The Shapeshifters (55 page)

The small shifters were there. He heard them scurry off and then sit down.

He had moved about ten metres, he guessed, when his foot struck something solid but soft, something that did not crumble under his boot or move. He squatted down, reached out and his hand felt . . . a shoe. The tread of a rubber sole. His fingers continued upwards and he found himself stroking bristly reindeer skin and then a furry rim.

Ejvor's boot.

It was Ejvor lying here.

Horrified, he gasped for breath, drawing in the stench that surrounded the corpse like a dense film. He slapped his hand to his mouth, which he had uncovered, but his stomach was empty and he retched into his glove. He threw himself to one side and began to crawl away, overwhelmed by the feeling of revulsion.

But then he stopped.

The head torch. It must have been her head torch he had seen.

Whether some little being had taken it or whether it was still around her neck, he did not know. There was only one way of finding out.

With his chin pressed down on his chest, he crawled back. He waved one hand ahead of him and finally came into contact with Ejvor's denim-covered lower leg. When he had worked out which way was up he shuffled on his knees to get closer to her head. He turned his face away and took a deep breath. His hand fumbled around, sweeping hesitantly in circles. If they had been eating her, they would probably have started on her upper body, where it was softest, and the last thing he wanted was to put his hand into the mess of a crushed and gouged-out chest cavity. But he thought
it was her cardigan he could feel under his glove, so perhaps they had not touched her after all.

He had to think about taking a breath again, but before he turned away he searched more urgently. And there it was, lying on her chest. As soon as his fingers had grasped the little head torch he began to pull it up towards her chin. The elastic band fastened onto something and he tugged as hard as he could. He felt her heavy head lift from the floor. Her neck cracked like broken wood.

When he had freed the torch he edged a short distance away and fumbled with the buttons. The light clicked on and in a dull, tight circle of light he saw the concrete floor, the cracks in it, and the carpet of brown pine needles. The battery would probably not last much longer.

He backed away to avoid the worst of the smell and because he did not want to accidentally see the state of Ejvor's corpse. He did not want to see what had happened to her face.

He walked with his knees bent, sweeping the lamp across the floor and the walls, which were lined with concrete blocks. He saw an upturned freezer that someone had filled with twigs and leaves and moss, a blue or perhaps grey child-sized rocking chair, a barrel used as a toilet and a rusty floor drain. There was an armchair that sloped because the legs on one side were missing, and a twisted woollen blanket on a bed of brown spruce branches. Was this where the big trolls slept?

Every so often he caught a glittering pair of eyes that slid away, but they belonged to the small creatures. The largest thing he saw was a vole with its stumpy tail running past in a straight line as if it was on a tightrope.

Close to the staircase was a sink. It was made of stainless steel
and reflected the beam of light as the head torch found it.

Above it was a mixer tap with a long, flattened handle, and the water pipe ran alongside the wall and disappeared into an ugly hole. He hurried up to it, pulled up the handle and drank. The water was so icy cold it made his teeth ache.

‘Signe,' he hissed up the stairs. ‘There's water here if you're thirsty.'

 

 

Inger and Yngve Fredén said they were relieved the giant had gone and they had no plans to look for him. They did not even want to know what had happened to him. Now that the garage was empty they could not understand how they had managed to take care of him for so many years: cleaned him, given him food and guarded him. They had felt no affection for him, they realised that now. It had been something else, as if he had planted their fear inside them.

We were weary. At least, I was. I was tired of staying in hotels, and it was not exactly cheap. That is why I suggested with a long-drawn-out yawn that we ought to go home. It was only three hundred kilometres and we could manage that if we drove for an hour each. Then we would be able to sleep in our own beds and think about what we were going to do in peace and quiet. It might also be a good idea to talk to the police and find out what their thoughts were concerning the attack at Holmajärvi and the kidnapping of Mattias Mickelsson.

‘Home,' Susso said, glaring at me coldly as she sat in the car with the squirrel in her arms. ‘You mean home where there are people who want to kill me, Mum?'

