Stallo

by Stefan Spjut

  ‘Yes, we know about that.’

  ‘So you’ve been there then?’

  ‘Susso,’ he said, ‘naturally we are grateful for your photograph and your interest in the search for Mattias, but I’m sure you understand that I can’t answer that question.’

  ‘But I only want to know if you’ve found him.’

  ‘When, or should I say if, we find him, you will be informed.’

  Seved took a dish from the washing-up rack, put it on the table and then fetched a carton of yoghurt and a tube of cheese spread from the fridge. The boy lifted the carton with both hands and poured some into the dish. He took his time, making sure not to spill any. From the basket of woven birch bark he took a slice of crispbread and crumbled it over the yoghurt.

  Seved felt a pang when he saw how the boy broke the bread, because it gave him an insight into the life he must have had, a life they had taken from him. That he had taken from him. Who had taught him to crumble crispbread into his yoghurt? Seved tried to push the thought aside but it was not easy. It worked its way in and spread, forcing to the surface a lingering anxiety. Much of the boy’s chest was visible in the opening of his shirt: it was like a bib of pale skin, lined with the shadows of his ribs. He had been with them for several days now and had not been eating well. He mainly wanted to drink. He liked apricot smoothies and yoghurt and clementines. Seved had asked him what he liked to eat. The boy never replied.

  The boy bent over his bowl, pressing his elbows tightly to his body. It was as if he was trying to take up as little room as possible. He had a slight cold and was breathing through his mouth. Below his nose lines of mucus had dried to a crust.

  ‘It’s Christmas Eve today,’ Seved said. ‘Lennart will have presents with him when he comes back, you wait and see. What would you like for Christmas?’

  There was no answer.

  *

  Lennart turned up around four o’clock with four plastic bags full of Christmas presents. The boy sat alone on the sofa, and his shoulders were so narrow he practically disappeared into the crack between the olive-green velour cushions with their large buttons.

  ‘We’ve got to have some Christmas music as well,’ Lennart said, and went to fetch the CD player. He fumbled with the buttons but nothing happened, so Seved had to hurry and put in the plug before the big man got angry with it.

  Once the CD started spinning and the music streamed out of the loudspeakers, Lennart sang along. He was unsure of the words. All he knew was ‘hejsan hoppsan’ and ‘fallerallera’.

  As he sang and hummed he emptied the plastic bags onto the wooden floor, grabbing hold of the bottom of each bag and turning it upside down. Out tumbled rattling Lego boxes, athletic-looking plastic figures with cheerful grins, cars with big tractor wheels, board games, jigsaw puzzles, soft toys, a shining silver pistol, a sword and dinosaurs with stiff gaping jaws. There was a drawing pad and a box of tricks with a magician on the front in a high top hat and a cape.

  Wide-eyed, the boy slid from the sofa and kneeled among the toys. Jim the mouseshifter was sitting in his uncombed hair.

  ‘Bet you’ve never seen this many toys before,’ said Lennart, grimacing as he clenched and unclenched his fingers inside their protective bag.

  No, the boy most certainly had not.

  ‘We didn’t know what you wanted, so we took everything.’

  The boy lifted up a robot and turned its arms.

  ‘There are games too,’ Lennart said. ‘The kind you play on the TV.’

  Börje was sitting in the armchair with a can of beer in his hand. He was drunk and he had said nothing for almost an hour. It was as if he had forgotten how to talk, and if anyone spoke to him, he only raised his eyebrows, startled. His eyelids had drooped so that only the lower half of his eyes was visible, but every time it looked as if he was about to shut his eyes completely all he did was slurp another mouthful from the can.

  The snow was falling gently and sparkled in the light from the lamp on the barn wall. On the windowpane two white patches appeared in front of the noses of the gigantic figures standing outside, draped in tarpaulin, watching the child playing.

