The Shapeshifters (28 page)

Susso was under a lot of pressure, and instead of supporting her I gave in.

When she talked about trolls I quickly tried to talk about something else, some everyday topic. In my defence I can say I didn't do it consciously. It was just that I couldn't deal with it, that's all. My reserves were too low. Drained. It takes a considerable amount of energy to maintain the pretence of self-pity.

But naturally we are stronger than we think.

And if it hasn't been obvious before, it certainly becomes apparent when you find yourself in a crisis.

In mortal danger.

 

 

Lars Nilsson had cut out the
Norrländskan
interview with Susso and stuck it on the fridge door with a magnet, and when they sat down to eat lunch she said:

‘So, Lars, you've been reading about this crazy person who believes in trolls?'

He looked up at her, considered the question with a puzzled expression and then shook his head as he lifted the fork to his mouth. They were eating enchiladas with a sweet and sour sauce.

‘I'm referring to myself, Lars,' she said, pointing her knife at her chest. And then she pointed it at the fridge door, and he understood.

‘Have they found the boy?' he asked.

Susso shook her head. ‘No, and it doesn't look as if they're going to, either. Not alive, at any rate.'

Lars Nilsson chewed for a long time, and after he had swallowed he said:

‘I remember when I was little. How two children disappeared, a brother and sister. We heard stallo had taken them and eaten them.'

Susso took a drink from her glass and waited for the old man to continue.

‘But that wasn't what happened,' he said. ‘Many years later someone saw the girl in a market. She wasn't a girl any longer but
a fully grown, fine young woman. It was a relative who had seen her, the lost children's uncle, and he was certain it was her because she was so like her mother. The man's own sister, that is. But she didn't recognise him, and when he went to embrace her she ran off into the crowd and was gone. And that's when people said stallo had taken her, not to eat her but just to have her, as their own child.'

‘Yes,' said Susso, ‘that's what we're hoping. The boy's mother, who I've met, talks about that. She says the person who has taken Mattias doesn't want to harm him. But that's probably how you have to think, to be able to bear it.'

‘They're tasty, these enchiladas,' said Lars.

‘Do you think so? I think they taste terrible. Or rather, taste of nothing. Makes you wonder what's in them.'

 

 

The sound of a television was coming from the upstairs landing. When Seved came into the hall and heard it he stamped up the stairs without taking off his boots. Profanities simmered in his mouth. Didn't she understand anything!

She was sitting cuddled up to the boy, who was curled under a blanket with only his face visible. They had been eating clementines, and the peel lay in a pile on the coffee table. They both stared at him wide-eyed as he strode across the floor and forced his way behind the old TV. With a powerful tug he wrenched the aerial cable out of the socket. A fizzing sound filled the room before he pulled out the plug as well. Then all he could hear was his heavy breathing.

Signe sat up. ‘It was only a children's programme.'

Seved did not answer. There was no point in arguing about such things when the boy was in the room. Because of that he had no release for the fury that had welled up inside him and driven him up the stairs. His hands shook as he rolled up the cable.

‘You can look at a film instead,' he muttered. ‘There are plenty of films you can watch.'

Seved did not want to hear anything about what had happened in Kiruna. That was the real reason he had forbidden Signe to put on the television. But he could not tell her that because naturally she knew nothing about the things Börje did. He had to deal with
this on his own, and that made it so much worse.

The risk of the boy seeing his own face on the TV news was practically non-existent by now. The police had interviewed several hundred people but had got nowhere, and therefore there was nothing to report. Moreover, almost every news programme was full of pictures from south-east Asia, where an earthquake had triggered a tsunami that had rolled in from the sea and taken the lives of a shockingly large number of people. On the paradise beaches of Thailand corpses lay like bundles of rotting seaweed in the sand. Many of the victims were Swedish. They were mangled and swollen and unidentified. As many as ten thousand Swedes could have drowned.

