Stallo

by Stefan Spjut

  ‘The camera,’ said Susso, starting to walk quickly. ‘Have you checked it?’

  ‘No,’ answered Edit. ‘I don’t really know how to. And I’m a bit scared to go outside, to tell you the truth.’

  ‘But you’re absolutely sure?’

  ‘As sure as I can be.’

  ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘I went and got Edvin’s rifle. And when he saw it, he dropped down. Perhaps that was a stupid thing to do. Because I’d really like to know what he wants.’

  ‘Yes. Me too.’

  *

  Susso knew it would be nothing short of suicidal to drive as far as Jokkmokk after working a night shift, but she convinced herself she had no choice. With any luck they had captured the person on camera.

  She could not gather her thoughts, she was far too tired for that. All she could do was walk as fast as possible. She let herself quietly into Gudrun’s hall and snatched the car keys. Then she went down to her own flat to get ready. In the bathroom she let out a yell and, in a desperate attempt to relieve the pain, smacked the palm of her hand hard against the tiles, obscenities pouring from her mouth: she had put in a contact lens using fingers that had been in contact with the powdered tobacco in her snus tin. The stinging in her eye and the fury at bringing it on herself in such an idiotic way – she didn’t know which came first – had the effect of waking her up. Her cheeks grew hot. She extracted the lens, crumpled it up and washed out her eye, groaning into the handbasin. Then she raked about in the cabinet until she found her glasses.

  From her wardrobe she pulled out the military-green backpack that she had borrowed from Torbjörn. After putting on her boots and jacket she thundered down the stairs to the dark, cold garage where the car was standing, a grey Passat. She threw the backpack onto the rear seat of her mother’s car, moved the driver’s seat forwards and reversed out. A couple of times in the past she had scraped the left wing mirror on a concrete post, so she drove especially slowly up and out through the garage exit.

  *

  There was another car parked outside Edit Mickelsson’s house when Susso pulled up and a wave of reluctance washed through Susso’s stomach when she saw it. Her first instinct was to do a U-turn. Make a curved track in the snow and drive home again. But she knew that she could never do that, so instead she pushed the snus pouch as far up inside her mouth as she could with the tip of her tongue and parked at an angle behind Edit’s car.

  Behind the cafe-style curtains she glimpsed a sudden movement. There was a ringing in her head, but now she had woken up, found her second wind. She decided to leave the backpack where it was on the back seat. Why she had brought it with her she had no idea. If Edit was not alone in there, it was probably advisable to go in empty-handed and a little bewildered.

  *

  They were sitting at the kitchen table, Edit and a thin man in a padded vest and cap. The peak hid his face; only his chin and pinched mouth were visible. In the indentation below his lower lip he had a little goatee tuft sprinkled with grey. The man could be none other than Edit’s son, Per-Erik.

  Edit looked over her shoulder and her lips formed a swift smile. Was she looking rather ashamed? Susso had not said she was coming, not definitely. She realised that now. She had said she might come, and now suddenly it seemed as if she was intruding. She wondered what to say, but the situation resolved itself when she caught sight of the wildlife camera on the worktop. There was no mistaking the fact that it was broken: only shards of the diodes remained. The plastic cover had been cracked open and the electronics were visible through the gap.

  ‘What’s happened here?’ she said, walking over to the worktop.

  Both Edit and her son watched her. The man had laid one hand over the other and was stroking his chapped knuckles. It looked as if he was contemplating something. Just as Susso thought he was going to open his mouth he turned away and peered out through the window instead, but there was nothing to see there.

  The camera could never be repaired. It was not only broken – someone had destroyed it. Susso levered the plastic halves open as far as they would go, unwilling but curious to know what the contents looked like.

  ‘It broke,’ he said finally. ‘When I got it down.’

  There was a momentary delay before the fury rose up inside Susso, but she controlled herself. She poked her index finger into her mouth and hooked out the snus pouch, which she threw away in the rubbish bin under the sink. After she had slammed the cupboard door shut she folded her arms and studied Per-Erik’s face in profile. She had detected a small grin, but he was now concealing it under a false expression of innocence.

  ‘Typical,’ she said.

  ‘Anyway, you have to have permission,’ he added.

  Susso shook her head. All she could do was smile.

  ‘There are laws,’ he said, gripping the peak of his cap and nodding in his mother’s direction. As he righted his cap the dark wisps of hair at his temples shifted.

  ‘We’ll pay you for the camera, of course,’ said Edit.

  ‘Like hell we will!’

  Per-Erik leaned across the table and stared into his mother’s eyes.

  ‘Anyone putting up a camera does so at their own risk. That’s what the law says.’

  As he said ‘the law’ he tapped his snus tin on the tabletop.

  ‘Is that what the law says?’ Susso asked. She grinned at him. Was he being serious?

  Per-Erik shrugged, clicked open the tin and probed with his fingers.

  ‘Well, that’s just the way it is,’ he said.

  Susso bowed her head, examining the rug on the floor. He was goading her. Not without success, she was forced to admit. But she kept quiet because it was risky to continue.

