Stallo

by Stefan Spjut

  ‘Mum,’ Susso said, ‘do you think it’s a coincidence?’

  Gudrun stared at the stone troll. After a moment she shrugged her shoulders. ‘It’s only a troll,’ she said.

  They carried on along the path, which was criss-crossed with roots. The fir trees were crowded together and their lower branches were straggly. The ground underfoot was brown and covered in pine needles and old leaves.

  Torbjörn asked if they thought it was illegal to defy no-entry notices.

  ‘We’re only going to ask,’ Susso said, taking a long step over a fallen branch. ‘Surely we’re allowed to do that.’

  *

  The house that became visible through the trees had a red exterior with white corners, barge boards and window surrounds, and a steeply sloping roof. The roof tiles were patterned with grey-green lichen. There were so many mullioned panes of glass that the windows looked as if they were behind bars.

  Susso walked closer and stood on her toes to look in but could only see curtains. They hung there, ghostly white, and a wooden seagull poked its long beak out from behind one of them as it gazed to the side. Brown fern fronds curled in the flower bed running parallel to the foundation’s base of natural stone.

  All they heard was the wind as it passed through the trees and bushes in a repeated combing movement. Stooping slightly, Susso moved forwards, preparing to make her excuses and bring out the photograph of the Vaikijaur man.

  At the front-veranda steps she halted and glanced around the corner of the house. There a lawn sloped down towards a dilapidated fence made of wire netting, with old pasture land beyond and an outcropping of birches, juniper bushes and a few oaks. Sunlight radiated down between the branches, illuminating the frozen grass and turning the blades fuzzy in the light.

  ‘Hello!’ she called.

  She paused for a second or two before walking up the concrete steps to the front door. She knocked and peered in through the faded cotton curtains, but there was nothing to see except an entrance hall with a worn and crumpled rag rug. There were more sea birds and some sparkling glass ornaments in the window.

  Gudrun crept up beside her, keeping her hands in her pockets. It was obvious that no one was at home, and that had made her a little bolder.

  ‘Nobody here,’ Susso said, and walked down the steps.

  On a green-painted plinth stood a sundial in the form of a sphere of welded iron circles. The arrow had an oily brass shimmer and the fletchings splayed out like the tail of a salmon.

  Behind the house she saw a rocky hillock where a pair of large oaks soared up, capturing sunlight in their branches. From the dry fragments of leaves came a gentle rustling sound.

  Susso continued circling the house without any clear idea of what she was looking for. She was just not ready to leave. A feeling rising from deep within her tethered her to this place. There had to be something here. It was magnetic. She was prepared to break into the house to look for answers, but she knew her mother would oppose that idea.

  She came to the back door and saw that someone had fastened a picture to an upstairs window with long strips of freezer tape. Susso stood on tiptoe and backed away, but she couldn’t make out what the drawing portrayed, only that it was painted in green. In pastels, perhaps.

  A child, she thought.

  In the above-ground foundations, immediately below a windowsill, was an aperture big enough to take a whole foot. It was extraordinary. In front of the opening lay a couple of boulders. She bent forwards and tried to see inside, crouching down to get a closer look.

  Inside she could see a few oak leaves that had shrivelled into small grey cylinders and beyond that only impenetrable darkness. Was it something to do with ventilation? But why have such a big hole? Fairly large animals could get in, surely?

  After getting up, supporting herself against the wall, she checked the palm of her hand for signs of the red paint. It was clean. She took a last look at the hole and walked back.

  Torbjörn was inspecting the sundial and holding up his watch, and as Susso walked towards them he grinned at her.

  ‘The time’s right,’ he said.

  ‘It’s probably a summer cottage,’ Susso said, and she twisted the arrow, making it squeak. ‘So we’ll have to phone, I guess.’

  ‘Or else we find out where they live,’ said Gudrun, pulling her jacket collar closed to keep out the wind.

  ‘And drive there?’ Torbjörn said.

