Stallo (31 page)

‘Dalarna!’

‘He lives outside Avesta.’

‘Do you know what I think, Susso?’ I said, rooting around in my bag for my lip balm. ‘I think you should leave it alone. He could easily be some kind of lunatic. I think the police ignore tips like this for a very good reason.’

‘But I want to help him. I can’t just sit here doing nothing.’

‘Help him? Who?’

‘Mattias!’

I couldn’t help sighing.

‘You’ve helped enough already. If it hadn’t been for your picture, the police would have had nothing to go on. You don’t have to do more.’

‘What if he’s got nothing to do with the case? Then it is my fault that they wasted masses of time looking for him. And Granddad’s fault.’ She pointed to the wall, at a framed photograph of
mountain flora showing colourful clumps of berries.

‘All right, all right,’ I said, trying to calm her down. ‘But I still think you ought to let the police take care of this. They know what they’re doing, don’t you agree?’

She shook her head.

‘If it’s a troll, they’ll never find him.’

‘But, Susso …’

‘Trolls don’t exist in any kind of register. They don’t have fingerprints. They can’t be found by using criminal sodding profiling. I’ve spent the best part of my life searching for them and even I don’t have the faintest idea where they keep themselves hidden or what they look like.’

After sighing again I reached for the tin of ginger biscuits, found a heart-shaped one and bit off the pointed end.

‘I think you should phone the police and talk to them. Ask them how it’s progressing and what they think about this latest tip about the old man in the loft. In Avesta.’

‘It drives me mad,’ she said. ‘They’re so slow following it up.’

‘Let’s go home now,’ I said. ‘We can pick up some Thai food on the way. And then we can watch a DVD. That’ll take your mind off it for a while.’

*

That was my way of trying to look after her. In all honesty I was probably afraid to give her too much encouragement. I was worried about what all this publicity in the press would lead to in the long run. What if she was never able to get a job because of it? Who wants to employ someone who spends all their time looking for trolls?

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.