Stallo

by Stefan Spjut

  ‘Redial the last number!’

  Randolf tapped with his thumb, and when the call was answered he introduced himself by his first and second name and even added that he was the owner of the ski trousers Torbjörn had borrowed.

  ‘Ask where they are!’

  ‘She is wondering’, he said ponderously, ‘where you are.’

  With my hand pumping the horn I drove right into the fire. That’s how it felt, anyway, as if we were hurtling ourselves straight into a sea of fire. Every building was alight and the sky was flickering yellow with all the smoke that had gathered like an enormous ceiling over everything. The barn walls were bulging out and the roof of one of the buildings had fallen in. But the yard was big, so I was brave enough to park in the middle. Randolf informed me that it was dangerous, but I told him I was not going to drive away without Susso. The bloke in the back seat didn’t say a word. He seemed happy as long as the bears were not around.

  They came running up in a line, first Torbjörn and then two people I didn’t know, a man and a girl. Susso came last, with the squirrel on her shoulder.

  Randolf opened the door. ‘Jump in!’ he shouted.

  When we had driven out of the smoke, I turned to look at Susso and Torbjörn, who were lying in the luggage compartment at the back, coughing.

  ‘What the fuck is he doing here!’ Susso exclaimed when she saw who was sitting in the back seat. It surprised me that she knew who the man was, and I told her we had picked him up along the way, with two bears breathing down his neck. Practically shouting she explained that he was one of the two men who had attacked her and Torbjörn in Holmajärvi. The man in question sat immobile, staring out of the window. He had nothing to say.

  We drove back past the upturned car, and further along we came across the bears.

  ‘Well, Susso,’ I said, slowing down, ‘there they are. I don’t think we’ll get any closer than this.’

  The man we had rescued broke his silence.

  ‘Drive,’ he said. ‘There are three of them. The third one’s keeping out of sight but he’s much more dangerous than the others, and if he gets close, we’re done for, all of us. So drive!’

  It sounded as if he knew what he was talking about, so I drove on, but after we had travelled a short distance in silence Susso shouted at me to stop.

  ‘You’re getting out of this car,’ she said to the man.

  The man did not move, and I assumed he was going to refuse. But then I heard him fumbling for the handle and opening the door. Randolf protested. It was like murder, he said.

  ‘Perhaps you would like to get out as well, Randolf?’ Susso said. ‘There are six of us in the car, after all, and that is illegal.’

  ‘No,’ he said, considering the prospect. ‘I’d prefer not to.’

  ‘That’s all right then.’

  I drove on and I could see the man’s back in the rear-view mirror as he stiffly climbed down into the snow at the side of the road, and I remember I felt dreadfully sorry for him and that I was already ashamed of what I had done.

  *

  Jola Haapaniemi was his name and nobody knows what happened to him after he stepped out of my car that evening at the end of January 2005, when the Öbrells’ farmstead was burning. The police found Ejvor Öbrell’s charred remains in a cellar and subsequently her younger brother, Börje Öbrell. Parts of him, at least. I think it was a lower leg and lower arm the dogs unearthed from the snow. The police never located the actual head, even though Susso had given them the GPS coordinates. Whoever had put it in the tree had moved it, maybe to keep it as a trophy or to have as dessert. The wolverines, perhaps. It’s the kind of thing they do, decorate trees with the ripped-off heads of their prey, and no one really knows why they do it. Perhaps they don’t even know themselves.

  But, as I say, nobody found a trace of Jola Haapaniemi, apart from his car, and when the guilt makes me break out in a cold sweat at night I try to persuade myself that he got away somehow. That the bears left him alone. Because Randolf’s words, when he said it was like murder throwing him out, they come back to haunt me, I can tell you.

  I know I should have put a stop to it, but at the time it seemed reasonable, even the right thing to do, to throw him out. Susso explained afterwards that she wouldn’t have had any rest until he had ended up the same way as the man in the tree.