Lennart had grunted with satisfaction when he saw it. It certainly could not have come at a better time, he thought. The wave had swept away the Vaikijaur man as well.

 

 

‘If it's true he's been living with those Laestadians in Årrenjarka,' said Susso, as she and Torbjörn sat at their usual table in Safari, ‘then we ought to have heard something by now.'

‘It was probably just talk,' Torbjörn replied. ‘Like Edit said.'

‘Yes, it seems like it.'

Susso, who had been quick to grab the sofa, undid the laces of her boots and pulled up her feet so she could rub them.

‘And that guy in Avesta?' Torbjörn asked. ‘The one who phoned?'

‘He seems a bit confused,' Susso answered, shaking her head. ‘I wanted to see the film, but then he started going on about how it wasn't digitised and he didn't know how to transfer it to his computer, and so on. And that's what usually happens when people are lying. The simplest things become difficult. I mean, how hard can it be? The quality doesn't matter. I just want to see if it really is him.'

‘My dad could never manage a thing like that,' said Torbjörn.

‘No?'

‘Not a chance.'

They walked home in the darkness. Torbjörn lived up in Matto, in a bedsit on Per Högströmsgatan, and Susso went with him part of the way so that she could buy food for breakfast at the ICA store. Torbjörn said there would be a few seconds of sun the next
day and his accelerator thumb was itching. Susso thought that sounded like an invitation, so she suggested they go out for a run on a snowmobile. He shook his head and said both of them were broken.

They walked into the shop, and Torbjörn began talking about
Lost
.

‘You've got to see it.'

‘I can't stand Channel 4. All those crappy ads.'

‘You can always download it,' he said.

‘My internet is so slow. It'll take forever.'

‘You can borrow it from me. I've got all the episodes.'

They watched
Lost
on the laptop Torbjörn had propped on a chair at the end of the bed. Susso tried to follow the story, but there were no subtitles so she found it hard to understand everything. She was also tired. Torbjörn lay next to her, explaining what was happening. A character called John Locke was hunting a wild pig and came across a monster you never saw, and then it ended.

‘But what was it then?' Susso asked.

‘Hmm,' said Torbjörn. ‘That's the question.'

‘Tell me!'

‘I don't know. We're never told.'

‘I bet you it was a dinosaur. If so, I'm not watching it any more.'

‘Have you got something against dinosaurs?' Torbjörn said, unexpectedly reaching out his long arm and pinching her shoulder hard.

‘Ow!'

‘That's what happens when you talk shit about dinosaurs.'

Susso giggled and hit back, calling him a variety of names. The
harsh words seemed to bring them closer. Before it had always been bickering, coarse jokes and wrestling that ended with one of them pinching the other on the inside of the thigh and making them howl in pain. Between this and the other there had been no physical contact at all. It was as if neither of them knew how to go about it.

Torbjörn asked if she wanted to watch another episode, but she slid off the bed, stretched and said she probably ought to be getting off home. He did not try to stop her.

While she put on her boots and tied the wet laces, he stood leaning against the hall mirror, one foot angled in front of the other, his hands plunged into his pockets, watching her.

‘Don't forget your things,' he said, nodding at the plastic bag she had put beside the door.

She stepped out of the front door and buried her head deep inside the collar of her coat, covering her mouth. It was snowing. Sharp grains blew in all directions at once, stinging her skin. Probably the worst kind of snowfall. Blinking was no help. The only thing she could do was look down at the ridged layer of snow, yellow under the street lamps lining Hjalmar Lundbohmsvägen.

When she reached Hermelingatan a Volvo trundled past with large clouds pouring from the exhaust at the back. Otherwise it was completely dead. It was past eleven. There was no sight or sound of roaring snow ploughs either, despite the fact that the snow had started to fall heavily. When they had left Safari the sky had been as dark as an empty blackboard.

The shadow of her hurrying form alternately lengthened and disappeared, only to reappear again suddenly. She cut across the
street and carried on in the direction of the playground in the park. She usually went this way, mainly to avoid the wind, but this time there was something pulling her in that direction.

