Stallo

by Stefan Spjut

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve already told you.’

  ‘Because it’s usually a parent who steals a child. If it’s a custody issue or something. Or another relative.’

  ‘Yes, but in this case it isn’t.’

  She had stopped texting and was staring at me.

  ‘Someone has taken him. Don’t you get it?’

  ‘He’ll come back, you’ll see,’ I said. ‘Children aren’t kidnapped just like that.’

  The squeaking from the metal springs hurt Seved’s ears but it was more than the noise that made him want to get out of Hybblet. Not only did he know what was going on inside the boy, he felt it. And he felt it with an intensity that took him by surprise.

  He saw him standing there in his red snowsuit but he could not believe it was real. That they had actually taken him. It had all happened in a flash. Before Börje wound down the window and called the boy over, the thought of kidnapping him had been nothing more than a thought – it had not even been a plan. He never believed it would happen. That it really would happen.

  The boy looked down at the little thing he was holding tightly to his chest. He had comfort from that, at least. Or perhaps it was the boy who was comforting the little shapeshifter. Seved knew how they could nestle their way in. Unobtrusive and eager. So it was not easy to say who was comforting who.

  Signe had brought a thermos with her and he heard her unscrewing the stopper. When she gave him a cup he squatted down with his back against the wall. Normally it was about ten degrees in the house, but now, with the window open, it was colder. A white mist hung in front of Signe’s mouth and it changed shape every time she breathed out, so Seved could clearly see how nervous she was.

  What were her memories of this room?

  He had no idea because they had never talked about it, but he assumed that she disliked being in here as much as he did. Perhaps it was worse for her because it had only been five or six years since she was that child jumping on the bed.

  Heavy footsteps could be heard on the cellar stairs and both Seved and Signe stood up, afraid. They stared at the door, which was opening.

  It was Lennart.

  He came in and joined them, standing for a long time looking at the boy, who had stopped jumping and was now sitting, prodding the little mouseshifter. The boy was letting it run free on the mattress and then crawl back into his hands to be picked up again.

  ‘I’ve just spoken to your mother,’ said Lennart. ‘She says you’re to stay here another night.’

  Instantly the boy looked up. He didn’t want to.

  ‘Your mum said so,’ Lennart grunted.

  ‘Phone her,’ said the boy. ‘She’ll come and get me.’

  Lennart strode to the bed and sat down, making it creak.

  ‘I didn’t want to have to tell you this, but your mum is angry with you, little fellow. I don’t know why.’

  Lennart rubbed his cheek with the hand that was inside the bag.

  ‘Do you know why?’

  The boy shook his head.

  ‘Don’t lie.’

  ‘Perhaps because I went to Granny’s house?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Lennart, nodding. ‘That’s what she said. She is angry because you went to your granny’s. Even though you weren’t allowed to. So she thinks you ought to stay here for a while.’

  ‘But I want to phone her. I want to say sorry.’

  ‘You can’t. There’s no telephone here.’

  ‘But you’ve just talked to her.’

  ‘That was over at the neighbour’s house,’ Lennart said, standing up. ‘And I can only use their phone once a day.’

  ‘But why can’t I go home?’

  ‘You can go home. Just not today.’

  I had been sitting so long at the laptop that I had given myself a stiff neck reading everything the newspapers had written about Mattias’s disappearance. Pictures from Vaikijaur were rolled out on the evening news: helicopters circling, a deserted Kvikkjokk Road. But no progress had been made by the police in their search. Susso had been down in her own flat all day but came back up in the evening. She sank to the floor with her back resting against the fridge.

  ‘Have you heard any more?’ I asked.

  Susso shook her head and picked up the dog.

  ‘They were talking to the police on the radio an hour or so ago,’ she said. ‘They’re not looking for him any longer. Out of doors, that is. So now they’re looking … in different ways, I suppose. I don’t know.’

  I took a mouthful of wine and sat there with the glass in my hand.

  ‘And the police have phoned me,’ Susso said.

  ‘They’ve phoned you?’

  ‘It’s the photo,’ she said, rubbing the back of her head against the fridge door. ‘They want to talk about it. I don’t know any more than that. I’ll drive down to Jokkmokk tomorrow.’

  ‘But what do they want to ask about it? And why do you have to go there? Surely they can come here? There has to be someone you can talk to here, at the police station.’

  ‘Well, how do I know?’ Susso snapped.

  Susso losing her patience like that made me shut my mouth. It was clumsy of me to go on about it. Naturally, this was tough for her.

  ‘They’ve set up some kind of base there,’ she continued. ‘Or whatever they call it. And I said I could go, it was no problem.’

  She put the dog down on the floor and brushed off her trousers.

  ‘Do they think you’re involved in some way?’

  ‘Of course they don’t.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘All they want to do is ask a few questions. I expect they want to find out what kind of person I am, spending my time photographing trolls. That’s not surprising.’

  ‘No,’ I said, sighing. ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Are you making a grotto?’

  Seved peered at the boy from below, at the sliver of his withdrawn little face that could be seen between his jacket collar and fur hat.

