by Stefan Spjut
‘Do you reckon it’s safe to get out?’ he said.
‘No,’ I replied, ‘I wouldn’t think so.’
‘Then what do we do now?’
‘We wait.’
‘Call again.’
‘They’re coming.’
‘Yes,’ he said, craning his neck, ‘someone’s coming this way.’
It was the squirrel, of course. It came bounding up the slope; we watched it dash up a set of swings. Then the little beast sat up there for a second or two before darting over to the other end and scampering down the log. Now it was hopping our way.
It jumped up on the bonnet and studied us intimately through the windscreen with eyes like liquorice. It was like being in a safari vehicle, being gawked at by a cheeky monkey.
‘Is he coming?’ Roland said.
I pretended to be looking at my phone.
‘If you don’t want him in your car, you’re going to have to tell him.’
‘Can he hear us?’
‘He can hear your thoughts.’
Now Susso and Diana were walking up from the cabin. Diana was carrying the little girl wrapped in a blanket and Susso was carrying a rifle.
Roland stepped out of the car and opened the back door on his side; when Diana put the child in the back seat, he hovered around them, wanting to help. I turned around and looked at the little girl. Her hair was so soaked with sweat, it looked black. Susso was standing with the rifle half raised as though she was about to take aim. Or threatening to. She glanced over at the trees and then I did too. I thought a bear was going to come bursting out, because I always do; sometimes they actually attack me in town and on occasion even inside my own flat. But there was no bear and nothing else either and in the end, she finally got in the car.
Roland rolled forward a few yards and then reversed to turn around. No one said anything. There was complete silence until we reached the Kurravaara road. Then Susso said:
‘Where is he?’
Even though I hadn’t seen the squirrel slink into the car, I had assumed it was with us. But it wasn’t.
‘He’s not here? Diana? We have to go back!’
Roland took his time answering.
‘Let’s go home.’
‘We have to go back!’
‘I’m not going back.’
I braced for an outburst, but it didn’t occur to me she might threaten him. I heard her fiddling with the rifle, then I saw the black barrel out of the corner of my eye, gliding into my field of vision.
‘Turn the car around.’
Roland slowed down and pulled over. He said nothing, just sat here. After a while, he turned off the engine.
‘You can’t stop here,’ Diana said. ‘There were people at the cabin. If you stop here, they’ll find us.’
‘Can’t you see,’ I said, ‘that he’s a monster?’
‘Turn around.’
‘No, Susso. We won’t. We’re not going back.’
‘I’ll shoot you. I swear. I’ll shoot you.’
Now the little girl burst out crying.
‘That you would go so far as to shoot Roland only proves I’m right. He’s a monster. And I don’t want monsters in my car. Nor in my flat.’
Susso opened the door. But she couldn’t climb out. Because Diana had grabbed the rifle.
‘No, Susso. Stay here. Stay here with us.’
‘Do you know what would’ve happened if he hadn’t been there when they came? You don’t want to know. We wouldn’t be here if not for him.’
‘No, we wouldn’t,’ Diana said. ‘Because we would have been home. And you would have still lived in Kiruna and none of this would’ve happened. It’s his fault we’re here.’
‘You don’t get it.’
‘That Kiruna is terrified and crying. I get that.’
‘You don’t get anything.’
‘Can you see that she’s crying?’
‘He,’ I said and turned around, ‘is the root of all evil.’
‘You know what? I feel sorry for you.’
‘You shouldn’t feel sorry for us. We feel sorry for you. And I know it was my fault. I haven’t been strong enough. But I’m trying to be now. So I’m not giving in.’
‘He saved my life. And your life too.’
‘I know he saved your life. He saved your life only to destroy it. He’s destroying you, Susso. You’re not yourself. We don’t recognise you. None of us recognises you.’
‘You think it’s going to stop?’ She turned to Diana. ‘You think it will? If you do, you’re sorely mistaken. They will never stop. Not until they get what they want. And I’m not who they’re after. It’s someone else in this car. Why don’t you tell them what they said they were going to do to her? Or should I?’
We said nothing because she clearly had a point.
‘The only one who can protect her is him. Don’t you see that? Diana, don’t you see that?’
‘Yes,’ Diana said.
‘The police are powerless. And the only thing we can do is hide.’
‘There are other methods,’ Roland said.
‘There are? Like what?’
He glanced at the side mirror.
‘I’m just saying.’
‘Where are we going to go? They’ve been to Diana’s house and they’ve been to her parents’. So what now, are we going to yours?’
‘They’ve been to Eva and Kent’s?’
‘Yes, and when they come for you, Mother, do you want the squirrel to be there or not? I’m just asking.’
I looked at Roland.
‘We can stay at a hotel,’ he said.
‘A hotel?’
‘At Ferrum.’
‘Are you serious?’
He nodded.
‘And then deal with this tomorrow.’
‘And how are you going to deal with it?’
He started the engine.
‘If you can’t see a way out, you have to make one.’