  It was not until later that we found out there was someone called Lennart Brösth, and if there was anyone Susso should have been afraid of, it was him. It was Mona who phoned and told us that. She had been to Umeå to talk to Magnus, who was in prison there. When we were driving away from the farm neither Magnus nor Amina had said a word. They were so overwhelmed that I had chosen not to bother them with questions. We had gone our separate ways, more or less without saying a word, after we had managed to stop the ambulance that came racing along Ammarnäsvägen after the fire and rescue vehicles. In his conversation with the police Magnus had admitted to abducting Mattias Mickelsson, but the police also suspected he had killed Börje and Ejvor Öbrell. He was in custody now, awaiting his hearing.

  Mona had assured him that he could tell her absolutely everything, but he had remained silent anyway, and she completely respected that. So he had said little about the trolls.

  But he had told the police about Jola Haapaniemi.

  And Lennart Brösth.

  Susso sat holding the squirrel and I could see she was tense as she heard what I had to say about Lennart Brösth, but I don’t think she was afraid of him. And she didn’t have to worry for long about him tracking her down – the police actually nabbed him a week or so later. Then she drove down to Luleå to talk to Kjell-Åke Andersson, who told her about the arrest. He shared every detail with her, and that was thanks to what she had in her pocket – which, of course, he knew absolutely nothing about. She even found out that DCI Ivan Wikström had been removed from the investigation and transferred to other duties because of the difficulty he had in cooperating.

  The only Lennart Brösth in the national register was born in 1914 in Gällivare, and the police doubted very much that a ninety-one-year-old could have murdered and dismembered Börje Öbrell and then climbed up a fir tree in the middle of nowhere with his head. At the same time Magnus had given them a detailed description of Lennart Brösth and described both his cars. It was the cars that eventually put the police on the right trail.

  According to the registration documents the cars were owned by a partnership called the Tjautjas Tourism and Transport Consultancy. The police contacted both of the owners, two brothers, and managed to get a phone number. With the help of this they managed to track down Lennart Brösth – don’t ask me how. They found him in a cabin in Gällivare, one belonging to a hostel in the Other Side, as that part of town south of the Vassaraälv river is known.

  The police had knocked, and when no one answered they had walked in and there he was on the sofa, in his underpants. A big man with a swelling gut, dripping with sweat. At first glance the officers thought he was under the influence of drugs because he had a belt tied tightly round his left arm, just like an addict. His left hand had been severed and was nowhere to be found. He had lost an enormous amount of blood and was taken to the hospital.

  The police wanted to know what had happened to his hand but they never got a squeak out of him. Kjell-Åke Andersson said that Lennart Brösth was a mystery. No way was he over ninety. He was seventy, max, and it would not be easy to connect him to any crime. Everything depended on Magnus Brodin’s testimony, and they could not rule out that he had identified Lennart Brösth in order to cover himself.

  It was lovely to come home but there was a lot to do because the shop had been closed for several days. Cecilia was still off sick and would only stay at home with her cropped hair, watching television and not doing much else. The dog was happy and so was Roland. I knew he had planned to go to Thailand at the end of the month, though I really thought he would cancel his trip after everything that had happened, but he didn’t.
He had to go, he said. Wasn’t he covered for cancellations? Yes, but he would need a doctor’s certificate, and did I want him to commit fraud? Fourteen days later he returned with a tanned forehead and a sun-streaked moustache that had grown longer. It was hanging down over his lip in a most unattractive way.

