Free Autumn Killing by Mons Kallentoft

instead.
    ‘What do you think?’
    ‘Someone stabbed him in a fit of rage, whacked him on the neck and dumped him in the water. Or the other way round.’
    ‘OK, from now on this is officially a murder investigation,’ Sven says.
    Rage, Malin thinks. My hand raised against Janne, bloody hell, I was so angry, imagine if I’d had a knife in my hand, but don’t think, don’t think, say instead: ‘We need to examine the car and the surrounding area, the whole castle and the other buildings, just to see if we can find anything. Anything that suggests a struggle, or any other evidence, come to that. Anything that looks like the murder weapon. Chances are we’re looking for a knife, and a rock or something similar.’
    ‘OK,’ Sven says. ‘We have to marshal our forces, have an initial meeting before we get going. And we need to interview the two men who found him. Call in the rest of the team. Karin, can you give the OK for us to use one of the rooms inside the castle?’
    Karin nods.
    A car appears at the edge of the forest.
    Another of the
Correspondent
’s blue and white staff cars.
    Everything in due course, Malin thinks, feeling her stomach contract and wanting to throw up.
    Malin walks over the gravel towards the doors of the castle, thinking about the hundreds of people who must have walked that path over the years. In fear or pride, tired, or with the elation that only owning considerable property can bring.
    These people are like spirits anchored to the landscape, ghosts that don’t want to leave the ground and fly.
    She had just closed Jerry Petersson’s open eye.
    Wanted him to find peace, to stop having to stare at the world with a cold, dead gaze. It’s quite enough for those of us who are alive to have to see the world like that, she thought. Then she looked at him. His blank face, the exposed wounds on his reasonably toned body. Who were you? she wondered. What sort of person do you have to be to end up where you did? How did all this come to be yours? Who got so angry with you that he or she stabbed you over and over again?
    Then she walked around the castle, finding a small chapel at the rear, but the door was locked. She peered in, and in the middle of the octagonal space was a raised dais that she assumed must mark the Fågelsjö family vault. Dozens of icons stared down from the walls at her, the gold surrounding the figures of Christ defying the darkness of the season, saying: ‘Beauty is possible’.
    On the other side of the castle stood two big red Stiga tractors, equipped for cutting grass, silent, as if they’d been used for the last time, their blades removed.
    Malin climbs the steps up to the castle, breathing in the morning air.
    In spite of the nausea, she feels excited.
    And that makes her ashamed. Thinks: you can feel ashamed of any emotion. Was it shame that killed you, Jerry? What were you ashamed of? If you were ashamed of anything at all. Maybe you have to be free from shame to own and live in a castle?
    In the castle’s entrance hall a huge chandelier hangs oddly alone up above. As if it’s waiting to spread light, Malin thinks. And that painting on the wall. A man, a woman. A bit of suncream on her back. Love? Suppressed violence. Definitely.
    That picture probably cost a fortune, Malin thinks.
    Muttering
.
    Questions.
    Don’t imagine I’m going to answer.
    Surely you have to do something to justify your salary?
    A camera clicking.
    My eternity is made eternal.
    I can’t move. Yet I could still see Malin Fors looking at my collection of icons just now.
    Maybe I can have some fun with this. Play with justice, the way I have so many times in the past.
    But how can I do that? My body’s full of holes. This doesn’t make sense. Doesn’t make sense.
    Help.
    Help me.
    Malin Fors.
    I don’t recognise this fear, it’s completely new.
    Only you can get me out of here, Malin. That’s right, isn’t it?
    Only you can silence this fear that I’ve been so desperately trying to