The glow from the lamp posts beside the narrow path swelled into circular patches in the darkness. The snow was easing off. It was as if she had entered a different zone where everything was untouched. The bushes were soft mounds under their white covering and the branches of the trees in the park were thickened by the snow.

Then she heard a sound, a dull squealing inside her skull. Or rather she felt it. She thought it was a car with faulty brakes, someone slowing down at a red light.

She heard the squealing again, and this time it pierced her brain so distinctly and painfully that she had to stop. Leaning forwards slightly she moved the bag to her left hand and lifted her glove to her ear. This time she had not experienced the sound as external: it was like a cry inside her head. Was there something wrong with her?

As she stood there, wondering if the sound was going to recur, she heard footsteps. She whirled round and saw a man walking towards her. He was big and wearing a dark waist-length jacket and a hat pulled down to his eyebrows. He walked with determined, loping strides and was less than ten metres away.

A strong urge to run welled up inside her but she controlled it, and instead walked on as fast as she could.

She dared not look back, wanting only to get out of the park as quickly as possible, and found herself jogging. She had reached the middle of the park and could already see the light from Adolf Hedinsvägen beyond a small hill. The plastic supermarket carrier swung to and fro in one hand, while with the other hand she
managed to pull out her mobile, which had been bumping about inside her coat pocket. It was difficult to focus on the screen. But who could she call? The police would hardly have time to get there if the man attacked her. She dropped the phone back in her pocket and felt around for her key ring, thinking she could use the largest key like a small knife. Then she decided to use the bag instead. Two litres of milk weighed two kilos. That would leave an impression.

With relief she saw that someone was standing over by the crossing.

A person wearing a lingonberry-red jacket—Roland.

He met her with an amused look and did not seem especially surprised to see her, even though it was so late. He was bareheaded and snowflakes were scattered in his hair. The cord coming from the handle of a retractable dog lead looped behind a snowdrift.

‘Look, Basker,' he said. ‘Look who's coming here.'

Susso turned round, but the man was no longer there. She gasped for air and felt it sting inside her chest. The dog came running up to her, wondering why she was not greeting him. Its snowy paws climbed up her jeans.

‘What's up?' Roland asked, pulling the lead gently.

The dog walked alongside them for a few steps but immediately wanted to go back.

‘Nothing,' she said, panting. ‘I just . . . I just got a terrible headache. And then . . . I don't know. It was . . . I don't know . . .' She shook her head and crouched down to pat the dog, which was standing on its hind legs, boxing with its paws. Roland's thumb clicked to shorten the lead. His pointy eyebrows had shot up.

Gudrun was sitting in front of the television watching a blaring action film. When she heard what had happened, that Susso thought she had been followed by someone in the park, her lips tightened to form a wide, serious fissure in her face. She fumbled with the remote and turned off the sound.

‘But are you sure . . . ?'

Susso sat with the cold shopping bag on her lap and was silent.

‘No,' she said, after a moment. ‘It was just so . . . horrible.'

Gudrun walked into the kitchen and looked down at the street, as if she was expecting the man Susso had told her about to be standing in the light of the street lamp, waiting.

Roland was still in the hall. He had not removed his jacket but had unclipped the dog and placed the lead on the chest of drawers.

‘I'm going out for a while,' he said. ‘To have a look around.'

‘Are you mad!' Gudrun exclaimed, quickly turning round.

‘I'm only going to look,' he said, shutting the front door behind him.

‘We have to phone the police.'

‘Drop it.'

‘What if it had been a rapist! And now he'll attack someone else instead because you've slipped out of his grasp.'

Susso snorted.

‘Slipped out of his grasp?' she said, bending over with an amused smile as she put the bag on the floor. She pushed away the dog, who was interested in the contents.

‘What if you read about it tomorrow? How would you feel then, if you hadn't reported it?'