Yes, ‘
Mum
,' she said, emphasising the word. How could I be longing for my own bed and my dog and my man when my own
daughter's life was in danger? I was ashamed of how selfish and stupid I was. For some reason I had thought the threat to Susso had vanished now that Mattias had been found, but clearly I knew nothing about it. It was like Susso said under those copper pans and Sami boots at Vippabacken. The people who had gone for her had probably done so because of her website.

It wasn't about the boy. It was about her.

And the only thing we could do was track down the bear. With a little luck that would lead us to Mattias's kidnappers, as well as the people who wanted Susso dead. And that might also give us an answer to what had happened to Mona's son.

So we drove to a hotel in Älvsbyn.

Next morning, after I had showered and taken my last clean blouse out of the case, I went down to breakfast, where Susso was sitting with a bowed head, dropping pinches of muesli into the front pocket of her jacket.

‘Are you mad?' I said, standing right in front of her. ‘Think if someone sees you! We'll be thrown out!'

But the thought of being discovered with a rodent in her pocket in a restaurant didn't seem to worry her in the slightest. It was as if she hadn't heard me.

Torbjörn was slouched opposite her, drinking coffee and reading the
Kuriren
, so I turned to him and asked if there was anything new in the papers. He told me Susso had spoken to a man called Eskilsson at the council's environmental protection agency. He was a forest ranger in northern Västerbotten, and that morning he had received a phone call from a church warden who had found fresh bear tracks in the area around Lake Storavan. They ran in a westerly direction over the ice just north of the headland where
Bergnäs was situated, and according to Eskilsson, who had already been to the site and checked the tracks, there was no doubt it was the same bear that had been observed in the forest clearing north of Glottje. He thought it seemed strange that it had not found a new place to hibernate yet. Bears that wake in the middle of winter usually curl up under the first available fir tree or simply dig themselves down in the snow, but because this one had done neither they were keeping an eye on it. If it was feeling stressed for some reason, or sick, it could be dangerous.

‘If only he knew,' I said, looking over at the breakfast buffet. People were queuing there, helping themselves, and that was making me feel stressed.

‘So we thought we should head in that direction,' he said. ‘Because it seems he knows where he's going, and it isn't far from Sorsele. So that might be something, considering that was where Mattias turned up.'

‘But what have you told that forest ranger, Eskilsson? What is he going to think?'

‘He just thinks I'm interested in bears,' Susso said.

‘Interested in bears?'

She nodded.

‘And, of course, I am.'

‘You look tired. Couldn't you sleep?'

‘Not really.'

‘Are you having nightmares? Because I am.'

‘I've got a headache,' she said.

I found a girl in a white blouse who worked at the hotel, and she soon returned carrying a plate with two tablets: one paracetamol and one ibuprofen. Susso took the tablets and washed them down with a glass of water that I fetched for her.

Some kilometres east of Arvidsjaur is a village called Deppis, and I couldn't help joking about that as we drove past the sign, and then at a villager who was shuffling along the roadside. Didn't he look awfully depressed? But I was the only one who thought so. Torbjörn was rustling a map he had taken from the hotel and Susso was talking on the phone to Ulf Eskilsson.

‘Granmyrheden,' she said after the call had ended. ‘There's an old guy there who has seen tracks that lead under a tree but don't come out. So that's probably where he is. It's by the Laisälven river and Ulf is on his way there now. If we're lucky, we'll be there before they . . . before they disturb him. I told him we know things about that bear that he doesn't know, but he didn't seem to be listening. He didn't seem too happy.'

‘Hardly surprising,' I said.

‘Here it is,' said Torbjörn, with his index finger on the map. ‘Just over twenty kilometres on this minor road that runs north from the 45. Where are we now? Have we passed Arvidsjaur?

‘Deppis,' I said with a sigh.

‘A hundred kilometres,' Torbjörn said. ‘You'll manage that in an hour, Gudrun.'