*
Susso was quiet all the way home. We all were, for that matter. Both Diana and I kept an eye on the road behind us, but there was no pursuit so far as we could tell. The little girl fell asleep, of course, but when we parked behind the hotel, she woke up and was anxious and wouldn’t get out of the car, and I wondered what they were going to think of us when we stepped into the lobby at half four in the morning with a crying child.
Roland and I took one room and Susso, Diana and the little girl another. They weren’t next to each other but on the same floor at least.
Roland rolled himself up in a sheet and was out like a light, but I ended up sitting on the edge of the bed, still fully dressed. After just a few minutes, there was a knock on the door. She stood there watching me and I obviously knew what she wanted. I fished the key out of Roland’s jacket pocket and held it out to her and she took it and left without a word.
Diana looked in through the kitchen window for a while before going up to the front door and unlocking it. The smells that greeted her cut her open; she had a sudden fit of vertigo and had to lean against the doorpost. A conglomerate of shoes on the hallway floor. His shoes weren’t there, nor had she thought they would be. Cold dejection had spread through her, leaving its mark on every thought, every feeling, every second. Anything that didn’t seem ominous seemed utterly meaningless.
She went upstairs and into the bedroom and looked at the unmade bed and Håkan’s dead mobile phone on the bedside table. Then she went back down. The kitchen counter was piled high with dirty dishes. It smelled like something had died there, under the plates. And something sort of had. Two weeks ago, two weeks ago exactly, they had sat here eating tacos, having a lovely time. A lovely time. That life was gone forever now. After returning from Norway, she had thought she might be able to have it again at some point in the future, but not any more.
She hadn’t slept many hours and her dreams had all been horrible. She had had a matter-of-fact conversation with her mother about how the most humane thing would be to put Kiruna d
own, as she put it, and even though she hadn’t wanted to, she had acquiesced and brought the little girl to the hospital, where they had walked down a long corridor to a special room for children who were being euthanised. It had all been very pragmatic; they had been received as though they were in for a tonsillectomy. But when she was about to say goodbye to Kiruna and squeeze her hand one last time, she had, thankfully, woken up and more or less thrown herself at the little girl, holding her tight and crying quietly. Then she’d heard a tiny sound and glimpsed a shadow moving along the curtain rod and after that she hadn’t been able to go back to sleep. She just dozed off from time to time. She remembered clearly how he had peered into her dream with his hideous old gnome face when she slept in her car outside Susso’s house and felt almost certain he had breathed that nightmare into her, because how would her own brain be capable of producing something so awful, something that went against her most deeply rooted instincts?
And yet, she had left the little girl in the hotel room with Susso without hesitation. Because she was right. If anyone could protect her, it was him and when she left, she had been grateful he was sitting there on the desk with those watchful eyes of his.
*
It was only just nine, but already so warm she was sweating. She had tied her fleece jacket around her waist and rolled up the sleeves of her shirt. Their car was not in the driveway; she stepped over the hedge and walked around to the back. The patio door was open and there she was in the window.
When she stepped into the kitchen, her mum put her phone down. Diana studied her carefully.
‘Where’s Dad?’
‘At Lakkapää,’ she said and put her hand to her mouth and squeezed her lips as though they were numb.
Diana went to sit down on a chair without taking her eyes off her.
‘Did anyone come by here?’
She shook her head.
‘Strange thing to ask, don’t you think?’
‘Yes,’ she said and coughed as he moved toward the kitchen counter.
‘And yet you immediately shook your head.’
‘Well, yes, because no one came by.’
‘Ever?’
‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘Mum.’
She came over and sat down at the table.
‘What did they say?’
‘Who?’
‘The people who came by.’
‘No one came by.’
‘Then why were you so weird when I called you last night?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You don’t remember me calling you?’
She shook her head.
‘Fine,’ Diana said and pulled out her phone. She opened the call list. ‘Look. Thirty-five minutes past midnight. Kent Sillfors. Outgoing call. One minute. See?’
‘Yes, but that’s for your dad.’
‘You picked up.’
‘You know what, I don’t think so. I’m usually pretty on the ball. You know I’m a light sleeper.’
Diana took hold of her hands. They were cold as wood.
‘Mum. It’s okay. You can tell me. I know exactly what happened to you.’
‘Please don’t touch me.’
The words caught her off guard. She let go and pulled her hands away. Then she sat looking at her mum, who was smiling sheepishly, with her eyes on the table top like a carefree dementia patient. Diana picked up her phone, got to her feet and left; her mum stayed seated, silent and with a disengaged look on her face.
*
She inserted the card into the lock and hacked at it until it clicked. The room was empty; when she realised this, she dashed out into the hallway and over to Gudrun and Roland’s room. She banged the door. Susso opened and when she stepped aside, she could see Kiruna on the bed with a pillow in her arms, watching TV.
‘What did they say?’ Susso said.
Diana shook her head.
‘Mum’s completely away with the fairies. I don’t know about Dad. But he’s probably just as bad. We have to leave.’
