Read Online Autumn Killing by Mons Kallentoft - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Mons Kallentoft
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is left hanging, feet down, the water dripping from its yellow raincoat, brown trousers and a pair of black leather boots.
The dripping water is coloured red. The yellow raincoat has been perforated by masses of holes and Malin can see a number of deep injuries to the body, and a mixture of blood and water is streaming from what must be dozens of stab wounds. The blood mixes with the rain. It’s raining blood, Malin thinks. So you didn’t exactly fall into the moat drunk, did you?
Little silver fish are falling from the victim’s mouth, wriggling like abandoned babies on their way down to the safety of the water.
Snake fish, Malin thinks.
A black eye staring right out into the rain and the thin fog that has drifted down into the moat. The corpse’s other eye is closed.
You look surprised, Malin thinks. But are you really?
Am I surprised
?
Hardly.
The water is no longer embracing me.
I am leaving your memory, Mum, and instead I’m hanging here staring down at the water, and off towards the castle, at these strangers.
I can hear and see Howie, he’s barking even more fiercely now. Can he see the holes in my body? I know there are a lot of them, but I can’t feel any pain, just the wind blowing through me.
Who are they, these people?
What do they want with me?
Are they the Russian soldiers from the old stories?
I’m moving slowly upwards, towards a whirring noise, and I’m spinning around and around, but it’s not making me dizzy, and now I’m heading towards the bridge, held by a pair of firm arms, and gradually I sink lower, my stiffening, bloody body.
A slapping sound as I touch the ground again.
I am lying on my back.
Black plastic under me. How can I know that I’m lying on my back when I can’t see or feel anything?
But I suppose that’s what it’s like now.
All those people standing by the edge of the moat looking at me. Who are they?
I’ve got my suspicions, but I don’t want to believe it’s true, that this has finally happened. I refuse to accept it. But there’s probably no point trying to resist. And if it has happened, there are plenty of riddles to solve.
And the buzz of the lawnmower isn’t here.
A woman’s face in my field of vision. She’s beautiful.
Then another woman.
She could have been beautiful, but right now it looks like she could do with six months’ sleep, her eyes seem completely devoid of any joie de vivre.
And the way they’re talking, I don’t actually want to hear what they’re saying, not yet.
‘It’s Petersson,’ Karin says as she and Malin crouch over the body lying on the bridge spanning the moat. ‘I recognise him from pictures in the
Correspondent
and Kalle’s business magazines.’
‘We can ask one of the tenant farmers to identify him,’ Malin says. ‘But I recognise him too, so there’s hardly any point.’
Johansson and Lindman are waiting inside a patrol car. They’re planning to interview them properly once they’re done out here.
‘Apart from the wounds, he’s got a large bruise on the back of his neck,’ Karin says. ‘In all likelihood, the injuries to his torso are knife wounds. Everything suggests the sort of extreme violence that you almost only see when someone loses control. You can take it for granted that he didn’t inflict these wounds on himself. But I can’t say much more than that out here, we need to get him back to the city to see if I can get anything else from the body. It’s impossible to examine the ground out here. The rain has swept away any evidence. I might be able to find some traces of blood in the gravel, but it’s far from certain.’
The ambulance arrived a short while ago.
Driven by Stenlund, one of Janne’s former colleagues. He waved a cheery hello and asked how Janne was, and Malin replied that he was fine.
She looks at the corpse.
The open, almost magically blue eye looks as if it’s trying to escape its socket, and she feels sick, wants to get up, but looks up at Zeke
The dripping water is coloured red. The yellow raincoat has been perforated by masses of holes and Malin can see a number of deep injuries to the body, and a mixture of blood and water is streaming from what must be dozens of stab wounds. The blood mixes with the rain. It’s raining blood, Malin thinks. So you didn’t exactly fall into the moat drunk, did you?
Little silver fish are falling from the victim’s mouth, wriggling like abandoned babies on their way down to the safety of the water.
Snake fish, Malin thinks.
A black eye staring right out into the rain and the thin fog that has drifted down into the moat. The corpse’s other eye is closed.
You look surprised, Malin thinks. But are you really?
Am I surprised
?
Hardly.
The water is no longer embracing me.
I am leaving your memory, Mum, and instead I’m hanging here staring down at the water, and off towards the castle, at these strangers.
I can hear and see Howie, he’s barking even more fiercely now. Can he see the holes in my body? I know there are a lot of them, but I can’t feel any pain, just the wind blowing through me.
Who are they, these people?
What do they want with me?
Are they the Russian soldiers from the old stories?
I’m moving slowly upwards, towards a whirring noise, and I’m spinning around and around, but it’s not making me dizzy, and now I’m heading towards the bridge, held by a pair of firm arms, and gradually I sink lower, my stiffening, bloody body.
A slapping sound as I touch the ground again.
I am lying on my back.
Black plastic under me. How can I know that I’m lying on my back when I can’t see or feel anything?
But I suppose that’s what it’s like now.
All those people standing by the edge of the moat looking at me. Who are they?
I’ve got my suspicions, but I don’t want to believe it’s true, that this has finally happened. I refuse to accept it. But there’s probably no point trying to resist. And if it has happened, there are plenty of riddles to solve.
And the buzz of the lawnmower isn’t here.
A woman’s face in my field of vision. She’s beautiful.
Then another woman.
She could have been beautiful, but right now it looks like she could do with six months’ sleep, her eyes seem completely devoid of any joie de vivre.
And the way they’re talking, I don’t actually want to hear what they’re saying, not yet.
‘It’s Petersson,’ Karin says as she and Malin crouch over the body lying on the bridge spanning the moat. ‘I recognise him from pictures in the
Correspondent
and Kalle’s business magazines.’
‘We can ask one of the tenant farmers to identify him,’ Malin says. ‘But I recognise him too, so there’s hardly any point.’
Johansson and Lindman are waiting inside a patrol car. They’re planning to interview them properly once they’re done out here.
‘Apart from the wounds, he’s got a large bruise on the back of his neck,’ Karin says. ‘In all likelihood, the injuries to his torso are knife wounds. Everything suggests the sort of extreme violence that you almost only see when someone loses control. You can take it for granted that he didn’t inflict these wounds on himself. But I can’t say much more than that out here, we need to get him back to the city to see if I can get anything else from the body. It’s impossible to examine the ground out here. The rain has swept away any evidence. I might be able to find some traces of blood in the gravel, but it’s far from certain.’
The ambulance arrived a short while ago.
Driven by Stenlund, one of Janne’s former colleagues. He waved a cheery hello and asked how Janne was, and Malin replied that he was fine.
She looks at the corpse.
The open, almost magically blue eye looks as if it’s trying to escape its socket, and she feels sick, wants to get up, but looks up at Zeke
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