The Shapeshifters (36 page)

In silence, heads bowed, Gudrun and Torbjörn came walking towards her. Torbjörn had put on his woollen hat and his head looked like a small bud on top of his gangly body.

‘There's been a journalist in the shop, asking about you,' Gudrun said. ‘Cecilia said you were away.'

‘But she didn't say where? She didn't say I'm here?'

‘It won't matter. No one could figure out exactly where in Gränna you are.'

Susso reached her hand out for the phone.

Cecilia was taken aback by the anger in Susso's voice.

‘If you're fifteen hundred kilometres . . .'

‘Yes, but what if it wasn't a journalist! Shit, I was attacked! Someone wants to kill me! Don't you get that, Cecilia?'

‘Oh, come on! It was a journalist. He seems really nice. He's even booked a pedicure session. You've got nothing to worry about.'

Susso ended the conversation with a furious tap of her thumb.

‘Look, it's not a problem,' Torbjörn said.

Susso wanted to get away. She had already begun walking fast.

‘You're getting paranoid now,' he said, hurrying after her. ‘No one knows where you are.'

‘They didn't have any trouble finding us when we were out on the snowmobile!'

‘I know,' he said. ‘But they had probably followed us. No one could have followed us down here. That's impossible. Calm down.'

Close to the house, tucked into a small copse of conifers, stood a shed with a sheet-metal roof. On one side was a hatch and above it, hidden away under the eaves, was a bird box. The doors had diagonal wooden handles. Susso recalled that the dwarf had lived with Mats's family in an old outhouse. If he had ever stayed here, it was likely he had lived in this shed.

‘Wait a minute,' she called.

But before she could even open the door, she caught a flash of dark-blue fabric moving along the path in the gloom below the trees. It was a woman walking briskly towards them. She was wearing a knitted jumper with the sleeves rolled up. Her grey hair was tucked behind her ears and she was holding a mobile phone.

‘Who are you?' she shouted.

Susso took a few steps back and began fumbling with the plastic folder.

‘We're looking for someone,' she said, pulling out a sheet of paper which she tried to flatten out. ‘Someone who has disappeared. Who we think might be here. Or who has been here, at least.'

Gudrun forced a smile. ‘We only want to know if you've seen him. The police are looking for him too. We've driven fifteen hundred kilometres.'

‘So perhaps you know something?' Susso added, waving the piece of paper in front of the woman.

‘This photo has been on television,' Gudrun said. ‘He could be involved in the kidnapping of the boy in Jokkmokk at Christmas. I'm sure you've heard about it.'

‘You should go now,' the woman said.

As they walked sheepishly towards the car, Susso and Gudrun tried pleading with the woman, who was following on their heels like a sheepdog.

It had not been their intention to do anything illegal, they explained, and Susso told her that the person in the photograph had run onto the headland in the spring of 1980 and no one had seen him since. The only way to track him down was to come here and ask.

‘But you can't just come marching in here when you feel like it,' the woman repeated. ‘This is private land! There are signs!'

Their appeal went unheard and finally they gave up. It seemed as if the woman was not even listening to them. All Susso wanted to do now was get away. She walked as quickly as she could without running, and she could hear her mother panting behind her.

By the time they reached the gate Torbjörn was already in the car and had started the engine. White fumes were pouring from the vibrating exhaust pipe. They climbed over the fence and were about to get into the car when they were stopped.

‘Wait a minute!' the woman called, stepping over the fence rails.

Judging from her voice she was prepared to talk now that they were on the other side of the fence. Susso said she had not been able to find the telephone number and that the directions, which were based on a journey taken twenty-five years ago, were all they had to go on.

‘The trail leads here,' she said, nodding out towards the headland. ‘Literally.'

The woman took the sheet of paper Susso held out to her. After turning it the right way up she snorted, grinning.

Gudrun leaned against the car to study the woman as she looked at the picture. Torbjörn switched off the ignition.

‘Have you seen this photo before? It's the one that was on TV.'

