The Shapeshifters (31 page)

 

 

Susso sat in Torbjörn's kitchen reading the newspaper. Torbjörn was cooking. He was holding a fork that he jabbed into the saucepan from time to time.

The attack at Holmajärvi was reported in the paper, and as she read the article Susso regretted speaking to the reporter who had phoned. She must have been suffering from shock to a certain extent, but she also felt she had to tell them about it. The police had shown little interest when she told them why she thought that she, in particular, had been attacked, but the newspapers had listened. Except they made it look as if she was convinced it was Mattias's kidnappers who had tried to attack her, and when she saw it all in black and white, it did not look very logical.

‘I want to get away,' she said. ‘Last night I slept at Mum's—well, I didn't sleep exactly. I lay awake most of the night. I keep thinking of those men who turned up at Holmajärvi. I know they won't come but it
feels
like they will. I don't want to stay here. Not until the police have picked them up. So I can find out why. That's almost the worst thing, not knowing what I've
done
. It's got something to do with Mattias, I get that. But not why someone would want to kill me.'

‘Going away for a while might not be such a bad idea,' said Torbjörn, nodding.

‘Can't you come with me?'

‘Well, it's a long way,' he muttered. ‘What do you think, fifteen hundred kilometres, times two?'

‘Eleven hundred.'

He lifted the saucepan from the stove, and as he tipped the macaroni into the colander his face disappeared in a cloud of steam.

‘I don't know if I want to travel that far in your car,' he said.

Susso leaned her elbows on the table and picked at her thumbnail.

‘Let's take Mum's car. She's said she'll pay for everything. Food, hotel—the lot. She wants me to leave town as well. She's afraid too.'

‘She seemed angry in Holmajärvi,' he said.

‘That's what happens when you're scared.'

He nodded.

‘She wants to leave as soon as possible. Tomorrow, preferably.'

‘Is she coming as well?' asked Torbjörn, looking surprised.

‘Well, yes, of course.'

‘But she, like, hates me.'

‘No, she doesn't,' Susso said, folding the paper so that Torbjörn could set the saucepan down on it. ‘Your mum, maybe. But not you.'

 

 

Seved and Signe were building with Duplo bricks at the kitchen table with the boy when Börje walked in through the door. He stood by the sink for a while, watching them. They had built a castle with battlements for the mouseshifter, which was sitting on the table, watching.

‘Bengt,' said Börje, and when the boy did not react he leaned across the table, trying to catch his eye, but no eye looked back.

‘Bengt,' he repeated, louder.

The boy raised his hand and scratched the side of his nose, and when he had hidden his hand under the table again he said quietly, almost in a whisper:

‘I'm not called that.'

‘Yes, you are. You are now.'

‘I'm called Mattias,' he insisted.

‘Not any more.'

The boy was silent.

‘The quicker you understand your name is Bengt, the better it will be,' Börje said kindly. ‘It will be easier that way. I promise.'

When the boy lifted his head, tears had welled up in his eyes and started to stream down his cheeks. He was holding a plastic brick but seemed unsure what to do with it.

‘But that's not my name,' he said, his voice high-pitched from crying. ‘I'm called Mattias. And I want to go home!'

Börje took a deep breath and tried to keep calm. But he did not succeed.

‘No!' he roared, slamming his fist onto the table and making the boy jump. The mouseshifter fell to the floor, making an unhappy chattering noise. ‘Your parents don't want you any more, don't you understand that? They're not able to look after you. They can't afford it! I'm looking after you. I'm your daddy now and you should be pleased about that. You should be grateful about that. Because where else would you have gone? You would have ended up in a foster home, and you wouldn't want that. They're nasty places.'

After he had said this he bent down and picked up the little creature.

‘This is your home now. You've got to understand that! And your name is Bengt. It says so in the papers, the adoption papers.'

The boy lowered his head. It was shaking.

‘Play with Jim now,' said Börje, dropping the little object onto the table. ‘Otherwise he'll think you don't want him.'

