Autumn Killing Read Online Free PDF

the door, letting the dog out first before getting out himself. The dog races off across the open field, presumably chasing the scent of a deer or elk, or a hare or fox.
    He looks out over the field for a while before stepping down onto the soft ground. He trudges about, watching the dog running back and forth along the line of the forest, leaping into a deep ditch before reappearing only to vanish into a pile of leaves where the faded ochre-colours compete for attention with others that seem to be powdered matt bronze or dull gold.
    Apart from the dog, Petersson is completely alone out in the field, yet he still feels quite at ease here, in a place where everything can die yet also be born, a breaking point in people’s lives, a sequence of possibilities.
    He runs his hand through his bleached hair, thinking how well it suits his sharp nose and hard blue eyes. The wrinkles in his brow. Business wrinkles. Well-earned.
    The forest over there.
    Fir trees and pines, undergrowth. A lot of game this year. His tenant farmers are coming later today, they’re going to try to get a young elk or a couple of deer. Something needs be killed.
    The Fågelsjö family.
    What wouldn’t they give for the chance to hunt in these forests again?
    He looks at his arms, at the bright yellow Prada raincoat, the raindrops drumming on his head and the yellow GORE-TEX fabric.
    ‘Howie,’ Petersson calls. ‘Howie. Time to go now.’
    Hard. Tough. An ice-cold machine. A man prepared to step over dead bodies.
    That was how people talked about him in the business circles he moved in up in Stockholm. A shadow to most people. A rumour. A topic of conversation, something that was often the cause of admiration in a world where it was deemed desirable to be so successful that you could lie low instead of maintaining a high profile, instead of appearing on television talk shows to get more clients.
    Jerry Petersson?
    Brilliant, or so I’ve heard. A good lawyer. Didn’t he get rich from that IT business, because he got out in time? Supposed to be a real cunt-magnet.
    But also: Watch out for him.
    Isn’t he involved with Jochen Goldman? Don’t they own some company together?
    ‘Howie.’
    But the dog doesn’t come, doesn’t want to come. And Jerry knows he can leave it be, let the dog find its own way home to the castle through the forest in its own good time. It always comes home after a few hours. But for some reason he wants to call the dog back to him now, come to some sort of arrangement before they part.
    ‘Howie!’
    And the dog must have heard the urgency in his voice, because it comes racing over the whole damn field, and is soon back with Jerry.
    It leaps around his legs, and he crouches down beside it, feeling the damp soak through the fabric of his trousers, and he pats the dog’s back hard in the way he knows it likes.
    ‘So what do you to want to do, eh, boy? Run home on your own, or drive back with me? Your choice. Maybe run back on your own, you never know, I might drive off the road.’
    The dog licks his face before turning and running back across the field and hiding under a pile of leaves, before disappearing through the dark, open doors of the forest.
    Jerry Petersson gets back in the Range Rover, turns the key in the ignition, listens to the sound of the engine, then lets the vehicle nose its way along the road again, into the dense, fog-shrouded forest.
    He hadn’t locked the castle doors when he set off on his spontaneous morning drive around the estate after waking early and being unable to get back to sleep. Who was likely to come? Who would dare to come? A hint of excitement: I bet
they’d
like to come.
    Fredrik Fågelsjö. Old man Axel.
    Katarina.
    She’s stayed away.
    The daughter of the house.
    My house now.
    He moved in their orbit a long time ago.
    A crow flies in front of the windscreen, flapping its wings, one wing looks injured somehow, maybe broken.
    The castle is large. He could do with a woman to share it