  There was a shower fitting in the room and a brittle, plastic shower curtain, but nothing else. Not even a hook to hang a towel on. Magnus wondered if that was for the same reason his cell had no door. Suicide risk, the lawyer had said. And because the door to the shower room had no handle he couldn’t hang it on there, so he was forced to drop it on the floor beside his slippers. He pushed the curtain aside and turned on the tap. The water was icy cold to start with and he let it gush against the palm of his hand until it became slightly warmer. Then he stepped under the shower head. At home the water had trickled out slowly and it took time to get wet all over. Here he was wet in a second. After working the soap into a lather he washed under his arms, over his stomach and around his cock. Then he dropped the soap and began scratching his beard with both hands. He did not want to be dirty when she arrived. Not this time. He had felt ashamed during her first visit. She had cried so much she had dark circles under her eyes, but he had hardly said a word or lifted his head. The tears had come afterwards, as he lay in bed watching TV. His body had shuddered with the crying. It had felt good, howling like that. And no one could hear him.

  After he had dried himself with the towel he wrapped it round his waist and then thumped his fist on the door, which opened almost immediately. The prison warden, a woman in a navy-blue uniform, stepped aside and followed him back to his cell. The door was locked behind him as he pulled on his underpants, and as he stepped into his jogging bottoms he glanced at the red digits on the clock radio. She would not be here for over an hour, and he thought that was a long wait.

  *

  She was sitting in the armchair, and when he came in through the door she half stood up. He gave her a quick look before shuffling over and sinking down on the bunk, which was covered in the same oxblood red plastic as the sofa. He thought she had cut her hair since last time but he did not like to ask. The police officer had folded his arms and was leaning against the wall. In the door behind him was an oblong window covered in paper. Magnus knew why. It was a room for shagging.

  She cleared her throat hesitantly and asked in a low voice what the prison was like, and he shrugged and tugged at his green fleece jacket and then they fell silent. He looked out beyond the bars on the window. There was a car park outside. Snow-covered birches. A white sky. From his cell he could just see an inner courtyard. The only things that moved there were the snowflakes and the shadows from the roof.

  Mona sat with her hands clasped, also looking out of the window. There was not much else they could do. On the wall behind her was a long row of red streaks, probably marks from the back of the armchair. Down on the floor, with its speckled surface, was an alarm button.

  ‘I’ve got to go to the toilet,’ she said, standing up.

  She opened the tall narrow door and shut and locked it behind her.

  Magnus sat for a while staring at the police officer’s black shoes before turning his eyes to the window again. Far in the distance a huge crane towered above the rooftops, and on the white window-frame surrounding the bars someone had etched some words in spidery letters. There were names and messages scrawled all over the prison. The mirror in the toilet in Magnus’s cell was made of polished steel riveted to the wall and there was hardly a patch free of graffiti.

  ‘Excuse me, but could you leave us a minute?’

  She had come out of the toilet and was standing with her back to him. Magnus looked at the police officer, who naturally shook his head.

  But she did not give up.

  ‘It would be very kind of you,’ she said.

  ‘There are restrictions,’ the officer said tersely.

  ‘Just for a little while.’

  ‘It isn’t allowed.’

  ‘I’m sure you can make an exception.’

  The police officer had been standing all the time with his arms tightly crossed over his chest, but when Mona took a short step towards him he let them fall.

  ‘If you want …’ he said in a mouth that had turned dry. ‘If you want to go out …’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re the one who should go out. You’ve got to make an exception and go outside.’

  He looked at his watch, a digital one with steel links.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘But only for a short while.’

  There was a beeping sound as he pressed the button on the intercom.

  ‘You can open it yourself,’ he said, and when the door was unlocked he went outside.

  Magnus watched his mother as she returned to the armchair. She sat down again and immediately pulled one arm inside her tunic top, so the sleeve hung empty. She looked up at the ceiling.

  ‘There’s got to be a camera in here, hasn’t there?’ she said.

  He shook his head.

  In her hand, which she struggled to get out of her tunic, she held a little object with a grey strip of fur on its forehead, and Magnus saw immediately that it was the birch mouse that had been with him and Signe in the tunnel when Hybblet was burning. He could not for the life of him understand how it had come to be here, in his mother’s hand. It must have shown in his face because she began instantly to explain.