 

 

Torbjörn must have been standing waiting in the entrance hall because he came out as soon as we pulled up outside his apartment building. He seemed a bit shy when he said hello to me. He looked away quickly. We had not met since that awful day in Holmajärvi and I suppose we were unsure of each other. To be honest, I'd always had a problem with him because his mother had turned my life upside down, but that was hardly his fault. Even so, I held it against him. It's easy to blame anyone who is even remotely involved.

Susso was curled up in the back under her jacket, with her feet up on the seat, so Torbjörn had to sit in the front. He rested his backpack on his knees as if he was going to be getting out any minute. I told him to put it in the back, and he did so immediately. My voice had sounded unintentionally abrupt and so I hurried to thank him for coming with us.

He nodded and looked out of the window.

‘And thank you for saving Susso's life.'

‘She saved mine,' he mumbled.

‘Yes,' I said, ‘but we're the ones who got you involved in all of this. Our family.'

He didn't answer.

South of Överkalix we pulled in at the Vippabacken motorway cafe to get something to eat. It was my decision: I hadn't been
there for fifteen years at least. A wooden sculpture of a Laplander stood outside the door, welcoming in the customers, and I remembered him. We had both aged fifteen years since last time. Even the stuffed bear was still there. It was standing in the small shop and staring into the restaurant, its gaping lips as black as liquorice. I said hello to it.

While we waited for the food I walked around looking at all the stock. The restaurant resembled a disorganised living-history museum but everything was for sale—even the bear in the entrance. I thought I could probably learn a thing or two from the place.

There was a stuffed jay and a stuffed pine marten. A conductor's bag with empty coin dispensers, and a spinning wheel. Reindeer antlers at various stages, and moose antlers, shovelshaped and pronged. Small landscape paintings with animals. A salmon spear. A bicycle with an old-fashioned saddle. Bread paddles, second-hand and new. Stickers with pictures of moose and the Swedish flag. Chests—the ones that were not empty were locked. Christmas-tree baubles, single or in bunches. Fishing line. A Finnish harp. A yoke with rusting hooks. A bear trap with a diameter the size of a hula hoop. Father and Mother Christmas dolls, with steel-rimmed spectacles. Old wooden pulleys. Nostalgic postcards and posters. Wooden ladles. Leather gloves and woollen gloves. Trolls with huge noses and tangled hair, with labels showing they came from souvenir wholesaler Allan Flink in Järpen, which is also where some of my stock comes from.

Sitting in a tiny painted chair right at the back was a doll, an old bronzed Sami man with a miserable expression. His traditional coat fitted badly and he had lost his left hand. All that was left were a few dangling threads.

Beside him logs had been piled up in crates and his best blue outfit was covered in woodchips, so you could understand why he was in a bad mood.

‘Where's Susso?' I asked Torbjörn, when I got back from looking around.

From the ceiling above our table hung an ancient gun, a vast chandelier with electric light bulbs, Sami boots with hooked toes, ordinary leather boots, bowls and copper pans.

‘She's talking to the police,' he said, squirting ketchup over his food.

He was eating Falu sausage, fried egg and fried potatoes, the same as Susso had ordered. I was still waiting for my hamburger, so I stole a slice of potato from Susso's plate at the very moment she walked back between the tables.

‘It was a stolen weapon,' she said, sitting down. ‘It belongs to someone called Holmqvist, but he has nothing to do with the case, they're positive about that. His cabin in the fells was burgled four years ago and the theft was reported.'

She cut a piece of sausage and put it into her mouth.

‘But the sight wasn't his,' she said, chewing. ‘So that arsehole must have attached it.'

‘But what about fingerprints and things?' I asked, reaching out for another piece of potato. She stabbed my knuckles with her fork.

‘They're still waiting to hear about that,' she answered, waving the fork to indicate I could take the potato if I wanted it. ‘My fingerprints will be all over it, that's for sure, but he was wearing gloves.'

‘But he might have handled it without gloves earlier,' I said.

She nodded.

‘We'll have to see,' she said. ‘It would be such a relief if they found them soon.'