  He had climbed up onto the heap of ploughed snow that was piled up in the middle of the yard, and was standing there wearing the winter clothes that had been stored in a cardboard box ever since Seved was a boy: the black padded trousers with braces; the blue down jacket with a red and white border across the shoulders, the one Börje insisted was a snowmobile jacket. Even the hat had belonged to Seved. It was made of chocolate-brown leather lined with fur, which was tinged yellow on the ear flaps and the folded-back section above the forehead. But the boots were modern. They had Velcro fastenings at the front, and reflective strips. They were the boy’s own boots.

  Seved walked up the veranda steps and fetched a snow shovel. The greying wooden handle was furry with frost.

  ‘Here,’ he said, climbing up the heap of snow and hacking at it with the steel blade.

  The boy took a step back, watching him with a wary but not uninterested look. His cheeks were red raw. He stuck out his tongue to lick at the clear mucus running from his nose.

  ‘You’ve got to have a plan for building it,’ Seved said eagerly, digging away at the snow. ‘So it doesn’t go wrong. Otherwise it will collapse. If you’re in the cave when it collapses, you’ll get trapped.’ He straightened up to rest his back for a few seconds. ‘That’s why you have to think about it before you start. The walls have to be straight. That’s very important. And you have to dig like this. Scrape away the snow to make it nice and even.’

  The boy knelt on one knee, looking at the growing hole.

  ‘And you can have windows in it,’ said Seved. ‘Do you want it to have windows?’

  The boy nodded.

  ‘Then we’ll make some. But first we’ve got to dig it out properly.’

  By now Seved had stepped down into the grotto opening, and from there he explained:

  ‘You make the windows by getting water to freeze in a cake tin or a bucket. And you can put things in the water too, to make decorations in the windowpanes. I’ll show you how to do it. You can put leave
s in it, for example, although they’ll be hard to find at this time of year. But I’m sure we’ll find something else.’

  To Seved’s great astonishment the boy suddenly leaned forwards and grabbed hold of his arm with both mittens. The grip was surprisingly strong and Seved didn’t understand what had got into him. Was it some kind of clumsy hug? But then he saw the frightened look under the furry edge of the hat and he understood why.

  One of them had come out onto the porch.

  It was Karats.

  He stood there with his shaggy, flattened head to one side so that it would not hit the roof. His eyes were dark slits on either side of the coarse nose and his cheeks were moving as he chewed something. One of the hares was sitting at his feet like a little dog.

  Seved crawled up out of the grotto and put his hand on the boy’s back, pulling him close as he looked towards the immobile giant on the porch.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘He won’t do anything. You don’t have to be afraid.’

  But the boy was petrified. He refused to let go of Seved, so Seved helped him down from the pile of snow and carried him inside.

  The police station in Jokkmokk was a yellow wooden two-storey building.

  Susso had never been inside a police station before, never had anything to do with them, so she didn’t know what to expect. The ramp leading up to the entrance had been conscientiously cleared of snow and scattered with brown swirls of sand. She opened the door and went into a reception area, where two women were busying themselves behind a glass screen. It seemed as if they were searching for something. They were looking down and did not even notice her.

  Susso took off her hat and pushed her hair to one side.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m here to meet a Lars-Göran Hannler, or I think that’s what he’s called.’

  One of the women, who was heavily overweight and had a bleached fringe, told her to sit down and wait.

  ‘He won’t keep you long.’

  Susso sat herself down on the waiting room’s small sofa, which was tucked behind a fig tree taller than she was. She crammed her hat into her jacket pocket and found her stick of lip balm, which she pulled out and rubbed over her lips. They had cracked in the cold.

  She wondered whether the receptionists were police officers. They did not look like police officers – at least, not the fat one. Though you could never tell.

  *

  Ever since Edit had phoned and told her that Mattias had disappeared, Susso had blamed herself, and nothing could persuade her otherwise. The guilt felt like a bitter grey lump inside her. However hard she tried she could not supress the thought that she had triggered all these events by driving to Vaikijaur and setting up the camera.

  The photos taken by the wildlife camera had scared her. Those white eyes were aimed at her. ‘It’s like I’ve been fishing and caught something I don’t want on the end of my hook,’ she had said to her mother. And so it was.

  *

  Lars-Göran Hannler was wearing a light-brown corduroy jacket and dark-blue jeans which he drew up at the waist before stretching out his hand to greet her. His palm felt rough and warm. He had a suntanned face, pale probing eyes and light-grey hair in a flat side parting. On the skin beneath his shirt collar shone a slender gold chain.

  ‘I’m glad you could come,’ he said.

  They walked up a staircase with framed photographs on the walls. Susso rested her hand on the bannister and studied the policeman’s back. A distended pocket containing a wallet came into view occasionally in the jacket’s back vent.

  In silence they walked down a short corridor and rounded a corner. She glanced at the name plates placed at eye level on the doors. Kvickström it said on one of them, and she recalled the same name written on one of the mailboxes in Vaikijaur. Somewhere a phone was ringing. There was absolutely nothing to show that the police did their investigative work from here – or perhaps she had completely misunderstood everything and that kind of work was carried out in Luleå instead.

