by Stefan Spjut
‘I hardly think us worrying about it will help.’
‘It bothers me that you’re not worried at all.’
‘It’s going to be fine.’
‘Stop saying that; you have no way of knowing that.’
He crumpled up his napkin and leaned forward and pushed it down the neck of his bottle.
‘I have such a strong feeling it’s going to work out, you might as well call it knowing.’
‘And I have a strong feeling it’s not going to work out and that it’s going to make everything worse. I’m the only one who knows exactly what kind of forces they are dealing with. I heard you laughing and talking about silver bullets and whatever else. Like it was a joke! Like you don’t think this is real.’
‘They’ve crossed paths with the squirrel, and I’ve told them about the wolves the girls saw in the village. So I’d say they have a pretty good idea of what they’re dealing with.’
‘And you’re just sitting there, gorging yourself on that disgusting pizza.’
‘It wasn’t even a little bit disgusting.’
‘And how long can it take! How long have we been sitting here!’
‘Gudrun. These lads, they’ve never let me down and they never will. There’s something almost religious about it. About our relationship. It’s not properly of this world.’
‘Religious?’
‘My eyes bloody well tear up when I talk about it.’
At that moment, his phone, which was sitting on the table, emitted a signal, the heroically tooting blast of a horn from Sherwood Forest. He held the phone up to me to inform me he had received a text.
‘Is it them?’
He pushed his glasses up to his forehead.
‘Yep.’
*
We drove back to the petrol station. Roland climbed into the Chevy and I drove behind him and that hideous doll’s head. He set out toward Pajala, which I thought was odd, and I found passing the turnoff to Susso’s house even odder.
After a few miles, we turned down a forest road that we followed to a clearcut. There was nothing there, and I suppose that was the idea.
Unable as I was to stay in the car, I got out and walked up and down the road in the stagnant heat. Roland stood gazing out across the devastated landscape and I could tell he was in no mood to talk.
After more than thirty minutes, I thought it was odd they hadn’t come and was just about to ask him to check his phone for more texts when I remembered we had both turned our phones off at the pizzeria.
Then the van came creeping toward us. All three of them were in the front seat, like a gang of slit-eyed copper thieves; the impression seemed deliberately evoked. Harr was in the middle; as they drew near, he held something up for us to see.
It was a shaggy grey wolf’s head, pulled halfway out of a supermarket carrier bag. Its tongue lolled out of its gaping maw and Harr stuck his tongue out and grimaced in an attempt to mimic the animal’s simultaneously aggressive and helpless attitude.
That didn’t sit well with me. I don’t know why. I instinctively felt it was wrong to make fun of the wolf and that Harr would pay for it, sooner or later.
After getting out of the car, he held the bag out to me and I was so caught off guard I took it. The head was unexpectedly heavy; it was like he’d handed me a bowling ball in a bag.
‘That one, let me tell you, that one you should stuff and mount and put up in your shop. As a warning to others.’
‘I think I’d rather not.’
‘But if that makes them leave you alone?’
‘I don’t think that would be the reaction.’
‘No?’
‘No. And it’s also incredibly illegal.’
‘You’re right, of course. How can I not have thought of that?’
I only then realised he was mocking me. His crooked front teeth glinted under the overhang of his moustache when he smiled. Roland opened the bag and looked in it.
‘What do you reckon, Rolle, shouldn’t she put it up in her shop?’
‘What a bloody brute.’
‘Yep. Less cocky now, though.’
Ensimmäinen took the rifles out of the van and put them in the hatchback’s boot and Pontus had squatted down to unscrew the licence plate.
‘Take a gander at this,’ Harr said.
The rest of the wolf was lying on the metal floor in the back of the van.
He grabbed its hind legs and pulled the body closer. Then he held up one of its front paws and stepped aside so we could see it. There was an oblong patch of skin on it with no fur. The skin was reddish and marbled and there seemed to be something repulsively spongy about it.
‘This,’ he said, scraping it with his thumb, ‘is probably the only sign of something being amiss.’
‘Was it like this?’
‘Nah, his head was still attached when we ran into each other.’
‘But weren’t there more of them?’ Roland said.
Harr shook his head.
‘But Susso said there were more,’ I said.
‘This was the only one we saw. And I actually killed it in self-defence. He came at us like a rabid dog.’
‘And Lennart Brösth, was he there?’
He shook his head.
‘What about the woman in the wheelchair?’
‘No wheelchairs,’ he said and closed the doors.
The reply left me lost for words. I must have looked unsteady, because Roland suddenly grabbed hold of my arm.
‘But you don’t understand …’
Harr was leaning against the van. He’d taken off his baseball cap and was looking into it, rubbing his thumb against the sweatband. His scalp shone underneath the strands of hair pulled tight over his head. Ensimmäinen unscrewed the cap of a plastic petrol canister and poured the contents into the cab of the van with a completely neutral look on his face; it looked like he was watering plants.
‘This doesn’t solve anything!’