My food arrived. I unscrewed the top of a large container of seasoning and sprinkled it over the thin fries. I hadn't eaten since breakfast and I was starving.

‘But what did they say?' asked Torbjörn. ‘Do they think it's because you took that photo? Do they think that's the reason they attacked us? Because in that case it proves the dwarf is mixed up in the kidnapping. And that more people are involved.'

‘I've thought about that,' Susso said. ‘Let's say that's the case. That it's this Vaikijaur man who has taken Mattias, and that the photo I took means him and his partners will get caught. Assuming he has partners. But why attack me, in that case? What good would that do? The damage had already been done. It can hardly be a kind of revenge.'

‘No,' said Torbjörn. ‘That's true.'

‘I can see only one explanation. They don't like what I'm doing.'

‘You mean your website?' I asked.

‘The very fact,' she said in a low voice, glancing quickly at the two men sitting at the next table, ‘the very fact that there are people out there who hate my website so much they're prepared to murder me proves I'm right. It proves the Vaikijaur man
is
a troll.'

‘Then perhaps you'd better take it down,' I said, with my mouth full.

Susso sprinkled salt on her potatoes as she shook her head.

‘I'm not planning to sit here and wait until it all calms down. I'm going to get those bastards. They'll regret it. What do you think, Torbjörn?'

Torbjörn looked up and then nodded.

‘I feel sorry for them,' he said. ‘Seriously.'

I felt revived when I sat in the driver's seat again, and despite the worrying and fairly extreme decisions Susso had talked about in the restaurant, the atmosphere was noticeably improved after we had eaten something and drunk a cup of coffee. We were getting closer to the coast too, so it felt as if we were making headway south. The blanket of snow on the fir trees formed a long wall along the roadside, shimmering pale pink. As I drove, Torbjörn told me about his training. He had taken an electronics course at Luleå University of Technology, and it seemed well worth it because he had found work straight away.

I also asked him about his mother and whether she liked living up at Riksgränsen, but Susso yelped like a little dog from the back seat.

‘Oh, give it a rest, can't you?' she said. ‘Leave him alone!'

And so I did.

But he hadn't been offended. He smiled at me in secret when Susso wasn't looking.

I had booked rooms for us at the Höga Kusten Bridge hotel, and we ate dinner at the restaurant there. We sat in silence looking at the menu and then we all ordered the meat loaf with mashed potato and salted cucumber, the speciality of the house. I looked out of the panoramic window but it was pitch black outside. The bridge looked like two glowing arcs in the night.

I noticed that Susso and Torbjörn's eyes met from time to time. It wasn't over between them, you could tell that a mile off.

‘We'll have to share a room,' I said, after the food had been served. ‘I hope you don't mind.'

They said that was all right.

‘I think it will make me feel more secure,' Susso said.

‘What about you, Torbjörn?' I said. ‘How do you feel about it, really? Will you be able to sleep?'

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘I thought it would feel better once we got away from town. But I'm still feeling tense, like someone's going to leap on me. Even the waiter. It affects you deeply, so deeply you can't calm yourself down.'

‘You'd better have some wine,' I said.

He nodded and emptied his glass.

 

 

It was not only the fact that Susso Myrén was still alive. The attack was all over the newspapers as well, which no doubt meant her website was receiving even more attention. So Börje and Jola had made the situation even worse by trying to shut her up. Seved was not allowed to know the content of the website—he was not even really sure what a website was—but he could understand what the fuss was about. She had come too close. Others might have suspected something in the past, but this was different.

She was investigating.

And Lennart wanted to put a stop to it, at any price.

Which is why he went ballistic with rage when she suddenly disappeared.

Jola, who had travelled up to Kiruna to finish what he and Börje had started, phoned Lennart to say she was nowhere to be found. He had parked outside her flat for over twenty-four hours but there was no sign of her. Her mobile was switched off and had been for a long time. The following day he had phoned her mother's shop pretending to be a journalist. He had spoken to Susso's sister, who told him Susso had gone away.