  Sigrid Muotka tentatively felt a bag of walnut kernels. She squeezed the cellophane and inspected the contents. The walnuts looked like brains. Her knitted beret was an intense splash of colour and a round reflective tag dangled from a twisted cord emerging from the pocket of her poplin coat. Susso stood behind her holding the wire basket. It was already quite full and she was holding it with both hands.

  ‘Do you want the nuts?’

  As if in answer to Susso’s question, Sigrid let go of the bag and walked on, her rubber-soled shoes shuffling on the shop floor. She looked timidly along the shelves but could not see what she wanted, and perhaps she did not even know herself. Susso wanted to help her and frequently offered suggestions, but the old lady either shook her head or appeared not to hear.

  There was a muffled buzz from Susso’s jacket. She put down the basket, dug her hand into her pocket and pulled out her mobile, along with a crumpled tissue. Unknown number. Normally she would be curious to find out who was phoning but lately she had not wanted to know. Because what if it was the police and they had discovered something? She did not answer and the caller left a voicemail message.

  They made their way to the till and Susso began to empty the basket onto the conveyor belt – milk, tins of mackerel, a sliced loaf, knobbly potatoes, a packet of coffee and four rolls of kitchen paper.

  Leaving the store, the two women pulled on their gloves, turned up their collars and lowered their chins, and went out to face the biting cold. It was almost three o’clock and the sky was grey. Sigrid Muotka lived on Föreningsgatan. There was not far to go but the final stretch was steadily uphill and Susso felt as if the cold was gouging out her eyes. She was pulling the sledge with the bags stacked one on top of the other, grimacing and glancing at little Sigrid, who was struggling along with the kitchen rolls in her arms, her eyes fixed on the snowy ground.

  ‘Not far now!’

  When they reached the block of flats the old woman walked straight in through the entrance doors, while Susso unloaded the sledge and took it to the carpet-beating frame, which doubled as sledge storage. There was not much room and to find a place Susso had to step in snow that was yellow and corroded by dog piss.

  Then her phone rang again.

  Unknown number.

  She realised it could be important, so this time she answered.

  It was a woman’s voice. She said her name too quickly for Susso to make it out, but she did hear the next sentence:

  ‘… and I’m phoning from Expressen. I’d really like to talk to you a bit about this website you’ve got …’

  TROLL HUNTER’S PHOTO ONLY POLICE LEAD

  The Vaikijaur man is not a man. At least, not if you believe cryptozoologist Sussie Myrén, who has captured him on film.

  ‘It could be a genuine troll,’ she says.

  Sussie Myrén’s wildlife camera took the picture, which is the only lead the police have in their search for four-year-old Mattias Mickelsson, who was abducted by two unidentified men on 17 December in Jokkmokk. But she had not set up the camera to take pictures of animals.

  She wanted to document something completely different. Trolls.

  In the family

  Ever since she was a child Sussie Myrén, who works as a care assistant in Kiruna, has dreamed of seeing a supernatural being with her own eyes. She inherited this unusual interest from her maternal grandfather, a fells photographer. Towards the end of the eighties he took an aerial photo of a bear with an unidentifiable creature on its back.

  ‘No one has ever been able to explain the image in the picture. I have puzzled about it all my life. You could say I absorbed it with my mother’s milk. If anyone has an explanation they are welcome to contact me,’ she says.

  Her own website

  In the interest of gathering information about authentic dwarfs and trolls she has creat
ed a website, and it was through the website that Mattias Mickelsson’s grandmother came into contact with her.

  ‘She saw a figure in her garden that she thought was some kind of goblin or gnome because he was so small and he looked so strange,’ says Sussie Myrén, who for the sake of simplicity uses the term ‘troll’ for all supernatural beings in the Nordic region that have a human form and anthropomorphic characteristics.

  ‘Abominable Snowmen and Big Foot are not trolls, of course, but if similar beings were observed here I would call them trolls. So it is quite simply a question of geography,’ she says.