‘You didn’t tell them we’re here, did you? At the hotel?’
‘Of course not. But I want to take Kiruna and go somewhere.’
‘Come here,’ Roland said, pushing past her into the hallway. ‘I want to have a word with you.’
‘No, we’re leaving. We can’t stay here.’
‘And where are you going?’
‘I don’t know. We just have to get out of here.’
‘I think there’s another way to go about this.’
‘How?!’
‘Come on.’
They took the lift down to the lobby. Roland sat down on a sofa and she took a seat across from him, bewildered by his inscrutable expression. He looked severe but also amused. He got up and went to the bar and when he came back, he was carrying a sheet of A4 paper and a pen.
‘I’d like to know more about that village.’
‘You mean Rumajärvi?’
He leaned forward across the table and let her know with a look that she was talking unnecessarily loudly.
‘I mean Rumajärvi.’
‘Why?’
‘Well. Even though living in this hotel is very pleasant, I don’t think we can stay here for the rest of our lives. It’s much too expensive. And Gudrun, she’s tired. She can’t take much more. It’s wearing us all down. So we have to find another solution. A final solution.’
‘Final?’
He glanced to the side and adjusted his watch strap by turning it around his wrist. Then he met her eyes and nodded.
‘And how is that supposed to work?’
‘You don’t have to worry about that.’
‘It’s mice we’re talking about. You can’t even see them. You don’t get it.’
‘I think we should focus on this village. On Lennart Brösth and this Erasmus fellow. I find it hard to believe that these mice would have an axe to grind with you, personally, so to speak.’
‘You don’t understand how twisted that place is.’
‘How many people live in the village?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Then we’ll have to ask for a best guess.’
‘My best guess. Maybe ten.’
‘Men? Women? Children?’
‘I saw one child.’
‘How many are fit to fight? So to speak.’
‘They’re all equally twisted. The worst one, the one I was most afraid of, was a woman. Young, blonde. She was the one who told me what was going to happen to Kiruna.’
‘This not knowing who they are, or even how many they are, complicates things. You want to cut the whole tumour out in one go, you know?’
‘My husband,’ she said. ‘He’s gone.’
‘Yes, I heard.’
‘They may have taken him. He might be there.’
‘In the village?’
She nodded.
‘Do you really think he is?’
‘If not, where is he? Can you tell me that?’
Roland sat in silence for a moment before pressing on.
‘Did you see any of those wolves when you were there? Susso reckons there might be five of them, does that sound right to you?’
‘Mm.’
‘What?’ he said and angled his ear to her.
‘Yes, that sounds about right.’
‘And this Erasmus? What does he look like?’
‘In his seventies. Long beard, long hair. Grey. He’s pretty short. Shorter than me. Like maybe five foot three. And he’s got a limp.’
‘Could you draw him for me?’
‘I can’t draw.’
‘You could try.’
Diana took the pen and started drawing.
When she was done, he studied the picture and nodded.
‘Now I want to know what it is you want us to do.’
He folded the paper and held it in his hand.
‘You won’t have to do anything.’
‘But I don’t understand. What
’s your plan?’
She looked at him but soon realised no answer was forth-coming on that subject. The strange thing was that he was kind of grinning at her, with his glasses perched on the tip of his nose.
‘It’s going to be big news, this,’ he said. ‘When it’s discovered. And they’re going to investigate it, from every angle. And do you know where that will lead them? It will lead them to Susso Myrén and it will lead them to Diana Sillfors.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the police were there last week. And why were they there? Who tipped them off? Your dad. What did he tell them exactly, do you know?’
She shook her head.
‘He talked to Denny. He’s an inspector, I think. Denny Långström. They know each other. And I think he told him Lennart Brösth might be there. And Susso, likely as not. But I don’t actually know.’
‘Rumajärvi’s not exactly a metropolis, so they can easily check which mobile phones have connected to the masts out there recently. I assume you brought your phone when you went up there. They’re going to want to know what you were doing in Rumajärvi. You have to be prepared for that. And by prepared, I mean you have to know what to say. Rambling won’t do, and I don’t think you’d better get trolls involved in your story.’
‘Then what do you want me to say?’
‘What did you tell them at the hospital when you brought Susso in?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘Maybe she had a boyfriend in Rumajärvi? A really scary junkie type. That you wanted to get her away from.’
‘Yes, now that you mention it, that’s how it was.’
‘And for the rest, you keep your mouth shut.’
She nodded.
‘Do you know what I mean by the three-S treatment?’
‘Colloquially?’
‘Colloquially.’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘All right then.’
Näcken slowed down and stopped by the boom barrier. Stava climbed out and opened it. Anders was in the back seat like a kid, staring out the window, and he didn’t like her leaving the car. He couldn’t remember where they’d been, but the lake he glimpsed between the trees awoke a memory in him and that made him afraid, so he placed a hand on his shirt and the little ones hiding underneath it.
‘What are we doing here?’ he said.
Näcken grinned at him.