‘At least this Erasmus bloke,’ Harr said, ‘definitely won’t bother you any more. And no one else in that village either. I swear it, on all that is sacred.’
Ensimmäinen pushed the door shut.
‘Mun aika mennä on,’ he said.
Harr put his cap back on. He touched the vizor and winked at me and then he grabbed the carrier bag with the wolf’s head and walked off toward his car.
*
It was unclear to me why they had to torch the van; wasn’t that just going to attract unwanted attention? And what if the flames spread and started a forest fire? It had been very dry lately. These and many other questions I put to Roland as we drove back home, but he made no answer, just sat with his hands on the wheel, staring straight ahead.
‘Why do you think he took that head?’
I noticed him grinning, almost imperceptibly.
‘He wouldn’t be dumb enough to stuff it, would he?’
‘Stuff what?’
‘The head!’
Now he frowned.
‘What head?’
Susso was sitting in the armchair with her legs on the bed, watching her. She never looked away and Diana was filled with a strong urge to hurt her. Physically. Grab the nearest object and hurl it at her. Wrestle her to the ground and push her thumb into her eye. Into her healthy eye. And she could obviously tell. Because now she smiled.
‘I’m just telling you what Mum told me.’
‘You’re bloody smiling.’
‘Only because you’re so worked up. You should see yourself, it’s like there’s one of those thunder clouds above your head. Like in a comic book.’
‘I’m worked up because you’re smiling. So your smile started it!’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise I was smiling.’
‘Okay, great, that’s all fine then.’
‘I understand that you’re feeling bad about it. On several levels.’
‘No, you don’t. You don’t have a family. You have no fucking idea. And the worst part is that you’re enjo
ying this.’
Susso looked down.
‘We said we weren’t ever going to get married,’ she said. ‘Traitor. The only reason you’re using your name is that he didn’t want to be called Hellström.’
‘Well, you got it your way. I have no husband and soon I won’t have a child either.’
‘I promise you I’ll never let them take her.’
‘Now we’re both at rock bottom. Just like the old days. You’ve dragged me down into your crap.’
‘I didn’t come looking for you.’
‘Goddamn it, Susso. Go fuck yourself.’
Susso put her feet down so Diana could pass. She pushed the curtain aside and looked out the window. The shadows from the cumulus clouds above Kiirunavaara had absorbed the mountain’s compact darkness and smeared it out in long tentacles, reaching in across the Bolagsområdet neighbourhood toward the town centre. Just below the hotel was a small park. In it rose the sculpture called Talande Tecken. A mining pick casting an ominously long and thin shadow across the stones. The fountain was a circle with a pipe in the middle from which water spurted out in iridescent sectors that evoked the streaks of an iris. She hadn’t known the fountain resembled an eye. Because she had never seen it from above before.
‘I’ve never been here before,’ she said.
‘Where?’
‘At Ferrum.’
‘It’s called memory lapses,’ Susso said. ‘I assure you we’ve been here several times.’
‘I mean at the hotel. In a room.’
Susso peered at her, waiting for her to go on.
‘Isn’t that weird?’
‘Not really.’
‘All right, but it feels weird.’
She lay down on the bed, with her back against the headboard.
‘Remember that time we went to Laguna and started laughing at the man who worked there. Or maybe not at him, maybe more at the entire situation. Remember that?’
‘That we went to Laguna?’
‘You have to. We laughed so hard we almost died. You even wet yourself.’
‘I did?’
Diana nodded.
Susso shook her head.
‘I don’t remember as much as you do, Diana.’
‘Of course you do. You just remember different things. I’ve noticed the same thing with Håkan. I remember things from when Kiruna was little that he has no recollection of. And vice versa. And by the way, there’s a hole in your sock.’
Susso wiggled her toes.
‘They’re your socks.’
Diana was quiet for a while, studying Susso’s foot.
‘Is it going to pass?’
‘Not unless you darn it.’
‘I mean with Håkan.’
‘He’s probably permanently changed. If you ask me.’
‘Maybe it would be better, in the long run, if he owned up to what he did. If he faced the consequences.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘It would be easier to live with, I reckon. Afterwards.’
Susso shook her head.
‘That’s no way to think. When they’re involved,’ she said, pointing to the top of the wardrobe, ‘different rules apply. You just have to accept it.’
‘He said he was over it.’
‘What?’
‘That I cheated on him.’
A brief knock on the door. Susso shot Diana a quick glance before getting up. She opened the door and Gudrun entered. Her hair tangled and her cheeks pale. She looked around.
‘Where’s the girl?’
‘She’s watching TV. In your room.’
At that, she sighed and sat down at the foot of the bed. She removed her handbag and put it next to her. Diana and Susso waited in silence for her to say something.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s over now.’
Then it was as if she couldn’t get anything else out.
‘Are you sure?’ Diana said.
She cleared her throat.