‘No,' she said. ‘I must have missed it.'

And then she said: ‘But it has to be a joke, doesn't it?'

The smile lingered at the corners of the woman's mouth.

‘Well, no,' Susso said. ‘It isn't.'

‘It isn't?' She raised her eyebrows.

Gudrun shook her head.

‘He does look a bit unusual, but . . .'

‘In that case,' said the woman, ‘someone's pulling your leg.'

‘This is what he looks like,' Susso said. ‘The picture has been in the paper as well as on TV. The police are looking for him. We really do want to know if you've seen him before.'

‘It's supposed to be a troll, isn't it?'

The word made Susso stiffen.

‘Yes,' said Gudrun hesitantly, moving nearer. She straightened the scarf around her neck. ‘Perhaps'—she was almost whispering—‘perhaps it does look like a troll. But it certainly isn't a joke, I can tell you that. A boy has been kidnapped. So it's no laughing matter.'

The woman turned sideways and waved the piece of paper in the direction of the headland.

‘Do you mean you don't know who used to live here?' she said.

She waited for an answer but no one spoke.

‘John Bauer,' she said. ‘This is John Bauer's old house.'

‘Now you're the one who's joking,' Gudrun said.

‘No.'

Susso and Gudrun looked at each other, and then Susso insisted they had had no idea who had lived in the house. It came as a complete surprise. She turned to Torbjörn, who was staring through the gap in the half-open door with a look of disbelief.

‘John Bauer?' he said. ‘The man who painted the trolls?'

The woman explained that there was no limit to people's curiosity, which is why they had put up the gates and no-trespassing signs. In the summer, boats circled the water packed with tourists craning their necks to get a glimpse of the fairy-tale artist's idyllic home, and hopefully a troll as well. Hot-air balloons floated disrespectfully low over the headland and people leaned over the edge of the baskets, waving.

None of this was appreciated by Herr Dahllöf, the current owner of the house, who had inherited it from his father's two sisters. He had been more or less forced to invest in a gate because sometimes people who had seen the house from the lake or from the air came tramping all over the garden afterwards, wanting to have a look at whatever could not be seen from further away. Since the gates had been installed no one had come onto the land. Until now.

‘We had no idea, truly,' said Gudrun. ‘We were told that the person we are looking for, the Vaikijaur man, set off for this place in 1980. That's all we know. That's why we are here. Not because John Bauer lived here. It's . . . well, I don't know what to say.'

‘It seems like someone is having you on,' the woman said, studying the photograph of the Vaikijaur man's face.

‘Well, I don't understand a thing. Do you, Susso?'

Susso shook her head.

‘The man who lives here, what was his name again?' she asked.

‘No one lives here,' the woman replied. ‘It's a summer house.'

‘Well, the owner then?'

‘Dahllöf. Fredrik Dahllöf, he's called. And he lives in Helsingborg.'

‘Have you got his phone number?'

 

 

Subdued music met Seved as he opened the door. Pan pipes, he thought. Supposed to be relaxing. On a table in the small entrance hall a candle was floating in a dish of water and over the doorway to the treatment room hung a curtain of ruby-red beads. There inside stood Cecilia Myrén with her back to him. She told him to take off his jacket, but, of course, he could not do that so he told her he was cold.

‘It's not that cold today.'

‘I'm not used to it, that's all.'

‘Oh, right. Where are you from?'

He did not reply and only stared at the floor.

She waited a moment for an answer and then gave up.

‘But you'll have to take your shoes off, you know.'

‘Yes,' he said, and began to untie his boot laces.

‘It would be a bit difficult otherwise,' she laughed.

The chair reminded him of a dentist's chair. It was adjustable and the seat covers were shiny and flesh-red. He really had no desire to sit down but he could hardly get straight to the point of his visit. She watched him as he climbed up into the chair and she seemed amused. Her eyes had narrowed.

‘Socks as well,' she said.

He pulled off his socks and sat with them in his hand, unsure what to do with them. Then he pushed them into his jacket
pocket. She stood with her back to him, unscrewing the lid of a little bottle. She had wide hips and was wearing a black skirt with a knee-high pleat at the back.

‘So, you're a journalist then?' she said, without turning round.

‘Yes.'

‘For a newspaper, or what?'

He said nothing. He had not been prepared to answer questions.

‘Or are you a freelancer?'

‘Yes. Freelance.'

‘That's nice,' she said. ‘Being your own boss. I've got this and it suits me perfectly, combined with the shop.'

‘It's exciting, what she's doing. Your sister.'

At first he thought she had not heard him, but then she said softly:

‘Scary too.'

She came up with a bowl full of water, set it on the floor and then began to roll up his trousers. He wondered if he smelled. He had never soaked his feet, let alone taken care of them. When his toenails grew too long he usually tore them off with his fingers.

‘A few weeks ago a couple of men tried to kill her,' she said, lifting up his feet and putting them in the water. ‘Here in Kiruna.'

‘Kill her?' he said. ‘Why?'

‘There are so many sick people around,' she said, standing up.

‘But what's she doing now, in Gränna?'

‘As I say, she's a bit upset at the moment, so if you want to talk to her you'll have to wait until she gets home.'

‘I only want to know what she's doing. And see if I can talk to her.'

‘She doesn't want to, not at the moment.'

When was the lemmingshifter going to start working on her?
He had no idea what would happen if he started asking her too early, if he
demanded
an answer from her. That could make her clam up. But at the same time he did not want the visit to drag on too long.

‘I might have seen a troll once,' he said.

‘You have to sit with your feet in the water for fifteen minutes,' she said. ‘To soften them.'

‘A real troll, I mean.'

‘Really? Where?'

‘Do you think your sister would want to write about it?'

‘Was it here in Norrbotten?'

He noticed his mouth had gone dry.

‘You could ring and ask her if she wants to.'

There was no reply. She had turned her back to him again and was doing something with the jars. He was going too fast, everything seemed to indicate that. It made him uncertain, so he raised his hand to the top of his jacket zipper, and once he had started to pull it down he thought he might as well continue. ‘Look,' he said.

‘Look what I've got here.'

Cecilia swivelled her head, her eyebrows raised, and when she saw the curled-up little creature in Seved's palms she turned round and pressed her hand with all its silver rings to her chest.

‘What?' she gasped. ‘What's that . . . why have you got . . . what is it?'

‘It's to make you tell me where she is.'

‘What is it, why have you got that . . .'

‘You must tell me,' he said. ‘Do you understand? You have to tell me now. And then I'll go.'

He lifted his feet out of the warm water and put them down on the floor, one at a time. One of his trouser legs had rolled
down and he left a trail of wet prints behind him as he slowly walked towards the woman, who backed away.

‘Stop,' he said. ‘Stand still. We only want to know. We have to know.'

But Cecilia was not listening. She continued walking backwards. Beside the wall in the entrance hall was a low unit with foot-care products on a glass shelf, and she tried to support herself against it. Jars and small bottles were knocked over by her groping hand and some fell to the floor.

A buzzing swelled in Seved's head and he did not notice that he had wet himself until the warmth spread down the inside of his left leg. It felt so uncomfortable that he had to move the creature to one hand to try and dry himself with the other.

‘You've got to stay,' he said, rubbing the wet stripe on his trousers, but naturally that did not make it any better. ‘There's no danger. Stay and you'll see.'

She did not stop. She stared at the thing in Seved's hand and all of a sudden one of her legs gave way, as if it had snapped. She spun her arms until her bracelets rattled, and the next moment she sank to the floor, her eyes squeezed tightly shut. It was as if all her body had given up but her eyes refused to accept it. From beneath her a pool spread quickly over the floor.

Presumably the little shapeshifter had come on too strong and damaged something inside her. Seved held the little creature in front of him and stroked its rough golden-brown hair with his thumb, from the back of its head and down over the cold skin of its neck, while he tried to think what to do next.