Stallo (37 page)

‘We were out picking wild strawberries,’ he said. ‘The whole family. Up by the road over there. When it was time to go home Tomas didn’t want to come with us. He liked wild strawberries. If I remember correctly, there was something I wanted to watch on TV, a football match or something, so I got impatient. When I tried to catch hold of him he ran away. And stupidly I ran after him.’

He stroked the top of his head.

‘It was almost as if I was driving him towards the road by chasing after him. When I realised what was happening I stopped
immediately, but he carried on. He probably didn’t realise I had stopped running after him.’

Mats looked at Susso and then at Gudrun, who was standing a short distance away with her hands in her pockets.

‘Do you see?’ he said. ‘He was right at the edge of the road and it was impossible for me to catch up with him. “Stop,” I yelled, and Monika, my wife, she shouted as well, at the top of her voice. I can still hear us shouting, both of us. But it was too late. The car was already there. And it was going fast.’

He cleared his throat before going on.

‘The very second we thought Tomas was going to be run over, a little figure dashed across the road and pulled him down into the ditch.’

Mats grabbed one hand with the other to show how it had happened.

‘He literally appeared out of thin air! A little old man in overalls and a hat,’ he said, smiling, lifting his hand to hip height. ‘It was so unexpected. So amazing. That feeling of powerlessness. First this abyss that opens in front of you and then …’

Mats shook his head.

‘We didn’t even think to say thank you. We just lifted the boy up and hugged him and then … well, we staggered home, I suppose.’

There was a creak from the floorboards as Gudrun took a step closer. Her head was tilted and her expression had given way to one of compassion.

‘It wasn’t until later that evening,’ Mats went on, ‘after the shock had worn off, that we realised how incredibly lucky we had been, and what an unlikely rescuer he was. What kind of creature was he, actually? The following day he was wandering around here on the edge of the forest. It was Monika who saw him. We
ran up to him to say thank you. We were overwhelmed, naturally, and happy to have the opportunity to thank him. It wasn’t until then, as we stood there looking at him, no longer in shock, that it occurred to us what a remarkable person he was. And it wasn’t just that he was a dwarf, or whatever you call it, and that he had such an unusual appearance. It was those eyes. And even though it was the middle of the summer he was wearing a thick winter hat and it looked … well, it didn’t look normal. He was wearing gloves too, stiff with dirt and mud, and a fingernail was sticking out through one of the fingers. It was absolutely black, that nail. I remember it.

‘We invited him for dinner. That was the least we could do. He ate greedily and was totally lacking in table manners. It was as if he had never seen food before. He kind of panted between each mouthful. The children couldn’t take their eyes off him and wanted to know what he was called, which was a reasonable question under the circumstances. I asked him, but he didn’t answer. It seemed like he was mute. We thought he was homeless and asked if he would like to stay with us for a while. He agreed to that, but only if he could stay in the storehouse. So I carried a mattress up here. It was right there,’ he said, pointing. ‘That was his sleeping place.’

‘Didn’t he leave anything behind?’ asked Gudrun, looking around. ‘A few of his possessions or anything?’

Mats shook his head. ‘He didn’t have anything, as far as I know.’ He nodded at the flattened cardboard boxes on the floor. ‘The only thing he left behind was that hole, in the flooring here. But don’t ask me why he did that.’

‘A hole?’ repeated Susso.

‘There’s a hatch there,’ said Mats, ‘or an opening, rather. The
actual lid is missing. That’s probably where they brought up hay in the old days, or grain, I’m not sure. There are planks there so no one falls through, and some old cork flooring underneath. He made a big hole in it.

‘Can I have a look?’ asked Susso.

They knelt down and moved planks, boards of various sizes and a piece of window frame coated with cracked linseed oil. Underneath there was a folded sheet of cork flooring and in the middle was an oval hole with ragged edges. The opening looked down on the top of a dirty wardrobe on the floor below.

‘I didn’t discover it until after he left.’

Susso crouched down and looked.

‘As I say, he had no belongings. We let him borrow a torch and Emma gave him a doll, but he left that behind. It sat in the window afterwards, and we thought that looked a bit sad. Like a reminder.’

Then he added, in a low voice:

‘And he left the torch behind too, in fact.’

Torbjörn had walked warily over to the stairs and was looking at the contents of the plastic boxes stored there.

‘What did he do about food?’ he asked. ‘Did he eat with you?’

Mats shook his head and said in a raised voice that could be heard the length of the loft:

‘He really didn’t like to go into the house. We left the food at the bottom of the stairs because that was how he wanted it. He brought the basket up here with him and then put it back on the bottom step when he had eaten the food. It was as simple as that. On Christmas Eve I put a little bottle of schnapps there, but he didn’t touch it. Otherwise he ate everything, even the skin on the potatoes.’

‘And how long did he live here?’ Susso asked, brushing her knees after standing up. Mats looked up as he worked it out.

‘From summer ’79,’ he said, ‘until spring 1980. May. So it was almost a year. But we hardly saw him. Only a light shining in the window here in the evenings. It seemed he didn’t just use the torch for light but also for entertainment. He would sit here flashing it on and off for hours. When the batteries finally ran out he gave it back and I put in new ones.’

Mats rubbed his mouth before carrying on.

‘Time passed and we … well, we didn’t have the heart to turn him out, to be honest. It didn’t feel right when we thought about what he had done for us. So he was allowed to stay. But it had its drawbacks, as I’m sure you understand.’

Mats raised his brows and sighed.

‘We couldn’t invite people round, for example, at least not at night because they might have seen the light out here and started asking questions. We had no idea what we would say. It all sounded so odd.

