The Shapeshifters (33 page)

The projector was set up on a solid pine table facing a tripod with a small screen, which Mats pulled down like a roller blind.

‘Right, let's see,' he said, getting the projector started.

Susso and Gudrun sat down on chairs, but Torbjörn remained standing. He had brought a biscuit with him and ate it while he waited.

Soon the film spluttered into action.

‘It's a bit further on from here,' said Mats. ‘About two and a half minutes into the film.' They watched children running around on a lawn in a downpour of scratches and flickering on the old cine film.

‘That's my son, Tomas,' Mats said, as a boy went by in a pedal car on a gravel road. ‘Right,' he said. ‘Keep an eye out now.'

The children were naked and skinny, splashing about in an inflatable paddling pool on the grass outside the storehouse. It
was high summer. The birches were like green foam, the colours very bright. A girl got ready to jump and then landed on her bottom in the pool.

All of a sudden he appeared in the door furthest away in the leaning storehouse. He was in shadow at first but then stepped out almost into the light.

‘There,' Mats said. ‘Did you see?'

It was him. There was no doubt it was the Vaikijaur man. A green tracksuit hung like a sack on his crooked little body. Gloves. Beneath a knitted hat pulled down low over his face two yellow eyes were gleaming as he watched the children. He seemed not to notice the camera.

Gudrun had covered her mouth with one hand.

‘His eyes!' she shrieked. ‘Look at his eyes!'

When Susso went outside she looked at the leaning building in a completely different way. She felt a strong sense of unease, as if he was still in there. As a result she was careful not to go any closer.

The old man in the film was stunted and strange, but very
real
. A freak, she had thought when he had first shown himself in the doorway. Oh my God, a genuine freak! She had to go round the house and stand on the perimeter of the field to get good reception. Kjell-Åke Andersson answered almost at once. He asked her to calm down because he was not at all sure what film she was talking about. He knew nothing about someone called Mats in Avesta.

‘Has he phoned us?'

It was impossible for her to stand still, so she walked up and down in the frozen grass.

‘He phoned after he had seen the photo on TV,' she said. ‘On that true-crime programme,
Efterlyst
. But nobody seemed to care. And now I've seen the film and it
is
him. It's the same person as the one in my photo. I'm one hundred per cent sure.'

The police officer said nothing.

‘You have to see this film,' she pleaded.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘Perhaps we should do that.'

‘I can film it and email it to you. That will be quicker.'

He gave her his email address and she hung up.

Mats was standing with his hands in his pockets, watching her.

‘I've spoken to the police,' she said. ‘They want to see the film.'

‘Shall I send the reel, or what?'

‘No,' Susso said. ‘I'll film it. We've got a video camera with us. Then I'll email it to him.'

‘I'm glad he listened to you,' he said.

‘It's totally bloody unbelievable. To think they never showed any interest in any of this! I can't make out what's wrong with them.'

‘Do you want to have a look?' asked Mats, pointing. ‘At where he lived?'

The storehouse had three black creosoted doors, with an opening for a cat in one of them. Stakes entwined with wilted hop vines leaned against the wall, where there was also a wooden plough that had been given a new colour late in its life: turquoise shone against the red wall.

Mats walked briskly across the lawn and lifted the hasp on the door closest to the forest, where the old man had stood in the film. The hinge creaked as he pulled the plank door wide open.

Inside were potato-storage boxes full of various tools: rakes,
spades, cultivators, fishing rods. On the floor were bags of old newspapers. A staircase made from rough-hewn planks led up to the loft: it was as steep as a ladder and crooked.

‘It's up here,' Mats said, climbing up.

Susso motioned for Gudrun to go first. She leaned forwards, grasped one of the steps and began to climb up. Susso went next, followed by Torbjörn.

Mats had positioned himself by the window. The frame was rotten and some of the wooden wedges holding it in place had worked loose. There was not much left of the curtains. They were tatters hanging from a plastic rail. Someone had hung them up to make the barn look homely from the outside. Through the smeared window they could see the gravel road.

