Deeds of Autumn Read online

  To my boys, who will one day conquer the world

  ‘Come little leaves,’ said the wind one day.

  ‘Come over the meadows with me and play.

  Put on your dresses of red and gold.

  For summer is gone and the days grow cold.’

  George Cooper

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Author’s Note

  Extract from Rites of Spring

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Prologue

  29 August 1990

  T

  he water began its journey in the darkness somewhere deep inside the ridge. It flowed from an underground spring with such force that it was pushed upwards, driving metre after metre through rock, mud and sediment. The ridge was over two hundred metres high, and without human assistance the water would have eventually lost its momentum, turned downwards, found its way out between the roots of the deciduous trees that covered the slopes and ended up as a stream in one of the steep ravines that sliced through the sides of the ridge. However, at the beginning of the twentieth century, a quarry was opened up high on the ridge. Diabase and amphibolite – hard, black varieties of rock well suited for gravestones.

  The workers blasted and excavated eagerly, deeper and deeper, until the day the shaft crossed the path of the water, providing it with an easier route to the surface. And the water thanked them by gushing forth with a power no one could have imagined. Only six months later the pumps were shut down, the machinery was taken away and the quarry was abandoned.

  As time went by, the place was all but forgotten. The water transformed the quarry into a small, deep pool, surrounded on three sides by steep, dark cliffs, and on the fourth by a sloping bank. The forest swallowed up the access road and the undergrowth reclaimed the area until all that remained were a few overgrown ruins of former workmen’s huts, and a glade right next to the bank where the shards of rock were packed so tightly that no living thing could fight its way through.

  The quarry wasn’t rediscovered until the ’60s, when the logging machines required new routes. In spite of the fact that no one was allowed on site, the beautiful, hidden pool became a favourite place for the young people in the area to swim and sunbathe. It was a perfect spot to meet and do whatever they wanted, without the feeling of constantly being monitored. By that stage no one had any idea how deep the quarry was. Some claimed that the water must be at least twenty metres deep, others forty. Some even said the quarry was bottomless, although how that was possible was a complete mystery.

  There were lots of rumours about what was hiding down there. Old cars, the proceeds of robberies, the remains of people who had disappeared long ago. Rumours that couldn’t be verified, and therefore grew even more fantastical with each retelling. However, all those who had ever visited the quarry were agreed on two things: that the black water was so deep that even high summer in Skåne couldn’t raise its temperature above twenty degrees, and that one of the young men who chose to scramble up the steep rock face on the far side in order to dive from the highest point was going to kill himself – sooner or later.

  *

  It took four firefighters to get the body out of the water. The bank was slippery and covered in sharp stones that made it difficult to get traction. On a couple of occasions one of the men stumbled and lost his footing, almost as if the water was putting up a fight, trying to retain the body for as long as possible.

  Seen from a short distance away, the young man looked as if he was sleeping. He was lying on his back with his eyes closed, the pale features so peaceful that it was possible to believe that he would wake up at any moment.

  But when the body landed on the stretcher with a horrible, heavy thud, the illusion was shattered. Cold water poured from his clothes and his long, fair hair, carrying with it blood from the back of his head, which had been crushed. It formed pink, shimmering puddles on the stretcher before it gathered enough weight to make its way down among the stones on the hard ground and disappear into the darkness.

  Water always finds the lowest point, thought the police officer who was standing just a metre or so away. He wondered whether he ought to jot down that observation. Turn to the last page of his notebook where he collected such thoughts, small reflections that didn’t really have anything to do with police work, but ought to be recorded anyway, possibly to balance out everything else he wrote. Instead, he stayed on the page he’d just started.

  He had written the place, time and date only a minute or so after getting out of the police car.

  Mörkaby quarry, 05.54, 29 August 1990.

  Underneath he’d left space for the names of the four young people in front of him, one on each line. Their faces had taken on a greyish tinge and they were trying in vain to avoid looking at the body. He knew who they were, how old they were, where they lived; he even knew who their parents were and where they worked. Under normal circumstances, this was something he liked about his job out here in such a rural area – familiarity with the locals, the sense of community. But on this particular morning, he wished for the first time that he worked in a city.

  Alexander Morell

  Carina Pedersen

  Bruno Sordi

  Marie Andersson

  They were all nineteen years old, as was the young man on the stretcher. As recently as June he’d seen all five of them careering through the village as they celebrated their graduation from high school – drinking cans of beer, blowing whistles, waving their white, peaked student caps and screaming with joy at the future that awaited them.