‘Then one day Tomas’s babysitter asked us if we knew there was a little gnome living in our loft, an old man with cat’s eyes who stood looking out of the window all day. She thought it sounded rather frightening and wondered if perhaps Tomas had been watching something unsuitable on television. We realised then that the situation had become unsustainable. So one evening I banged on the door and climbed up here. He was sitting on the mattress, looking at me. Staring, actually. I had never come up to where he lived before. I had quite a shock I can tell you, because it stank. It stank of piss. And he had carried in a load of sticks which he had laid on the floor, and he had even been in the room underneath here and brought things up. Toys. Plastic pots. Old
ornaments. I told him it was time for him to move and I offered to drive him wherever he wanted to go. He said he wanted to go to Gränna, and that was the first and only word he ever spoke to me.’

‘Gränna?’ Gudrun said.

Mats nodded.

‘He had a slight Finnish accent.’

He looked down at his shoes, battered deck shoes with dry leather laces that he had tied in loops so big they brushed the dusty floor.

‘I thought it was a bit odd that he wanted to go there in particular. But he was very determined about it. I asked if he knew anyone there, and he nodded. We set off the following day. I tried talking to him, because it’s quite a long drive to Gränna. Once it was obvious he could speak, I tried to get him to tell me a little about himself. But all he did was sit in the back and look out of the window. It was like driving a car with a dog. I heard him sitting there panting, and from time to time he moved, or sighed deeply and yawned. When we reached Gränna I let him out on the outskirts of the town. He knew exactly which way to go. I opened the door for him and he leapt out, ran down a path and disappeared onto a headland there, without saying goodbye or even turning round. He just ran. And after that I never saw him again.’

Mats shrugged his shoulders to indicate the end of his story.

‘But where did you drop him off?’ Susso asked. ‘What was the address?’

‘No special address, it was only a bus stop. And then he ran out to the headland. That’s all I know.’

‘A headland?’

‘Yes. It was close to a lake.’

‘But were there any houses there or was it open country?’

Mats shook his head.

‘I don’t know. It was so long ago. Almost twenty-five years.’

‘You don’t remember the name of the bus stop?’ asked Torbjörn, who was holding onto a roof beam in the middle of the loft space.

Mats smiled.

‘No. I didn’t look. I just wanted to be rid of him.’

‘Could you point out on a map where it was?’ Gudrun asked.

‘I think so. More or less.’

*

Susso pulled her laptop out of her bag. While it was starting up she looked for the cable for the video camera. She rummaged about in her pack, until she felt the plastic against her fingers.

‘Right, you can run it now,’ she said, and switched on the camera.

Mats started the projector. She watched the film through the video camera’s small flip-out screen to avoid having to see the old man directly on the projector screen.

‘It’s hard to imagine that he’s mixed up in this kidnapping,’ said Mats. ‘I can’t understand it. After all, he saved Tomas and was always kind to the children – well, he was never directly unkind, anyway. I know he was a bit scary but I simply can’t understand how he could be capable of such a thing.’

Susso transferred the film to her laptop and saved it on a memory stick, which she inserted into Mats’s laptop and sent to the police inspector.

‘Shall we look at a map?’ Gudrun said. ‘So you can show us where you let him out?’

Mats sat with his neck bowed, clicking the mouse.

‘Now let’s see,’ he said slowly. ‘Gränna. Örserum. The 113. Right. Bunnström … there’s a beach there. Now then … Ekhagen. It has to be there. Can you see where it says Ekhagen?’

He hovered the cursor over a light-brown headland.

‘That’s where it was. By the road here.’

There were two properties on the headland, but no addresses or telephone numbers.

‘You’re going to have to phone National Land Registration,’ said Mats. ‘Or the council.’

‘Or a neighbour,’ Susso said. ‘We could phone someone who lives close by, someone whose number we could get hold of.’

‘There’s no point,’ Gudrun said.

‘Why not?’ Susso asked, straightening her glasses.

‘If it’s true he isn’t human, or whatever you want to call it, and he knows someone who lives on the headland, do you think they are going to tell you where he is?’

Susso folded her arms.

‘Yes, I do,’ she said. ‘If they hear what he might be mixed up in.’

Gudrun shook her head.

‘We have to go there.’

‘To Gränna?’ said Torbjörn, looking at Gudrun.

‘An unannounced visit is our only hope,’ she said.

‘But how far away is it?’ Susso said.

Gudrun shrugged.

‘Three hundred kilometres,’ said Mats.

Gudrun’s mouth was pursed and ringed with deep lines.

‘We can’t turn back now.’

Animals were not allowed in the hostel, Seved was pretty sure about that, so he left the cage in the car, hidden under a blanket. He would have to get it later, after reception closed. There was a girl sitting behind the glass, no older than twenty, if that. He mumbled the false name he had used to book the room and paid. The girl gave him a key with the room number engraved on a plastic tab. He took the lift up to a narrow corridor with green vinyl flooring and found his room at the far end on the right.

It was considerably bigger than he had expected. A bunk bed of white-painted steel stood on one side of the window and a single bed on the other. He felt relieved as he put his bag down on the table. The thought of having to sleep in the same room as the shapeshifting lemming had been worrying him ever since Lennart had ordered him to drive to Kiruna. For a while he had even considered booking two separate rooms, but this room was big enough for him to stash the cage far from the bed. On the table lay a pile of folders. Tourist brochures. He sat down and opened one of them. It showed a map of the town surrounded by advertisements.
Hotel Kebne: the hotel that raises your expectations
. Café Safari. The Nanking restaurant. He turned the map over.
Kiruna is special
, it said.