The Fire Witness

by Lars Kepler

  Before Vicky drowned, she was a suspect for two violent murders.

  Everything indicates that she prepared her killings in advance. She waited for nightfall, killed Elisabet with a hammer, returned to the house, unlocked the door to the isolation room, and then killed Miranda.

  The Needle says that Miranda was killed by a rock.

  Why would Vicky leave the hammer in her room and then go find a stone?

  There are times when Joona thinks his old friend must be wrong. It’s why he has not yet said anything about his suspicions to anyone. The Needle will have to present his theory in his report.

  Vicky went to bed after killing these two women.

  Joona saw the blood on her sheets and how it had been smeared by Vicky’s arm as she changed positions in her sleep. Holger Jalmert said that this observation was interesting but impossible to prove.

  Without witnesses, he would never get an answer to this case.

  Joona has read Elisabet Grim’s final note in the Birgittagården logbook, but nothing in it indicates the violence that erupted later that night.

  The girls did not see a thing.

  No one knew Vicky Bennet.

  Joona has already decided he needs to talk to Daniel Grim, the therapist. It’s worth a try, even though it’s difficult to question someone in mourning. Daniel was the person the girls trusted the most. If anyone understands what happened, he’s probably the one.

  His shoulder is hurting, so Joona pulls out his cell phone slowly. He remembers that Daniel Grim kept himself together in front of the girls when he first got to Birgittagården, but his face had contorted in pain when he found out Elisabet had been killed.

  The doctor had called his acute shock “arousal,” a consequence of traumatic stress, which might prevent Daniel from remembering much for some time.

  “Psychiatric clinic, Rebecka Stenbeck speaking,” a woman says after five rings.

  “I would like to speak with one of your patients, Daniel Grim.”

  “One moment.”

  He can hear the woman typing on a keyboard.

  “I’m sorry, but the patient is not allowed to receive phone calls,” she says.

  “Who made that decision?”

  “His doctor.”

  “Would you connect me to him, please?”

  There’s a series of clicks and then the phone rings.

  “Carl Rimmer here.”

  “I’m Joona Linna, a detective with the National Police,” Joona says. “It’s very important that I speak with a patient by the name of Daniel Grim.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t allow that,” Rimmer says immediately.

  “We are investigating a double murder and—”

  “Nothing will change my decision. The patient needs to recover.”

  “I understand that Daniel Grim is suffering, but I promise—”

  “My decision stands,” Carl Rimmer says, but his tone is friendly. “In my opinion, the patient will recover and then the police can talk to him.”

  “When will that be?”

  “I’d guess in a few months.”

  “I need to talk to him for just a little while, but I need to talk to him now.”

  “As his doctor, again I must say no.” Rimmer is adamant. “He was extremely upset after your colleague questioned him earlier.”

  72

  Flora is hurrying home with a heavy bag of groceries. The sky is dark, but the streetlights haven’t come on yet. Her stomach knots as she thinks of how the police rebuffed her. Her face had flushed with shame when the female officer told her that it was a crime to make a false report. Still, she’d called back to tell them she’d seen the murder weapon. Now she keeps going over the conversation again and again in her mind.

  “Police,” said the same officer who had just given her a warning.

  “My name is Flora Hansen. I just called a moment ago,” she said, and swallowed hard.

  “Yes, about the murders in Sundsvall,” the officer said calmly.

  “I know where the murder weapon was hidden,” she lied.

  “Do you realize that I am going to report you, Flora Hansen?”

  “I’m psychic. I’ve seen the bloody knife. It’s in the water—dark, glittering water. That’s all I saw, but I … I can go into a trance and find out more, for a fee. I can point out the exact place.”

  “Flora,” the officer said sternly, “if you persist, you will be under suspicion for a crime and the police will—”

  Flora hung up.

  Now she’s walking past the halal food market. She stops and looks in a garbage can for empty bottles, then she shifts the grocery bag to her left hand and keeps walking to the apartment building. The front lock has been broken and the elevator is stuck in the basement. Flora climbs the stairs to the second floor and unlocks the door to the apartment. She walks into the hall and flicks the light switch.

  There’s a click, but the light does not go on.

  She puts down the grocery bag, locks the door behind her, and slips off her shoes. As she bends over to put them away, the hair on her arms rises.

  The apartment suddenly feels extremely cold.

  She takes her wallet and the grocery receipt out of her purse as she walks down the hall to the dark living room. She can make out the sofa, the big worn armchair, and the dark pane of the television. There’s an odor of electric dust—a short in the wiring.

  Without stepping into the living room, she reaches to turn on the lights. Nothing happens when she pushes the button.

  “Is anyone home?” she whispers.

  The floor shakes and a teacup rattles in its saucer.

  There’s someone moving through the darkness.

  Flora follows. The floor is cold beneath her feet. It feels as if someone has left the windows open too long on a winter day.

  The door to the bathroom is shut. As Flora reaches for the handle, she remembers that Ewa and Hans-Gunnar are not supposed to be home this evening. They are at a pizza parlor, celebrating a friend’s birthday. This means no one should be in the bathroom, but still she pushes open the door.

