Mons Kallentoft - Autumn Killing

She doesn’t have time to see the shadow over the peephole in the door, and Dad is suddenly standing in front of her, suntanned and jolly and happy to see her. His face is rounder and he looks well, and he pulls her to him, takes her in his arms and gives her a long hug without saying a word, and in the end Malin says: ‘Dad, I’m having trouble breathing.’

And he lets go of her. Steps aside. Says: ‘Let’s go in and see Mum,’ and Malin goes into the flat, sees the furniture and rugs they brought down from Linkoping, how badly they match the new Spanish hacienda-style furniture.

‘How are you?’ Dad asks as he follows her into the living room.

‘Fine,’ she replies, and out on a balcony with a view of the Atlantic she sees her Mum facing away from her, against the strange glow from the street lamps. Mum is sitting at a table in a pink tennis shirt, her hair still a blonde bob, and Malin wonders what her face looks like.

Wrinkled? Alert, angry, or just older?

Mum doesn’t turn around and soon Malin is standing beside her on the balcony, hearing Dad’s voice say: ‘Here she is!’ and now Mum notices her and Malin thinks that her face looks like it always has, only browner, with the same pinched expression in spite of the smile on her lips.

Mum gets up.

Air-kisses my cheeks.

‘Have you been drinking, darling? You smell like you have. And you do look a bit puffy.’

And without waiting for a reply she goes on: ‘It’s lovely that you’re here, darling. Wonderful. It’s about time. We’ve bought the best paella from a place on the way back from Abama, oh, you should see the course there! What a course! Henry, get your daughter a glass of wine, would you? There, now sit yourself down,’ and Malin sits down opposite her mother on her parents’ balcony in Tenerife and she doesn’t know whether to look at her mum, around the flat, or out to sea.

‘So what are you really doing here?’

Mum is drinking her wine quickly and nervously and Malin is taking great gulps from the glass Dad has just put in front of her, and she wonders if this is what visiting your parents is like, when you’re an only child whom they haven’t seen for three years. Then Malin takes another deep gulp of wine and thinks that there aren’t any rules for this sort of thing, no accepted standards of human behaviour, and she wishes Dad were here, but instead she can hear him doing something in what must be the kitchen.

Mum opposite her, with her question hanging in the air.

‘A case I’m working on,’ Malin replies. ‘It led here. So I came down.’

And any other person would have continued to ask about the case, wondering what it was about, what the connection was that meant a detective inspector from Linkoping was prepared to take a five-and-a-half-hour flight down to Tenerife.

But Mum starts talking about the golf course.

‘You see, it’s in Abama, the most exclusive resort on the whole island, and it costs an absolute fortune to play even if you can actually get a tee-off time, but they held a lottery for slots at the Swedish Club and what do you know, we won! You should see the first hole, we were there with Sven and Maggan. .’

Malin pretends to listen.

Nods.

Inside she is telling Mum about Tove, how Tove is, that she’s growing up. She tells her about Janne, that they’ve separated and that she’s very upset about it and sometimes doesn’t know what to do with herself, and ‘if you mis-hit the ball there it can fly out to sea, and you lose three strokes and then the whole round is ruined’, and Malin tells her that she can see that she’s making a mess of everything, that she wants to drink, that she’s drinking too much, she drinks like a fish, and that deep down she’s already admitted to herself, but only herself, that she’s a fucking alcoholic, but that there’s no way she’s ever going to admit that to anyone else, and she nods happily when Dad pours her some more wine and suddenly plates appear on the table alongside a shop-bought paella in an aluminium tray with three langoustines perched on top of the yellow rice.

Darkness has fallen.

And Malin can hear hesitant, distant music from the pubs down by the shore, and she listens to it as Dad says: ‘Help yourself, Malin.’

And she stretches out too quickly and knocks her wine over.

Damn.

‘Oops,’ Dad says. ‘I’ve got it.’

‘Still as clumsy as ever!’ Mum says, and Malin feels like getting up and leaving, but she doesn’t move.

Malin can hear her mother chattering away to one of her friends on the phone in the living room.

Dad with his calm face opposite her, he almost seems to think it’s a relief that Mum’s left the table.

The paella is all gone.

It was good, Malin thinks, in spite of everything.

Mum’s been talking about golf, about hairdressers, about the rising price of food, about the fact that the flat may not be that big but its value has gone up, about some yoga class she’s just started going to, all this and much more, and then the phone rang and she went to answer it. Now Dad asks: ‘How are things with Tove?’

The wine has gone to Malin’s head.

‘She’s starting to get grown-up.’

‘Like you’ve been for a long time.’

You’re smiling at me, Dad.

‘And with Janne?’

He must know that we’ve separated.

‘It’s OK. We couldn’t make it work. No point trying, really,’ and just as Dad is about to respond to what she’s said, Mum appears in the doorway, saying: ‘That was Harry and Evy. They’re coming over. They’re keen to meet our clever detective inspector daughter.’

No, Malin thinks. No.

And Dad looks at her, says: ‘You know what, Malin? Why don’t you help me clear the table, then we can take a stroll down to the shop and get some ice cream before they get here?’

‘Yes, you do that,’ Mum says. ‘My feet ache. We must have walked at least twenty kilometres today. How many sixty-seven-year-olds can do that?’

Malin drains her wine glass.

Makes sure she gets the last drops, but Mum doesn’t seem to notice how thirsty she is.

The chiller cabinet and air conditioning of the little supermarket are groaning.

The shopkeeper greeted Malin’s dad like an old friend, and Dad had a long conversation with him in almost fluent Spanish. Malin didn’t understand a word of what they were saying.

‘Ramon,’ Dad says. ‘Nice bloke.’

And now he says: ‘What do you think? Vanilla or chocolate? You’d rather have chocolate, wouldn’t you?’

‘I’d rather have a beer in the bar next door.’

He gets a tub of chocolate ice cream from the freezer before turning to face her, the front of his pale blue shirt speckled with yellow from the paella, and Malin sees now that his hair is much thinner than when they last met.

‘We can do that if you like, Malin,’ and the next minute they’re sitting in the bar, in lingering thirty-degree heat under a whirling fan in the ceiling, and Malin wipes the condensation from her glass and thinks that the feeling is the same here as back home in the Hamlet or the Pull amp; Bear. The walls of the bar are covered with blue tiles, decorated with white fish caught in nets.

Dad takes a deep gulp of his beer and says: ‘Mum doesn’t change.’

‘So I see.’

‘But somehow it’s easier down here.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘There’s less pretending.’

Malin takes a mouthful of beer and nods to show that she knows what he means, then she takes a deep breath.

‘You’ve been having a tough time,’ he says.

‘Yes.’

‘Anything you want to talk about, love?’

Do I want to?

What would we say to each other, Dad? And the fish on the tiles, half of them have their eyes closed, as if they’re in a dark moat, and she feels like telling him about her dreams, about the boy in them, tell him and find out who he is, find out what’s hidden in the darkness in those dreams.