‘That's Tomas,' said Mats, pointing at a graduation placard leaning against the wall. It was an enlarged photograph with the words ‘Congratulations Tompa!' written underneath. The boy in the photo looked about six years old.

‘What happened exactly?' asked Susso. ‘You know, that incident with the car you told us about?'

Mats leaned his shoulder against the wall and moved the curtain aside with his index finger.

‘We were out picking wild strawberries,' he said. ‘The whole family. Up by the road over there. When it was time to go home Tomas didn't want to come with us. He liked wild strawberries. If I remember correctly, there was something I wanted to watch on TV, a football match or something, so I got impatient. When I tried to catch hold of him he ran away. And stupidly I ran after him.'

He stroked the top of his head.

‘It was almost as if I was driving him towards the road by chasing after him. When I realised what was happening I stopped
immediately, but he carried on. He probably didn't realise I had stopped running after him.'

Mats looked at Susso and then at Gudrun, who was standing a short distance away with her hands in her pockets.

‘Do you see?' he said. ‘He was right at the edge of the road and it was impossible for me to catch up with him. “Stop,” I yelled, and Monika, my wife, she shouted as well, at the top of her voice. I can still hear us shouting, both of us. But it was too late. The car was already there. And it was going fast.'

He cleared his throat before going on.

‘The very second we thought Tomas was going to be run over, a little figure dashed across the road and pulled him down into the ditch.'

Mats grabbed one hand with the other to show how it had happened.

‘He literally appeared out of thin air! A little old man in overalls and a hat,' he said, smiling, lifting his hand to hip height. ‘It was so unexpected. So amazing. That feeling of powerlessness. First this abyss that opens in front of you and then . . .'

Mats shook his head.

‘We didn't even think to say thank you. We just lifted the boy up and hugged him and then . . . well, we staggered home, I suppose.'

There was a creak from the floorboards as Gudrun took a step closer. Her head was tilted and her expression had given way to one of compassion.

‘It wasn't until later that evening,' Mats went on, ‘after the shock had worn off, that we realised how incredibly lucky we had been, and what an unlikely rescuer he was. What kind of creature was he, actually? The following day he was wandering around here on the edge of the forest. It was Monika who saw him. We
ran up to him to say thank you. We were overwhelmed, naturally, and happy to have the opportunity to thank him. It wasn't until then, as we stood there looking at him, no longer in shock, that it occurred to us what a remarkable person he was. And it wasn't just that he was a dwarf, or whatever you call it, and that he had such an unusual appearance. It was those eyes. And even though it was the middle of the summer he was wearing a thick winter hat and it looked . . . well, it didn't look normal. He was wearing gloves too, stiff with dirt and mud, and a fingernail was sticking out through one of the fingers. It was absolutely black, that nail. I remember it.

‘We invited him for dinner. That was the least we could do. He ate greedily and was totally lacking in table manners. It was as if he had never seen food before. He kind of panted between each mouthful. The children couldn't take their eyes off him and wanted to know what he was called, which was a reasonable question under the circumstances. I asked him, but he didn't answer. It seemed like he was mute. We thought he was homeless and asked if he would like to stay with us for a while. He agreed to that, but only if he could stay in the storehouse. So I carried a mattress up here. It was right there,' he said, pointing. ‘That was his sleeping place.'

‘Didn't he leave anything behind?' asked Gudrun, looking around. A few of his possessions or anything?'

Mats shook his head. ‘He didn't have anything, as far as I know.' He nodded at the flattened cardboard boxes on the floor. ‘The only thing he left behind was that hole, in the flooring here. But don't ask me why he did that.'

‘A hole?' repeated Susso.

‘There's a hatch there,' said Mats, ‘or an opening, rather. The
actual lid is missing. That's probably where they brought up hay in the old days, or grain, I'm not sure. There are planks there so no one falls through, and some old cork flooring underneath. He made a big hole in it.