  Simon Vidje, he wrote at the bottom of the list and underlined both words in black. He had known the identity of the victim for quite some time now, and yet there was something about seeing the name on paper that made the situation even more unpleasant. Everyone in Nedanås knew who Simon Vidje was. A child prodigy. One in a million. Someone who was destined to conquer the world, visit amazing places and take his home village and everyone in it along for the ride. Instead, his story had ended here, in cold bl
ack water in the middle of nowhere, not too far from the place where he’d grown up.

  The police officer’s radio crackled into life, then he heard a rough, familiar voice conveying instructions which he immediately carried out.

  ‘Your father is on his way, Alex,’ he said to the muscular boy with protruding wrestler’s ears and broad shoulders. He received a brief nod in response.

  The officer gazed at the four of them for a moment, then frowned and made a note below their names.

  Marie Andersson’s clothes are wet. Alexander Morell’s, Carina Pedersen’s and Bruno Sordi’s clothes are dry.

  Maybe it was a pointless observation, a fact with no value whatsoever. At least that was what he would claim later on, when it had somehow found its way into the official police report and people started asking him what those fifteen words actually meant.

  However, he was currently unaware of the difficulties ahead. All he knew was that he had a job to do. Questions to ask, answers to write down in his notebook.

  He began as gently as he could. ‘So, what actually happened?’ No one answered. The four of them had given up the struggle and were staring at the stretcher, where pale red water still dripped from Simon Vidje’s crushed head and continued on its way to the lowest point, deep down in the darkness.

  1

  Autumn 2017

  T

  he long, winding route up the ridge is steep, edged with streams flowing through ravines, and with tall deciduous trees, their glowing colours reflected in the car’s paintwork as they reach up into the sky.

  ‘The Swedish summer chooses exactly the right way to die,’ Håkan always used to say. ‘A massive explosion of colour before eternal darkness, that’s the way to go. Don’t you agree, Anna?’

  Then he’d start humming the riff from ‘Out of the Blue’, playing air guitar until she and Agnes were helpless with laughter. Håkan loved the autumn, loved being outdoors. Camping, climbing, walking in the mountains. They were young then, the two of them, without a care in the world. Agnes was still little, bobbing along as light as a feather in the carrier on his back. Fifteen years had passed, yet Anna can still conjure up the memory with ease. And the song.

  According to Neil Young, it’s better to burn out than to fade away.

  But that’s exactly what Håkan did. He slowly faded away, out of the blue and into the black, until all that remained of him were the whispers inside her head.

  Please help me, Anna!

  She turns up the volume on the radio station that Agnes chose before switching her full attention to her phone, as usual. They’ve been travelling together for almost seven hours, yet their mother-daughter conversation has filled no more than ten minutes. Anna tightens her grip on the wheel, keeps her eyes fixed on the road. Avoids looking at the trees, the sky, the colours that slice right through her. Razor blades in red, gold and blue.

  She hates the autumn. Hates it.

  Three keys dangle alongside the one in the ignition. The first is for the house in Äppelviken which is no longer their home. The second is the spare key to Håkan’s rented apartment, and should have been returned last winter when the auctioneers emptied the depressing little rooms. Number three is the key to her office at police HQ in Stockholm. She knows she should have handed it in the day before yesterday along with her official pass, but she didn’t.

  Because if you open the ring and start removing keys, then you have to go all the way, Håkan whispers. You have to remove everything. Not just the keys, but the locks, the doors, the rooms – the memories.

  She mumbles to him to shut up.

  *

  Nature up on the ridge is completely different from down below. The open landscape has been replaced by deciduous forest and small meadows surrounded by sturdy stone walls. White cows gaze at them as they pass by; it’s almost as if they realise that Anna and Agnes are outsiders. There is a white line in the middle of the road across the top of the ridge, but it is still so narrow and winding that Anna automatically slows down when they meet other cars. As they approach the crossroads, the satnav on her phone seems to hesitate. She can understand why. The vegetation along the sides of the dirt track has recently been cleared, and the gravel is dark brown and fresh. In contrast, the metal sign bearing the word TABOR is old; it almost looks creased, as if someone screwed up a piece of paper then tried to smooth it out again.

  Milo is on Agnes’s knee, and as the main road disappears in the rear-view mirror, the white terrier places his paws on the door and presses his nose to the window. His tail is wagging eagerly as if he knows where he is, which of course is impossible as he’s never set foot in Skåne before. Agnes doesn’t even look up as her thumbs continue to move across the screen of her phone.

  Anna glances at the clock. The removal truck is just over an hour behind them. She reminds herself yet again that they are simply moving house, nothing else.

  Sure, Håkan grins inside her head. Who do you think you’re fooling?

