by Stefan Spjut
Nothing much could be learned from the shape of the handprints 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 ge
t 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.’
‘According to plan?’
‘Yes, if the child doesn’t cry or scream or make a fuss, because that makes them sad and things will get even worse.’
Börje nodded.
‘I’m sure that won’t be a problem.’
‘No?’
‘As long as we’re kind they keep calm. Children are polite creatures. Their politeness paralyses them.’
Seved was unsure if he should ask because they had never discussed these things before, but after what had happened it seemed as if a wall between them had come down, and without thinking he blurted out:
‘But have you ever done it? Taken a child, I mean?’
Börje said nothing. After putting down the tube, screwing the top back on and licking his thumb he said:
‘How do you think she got here?’ he said, nodding towards the ceiling. ‘Do you think the stork brought her?’
‘But isn’t she adopted? I mean, really adopted? That’s what Ejvor said. That you had adopted her.’
‘We did, in a way. But there’s no paperwork.’
‘So you just took her?’
‘I don’t want you to say anything to her about this. It’s getting close now.’
Seved nodded.
‘It was Erasmus who told me to do it,’ said Börje. ‘Erasmus Partapuoli, that arsehole who was here yesterday. It was a crisis. Just like it is now. Erasmus had snatched a child in Finland, but we needed more. And they had to be girls—well, you know why. And dark-haired, because he’d worked out there was less of an outcry if you took a kid with black hair, and that’s true. There’s less coverage in the newspapers because it’s not nearly as dramatic as when a Swedish kid disappears. People don’t identify with it in the same way. They don’t care because they don’t feel it could have been their child. It’s only some immigrant kid. And anyway it’s much easier to hide children who aren’t Swedish. No one recognises them. They all look alike.
‘It was the summer of ’97, and I travelled way down south because there weren’t that many foreign kids up here, at least not then, and it’s always better it happens far away, whatever the circumstances. I was in Småland, and by pure chance I passed a farm where a group of sodding immigrants was standing, gawping at me. They looked pretty strange, I can tell you, out there in the middle of the forest, and as I drove up they got frightened and some of them even ran off to hide, and I wondered what the hell was going on. And they had kids, masses of them, swarming around like chickens. I assumed they were refugees, hiding on this farm, and I thought I’d go back at night because surely they couldn’t keep tabs on all those kids. But then as I drove away I caught sight of her. She had taken herself off maybe three hundred metres from the farm, and was playing with something in the grass. I told her that her parents were looking for her. She couldn’t speak a word of Swedish, but I indicated she should get in the car. And then I told her I’d drive her back to the farm.’
He sniffed.
‘But that didn’t happen.’
After a pause he laughed and went on:
‘Remember that ferret that was always in here before? Bloody hell, he was a laugh. It’s like he had a sense of humour.’
After saying this he sat quietly for a second or two, looking at the table.
‘I wonder what happened to it . . .’
‘You mean the brown one? With the long mark on its throat?’
Börje nodded.
‘I haven’t seen it for several years,’ said Seved.
‘Well, whatever. I had it with me,’ said Börje, nodding. ‘And she liked it so much, she sat stroking it all the way up here. And everything went so smoothly that I drove back down again. She was mentioned in the papers, but not much, you know. That’s the way it is. Most people think it’s a family matter, that some relatives have come from their homeland and taken the kid for some unknown reason. So people don’t care and neither do the police because there’s not much they can do if the kid’s been taken out of the country. People looked for her. There were search parties, but after a couple of days they gave up. Well, the papers did, anyway.
‘So I drove around down there and came across another girl. She was dragging a black rubbish sack, collecting empty cans, and I thought she was a gypsy with her long black hair. Bloody perfect. So it was the same thing with her. All I had to do was let the ferret run out and get her. It was in Sävsjö, that’s what the place was called. I drove with her all the way up to Kattuvuoma. To Erasmus. Skabram was living up there at that time. But he said he didn’t want her and suggested I strangle the girl and throw her body somewhere on the roadside. Well, not just strangle her. It had to look as if there was a paedophile on the loose.’
Börje took a huge crunch.
‘So I took her with me to Grete, and she’s settled down really well there. I bet she’s better off there than with her filthy gypsy parents down in Sävsjö.’
He thought for a while before he went on:
‘Some people shouldn’t have children, Seved. They can’t cope. A refugee family with ten kids. I mean, shit, if they have so many kids they can’t even look after them, then something’s wrong. And the whole pack was allowed to stay, I heard, for humanitarian reasons, after they had lost the girl. So everyone ought to be happy all round.’
He licked a blob of cod roe from his knuckle.
‘I did Signe a favour. That’s how I see it.’
‘Erasmus was wearing Ejvor’s jacket.’
‘Yes, I noticed that.’
‘And is that supposed to be okay?’
Börje shrugged his shoulders.
‘It’s his jacket, in a way.’
‘What do you mean, “his”?’
‘It’s his money we’re living off.’
‘But isn’t Lennart . . .’
‘Most of it comes from Erasmus. And from the Finns. And Grete, of course.’
Börje had stood up. He opened the fridge and put in the tube of spread and the packet of crispbread as well.
‘There’s nothing wrong with Erasmus, not really,’ he said. ‘He’s a bit of an unsavoury character but he’s only doing what’s necessary. Just like Lennart. That’s all there is to it. Erasmus loves his wolves and he’ll do anything for them. Anything. And for us too. You’d better remember that.’
‘I think he could have left the jacket alone.’
‘Oh, get over it,’ Börje said, sitting down. ‘It’s only a jacket. Tell me what else Lennart said. About that child. Is it a girl?’
‘No, a boy. He lives in Vaiki . . . Vaikijaur. It’s some village outsid
e Jokkmokk. On the road to Torsten Holmbom. He’s the one who told us he was there.’
Börje nodded.
‘I know where that is.’
‘So I’ve got to drive there and talk to Torsten.’
‘I can come with you, if you like.’
Seved nodded.
‘Yes, okay. Seeing as I don’t know where it is.’
‘That’s settled then.’
‘But what about Signe? Are we just going to leave her here?’
‘I’m sure it’ll be all right. As long as she stays indoors there’s no danger.’
Susso’s sleep was more like a hibernation, with intermittent explosions of insistent and vivid dreams filled with cries and unintelligible words. The room was cold but she was wearing her outdoor clothes, and that was probably what woke her eventually.
Not moving, she lay staring at the thin strip of light under the door, trying to recall where she was. When she moved her sleeve she heard the rasping sound of the jacket’s stiff fabric, and then she remembered.
With an effort she sat up in bed and took out her mobile, pressing a key with her head bowed. Her hat was perched on top of her head like a cone. There was a crackle of static electricity as she pulled it off.
It was pitch black outside the window. 16:14, the display said. What time had she fallen asleep? Eleven, maybe twelve. It did not feel as if she had slept deeply, but even so she must have done because when she woke up her glasses were still in her hand. Normally she only slept in that immobilised state when she was drunk.
There had been a slamming of car doors, lowered voices, whispers. A small figure had stood motionless in the doorway, watching her for a long, long time, and afterwards a larger shape had blocked out the light and closed the door. A mobile had rung, an Ericsson. That little six-tone melody, over and over again.
She sat still on the bed for a while, listening, unable to move. From outside nothing could be heard except the rumble of the fridge. It was almost uncomfortably quiet.
After smoothing out the creases in the bedspread and placing the cushion symmetrically on the bed, she walked into the kitchen, where Edit was sitting reading with her head in her hands. She was wearing a bulky yellow knitted cardigan. The squeak of the door made her look up.