  Gudrun nodded.

  The shop was empty when Seved arrived. A woman was sitting behind the counter looking at a computer screen, and he knew it must be her. The sister. Cecilia Myrén.

  He walked around outside a couple of times to summon up the courage to approach her. He had no idea what it would lead to, or whether he would be forced to break into her home later that night. Everything had to happen unobtrusively. With great care, Lennart had said.

  From time to time Seved felt a twitching against his chest. It was the little lemmingshifter, changing position. It was in his inside pocket, directly over his heart. It could feel his heartbeats and presumably his nervousness. Did it have any thoughts about that?

  *

  Cecilia looked up the moment Seved entered the shop.

  She was about forty-five. Her hair was shoulder length and tinted chestnut brown, and she had pushed her glasses up onto her head like a hairband. Her fingers were covered in silver rings and she wore bracelets on both wrists. She smiled as she greeted him.

  Without introducing himself, Seved muttered that he was a journalist who wanted to write about Susso Myrén but could not get hold of her, so he wondered if she could help him track her down.

  ‘Well, that might be difficult. She’s in Gränna.’

  ‘Gränna?’

  She nodded.

  ‘What … what’s she doing there?’

  ‘Buying peppermint rock. No, I don’t know – it’s got something to do with her website.’

  Seved rubbed his hand gently against his chest. She seemed chatty enough. With a little luck he might not even need the little lemmingshifter’s help. But he had better watch out and not go too fast. There was a risk she would back off.

  ‘Are you the only person working here?’

  ‘No, my mother works here, and Susso too, sometimes. And in summer during the busy season we take on extra staff. Mum is really retired but she can’t just sit at home, that would drive her mad. So we all help out. I’ve got my pedicure business as well, of course. I do that part-time.’

  She reached across the counter and picked up a business card from a transparent plastic holder. Cecilia’s Pedicure Salon, it read. Seved nodded.

  ‘Perhaps your feet need looking at?’

  He had started to shake his head, but then he suddenly changed his mind.

  ‘Why not?’

  Susso had wandered off towards the pasture in protest. She was still not prepared to leave. There was something here, she was convinced of that. She felt it. There was a small gate in the fence but it served no purpose because the wire netting was sagging so low between the rotting fence posts that she could easily step over it.

  She strolled around among the birch trees and the prickly juniper bushes, kicking the thick matted carpet of grass. Here and there the vegetation was hidden by a patch of snow that was slowly being eaten away.

  She walked down towards the beach to get an overview of the lake, but a straggly wall of rushes blocked her way and the ground was boggy and coated with crackling shards of ice. She did not want to get wet feet.

  Not far from the gate she had spotted a short jetty, so she turned back and walked quickly in that direction. She heard the tones of a ringing mobile coming from over by the house – her mother’s ring tone, a rock song. Her gaze wandered over the tree-covered islands and the murky strips of forest rising up on the other side of the bay. Beyond that ridge was the motorway and Lake Vättern.

  In silence, heads bowed, Gudrun and Torbjörn came walking towards her. Torbjörn had put on his
woollen hat and his head looked like a small bud on top of his gangly body.

  ‘There’s been a journalist in the shop, asking about you,’ Gudrun said. ‘Cecilia said you were away.’

  ‘But she didn’t say where? She didn’t say I’m here?’

  ‘It won’t matter. No one could figure out exactly where in Gränna you are.’

  Susso reached her hand out for the phone.

  *

  Cecilia was taken aback by the anger in Susso’s voice.

  ‘If you’re fifteen hundred kilometres …’

  ‘Yes, but what if it wasn’t a journalist! Shit, I was attacked! Someone wants to kill me! Don’t you get that, Cecilia?’

  ‘Oh, come on! It was a journalist. He seems really nice. He’s even booked a pedicure session. You’ve got nothing to worry about.’

  Susso ended the conversation with a furious tap of her thumb.

  ‘Look, it’s not a problem,’ Torbjörn said.

