Is he still here?
Bettina, is that you?
No, but is he still here?
What was it he said?
I didn’t understand.
Someone’s coming now, is he coming back?
He took his stinking fingers out of my nostrils, but the rag is still in my mouth. He didn’t cut me again.
Ropes around my ankles and wrists. I try pulling this way and that, and I know he’s going to come back, I want to see you, Bettina.
Or do I?
I want to stay. I know what I’ve got to do, I can feel the light returning to my eyes now, I heard a door open, is that death or life coming in?
Spare me.
I’m a good person.
The room is bathed in light from a spotlight in the ceiling.
Malin sees him.
He’s sitting still on a chair in the middle of the room, blood running from his head and nostrils.
Axel Fagelsjo.
Alone. No Anders Dalstrom.
Fagelsjo. Not so imposing now, and Malin thinks that it makes little difference if he’s alive or dead, yet she still hesitates in front of him, approaching him slowly, is he dead, alive?
Fagelsjo seems to be melting into the stone beneath him, his blood seems to be sucked up by the castle walls, and she can feel the heartbeat of history, pumping a strange music through her veins.
Standing right in front of Fagelsjo now.
She puts an arm on his shoulder.
He squints. His eyes seem to clear.
Malin waves the others into the room. No one else there, where’s Dalstrom?
And Fagelsjo jerks.
Coughs, wants the rag out of his mouth, and Malin looks around again, nothing, and she puts her pistol down on the stone floor, Zeke breathing heavily behind her.
Then she takes the rag from Fagelsjo’s mouth as a uniformed officer cuts the ropes tying his wrists and ankles.
He throws up his arms, as if with some peculiar, new-found power.
Kicks his legs.
His bloody sweater shudders, and Malin can see the fat moving beneath it.
Then he moves, and stands up.
Looks down at Malin.
‘The bastard didn’t have the nerve,’ Fagelsjo says. ‘He didn’t have the nerve.’
He probably did have the nerve, Father.
But he couldn’t, didn’t want to.
I see you sit down again, defenceless, and not long ago you were experiencing the most profound of all fears, the feeling that is the only thing that exists on the boundary where life and death meet.
You were there just now, and now you’ve been called back, but have you learned anything, Father?
I don’t think so.
I shall be buried in a few days’ time, Father, but you don’t care about that, or do you? The family vault is ready out in the chapel.
There’s so much I don’t know about you, Father, and now Malin Fors and Zacharias Martinsson are standing by the door, they’re talking to their boss, wondering: where is Anders Dalstrom?
You’re close now, Malin, but this drama isn’t over yet. There are still a few more moments of obscurity and clarity to come.
You’ve found the knife, with the coat of arms on the shaft, the knife that perforated my body. Karin Johannison will let you know within a few days that it was the knife that inflicted my wounds.
I’m tumbling around in my space, amused as I am by this relentless desire for events to play themselves out, come to a conclusion, so that a new beginning can finally have its beginning.
There’s some justice in the position I’m in. I destroyed friendships, and many other forms of love, and I never took responsibility for that.
But where is he now, Anders Dalstrom?
You know, Malin. You know.
Malin is crouching beside Axel Fagelsjo, who has sat down on the chair again, when she sees Waldemar Ekenberg and Johan Jakobsson coming over from the direction of the stairs.
Axel Fagelsjo is carefully but firmly wiping the blood from his face, breathing slowly, saying: ‘He didn’t have the nerve. The bastard. But he knocked out several of my teeth.’
‘Did he say anything as he left?’
‘No.’
‘Do you have any idea where he might have gone?’
‘No. Where would someone like that go?’
The man before her looks huge on his chair, the look in his eyes tired but sharp as he says: ‘When animals are about to die, they go to places they’ve been before, places that are important to them.’
‘Did he have a rifle?’
‘How else do you think he got me down here?’
‘So you were here when he arrived?’
‘No, I was at home in the apartment, but I was about to come out here when he arrived. It was time to come home.’
Malin jumps up and runs over to Zeke without paying any attention to Johan, Sven or Waldemar.
‘Come on!’ she yells. ‘I know where he is.’
Zeke follows her without asking, and they rush towards the car over the moat where the water seems to be frothing with green bubbles. The rain is pounding the ground and soon they are in the Volvo, carrying them faster and faster through the darkness of the estate, imagining that they can see the spirits of those who have gone before them, drifting anxiously outside the car windows.
They sit in silence.
Behind them other cars with flashing blue lights.
But no sirens.
The sound of wind and rain and engines dominates the forest and fields.
They pass Linnea Sjostedt’s cottage, a dull glow coming from the windows.
They pass the building where the party took place that New Year’s Eve, turn once, twice, three times, and then the sharp bend by the field where Jerry Petersson and the others rolled over and over and over, bodies flying through the air, the winter night must have been shattered by the sound of metal crumpling, bodies breaking, beyond any hope of repair.
A car some way out in the field.
White, almost transparent rain in the beams of light from the headlamps.
And at the boundary of light and darkness stands a man with a rifle in his hand.