Mons Kallentoft - Autumn Killing

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.

Borje Svard’s wife, Anna, died earlier in the week, finally allowed to stop breathing, and Malin called Borje but got no answer, and she hasn’t tried again. But she knew he was going to keep Jerry Petersson’s dog, whatever its name was.

She takes a sip of the tea she’s just got from the kitchen.

Looks out of the window, the same darkness as before.

Then the start of the evening news, a female voice and pictures.

‘The man who admitted murdering two people in Linkoping this autumn, as well as the kidnap of a third person, was killed today during an attack in Linkoping District Court. A man who has been identified as the victim of the kidnapping and the father of one of the murder victims had somehow managed to smuggle a sawn-off shotgun into the courtroom and. .’

Malin feels faint.

She spills tea in her lap, but doesn’t feel the heat as she concentrates on the screen.

Pictures from the courtroom.

A commotion.

She hears the shots. The screams.

Then Axel Fagelsjo’s face, pale scars on his cheek.

His head held down against the floor of the courtroom by two police officers.

His face expressing conviction, determination, isolation and grief.

A face, not a mask.

You did it, Malin thinks. And I understand you.

The monster above Tove. Ready to strangle her.

If a parent doesn’t protect his or her child, who else will?

My task is to protect Tove.

There’s a place in this world for me as well, Malin thinks. She feels that everything’s going to be all right.