  Susso wanted to get away. She had already begun walking fast.

  ‘You’re getting paranoid now,’ he said, hurrying after her. ‘No one knows where you are.’

  ‘They didn’t have any trouble finding us when we were out on the snowmobile!’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But they had probably followed us. No one could have followed us down here. That’s impossible. Calm down.’

  *

  Close to the house, tucked into a small copse of conifers, stood a shed with a sheet-metal roof. On one side was a hatch and above it, hidden away under the eaves, was a bird box. The doors had diagonal wooden handles. Susso recalled that the dwarf had lived with Mats’s family in an old outhouse. If he had ever stayed here, it was likely he had lived in this shed.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ she called.

  But before she could even open the door, she caught a flash of dark-blue fabric moving along the path in the gloom below the trees. It was a woman walking briskly towards them. She was wearing a knitted jumper with the sleeves rolled up. Her grey hair was tucked behind her ears and she was holding a mobile phone.

  ‘Who are you?’ she shouted.

  Susso took a few steps back and began fumbling with the plastic folder.

  ‘We’re looking for someone,’ she said, pulling out a sheet of paper which she tried to flatten out. ‘Someone who has disappeared. Who we think might be here. Or who has been here, at least.’

  Gudrun forced a smile. ‘We only want to know if you’ve seen him. The police are looking for him too. We’ve driven fifteen hundred kilometres.’

  ‘So perhaps you know something?’ Susso added, waving the piece of paper in front of the woman.

  ‘This photo has been on television,’ Gudrun said. ‘He could be involved in the kidnapping of the boy in Jokkmokk at Christmas. I’m sure you’ve heard about it.’

  ‘You should go now,’ the woman said.

  As they walked sheepishly towards the car, Susso and Gudrun tried pleading with the woman, who was following on their heels like a sheepdog.

  It had not been their intention to do anything illegal, they explained, and Susso told her that the person in the photograph had run onto the headland in the spring of 1980 and no one had seen him since. The only way to track him down was to come here and ask.

  ‘But you can’t just come marching in here when you feel like it,’ the woman repeated. ‘This is private land! There are signs!’

  Their appeal went unheard and finally they gave up. It seemed as if the woman was not even listening to them. All Susso wanted to do now was get away. She walked as quickly as she could without running, and she could hear her mother panting behind her.

  By the time they reached the gate Torbjörn was already in the car and had started the engine. White fumes were pouring from the vibrating exhaust pipe. They climbed over the fence and were about to get into the car when they were stopped.

  ‘Wait a minute!’ the woman called, stepping over the fence rails.

  Judging from her voice she was prepared to talk now that they were on the other side of the fence. Susso said she had not been able to find the telephone number and that the directions, which were based on a journey taken twenty-five years ago, were all they had to go on.

  ‘The trail leads here,’ she said, nodding out towards the headland. ‘Literally.’

  The woman took the sheet of paper Susso held out to her. After turning it the right way up she snorted, grinning.

  Gudrun leaned against the car to study the woman as she looked at the picture. Torbjörn switched off the ignition.

  ‘Have you seen this photo before? It’s the one that was on TV.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I must have missed it.’

  And then she said: ‘But it has to be a joke, doesn’t it?’

  The smile lingered at the corners of the woman’s mouth.

  ‘Well, no,’ Susso said. ‘It isn’t.’

  ‘It isn’t?’ She raised her eyebrows.

  Gudrun shook her head.

  ‘He does look a bit unusual, but …’

  ‘In that case’, said the woman, ‘someone’s pulling your leg.’

  ‘This is what he looks like,’ Susso said. ‘The picture has been in the paper as well as on TV. The police are looking for him. We really do want to know if you’ve seen him before.’

  ‘It’s supposed to be a troll, isn’t it?’

  The word made Susso stiffen.

