The Shapeshifters Read Online Free PDF Page B

paper with columns of text and grainy photographs of helicopters, policemen and desolate forest roads has eclipsed the almost transparently vague memories I once had.
    Going back step by step in my mind just won’t work. It’s like trying to scrape one layer of paint off another. His face is there like a blurred stain. I know I thought the whole story was particularly nasty. First, that a kid could be abducted like that by an unknown person in Sweden, and then it didn’t make it any less nasty when it appeared his mother might have killed him.
    There is no end to the times I have dug for premonitions.
    Premonitions of
evil
.
    That summer I was carrying Susso, and even if I have no particular memory of it, I’m sure that on occasions I must have cupped my hands over my stomach when I saw Magnus’s face in the newspaper. Shouldn’t I have felt then that my unborn child’s destiny was linked to that boy’s? Shouldn’t I have felt a shudder go through my body?
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    SUNDAY 12 DECEMBER 2004
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    She drove through intervals of snow, particles streaming fast in the beams of the headlights, sputtering against the windscreen in waves. At times they came in such a mass that she had to lean over the steering wheel, wrinkling her eyebrows. The wipers squealed at full speed but made little difference.
    Even when there was a break in the snow showers Susso could not relax. Billows of snow whipped across the road, whirling ceaselessly from one side to the other, and threatened to swirl up and blind her at any moment. If she met an oncoming truck or was overtaken, she became enclosed in a white chamber for one, two, possibly three seconds at the worst. In those moments she held her breath, clenched her hands on the steering wheel and exhaled abrupt obscenities from between her clenched teeth.
    But at least it was still light.
    She picked up her mobile from the seat and checked the time.
    Surely she would be there soon? She tried to think when she had last seen a road sign.
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    Just before Jokkmokk she turned off to the right and onto a road that wound alongside the lakes which led away towards Kvikkjokk and the horizon with its undulating fells. Under its streaks of frost a brown sign indicated that this was the way to SarekNational Park. The only way. An ancient route, she knew that. Linnaeus had walked it once. Or had he ridden along it?
    She soon saw the name, surrounded by a tangle of birch branches. White lettering on a blue background: VAIKIJAUR. On top of the sign an undulating ridge of snow. Between the trees she saw the white sphere of the lake.
    She slowed down, put the car into second gear and leaned over the wheel, letting her gaze wander between the houses scattered on either side of the road.
    Advent stars in the windows, light strings spiralling around naked branches. Council rubbish bins of green plastic frozen solid in snow drifts. Grey satellite dishes on gable walls. Snow-clearing tools lined up on porches: scrapers, shovels, long-handled brushes. Every household had the same collection.
    Someone had hung out a claret-red blouse on a coat hanger that moved in the wind. That was the closest thing to a human being she saw.
    She zigzagged slowly down the road so that she could read what was written on the letter boxes. Åke and Maud Kvickström. Thomas . . .
    She drove on like that, squinting her eyes to read. Many boxes were covered in snow, but she thought she might strike lucky, and fairly soon she spotted the name, written by hand on an old metal lid. Mickelsson.
    The house looked weighed down by the snow clinging to the roof in bulging drifts. The land around it sloped down towards a lake, and on the far side it was just possible to discern spinneys of stunted birches in a grainy mist. Was it snowing over there?
    She pulled up behind the car that was parked in the driveway and switched off the engine, but sat where she was for a while,looking at the house.