‘We’re not going to talk about this. At all. Do you understand me, Susso? Not another word about this.’ She wagged her pudgy little finger. ‘The police are going to want to talk to both of you, sooner or later, and it would be better for everyone involved if you knew nothing. We’ve talked about this. You had a junkie boyfriend in Rumajärvi whose name you can barely remember, and you went up there and fetched her. That’s all. Any other information you may want, you’ll have to get from the papers when they start writing about what happened. Which may not be for a while.’
*
Diana held the little girl’s hand in hers and neither of them spoke. They walked through the church grounds.
‘Do you think there are any more birds?’ she said. ‘Baby birds.’
When she received no response, she stopped.
‘Do you?’
Diana sank into a squat and looked the little girl in the eyes.
‘Should we have a look?’
She pushed part of a shrubbery aside.
‘Baby birds, where are you? Hello?’
The little girl stayed on the footpath, watching her with unexpectedly grown-up eyes, full of contempt. As though she were looking at an old alcoholic answering the call of nature in the middle of the park.
Diana climbed back out of the greenery, full of despair that she immediately pushed back down. She grabbed the little girl’s hand and walked on as though nothing had happened. They followed Lasarettsgatan past the hospital and strolled down Kyrkogatan. The little girl turned a few times to look at the building where she knew both her parents worked, but she didn’t say anything and neither did Diana.
Håkan had been missing for four days now and Kiruna hadn’t asked about him once. She didn’t know what to think of that. It could be she was angry with him for being ill and then disappearing and had rejected him. That was going to leave a big mark. And those mice that had lured her into the night. What kind of nebulous harm they may have done to her was more than she could bear to think about.
*
As soon as they stepped through the door, she did a lap of the house in search of Håkan, but he wasn’t there. She held his phone in her hand and had a confused thought about needing to charge it so he could call. The little girl lingered in the hallway. She hadn’t taken her shoes off.
‘I don’t want to be here,’ she said.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because I don’t.’
Diana felt anger growing inside her.
‘We live here. Take your shoes off.’
That made the child plunk herself down on the floor. She put her arms on her knees and pushed her head out like a sulky little monkey.
‘Where do you think we should go then? I’m sure Daddy will be home any minute. And we have to be here when he comes.’
‘No, we don’t.’
‘Yes, we do.’
‘I want to go to the cabin.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I want to go to Nana’s cabin.’
‘Why would we go there?’
‘It’s fun there.’
Diana squatted down in front of the girl. Her little shoes had elastic no-tie laces; she dug her fingers in under the ties to loosen them.
‘But we’re not going. We’re staying here. Until Daddy comes home.’
‘I want to go to Nana’s cabin.’
‘So you said. But we’re not going to.’
‘I want to go to Nana’s cabin.’
‘That’s enough.’
‘I want to go to Nana’s cabin.’
‘I don’t want to hear any more out of you.’
‘I want to go to Nana’s cabin.’
‘Kiruna. Stop it!’
‘I want to go to Nana’s cabin. I want to go to Nana’s cabin. I want to go to Nana’s cabin.’
Her hand shot out and covered the little girl’s mouth. When she tried to free her lips by yanking her head back, Diana held her head in place with one hand and pressed the other hard against her mouth.
/> ‘Stop it,’ she said and felt her eyes welling up with tears.
As soon as she removed her hand, it started again. ‘I want to go to Nana’s cabin. I want to go to Nana’s cabin. I want to go to Nana’s cabin.’
Diana stood up and locked the front door. Then she picked up the incessantly rambling girl, carried her upstairs and put her down on the floor in her room.
‘Now stop it! Do you hear me? Stop it!’
The little girl didn’t stop and eventually Diana left the room and closed the door. There was no key in the lock, so she fetched the key from the door to her and Håkan’s bedroom. Kiruna was on her way out into the hallway with her monotonous message, so she shoved her back inside and closed and locked the door. Then she picked up the phone and called Gudrun.
‘Can I talk to Susso.’
‘She’s still at the hotel.’
‘Okay, I’ll call her there.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘It’s nothing. I just wanted a word.’
She dialled the number of the hotel and was put through. The receiver was picked up but no one spoke, there was just a rushing sound.
‘Hello? Susso?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t you say anything?’
‘I didn’t know who it was.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Nothing. Watching TV.’
‘Kiruna’s acting really weird. She’s going on and on about going to the cabin. I can’t get through to her, it’s really scary and I don’t know what to do.’
‘I’m on my way.’
After she hung up, she walked over to the door. Nothing but silence on the other side. Not a peep, and that made her anxious. She unlocked the door and opened it. For one brief, horrifying moment, she thought the little girl was gone. Then she realised she had crawled in behind the easel and box of play clothes, from which the sparkling wings of her elf costume were jutting out.
‘Mummy,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong with me?’
She wanted to tell her there was nothing wrong with her, but couldn’t get so much as a word out; instead she closed the door and went down to the kitchen.
She cleared the table, loaded the dishwasher and started it. Then she filled the sink with hot water and washing-up liquid. After doing all the dishes and building a mountain of mugs and saucepans and plates on the drying rack, she poured herself a glass of red wine and chugged it and then she had another.