  ‘Amina gave it to me. Or Signe.’

  ‘Signe?’ he said. ‘You’ve met Signe?’

  She nodded without looking up from the little animal.

  ‘She’s with her parents in Växjö. I went down to talk to her. She said you were to have it so it could help you get out. Like it did last time you were locked in.’

  ‘But I haven’t done anything,’ he said. ‘I didn’t murder them.’

  ‘I know that, Magnus. But there will be a trial anyway, and I presume you can’t explain exactly what happened. This Lennart Brösth isn’t likely to say much, is he? And you have admitted you were there when the boy was taken.’

  ‘It wasn’t me, it was Börje.’

  ‘But you were with him, weren’t you?’

  He nodded and looked down at his slippers.

  ‘Well, it can’t hurt, can it, having him in the court with you?’

  He continued nodding.

  ‘No.’

  He lifted his eyes and looked at the little object lying completely still in Mona’s cupped hands. Its eyes were closed and it looked as if it was trying to sleep. The long fluffy tail lay coiled around its huddled body.

  ‘Take him,’ she said, and Magnus held out his hands.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘How did you manage to bring him in here?’

  She sat up straight and held back a smile.

  From his closed fingers it looked as if Lars Nilsson wondered whether he had the right to touch the squirrel’s tail. Trembling, he moved them closer to the bushy tail, but no further. Susso had said he could pat him, but the old man refused. He did not feel brave enough. When she had told him there was another face concealed behind the fur he had looked scared. She might just as well have said that the squirrel would bite.

  How could there be another …

  Susso picked a snus pouch from the tin and held it to her lips.

  ‘He’s stallo,’ she explained. ‘That means he can shapeshift.’

  After saying this she inserted the snus, and when her tongue had pushed it under her upper lip she added:

  ‘It’s the best hiding place in the world.’

  Towards the end of February we decided to arrange a presentation. We advertised in Kuriren and Norrländskan and the Kiruna free ads, and there wasn’t an empty seat in the Nåjden hall. There was not enough room for everyone, even though the hall holds almost four hundred.

  Of course, people came because they wanted to hear about the Vaikijaur man and Mattias Mickelsson’s miraculous reappearance. I had asked her how much she was actually
going to tell – surely nothing about the squirrel or the bears, or what had happened to Jola Haapaniemi? – but she hadn’t actually said, so I assumed she would be speaking about her website and the photo Dad took.

  Cecilia introduced the presentation. I thought she ought to let me or Susso do it because she was still unbalanced. She had been off sick for over a month, and Tommy and I had been helping her look after Ella. It was as if Cecilia looked right through her. But she insisted on holding the microphone. It all went wrong, of course. She repeated herself and lost her thread and then started telling everyone about how Dad had forgotten her on a beach once when she was a little girl and how they had flown to an inland lake in the fells to go fishing. Over and over she scratched her scalp hard – it was a kind of nervous tic – and I more or less had to lead her off the stage so that we could start the presentation.

  Afterwards Susso got up on stage and took the microphone.

  She explained about her website and how she had taken the photo of the Vaikijaur man. She put in a joke here and there and that made people laugh, but otherwise they sat in absolute silence. We would never really know who the Vaikijaur man was, she predicted. However, the police had confirmed he had nothing to do with the disappearance of Mattias Mickelsson. In conclusion she said she now knew there was no such thing as trolls and that she had decided to close down her website.

  I was gobsmacked, while Roland took out his snus and sat there with it in his hand. I looked at Torbjörn, who was standing to the side of the stage, but his expression didn’t change, so I expect he had known exactly what she was going to say.

  Someone asked what had made her stop believing in trolls, since it said on the website that she had believed in them all her life.

  She could not answer that question. She was embarrassed and jangled her earrings and said it was simply that she didn’t believe any more, and when the questioner insisted she asked him if he believed in trolls himself. That shut him up.