  There was no more to say. They had reached deadlock, and for a long time it was silent in the kitchen. Per-Erik had opened the snus tin and taken out a pouch without taking his eyes off his mother, who was looking down at the tablecloth. He pressed the snus into his mouth, rubbed his large, rough hands together and shifted his heavy boots underneath the table. Then he stood up and muttered something Susso could not hear. He thrust out his head and stomped to the door. A small reindeer-horn knife dangled from his belt.

  Then there was rumbling outside the house. Per-Erik’s engine increased to a roar before he backed the car out of the driveway, causing snow to fly up from the tyres.

  Susso sank down on one of the kitchen chairs. She pushed a finger under one lens of her glasses and rubbed her eyelid, releasing a long sigh. The memory card looked a bit bent, and that looked ominous, but probably the worst thing was that the camera had been trampled in the snow. She had no idea how sensitive the circuit boards were to damp.

  Edit stood by the coffee machine holding an unbleached coffee filter. She had folded it and was busy pinching the fold as she watched Susso. The old woman looked genuinely sorry.

  ‘Have you got a camera that can read this?’ asked Susso, lifting up the tiny plastic card.

  ‘Camera? No, not one like that. Not a digital one.’

  ‘And you haven’t got a reader, for your computer?’

  Edit looked around, trying to remember where the computer could be.

  ‘You’ve got to have a special memory card reader,’ Susso said. ‘You know, one of those little external gadgets.’

  Using her fingertips she indicated the size of a matchbox on the tabletop.

  ‘Have you?’ said Edit. ‘No, I haven’t got one of those. Sorry.’

  She scooped coffee out of a metal tin.

  ‘So the pictures can be there even though the camera’s ruined?’ she asked.

  ‘You never know.’

  Edit shook her head.

  ‘He went mad when I told him about the camera.’

  ‘What did he say about what you saw?’

  ‘That I had imagined it, of course.’ Edit gestured towards the window. ‘That I had seen myself in the window, my own reflection. But why don’t you see for yourself? His tracks are out ther
e.’

  *

  Tracks.

  Susso leaned over the handrail and saw tracks. They were unmistakable.

  Someone had stepped off the cleared path and taken a few steps in the snow up to the kitchen window, and even placed their hands on the windowsill, for there were indentations in the snow there.

  Nothing much could be learned from the shape of the hand-prints because the snow was deep and loose and had slipped into the holes, but there was no doubt that whoever had made them had been there recently and was a relatively small person.

  A child, Susso thought. Could a child have been here, in the middle of the night? But why? She got out her mobile and took some pictures, with and without the flash. They showed more or less nothing apart from shadowy impressions in the whiteness, but despite that she had to document the tracks in some way.

  She had seen tracks before, of course, at least on photographs. Imprints made by peculiarly shaped paws. Naked feet with exceptionally long crooked toes. Funny little reindeer-hide shoes. But footprints were an elusive communication and to her they were of little or no value as proof. People through the ages had faked them to frighten or just confuse those around them. The Abominable Snowman in the Himalayas might not have materialised but it had been recreated time and again by a large footprint made in the snow, and it was obvious why Big Foot in the States had been given that name.

  She walked down the steps and over to the corner of the house where the camera had been. The snow was trampled and the prints she and Edit had left were still there. They led straight towards the edge of the forest. She bent forwards to get a closer look. It had not snowed much since and it was hard to tell whether they had been made recently. The footsteps left by the mysterious visitor continued in among the trees, and she followed them all the way to the neighbouring plot of land. There they veered off and disappeared up towards the road, exactly as she had expected.

  *

  ‘Did you show him that?’ asked Susso, as she walked in through the door, stamping the snow from her boots.

  Edit nodded.

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘That Matti had made them.’

  ‘And you’re sure about it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That it wasn’t Mattias who had left the tracks when he was last here.’

  Edit folded her arms and leaned against the worktop.

  ‘Well, of course I am,’ she said. ‘You were here yourself last Sunday. There were no tracks outside the house then, were there?’

  ‘I never thought of that.’

  ‘No, but I did. And there were no tracks. I’m absolutely positive about that.’

  She pointed to the window.

  ‘He was standing out there early this morning. Looking at me. It wasn’t very nice, I can tell you. To think that he came back and even dared to get closer this time. And he’s not as shy as he was. He’ll be ringing the doorbell next. I don’t know what I’ll do then.’

  There was a naked honesty in Edit’s harassed voice, and Susso couldn’t alleviate it with her own mumbling doubt. She wished she were not so tired, that her thoughts were not so muddled.

  She picked up the warm cup with both hands and propped her elbows on the table, bent forwards and began slurping her coffee, which was strong and good.

  ‘I am so tired,’ she said.

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to sleep for a while?’

  Susso smiled at the suggestion, the kindly tone.

  ‘No, I’ve got to get going.’

  Edit stretched slightly, as if her neck ached.

  ‘You shouldn’t drive when you’re so tired.’

  ‘I know, but it’s Mum’s car and I have more or less stolen it. And I want to get home and look at the photos, to see if there’s anything there.’