  Unknown species

  Sussie Myrén thinks in cryptozoological terms. She believes the beings we call trolls could, in fact, be animal species that have avoided scientific explanation.

  ‘I am fairly certain that Abominable Snowmen and Yeti exist or have existed. And Sweden has huge areas of forest. Remember, these creatures are more wary than lynx and considerably more intelligent.’

  But why have troll skeletons never been found?

  ‘That’s a good question. The answer is probably that these beings are extremely rare and can be similar to other animals, even humans. Have you ever seen a skinned bear, for example? It is uncannily like a human corpse.’

  Mobile cameras

  She believes that the explosive increase in the number of cameras in our society, such as those in mobile phones, will result in a flood of photographic evidence.

  Now she hopes her picture will be able to assist the police.

  ‘It could be a troll, but not necessarily. The most important thing is for anyone with information about the person in the photograph to contact the police.’

  *

  My jaw dropped when I read that, and I had trouble catching my breath. That’s what Roland told me anyway, when he came in with the newspaper and handed it to me with an inscrutable grin below his moustache. He had no idea why it made me so upset.

  ‘“Absorbed it with my mother’s milk,”’ I said. ‘What will people think!’

  ‘But that’s true, isn’t it?’ he said.

  I read our name in the paper with horror.

  Myrén, Myrén, Myrén!

  And they had spelled Susso’s name wrong. Luckily Dad’s name wasn’t mentioned – it would hardly be good for business if the actual name of the company was linked to something as awful as child abduction. Although Cecilia said the connection didn’t matter and that the publicity could only have a beneficial effect on business, if that’s what I was worried about. But I was still thankful the reporter had not dug any deeper.

  The police got nowhere with their investigation. Apart from the fact that they knew Mattias had been taken by two men in a brown Volvo estate, the photograph was their only lead, but such an elusive and doubtful lead that they had no idea how to follow it up, or even if there was any point in doing so. And because the boy had been missing for so long they were more or less certain he would never be found alive. You could read that between the lines. There were thirty investigators working on the case full-time. Every dark-coloured Volvo estate registered in the province was being checked out, and it would be hard to find a more common make of car in Norrbotten, so they had their work cut out. It’s a never-ending job, so Roland said, and judging by the look of Kjell-Åke Andersson, the detective in charge, he thought the same. He was on TV: a short grey-haired bloke who spoke slowly and looked pretty pathetic standing in the wind outside that steel building in Luleå where the County Police have their headquarters, and which is so horribly ugly that people with an interest in architecture come from far and wide to visit the place, just to look at the awfulness of it.

  ‘It’s a total mystery to us,’ he explained.

  When he was asked if they had any leads he shook his head. ‘Nothing new, anyway.’

  And the man in the photograph? The Vaikijaur man?

  ‘We’re not excluding anything from our enquiries. That means we are interested in any tips we receive. And we are entreating the general public to continue passing on tips, so if anyone has any information please phone 114 14 …’

  Occasionally I asked Susso how she was getting on, and although I noticed she was a bit down – to be honest, she just wasn’t herself – I never had the strength to break through that shell of indifference she had built around herself. When she said she was fine, I contented myself with that answer, which was of course cowardly of me because inside I knew it was a lie.

  The same day she had been in the national newspaper she was phoned by the local papers Norrländskan and Kuriren. She had answered their questions politely and even agreed to be photographed. I suggested they take the picture outside our shop, and that’s what they did. We had to make something positive out of all the fuss.

  Susso thought the more that was written about Mattias, the better. The more often his picture appeared in the press, the greater the chance of him being recognised by someone who had happened to see him. But the local press was only interested in Susso, the girl who believed in trolls and whose grandfather was famous in the county.

  Susso was embarrassed about the way she was portrayed in the papers, and naturally people talked. The attention was too much, we all felt that. It made all of us feel bad. Business in the shop suffered too, and I could see no logic in that. And as for Roland, he just walked around with that grin on his face.

