Mons Kallentoft - Autumn Killing

‘I’ve been dreaming about a boy,’ she says finally.

‘A boy?’

‘Yes.’

‘A little boy?’

Dad is quiet, drinks some more.

‘Did Mum ever go away when I was little?’ Malin goes on.

‘The ice cream’s melting. Shall we go back?’ he says.

‘Dad.’

‘Some things are best not spoken about, Malin. Some things are just the way they are and you have to accept it. You’re pretty good at not letting anyone get too close. You always have been.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘Nothing.’

Malin empties her glass in four large gulps before she gets up and leaves a five-euro note on the bar.

She and Dad stand beside each other on the pavement. Cars go past and the noise of people’s voices merges with unfamiliar music.

‘You’ve got a secret, you and Mum, haven’t you?’ Malin says. ‘Something you’re not telling me, even though you should.’

Dad looks at her and he opens his mouth, moves his mouth and tongue, but no words come out.

‘Tell me, Dad. I know there’s something I need to know.’

And he looks as if he’s about to say something, then he looks up at the balcony of the flat and Malin can just make out the figure of her mother up there.

‘The secret. There is a secret, isn’t there?’

And Dad says: ‘We’d better get back up with the ice cream before it melts. Our friends will soon be here.’ Then he turns and walks away.

Malin doesn’t move.

‘I’m tired, Dad,’ she says, and he stops, turns back towards her again.

‘I’m not coming back up. I’m going to go back to the hotel.’

‘You have to say goodbye to Mum.’

‘Explain to her, will you?’

And they stand there facing each other, five metres apart. They look at each other for almost a minute, and Malin is waiting for him to come over to her and give her a hug, and force everything that stings and burns away from reality.

He holds the ice cream up.

‘I’ll explain to Mum.’

Then Malin sees the back of his shirt. Pale blue and sweaty in the dim light from the bar, the shop, the street lamps, the stars and the half-moon.

What are you doing here?

Jochen, do you usually come here? Is that you, sitting over at the bar, showing off your bronze skin?

What’s she doing here?

They seem to be wondering, the men sitting by the counter around the podium where the naked girls are dancing in blue fluorescent light. She’s in one of the bars opposite the hotel. She can crawl home from here.

Lesbian?

I don’t give a damn what you think, Malin thinks. I don’t give a damn that each shot of tequila costs thirty euros and that the girls keep disappearing with men behind a curtain.

African women.

Balkan girls.

Russians.

Many of them must have ended up here after being threatened with violence. How many of them are going to end up like Maria Murvall?

But now they’re dancing, their oiled skin shining as they spin listlessly around the poles with their eyes empty of emotion.

Malin downs her fourth tequila and at last the room, the girls, the men around her start to lose their edges and blur together into a single warm, calm image of reality.

I can sit here OK, Malin thinks.

This bar is my place.

She raises a finger and calls the bartender over.

He fills her glass and she puts money on the bar. She knows that as long as she pays, she’ll be allowed to drink, and if she ends up falling off her stool they’ll carry her out into the street and tuck her out of the way so she can sleep it off.

But I’m going to cling to this planet, she thinks.

Then she closes her eyes.

Tove’s face. What’s she doing now? Is the beast there by her bed about to strangle her? Do drowned sewer rats wants to nibble the skin from her sleeping body? I’m coming, Tove, I’ll look after you.

Janne’s face. Daniel Hogfeldt’s. Mum’s, Dad’s.

Away with you all. Do you even wish me well?

Away.

Maria Murvall. Mute and expressionless, yet still so clear. As if she’s chosen to withdraw from the world to avoid seeing the darkness.

Jerry Petersson. Trying to move in the moat, clamber out, but the green spirits are holding him down, the fish, but also the worms and crabs and eels and aggressive black crayfish eating away at his body, falling from his mouth and empty eye sockets.

Jochen Goldman’s body. Is he going to come after me now? Am I in his way? Am I going to end up as shark food?

I don’t care.

The Fagelsjo family’s self-awareness and bitterness. A car rolling over and over like a huge snowball on a cold, snowy New Year’s Eve.

Dark-coloured cars.

Eyes that see, but notice nothing. The world disappears and becomes soft and malleable, simple and easy to understand, to like.

Drink, drink, drink, says the voice. Drink. It’ll make you feel better, everything will be fine.

I’m more than happy to listen to that voice, Malin thinks.

Wednesday, 29 October

You should see them now, Malin .

What are their names, your colleagues? Waldemar? Johan?

They’re standing in the morning chill with Jonas Karlsson outside the building he lives in, asking him to go in, saying they have to talk to him, that he didn’t tell them the truth about what happened on that fateful New Year’s Eve.

You see, Malin, I’m keeping an eye on what you’re all doing.

It hasn’t been such a great morning for your colleagues. The prosecutor has ordered that Fredrik Fagelsjo be released from custody, he’s received a request from the lawyer, Ehrenstierna, which convinced him that Fagelsjo was unlikely to commit any further offences, and that he would remain at your disposal. ‘We can’t hold such a prominent member of the local community for a whole week on relatively minor offences.’

But you police still suspect him.

New Year’s Eve. When will that snow stop falling? When will those lawnmower blades fall silent?

Was I the one driving?

What was I doing at Fredrik Fagelsjo’s New Year party? I don’t want to remember, but it was one of those things people do, Malin, when we both want something yet somehow don’t, when we want to demonstrate our sovereignty, yet have to let go of it in order to get something.

Jonas is scared now.

I can feel it when I position myself just a few centimetres away from him. He knows that time has caught up with itself.

Jonas was on his way to work when the police came back. He tells them he spent the whole of the previous day at the trotting-track out in Mantorp.

Maybe he was the one driving after all?

Jochen is capable of playing with anyone just for the fun of it. Without all those games his life is pointless.

Now the door to Jonas Karlsson’s block of flats closes.

Waldemar’s hand on his shoulder as they disappear inside the building. And I am with you, Malin, beside your sleeping head ten thousand, three hundred and seventy-nine metres up in the air.

Secrets, Malin. You used to love secrets when you were a little girl, and now you’re obsessed with them.

The plane is moving through the atmosphere. You’re sleeping a dreamless sleep and you could do with it, you had to stop the taxi on the way to the airport so you could leap out and empty the previous day from your stomach.

Are you incorrigible, Malin?

You look so exhausted as you sit there leaning against the cold concave window, deaf to the roar of the engines. I actually feel like stroking your cheek, Malin, and that’s probably all you want, isn’t it?