  ‘This is where I live,’ the police officer said as they arrived at his office.

  He waved towards the chair, indicating where Susso was to sit. After sitting down she pressed her palms together and pushed them between her thighs.

  Lars-Göran Hannler exchanged a few words with someone further down the corridor. ‘That’ll be great,’ he said, before pushing the door closed and sinking down on the chair behind the desk. Susso looked at the computer. The screensaver consisted of the emblem of the Swedish police force, which was slowly rebounding from one side of the screen to another. It looked desperately unimaginative.

  ‘As I mentioned on the phone,’ Lars-Göran said, rolling the chair back a few centimetres, ‘we want to know how you went about taking the photo in Edit Mickelsson’s garden.’

  ‘And as I mentioned on the phone,’ she said, repeating his own words, ‘it was a wildlife camera. I didn’t take the picture.’ She mimed taking a photograph.

  The police officer regarded her for a long time. He had folded his plump arms across his chest.

  ‘So all you did was set up the camera on Edit Mickelsson’s house?’

  Susso nodded.

  ‘And you have no idea who that is in the picture?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Obviously, if I knew I would have told you.’

  The officer nodded.

  ‘Did you ever meet Mattias?’

  ‘No. Or rather, yes. He stood watching me once while I was asleep. In Edit’s house. But, no, I have never met him or spoken to him or anything.’

  The police officer inhaled through his nostrils and cleared his throat. He placed one elbow on the back of his chair and locked his fingers together over a stomach that stretched his shirt and revealed skin in the gaps between the buttons.

  ‘Because there is no room here for any kind of hoax, as I’m sure you understand.’

  ‘Hoax?’

  ‘Some internet scam …’

  ‘It isn’t,’ she said, leaning towards him. ‘It’s nothing like that. It’s genuine. On the level, or however you want to say it.’

  All at once she felt exhausted. What did he actually want to know? She stared at the grey mottled vinyl flooring and tried to collect her thoughts.

  ‘It’s like it’s unreal but … I don’t know what to say.’

  There was a long pause before the policeman spoke again. It was as if he wanted to let her sit there, squirming. Let the silence take effect. With any luck it might result in her revealing something new and useful.

  ‘I’ve looked up your website, you know. Read what’s on it.’

  ‘It’s only … a project. That’s all,’ she said feebly.

  ‘And we are familiar with your maternal grandfather, Gunnar Myrén. But I have never seen this bear before. Or the troll, or whatever it might be. That’s new to me.’

  ‘We …’ she began, but was interrupted when the door opened behind her. Instinctively she turned her head, but by that time the door had closed. She looked quizzically at the officer. His gaze was clear and unchanged.

  ‘He was afraid,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Afraid of not being believed. Because people didn’t believe him. And then there’s Mum. She’s afraid of making herself look stupid.’

  She smiled as she said this, but the police officer did not return her smile.

  ‘And you’re not?’ he said.

  Susso shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘I don’t care. Not as much.’

  He nodded his head.

  ‘And this is the first time you have captured something on a photograph?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, nodding emphatically. ‘I have photos other people have taken, but they’re not very good. If you have visited the website, you will have seen them already.’

  He received this information with a nod, but she could not decide whether he nodded because he had seen the pictures, or whether he simply wanted to move on.

  ‘But it’s the first time I’ve … c
aptured anything on a photo myself. I’ve set up the camera before but never got anything. So this is the first time.’

  He watched her for a few seconds, waiting in case she had anything more to add. There was nothing. When she shut her lips and raised her eyebrows to indicate that she had finished he stood up.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ he muttered, and walked out of the room.

  *

  He returned with two other men trailing behind him. Both were in their sixties. One was short and bald, with a flattened nose, and she thought he looked like an old boxer. He was wearing a light-blue police shirt with a dark-blue tie, and a ballpoint pen was attached to the edge of his breast pocket. His name was Kjell-Åke Andersson and he told Susso that he was leading the investigation. He spoke slowly, emphasising every syllable, and she could tell he came from Tornedalen. He pulled up a chair and sat down diagonally opposite her. His eyes were red and bloodshot, but he kept them fixed on her.

  A trail of aftershave followed the second man into the room. He had a leather jacket and a white, well-trimmed moustache. Before he took his place by the window, scanning the car park and the street, he introduced himself briefly as Wikström from the county CID. The black jacket shone like the protective shell on a beetle’s back, and Susso thought there was something odd about him. The jacket and the overpowering smell of aftershave did not correspond to his age.

  She now had three pairs of eyes directed at her, and she did not like it. Only intermittently did she succeed in looking unconcerned. She worked her tin of snus out of her pocket but she could not bring herself to open it, and sat pressing the lid, making it creak. She was fully aware that she gave the impression of being nervous but there was nothing she could do about it.

  ‘It is extremely rare for a child to be abducted in this way,’ said Kjell-Åke ponderously. ‘That’s why it’s hard for us to know how to go about looking for him. But we do know that every hour is vitally important now, at the beginning.’

  When he had said this he fell silent, and judging from his enquiring look it was clear that Susso had to confirm that she understood. She nodded.