  She turns the radio up even louder in order to drown him out. She recognises the song, one of the few new ones she actually likes.

  ‘This is good! Zara Lah-hrsson,’ she says, mainly in an attempt to break the silence, and immediately falls into the trap. The name tangles itself up into a little gasp, and Agnes responds with one of those sounds that is somewhere between a sigh and a snort. She still doesn’t look up. Anna’s sixteen-year-old daughter has plenty of ways to punish her. Colouring her beautiful hair pink, the ring in her nose, the five in her right ear. The ripped jeans, the dark makeup, the military-style jacket, the worn-down Converse trainers, the full rebel uniform that has erased virtually any trace of the Agnes she once was. Not to mention the left-wing tendencies, the ultra-feminism, or the badge on her jacket informing everyone that ALL COPS ARE BASTARDS, or all the other hidden landmines that Anna has to pick her way around so that not every conversation ends in an explosion. And yet none of these methods are anywhere near as effective as the one her daughter is deploying right now: silence.

  People usually open up to Anna. Håkan always said that there was something about her that made this happen, but in fact it’s all down to her stammer. She knows it’s barely noticeable, a minor stumble over certain sounds that she can sometimes pre-empt, sometimes not. She never even thought of it as a problem until her parents sent her to a speech therapist at some point during her years in primary school. As a result she began to avoid speaking and focused on listening instead. Most people listen with only half an ear; they’re mostly thinking about what they’re going to say next, and so they miss what is really being said – not only the words themselves and the nuances of tone, but also the involuntary micro-clues that human beings constantly give. The head movements, the gestures, the grimaces, the pauses. Signs that sometimes directly contradict the content of the conversation. That was how she realised at an early stage that her parents were going to split up. And that Håkan was cheating on her.

  Agnes’s silence, on the other hand, makes Anna hyper-conscious of every word, every syllable that crosses her lips, and somehow that feeling transfers to her speech centre. It becomes an electrical fault in the communication between her brain and her mouth, makes her appear uncertain. She hates this, because stammering has nothing whatsoever to do with uncertainty.

  Breathe, breathe . . .

  She glances at herself in the rear-view mirror, sees that she is clenching her jaw in the way she really doesn’t like. She has inherited her dark hair and eyes from her father, along with her slightly angular nose, but that particular bitter expression is definitely a legacy from her mother. She shakes her head, tells herself that she is doing the right thing in following the school counsellor’s advice to be patient and avoid confrontation. Which of course is easy for him to say, because he only sees Agnes for an hour a week. He doesn’t have to live with her.

  Breathe . . .

  The trees are closing in around the track, and Milo is still pressing his nose to the side window and
making excited little noises. The dog was one of Håkan’s bright ideas. He simply appeared on the doorstep on Agnes’s fourteenth birthday with the puppy in his arms. They’d promised each other that they wouldn’t turn into a stereotype. They would stick to a mutually agreed line, they would never play the divorced parents’ equivalent of good cop, bad cop. And yet that’s exactly what they did.

  Håkan took on the leading role as the fun, much-loved daddy, while Anna, without quite knowing how it had happened, had been allocated the clichéd supporting role as the miserable, mean-spirited mother who was always going on about rules and responsibilities. Who disliked animals so much that she wouldn’t even let her own daughter have a puppy. And so she’d given in. Let the wretched animal into the house to prove that she too could be cool and spontaneous. It hadn’t helped at all.

  Milo whimpers again, louder this time, as if he can see something in the shadows among the trees that only a dog can detect. Rabbits, probably. The stupid creature is crazy for rabbits and can chase them for hours if he manages to escape, which he does with depressing regularity. He is both hyperactive and spoiled, and he treats Anna with the same thinly veiled contempt as Agnes does. But there is no denying that Milo loves Agnes more than anything else in the world, and she feels the same about him. Sometimes Anna realises that she envies their relationship, which of course is ridiculous.

  The track winds deeper and deeper into the forest, the burnished leaves close in above them, and even though she was pretty sure they’d reached the top of the ridge a while ago, they are still climbing.

  ‘Are your ears popping too?’ she ventures in the most neutral tone she can summon.

  ‘Mm.’ Agnes continues to stare at her phone.

  After about five minutes they round a bend and reach a rectangular courtyard. The trees loom in from both the longer sides, the tops so close together that there are only a few metres of sky between them. A long shed leans against the trunks on the left, and at the far end there is a lovely old brick building, with a dark-coloured car parked outside. As they draw closer Anna can see that a section of the reddish-brown brick between the ground floor and the first floor has been painted white. It bears the year, 1896, followed by the words BEHOLD THE MOUNTAIN OF THE LORD in ornate lettering.