‘Can I have a look?' asked Susso.

They knelt down and moved planks, boards of various sizes and a piece of window frame coated with cracked linseed oil. Underneath there was a folded sheet of cork flooring and in the middle was an oval hole with ragged edges. The opening looked down on the top of a dirty wardrobe on the floor below.

‘I didn't discover it until after he left.'

Susso crouched down and looked.

‘As I say, he had no belongings. We let him borrow a torch and Emma gave him a doll, but he left that behind. It sat in the window afterwards, and we thought that looked a bit sad. Like a reminder.'

Then he added, in a low voice:

‘And he left the torch behind too, in fact.'

Torbjörn had walked warily over to the stairs and was looking at the contents of the plastic boxes stored there.

‘What did he do about food?' he asked. ‘Did he eat with you?'

Mats shook his head and said in a raised voice that could be heard the length of the loft:

‘He really didn't like to go into the house. We left the food at the bottom of the stairs because that was how he wanted it. He brought the basket up here with him and then put it back on the bottom step when he had eaten the food. It was as simple as that. On Christmas Eve I put a little bottle of schnapps there, but he didn't touch it. Otherwise he ate everything, even the skin on the potatoes.'

‘And how long did he live here?' Susso asked, brushing her knees after standing up. Mats looked up as he worked it out.

‘From summer '79,' he said, ‘until spring 1980. May. So it was almost a year. But we hardly saw him. Only a light shining in the window here in the evenings. It seemed he didn't just use the torch for light but also for entertainment. He would sit here flashing it on and off for hours. When the batteries finally ran out he gave it back and I put in new ones.'

Mats rubbed his mouth before carrying on.

‘Time passed and we . . . well, we didn't have the heart to turn him out, to be honest. It didn't feel right when we thought about what he had done for us. So he was allowed to stay. But it had its drawbacks, as I'm sure you understand.'

Mats raised his brows and sighed.

‘We couldn't invite people round, for example, at least not at night because they might have seen the light out here and started asking questions. We had no idea what we would say. It all sounded so odd.

‘Then one day Tomas's babysitter asked us if we knew there was a little gnome living in our loft, an old man with cat's eyes who stood looking out of the window all day. She thought it sounded rather frightening and wondered if perhaps Tomas had been watching something unsuitable on television. We realised then that the situation had become unsustainable. So one evening I banged on the door and climbed up here. He was sitting on the mattress, looking at me. Staring, actually. I had never come up to where he lived before. I had quite a shock I can tell you, because it stank. It stank of piss. And he had carried in a load of sticks which he had laid on the floor, and he had even been in the room underneath here and brought things up. Toys. Plastic pots. Old
ornaments. I told him it was time for him to move and I offered to drive him wherever he wanted to go. He said he wanted to go to Gränna, and that was the first and only word he ever spoke to me.'

‘Gränna?' Gudrun said.

Mats nodded.

‘He had a slight Finnish accent.'

He looked down at his shoes, battered deck shoes with dry leather laces that he had tied in loops so big they brushed the dusty floor.

‘I thought it was a bit odd that he wanted to go there in particular. But he was very determined about it. I asked if he knew anyone there, and he nodded. We set off the following day. I tried talking to him, because it's quite a long drive to Gränna. Once it was obvious he could speak, I tried to get him to tell me a little about himself. But all he did was sit in the back and look out of the window. It was like driving a car with a dog. I heard him sitting there panting, and from time to time he moved, or sighed deeply and yawned. When we reached Gränna I let him out on the outskirts of the town. He knew exactly which way to go. I opened the door for him and he leapt out, ran down a path and disappeared onto a headland there, without saying goodbye or even turning round. He just ran. And after that I never saw him again.'

Mats shrugged his shoulders to indicate the end of his story.

‘But where did you drop him off ?' Susso asked. ‘What was the address?'

‘No special address, it was only a bus stop. And then he ran out to the headland. That's all I know.'