  In the gray light of the bathroom mirror, she sees something that makes her stagger backward and gasp for breath.

  On the floor of the bathroom, between the tub and the toilet, a girl is lying with her hands in front of her face. There’s a huge pool of blood next to her head and tiny red drops have spattered on the bathtub, the floor mat, and the shower curtain.

  Flora trips over the vacuum cleaner hose and as her arm swings out, it catches Ewa’s plaster relief from Copenhagen. It crashes at the same time Flora does. Her head hits the hall floor.

  73

  The floor is icy under Flora’s back. She lifts her head and stares at the bathroom, her heart pounding.

  There’s no girl there.

  There aren’t any drops of blood on the bathtub or the shower curtain. A pair of Hans-Gunnar’s jeans is lying on the bathroom floor close to the toilet.

  It must have been her imagination.

  She rests on the floor as she waits for her heart to stop pounding. She can taste blood in her mouth. She turns her head and looks down the hall. The door to her room is open. She knows she closed her door. She always closes her door. She shudders and goose bumps rise over her entire body. Icy air is being drawn toward her room. Two dust bunnies roll in the draft down the hall and she follows them with her eyes. They stop at her door, between two bare feet.

  Flora moans.

  The girl who was lying on the bathroom floor is now standing in the doorway to her room. She steps into the hall.

  Flora tries to sit up, but her body is frozen with fear. She realizes that she’s seeing a spirit—for the first time in her life, she is face-to-face with a real ghost.

  The girl’s hair is tangled and bloody.

  Flora is breathing quickly and her pulse thunders in her ears. The girl is hiding something behind her back as she starts to walk toward Flora. She stops just one step away from Flora’s f
ace.

  “Do you want to know what I have in my hands?” the girl asks so quietly that the words are almost impossible to hear.

  “You don’t exist,” Flora whispers.

  “Do you want me to show you what I have in my hands?”

  “No.”

  “But I don’t have anything.”

  A heavy rock lands with a thud behind the girl. The floor shakes and the pieces of broken plaster jump.

  The girl shows her empty hands and smiles.

  The rock is silvery-gray and has sharp edges. It looks like it’s from an iron-ore mine. The girl steps on it with one foot. It rocks back and forth. She pushes it away.

  “Well, go ahead and die!” the girl mumbles to herself. “Hurry up and die already!”

  The girl squats down and puts her ashen hands on the rock. She rocks it, trying to get a good grip on it. It slips out of her grasp. She wipes her hands on her dress and tries again. The rock turns over with a thud.

  “What are you going to do?” asks Flora.

  “Close your eyes and then I’m gone,” the girl says, and picks up the sharp rock. She lifts it over Flora’s head. Its dark underside looks wet.

  The electricity suddenly turns back on. Ceiling lights come on all over the apartment. Flora rolls to the side and sits up. The girl has disappeared. The television starts to blare and the refrigerator resumes humming.

  Flora gets up and walks to her room. The door is shut and she opens it. She turns on the ceiling light, opens the wardrobe, and looks under the bed. Then she goes into the kitchen and sits at the table. Her hands are shaking as she dials the phone for the police.

  The automatic voice-message system gives her a few choices. She can report a crime, leave a tip, or receive an answer to a general question. The last choice contacts her with an operator.

  “Police,” says the friendly voice. “What can I do to help you?”

  “I would like to talk to someone working on the Birgittagården case,” Flora says in a shaky voice.

  “What does this concern?”

  “I … I’ve seen the murder weapon,” Flora whispers.

  “I see,” the operator says. “I’m going to connect you to our department that takes tips from the general public. Just a moment.”

  Flora is about to protest, but there’s already clicking on the line. Then there’s another woman’s voice: “How can I help you?”

  Flora can’t tell if it is the same woman she’s talked to before—the one who got angry when Flora told her about the bloody knife.

  “I need to talk to someone who is working on the Sundsvall murder case,” Flora says.

  “Talk to me first,” says the voice.

  “It was a large rock,” Flora says.

  “I can’t hear you. Please speak louder.”

  “What happened in Sundsvall. You should be looking for a large rock. Its underside is all bloody and …”

  Flora falls silent. Sweat runs down her sides.

  “How do you know anything about the Birgittagården murders?”

  “I’ve … Someone told me.”

  “Someone told you about the Birgittagården murders?”

  “Yes,” Flora whispers. Her ears are ringing.

  “Keep going,” the woman says.

  “The murderer used a rock, a large one with sharp edges. That’s all I know.”

  “What is your name?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I just wanted—”

  “I recognize your voice,” the policewoman says. “You called earlier about a bloody knife. I’ve already written up a report on you, Flora Hansen, but I think you should contact a doctor. You need some serious help.”

  The policewoman hangs up, and Flora looks at the telephone in her hand. She jumps, knocking over the paper-towel roll when the grocery bag in the hallway falls over.

  74

  Elin Frank got back to her apartment an hour ago after a long committee meeting at the Kingston Corporation to discuss two holding companies in Great Britain.

  She’s feeling anxious about having slept with the Vogue photographer, but she keeps reminding herself that it was just a small adventure and she needed one after so long without sex. Still, she finds herself sweating from embarrassment.