‘Easy.'

 

 

The tunnel was a black rectangle in the far wall and Seved thought it looked small. He would only be able to get in if he bent down. Could the big old-timers really get through there? He lowered his head and held up the lamp. The walls were damp and it was impossible to see where they ended. Something was lying there in the circle of light—was it a shoe? Yes, a man's shoe, an old one. And further along there was a rock. It looked natural, a rock in these cavernous surroundings, but still it seemed odd. Someone must have carried it in. But why?

The passageway smelled musty and old, but it was a relief to be rid of that putrid stench of decay. He walked slowly, keeping an eye out for concrete blocks that had been displaced by the heavy ground frost. After he had gone a few metres he switched off the torch and in the darkness saw a fuzzy strip of light from the ventilation system, which consisted of a pipe that rose up out of the ground behind Hybblet and was topped with a cone-shaped steel hat.

The handle of the hatch grated as Seved slowly turned it. There could very easily be someone sitting up there guarding them, so he did not want to make a noise if he could help it. He noticed immediately that it would be impossible to get at the chain. The gap that appeared when he put all his weight against the hatch doors was less than a centimetre wide.

He crawled out of the tunnel and heard the tap running. It was bloody lucky there was water at least. He thought Jola could have mentioned it, but then again perhaps he thought Seved knew what was inside the hide. Either that or he didn't give a shit about them.

To save the fading batteries he switched off the light and inched his way back with his hands in front of him like a sleepwalker.

The blackness seemed to have paled imperceptibly, as if day-light was breaking through, but he was sure that was only his imagination. Or perhaps his eyes had adjusted somehow. The hide door was left open fairly often but even so he thought it was surprising that the old-timers did not go blind from spending so much time in the dark. But their eyes were different, of course.

When he thought he was close to the sink he flashed the light to orientate himself. He had not come as far as he had expected. Amina was standing with the blanket round her shoulders and he could hear she was moving her lips. She was talking to the little creature. During the night it had shapeshifted. ‘Feel here,' she had said, but Seved had not really wanted to. He thought she should let the thing go. ‘I'm not holding it,' she had said. ‘It wants to be with me.'

He sank down on the bottom step and buried his face in his arms. They had been in the hide for over twelve hours and the hunger was gnawing at his insides. He had kicked over one or two tin cans on the floor but the thought of eating from them turned his stomach.

What would be waiting for them if they managed to get out? The hares would be waiting, that was for sure, spread out in the forest, quick to pass on the news. And the weasels. But mainly he thought about the wolverines. Jola must have had them with him.
They had frightened Seved and he did not want to think about them, but he could not help it. They appeared as soon as he shut his eyes. The one with the owl mask especially. It had stepped right out of a nightmare and frozen its imprint inside him.

 

 

Ulf Eskilsson sat in his car with his elbows resting heavily on his knees and his boots in the snow. His thin hair was sticking up in tufts that were damp with sweat and he was holding his woollen hat in his hand. He nodded silently at an older man in a green trapper hat who was leaning his hand against the door, talking. Beside the Volvo Eskilsson was sitting in stood a snowmobile, an old Ockelbo with a wide track and a trailer. Gudrun pulled up behind it.

‘You know, the red fox kills the Arctic fox and they are both carrying scabies,' the older man said before clamping his mouth shut and glancing sideways at Susso, who was walking quickly towards them.

She could tell by looking at the men that they were shaken. It was obvious something had happened, something they had not bargained for. The snow was falling in large flakes across the narrow road, and Susso ran her eyes over the white, solidified forest.

‘Well,' Gudrun said, slamming the car door shut, ‘where's the bear then?'

There was a pause before Ulf Eskilsson answered:

‘I don't know what it was, but it certainly wasn't a bear.'

‘Have you seen him?' Susso asked.

They said they had.

‘And he wasn't a bear?'

‘Well,' said the older man, ‘he was, partly. But not all of him, I can tell you that for sure.'