  ‘There are gremlins in the works,’ he said.

  Lennart sat with the open newspaper in front of him, staring at the greatly enlarged photograph of Jirvin’s aged face. There was also a picture of Mattias, and one of a cryptozoologist named Sussie Myrén from Kiruna. Naturally Seved and Börje knew the article was disturbing, and they were waiting to hear what Lennart had to say about it. He sniffed and shifted his weight from one buttock to the other, making the old chair creak. The bag lay on one side of the paper and his bronzed right hand on the other. The creases on the knuckles of his fingers were deep crevices.

  ‘The other day,’ he said at last, ‘when the police made their unannounced visit to Torsten, this person was here, nosing about. Patrik noticed a car on the other side of the barrier. A green Volvo 240, registered to Susso Maria Myrén.’

  Lennart prodded his index finger on the cryptozoologist’s face.

  ‘But how did she know he was there?’ Seved asked. ‘And how did she find the house?’

  ‘She found it’, said Lennart slowly, ‘because our friend here has been running around the village for some unknown reason. He has been to the boy’s grandmother’s house on at least two occasions. And he can’t just have been there by chance. We have no idea at the moment why he did it, but it’s important you keep an eye on him.’

  ‘What, you mean he was trying to warn her? Is that what you’re saying?’ said Börje.

  A growl formed in the base of Lennart’s throat.

  ‘I’m saying you’ve got to keep an eye on him! No one knows what goes on in his head.’

  ‘There’s not much we can do,’ Börje said. ‘Not if he starts causing trouble. Such an old …’

  ‘He won’t dare cause any trouble,’ said Lennart. ‘Not down here. Not with you. Because otherwise Karats would make a fox-fur collar out of him. And he knows it. That’s another reason we moved him. With Karats and Skabram close by he won’t be getting up to any mischief. But you’ve still got to keep an eye on him, understand? Make sure he doesn’t slip away.’

  Börje nodded, and Seved noticed a layer of perspiration had formed on his forehead. He had never seen him look so tense before.

  ‘Jola and I have had a closer look at that website Susso Myrén has set up,’ Lennart continued, his fingers scratching inside the bag. ‘And I can tell you this much: it needs to be got rid of.’

  When he had said this he looked at Börje challengingly.

  ‘But what does it say, this website?’ Börje asked.

  Without taking his eyes off him, Lennart said:

  ‘It’s got to go.’

  Börje pursed
his lips and swallowed hard.

  ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  ‘I’m a bit out of touch …’

  ‘Jola can help you,’ muttered Lennart, folding the paper. ‘You travel up to Kiruna next week. We’re taking a trip to Östersund, but after that you’d better see to it. Right away.’

  One evening at the beginning of the new year I was sitting in the shop, holed up in the darkness like a little owl. I had closed long ago but it was savagely cold outside and I was putting off going out in it, just sitting there in my jacket and staring into space. I was vaguely thinking about whether I should improve the Christmas decorations or simply take them down, even though there were several days left until the thirteenth of January, St Knut’s Day.

  There was a sudden sharp rap on the shop window, and there outside stood Susso. She was wearing her Inca hat and the large, light-blue down coat that reaches to her knees, and she was holding her mobile in her gloved hand. She had used it to rap on the glass.

  ‘I’m just leaving!’ I called through the window, waving my gloves as proof, but she pointed to the door, so I had to go and open up for her.

  She held up the phone and said in an eager voice that she had just been speaking to a man who knew who the Vaikijaur man was.

  The man who had phoned was called Mats. He didn’t know the exact identity of the Vaikijaur man but apparently he had lived in his loft for over a year at the beginning of the eighties. He was not a hundred per cent sure, but he was so similar that he had contacted the police. They had not been particularly interested, however. On the other hand, he couldn’t offer them much information: he didn’t know what the man was called, not even his first name or where he came from – in fact, he knew practically nothing about him at all.