  There was a soft clink as Edit stirred her cup.

  ‘You had a different car when you were here last time,’ she said. ‘A red one.’

  Susso nodded.

  ‘That was my sister’s.’

  ‘Haven’t you got a car of your own?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s not working and I haven’t got any winter tyres. It feels like it’s not worth repairing. It’ll be too expensive, all of it.’

  ‘What make is it?’

  ‘A Volvo.’

  ‘I’ve got some wheels you can have,’ said Edit. ‘If they’ll fit.’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘After Edvin passed away I sold the car to some lads, but they were just going to wreck it. It was perfectly obvious what their plans were. It was a shame, I thought, because there wasn’t much wrong with it. Even the seat warmers were still working. Anyhow, I kept the studded tyres.’

  ‘How many wheel nuts are there?’

  ‘Four, I think.’

  Without discussing it further they went out to the storage shed. Edit had to tug at the door because the snow was piled against it, and it flew open with a bang. The wheels were piled one on top of the other beside a workbench. A blurry pattern of rust had spread over the metal wheel hubs and small glistening stones were wedged in the tyre treads.

  Susso examined the tyres.

  There were four wheel nuts. She thought they would probably fit.

  ‘They’re not exactly new,’ said Edit, standing in the doorway with her hands in her cardigan pockets. ‘But I’m sure they’ll do for one more winter.’

  ‘One?’ answered Susso. ‘Two, at least.’

  She pressed one of the studs with her thumb. Most of them protruded from the tyres by a couple of millimetres.

  ‘But I can’t just take them.’

  ‘Oh, it’ll be all right,’ Edit said, holding open the shed door. ‘I’ll tell Per-Erik I gave them to you to compensate for the camera. That’ll shut him up.’

  Although Edit was short and slight it took her less time to carry the wheels from the shed than it took Susso to wedge them into the baggage compartment of the Passat. The night shift had caught up with her and she stood motionless, staring at the worn exhaust pipe, the number plate bearded with snow, the line of icicles hanging from the front bull bars, and at one of the backpack’s grey-green straps poking out from underneath the car door.

  Edit lifted in the last tyre herself and slammed the back door shut with such a loud noise that it made Susso lift her head and look around in confusion.

  ‘You are going to get some sleep,’ said Edit, nudging her towards the house. Susso tried to protest but gave up.

  *

  In the room where Edit had led her there was a bureau and beside it a bed with a brown crocheted bedspread. The bed had metal springs which creaked under Susso’s weight as she sat down. Worn out, she collapsed onto her side and pulled up her feet.

  She lay there, too tired to remove her jacket and hat, or even her boots with the snow-covered soles. There was a small embroidered cushion which she dragged under her cheek, but it knocked her glasses sideways, forcing her to take them off. She held them in her half-open hand because she was too tired to reach out and put them on the bedside table. Her eyelids closed, and the darkness was immediately pierced by a flickering pattern of dots and circles of different sizes. It was as if she was looking directly into the secret inner workings of her brain. She felt the waft of air as Edit dropped a blanket over her.

  ‘Thanks,’ she slurred into the hard little cushion, which smelled as if it had been stuffed with dust.

  But by that time Edit had already pulled the door shut.

  It seemed the lemming shapeshifters had been useful after all. Seved had not heard a sound all night – no banging and not a single shout – and when he went outside in the morning he saw no sign of anyone having been out of doors. It had snowed a little but there were no fresh footprints surrounding Hybblet. There were only his own tracks from the previous evening, when he had placed the cage in the hallway. He had done it swiftly, wary of the smell of the rotting corpse.

  It had not struck him then that the Volvo was no longer lying on its roof. Börje
must have righted it while he had been in Arvidsjaur. He walked over and looked inside, then opened the door and sat down. After sliding back the seat he knelt on it and started tidying the interior of the car, throwing into the back everything that belonged there. There was so much rubbish he ought to get rid of while he was at it, but he had no sack to put it in and could not be bothered going to get one, so he left it as it was. He picked up coins, a packet of chewing gum, cassette tapes, snus tins, a pen, a phone charger. Much of this had been lying under the seats, hidden and mainly inaccessible. That was perhaps the only advantage of having the car turned upside down.

  *

  Börje sat at the kitchen table eating crispbread. He slid a slice out of the packet, squirted a swirl of cod roe spread onto it from the tube and took a bite. Seved told him about the lemmings he had let out in Hybblet and how that might explain the silence during the night, but Börje said it could just as easily be a coincidence.

  It would rise up in them and then subside, but it would not go away.

  He rested the hand holding the crispbread on the table.

  ‘What else did Lennart say? I can’t believe he wanted to meet you just to give you the shifters.’

  Seved had expected this question and had already decided how he would answer it.

  ‘He wants me to do it.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  Börje sat in silence for a few moments before he said:

  ‘Will you be able to?’

  ‘He gave me money.’

  Börje worked another slice out of the packet without taking his eyes off Seved, eyes that narrowed and showed interest.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Fifty thousand. And I’ll get another hundred, he said. If everything goes according to plan.’