  She has changed into her old, faded red sports shorts and an equally worn ABBA T-shirt, and she’s nursing a bottle of Perrier she picked up in the kitchen. As she gets to her bedroom, she switches on the TV, but pays little attention to it.

  Later this afternoon, she is supposed to have a telephone conference with the CEO of her subdivision in Chicago while she has a paraffin bath and a manicure. At eight, she’s expected at a charity dinner, where she’ll sit at the head table. The chairman of Volvo has been assigned the chair beside hers. The crown princess is awarding a prize from the General Inheritance Fund, and Roxette is providing the evening’s entertainment.

  From her walk-in closet she can still hear the television, but she’s still not actively listening, and she doesn’t yet notice the news is now on. She opens one of the wardrobes and looks through her clothes. She selects a metallic-green dress the designer Alexander McQueen made just for her not long before he died.

  “… Vicky Bennet …” She hears the name mentioned on the broadcast, and she rushes back into the bedroom. On-screen, a detective by the name of Olle Gunnarsson is being interviewed in front of a dreary police station. He’s trying to smile patiently, but his eyes are narrowed. He’s stroking his mustache as he nods.

  “I cannot comment on an ongoing investigation,” he says, and clears his throat.

  “But you’ve concluded the underwater search?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Does this mean that you’ve found the bodies?”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  The image changes, and Elin is staring at footage of the salvage of the wrecked car. The crane is lifting it straight up and it breaks the surface of the water and starts to sway. Water pours from the car as a voice says that the vehicle that Vicky Bennet stole was found submerged in the Indal River earlier that day and that both the murder suspect, Vicky Bennet, and four-year-old Dante Abrahamsson were feared dead.

  “The police are not talking about what they’ve found, but we’ve learned that the underwater search has been suspended and the search for survivors called off …”

  Elin has stopped listening to the news anchor. All she can do is stare at the picture of Vicky they are now showing. The girl looks older and skinnier, but she hasn’t changed. Elin feels as if her heart has stopped. She remembers what it felt like to carry the sleeping child.

  “No,” Elin whispers. “No.”

  She’s staring at the girl’s narrow, pale face. Her hair is falling every which way, uncombed and tangled. Just as difficult to care for as always.

  She’s still a child, and now they’re saying she’s dead.

  Vicky’s gaze is defiant, as if she’s being forced to look at the camera.

  Elin wheels away from the television and steadies herself on the wall, not noticing that she’s knocked an oil painting by Erland Cullberg. It falls to the floor.

  “No, no, no,” she moans. “Not like this. No … no …”

  The last thing she’d heard of Vicky was her crying in the stairwell, and now she is dead.

  “I don’t want this!” she screams.

  She walks over to the china cabinet with the heirloom Seder plate she inherited from her father. She grabs the upper edge of the cabinet and hurls it over with all her strength. Its glass front splinters and shards whirl over the parquet. The beautifully detailed Seder plate breaks into five pieces.

  Elin doubles over and drops to the floor as a single thought churns in her mind. I had a daughter. I had a daughter. I had a daughter.

  She sits up, takes a slice of the Seder plate, and drags its point across her wrist. Blood starts to run out, dripping down onto her knees. Elin makes a second cut, inhaling sharply from the pain. A key rattles in the front-door
lock. Someone opens the door and comes in.

  75

  Joona is browning two thick ox fillets in a cast-iron skillet. He has tied up the meat and seasoned it with roughly ground black and green peppercorns. When the surfaces of the tournedos are glazed, he places them over sliced potatoes in a clay baking dish and salts them, then moves the dish into the oven. As the meat cooks, he makes a sauce of port, currants, veal stock, and truffles. Then he pours two glasses of a red Saint-Émilion.

  The earthy aroma of the wine has spread through the kitchen when the doorbell rings.

  Disa is there, wearing a red-and-white polka-dot raincoat. Her pupils are large and her face is damp from the rain.

  “Joona, I’m going to test you and see if you are as good a detective as they say.”

  “How can you test that?”

  “By asking you if I look normal.”

  “You’re more beautiful than ever.”

  “That’s not it.” Disa smiles.

  “You’ve cut your hair and you’re wearing that barrette from Paris for the first time in more than a year.”

  “Anything else?”

  Joona runs his eyes over her thin, blushing face, her shining hair, and her slim body.

  “Those are new,” he says, and points to her high-heeled shoes.

  “Marc Jacobs. A little too expensive for me.”

  “They’re nice.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I’m not done yet,” he says, and takes her hands in his, turns them over, and inspects her fingernails.

  He can’t help smiling as he says she’s wearing the same lipstick as the time they went to Södra Theater. He gently touches her earrings and meets her eyes and rests his gaze there a moment. Then he moves so that the light from the floor lamp falls on her face.

  “It’s your eyes,” he says. “Your left pupil is not shrinking in the light.”

  “Good detective,” she says. “I’ve had my eye examined.”

  “Is there anything wrong?”

  “The cornea has developed an astigmatism, but it’s not anything I have to worry about.”