  ‘Yes,’ said Gudrun hesitantly, moving nearer. She straightened the scarf around her neck. ‘Perhaps’ – she was almost whispering – ‘perhaps it does look like a troll. But it certainly isn’t a joke, I can tell you that. A boy has been kidnapped. So it’s no laughing matter.’

  The woman turned sideways and waved the piece of paper in the direction of the headland.

  ‘Do you mean you don’t know who used to live here?’ she said.

  She waited for an answer but no one spoke.

  ‘John Bauer,’ she said. ‘This is John Bauer’s old house.’

  ‘Now you’re the one who’s joking,’ Gudrun said.

  ‘No.’

  Susso and Gudrun looked at each other, and then Susso insisted they had had no idea who had lived in the house. It came as a complete surprise. She turned to Torbjörn, who was staring through the gap in the half-open door with a look of disbelief.

  ‘John Bauer?’ he said. ‘The man who painted the trolls?’

  The woman explained that there was no limit to people’s curiosity, which is why they had put up the gates and no-trespassing signs. In the summer, boats circled the water packed with tourists craning their necks to get a glimpse of the fairy-tale artist’s idyllic home, and hopefully a troll as well. Hot-air balloons floated disrespectfully low over the headland and people leaned over the edge of the baskets, waving.

  None of this was appreciated by Herr Dahllöf, the current owner of the house, who had inherited it from his father’s two sisters. He had been more or less forced to invest in a gate because sometimes people who had seen the house from the lake or from the air came tramping all over the garden afterwards, wanting to have a look at whatever could not be seen from further away. Since the gates had been installed no one had come onto the land. Until now.

  ‘We had no idea, truly,’ said Gudrun. ‘We were told that the person we are looking for, the Vaikijaur man, set off for this place in 1980. That’s all we know. That’s why we are here. Not because John Bauer lived here. It’s … well, I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘It seems like someone is having you on,’ the woman said, studying the photograph of the Vaikijaur man’s face.

  ‘Well, I don’t understand a thing. Do you, Susso?’

  Susso shook her head.

  ‘The man who lives here, what was his name again?’ she asked.

  ‘No one lives here,’ the woman replied. ‘It’s a summer house.’

  ‘Well, the owner then?’

  ‘Dahllöf. Fredrik Dahllöf, he’s called. And he lives in Helsingborg.’

  ‘Hav
e you got his phone number?’

  Subdued music met Seved as he opened the door. Pan pipes, he thought. Supposed to be relaxing. On a table in the small entrance hall a candle was floating in a dish of water and over the doorway to the treatment room hung a curtain of ruby-red beads. There inside stood Cecilia Myrén with her back to him. She told him to take off his jacket, but, of course, he could not do that so he told her he was cold.

  ‘It’s not that cold today.’

  ‘I’m not used to it, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh, right. Where are you from?’

  He did not reply and only stared at the floor.

  She waited a moment for an answer and then gave up.

  ‘But you’ll have to take your shoes off, you know.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and began to untie his boot laces.

  ‘It would be a bit difficult otherwise,’ she laughed.

  The chair reminded him of a dentist’s chair. It was adjustable and the seat covers were shiny and flesh-red. He really had no desire to sit down but he could hardly get straight to the point of his visit. She watched him as he climbed up into the chair and she seemed amused. Her eyes had narrowed.

  ‘Socks as well,’ she said.

  He pulled off his socks and sat with them in his hand, unsure what to do with them. Then he pushed them into his jacket pocket. She stood with her back to him, unscrewing the lid of a little bottle. She had wide hips and was wearing a black skirt with a knee-high pleat at the back.

  ‘So, you’re a journalist then?’ she said, without turning round.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For a newspaper, or what?’

  He said nothing. He had not been prepared to answer questions.

  ‘Or are you a freelancer?’

  ‘Yes. Freelance.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ she said. ‘Being your own boss. I’ve got this and it suits me perfectly, combined with the shop.’

  ‘It’s exciting, what she’s doing. Your sister.’

  At first he thought she had not heard him, but then she said softly: