Stallo (64 page)

The man in the back seat panted and whimpered. He wheezed as he breathed and it seemed he could not decide whether to lie down on the seat or sit up. Between gasps he said he had wounded one of the bears and they were dangerous.

‘Drive!’ he said. ‘Drive, for God’s sake!’

I expect the bears had worked out that the headlights were not as dangerous as they thought, and soon they were so close I could see their nostrils.

‘Perhaps you ought to reverse,’ Randolf said.

But I shook my head.

‘Susso is up there.’

‘There’s no one there!’ the man said. ‘I promise you, there’s no one there.’

Flashing the headlights at full beam was no good, so I tried hooting. That made one of the bears stop and tilt its head to one side. It annoyed the other and it ran towards the car, hitting a wing mirror with such force it snapped off. The man shouted from the back seat:

‘If you don’t back out of here, they’ll tip the car over!’

It looked as if he was right, so I put the car into reverse and rolled slowly backwards. The bears followed, of course. I increased speed but drove carefully because the road was winding and in the dark it wasn’t easy to see where the bends were. But soon I managed to put thirty metres between me and the bears.

‘Randolf,’ I said.

‘Yes?’

‘Hold on!’ I said, putting it into first.

I pressed the accelerator so hard that the tyres skidded. Randolf clutched the handle above the door, taking my advice literally. I hooted again and flashed the headlights.

The bears waited for a long time and I thought they were never going to move. But finally they did. They lurched off on opposite sides of the road. The one on my side of the car had his jaws wide open as I drove past.

After that I floored it because naturally they came after us, and this time they were running, so Randolf informed me.

A little further along the road was an upturned car, and as we passed it we saw flames shooting up behind the trees. It wasn’t until then that I remembered that Torbjörn had told me to phone the fire service. But at that moment all I could think about was Susso. And the bears, of course. I got out my phone and tried to ring Torbjörn, but the driving took all my concentration, so I threw the phone to Randolf.

‘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.