional atmosphere to the study centre that’s been turned into a treatment home for alcoholics who have crossed some sort of boundary for respectable behaviour.

Six weeks here.

Sven Sjoman was immovable.

‘I’m taking you out of active service. You’re on sick leave, and you’re going to go to this treatment centre.’

He put the brochure on his desk, the nasty little pamphlet turned to face her.

Like an advert for an activity holiday.

Yellow-painted residential blocks around a white-plastered turn-of-the-century house. Birch trees in bloom.

Snow outside at the moment, the rain of late autumn transformed into beautiful crystals.

‘I’ll go.’

‘You’ve got no choice if you want to remain a detective.’

She called Janne. Explained the situation, like Sven wanted her to, and he didn’t sound surprised, maybe he and Sven had spoken to each other.

‘You know you’ve got a problem, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘That you’re an alcoholic?’

‘I know I can’t handle drink, yes. And that I’ve got to-’

‘You’ve got to stop drinking, Malin. You can’t have so much as a drop.’

Janne had let her see Tove. They met for coffee out in Tornby, then they went to H amp;M to get new clothes for both of them. In the cafe Malin apologised, said she’s been acting completely crazy recently, told her she was going to get help, as if that was news to Tove.

‘Do you have to be gone so long?’

‘It could have been even worse.’

And Malin had felt like crying, and she could see Tove holding herself together. If that was what she was doing?

It was as if a grown-up were sitting opposite Malin, a familiar stranger, someone who had changed, and they were sitting in the midst of retail mayhem trying not to be sad together. Of all the things a mother and daughter could do together, they were doing this.

Tove had said: ‘It’ll do you good, Mum, you need help.’

Do fifteen-year-olds say things like that?

‘I’ll be OK, you’ve got to try to get better.’

Sick, in Tove’s eyes. But there is something sick about a parent who abandons their child.

‘I’ll be home before Christmas.’

But this place.

Sitting in groups and talking about how much they want a drink.

Having individual sessions with someone who can’t get her to open up.

Admit that she’s an ‘alcoholic’.

Missing Tove so much it’s driving her mad. Feeling so ashamed she wants to turn her skin inside out. Trying to find ways to bear the shame.

Hugs outside the house in Malmslatt when she dropped Tove off. Janne behind the illuminated kitchen window.

‘Be careful. Don’t let anything happen to you. It would kill me.’

‘Don’t talk like that, Mum, don’t say that. I’ll be fine.’

Malin doesn’t miss Janne. Not missing missing him is the best thing about being here.

Who wants to sit around talking about their destructive behaviour? Their patterns, the things that trigger the thirst. Their memories.

Leave my memories the fuck alone.

Don’t want to, don’t want to, don’t want to know.

Dreams about a faceless boy. About secrets.

Lies. Told to your face by well-meaning people. Sleepless nights, dreams about snakes being chased by lawnmower blades through sewers full of blue-stomached rat corpses.

This all ends for the dead, but not for me. Unless perhaps it does?

The images in the dreams are black-and-white, as if filmed on an old Super 8 camera, and sometimes there’s a boy in the pictures, a boy running over different grass to the lawn in the film on Anders Dalstrom’s bedroom wall.

Yesterday I sat with the others. I said the words straight out: ‘I’m an alcoholic.’

Dad phoned me here.

He had heard from Janne where I was, why I wasn’t answering my phone at home or my mobile. He didn’t sound worried, just relieved, him too.

‘You weren’t doing too well when we met.’

What are you hiding from me? The two of you. What is it I don’t know? Are you and Mum going to carry your secret to the grave?

Are you hiding the reason I’m sitting here in a room in a treatment centre in the middle of the forest staring at a washed-out rag-rug?

Malin curls up on the bed against the wall. Pulls her legs up and thinks about Maria Murvall, how she’s sitting on another bed in another room.

What does this world want with us, Maria?

I’m going to be home by Christmas. I’m going to handle not drinking. We’ll have a nice, peaceful Christmas. I’ve got to stay calm.

The sofa in the television room is covered with green fabric.

Malin is alone there, none of the other women with the same problem as her seem to be interested in what’s going on in the world.

Anders Dalstrom’s trial starts today. The interviews with him, him saying it was like he had snakes inside him, and that they had somehow disappeared from him when he killed Jerry Petersson. He talked about calm. The sort of calm he wanted to experience again, and that made it easy to kill Fredrik Fagelsjo, but that the snakes refused to listen to any violence against Axel Fagelsjo.