The Fire Witness

by Lars Kepler

  They drove past the exit to Älvkarleby.

  “Lumi’s going to love the zoo,” Summa said quietly. “The chimpanzees and the rhinos.”

  “I already have my own monkey!” exclaimed Lumi.

  “What?”

  “I’m her monkey,” Joona said.

  “That suits you.”

  “Lumi takes good care of me. She’s a nice vet.”

  Summa’s sandy brown hair was hanging in her face, partially covering her deep, dark eyes, but Joona could see the dimples appear in her cheeks.

  “Why would you need a vet? Is there something wrong with you?”

  “I need glasses.”

  “Is that what she said?” Summa laughed. She was flipping through a magazine and didn’t notice that he’d missed the turnoff and was now heading in the wrong direction entirely. They were already north of the Dalälven.

  Lumi had fallen asleep with her doll resting against her cheek.

  “Are you sure that we don’t have to book a table?” Summa asked. “I want to sit outside on the veranda this evening so we have that great view of the river below us.”

  Joona took the exit toward Mora, and that’s when Summa realized that something was wrong.

  “Joona, we missed the exit to Älvkarleby, didn’t we? Aren’t we staying in Älvkarleby? That’s what we were planning, weren’t we?”

  “Yes, that’s what we planned.”

  “What are you doing?”

  He didn’t reply, but kept staring at the road. The afternoon sun made the puddles shimmer. A long-distance truck ahead of them swung into the middle lane without signaling.

  “We said that we’d—”

  Summa stopped and took a deep breath. Then her voice changed and fear was in it.

  “Joona? Have you lied to me? Tell me you didn’t lie to me.”

  “I had to,” he whispered.

  Summa stared at him. He knew how upset she was. She struggled to keep her voice low so that Lumi would not wake up.

  “You can’t be serious,” she said. “You can’t do this. You told me we weren’t in danger any longer. You said it was all over and I believed you! I believed you’d changed your mind, I believed that—” Her voice broke and she turned away and looked out the window.

  “I lied,” Joona confessed.

  “You are not supposed to lie to me. You must never lie to me.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “We can leave the country, the three of us together. It’ll all work out. You’ll see.”

  “You have to understand, Summa. You must understand. If I thought it was at all possible … if I had any other choice—”

  “Stop this nonsense right now,” she says. “This threat can’t be real. It can’t be. You’re seeing a connection that doesn’t exist. Samuel Mendel and his family have nothing to do with ours. Do you hear me? We’re not under any real threat.”

  “I’ve tried to tell you how serious this is, but you won’t listen.”

  “I don’t want to listen. Why would I want to?”

  “Summa, I have to … I’ve arranged everything. There’s a woman named Rosa Bergman waiting for you in Malmberget. She’ll give you new identity cards. You will be fine.”

  His hands have started to shake.

  “You really are serious,” Summa whispers.

  “I’m more serious than I’ve ever been,” he says. “We are going to Mora, and you and Lumi will take the train to Gällivare.”

  He could tell that Summa was working hard to keep her emotions in check.

  “If you leave us at the station, you’ve lost us for good. Do you realize this? There’s no way back.” She stared at him with defiant and sorrowful eyes.

  “Tell Lumi that I had to go work abroad,” he continued, keeping his voice low. Summa had started to weep.

  “Joona,” she said. “No, don’t do this.”

  He kept staring straight ahead. He swallowed hard and kept his eyes on the road.

  “And in a few years,” he went on, “tell her that I’m dead. You must never ever contact me again. Never try to see me. Do you understand?”

  Summa was now crying out loud.

  “I don’t want to! I don’t want to!”

  “Neither do I.”

  “You shouldn’t do this to us!”

  “Mamma?” Lumi had woken up and sounded frightened. Summa quickly dried the tears from her cheeks.

  “Don’t worry,” Joona says to his daughter. “Mamma is sad because we’re not going to the hotel by the river.”

  “Tell her,” Summa said.

  “Tell me what?” asked Lumi.

  “You and Mamma will be taking the train,” Joona said.

  “What about you?”

  “I have to work,” he replies.

  “You told me we were going to play monkey and vet.”

  “He doesn’t want to play,” Summa said harshly.

  They were near the outskirts of Mora. They passed scattered houses and a few industrial buildings. Then they passed shopping malls and car repair shops. The dense forest fell back, and the fences to keep the wildlife off the highway disappeared.

  187

  Joona slowed down as they drove up to the train station. He parked and opened the trunk and lifted out the huge suitcase on wheels.

  “Did you remove your things last night?” Summa asked.

  “I did.”

  “Did you put other stuff inside?”

  He nodded and looked away toward the station: four parallel lines of tracks, embankments of rust-colored gravel, weeds, and dark crossties.

  “Your daughter needs you in her life.”

  “I have no choice.” He looked inside his car’s rear window to where Lumi was pushing her big, soft doll into her backpack.

  “You have many choices,” Summa continued. “Instead of fighting, you’re giving up. You have no idea if this threat is real. I just don’t understand all this.”

  “I can’t find Lollo!” Lumi complained.

  “The train leaves in twenty minutes,” Joona said.

  “I don’t want to live without you,” Summa said, and took his hand. “I want things to go on as they were.”

  “I know.”

  “If you do this to us, you will be all alone.”

  He didn’t answer. Lumi climbed out of the car and dropped her backpack on the ground. A red barrette was hanging loosely in her hair.

  “Are you ready to live the rest of your life alone?”

  “I am,” he said.

  Joona could not look at her. He gazed across the tracks. Between the trees on the other side of the tracks, the northern bay of Lake Siljan was glittering.

  “Say goodbye to Pappa, now,” Summa said. She pushed her daughter toward her father.

  Lumi stood still and didn’t look up.

  “Hurry up,” Summa says.

  Lumi looks up and says, “Bye-bye, Monkey.”

  “Properly. Say goodbye properly.” Summa showed her irritation.

  “I don’t want to,” Lumi said.

  She clung to her mother’s leg.

  “Do it anyway,” Summa said.

  Joona squatted down before his tiny daughter.

  “Can I have a hug?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Well, here comes the monkey with his long, long arms!” he joked.

  Joona lifted her up. He felt her little body resist—she knew something was seriously wrong. She wriggled to get down, but Joona held her close, just for a while, just to inhale the scent of her neck.

  “You silly!” she shouted.

  “Lumi,” Joona whispered against her cheek. “Never forget that I love you more than anything else.”

  “Time to go,” Summa said.

  Joona set his daughter down. He wanted to pet her on the cheek but couldn’t bring himself to do so. He felt as if he was shattering into pieces. Summa was staring at him in fear. Her neck was stiff. She grabbed Lumi’s hand and pulled her away.

&nbs
p; They waited for the train in silence. There was nothing more to say.

  Downy dandelion seeds blew over the tracks.

  There was a burned smell from the brakes as the train rolled away from the platform. He stood and stared at his daughter’s pale face through the train window. Her little hand was waving slowly. Summa was a black shadow sitting rigidly next to her. She did not look at him. Before the train reached the bend toward the harbor, Joona turned and walked back to his car.

  188

  Joona drove the 145 kilometers to Ludvika without thinking. His head was roaring but empty—frighteningly so.

  He drove without thinking and finally arrived.

  His headlights lit up massive metal structures. He turned into the industrial area and drove down to the empty harbor near the power station. A large gray car was already parked between two huge piles of sawdust. Joona pulled up next to it. He was remarkably calm; so calm that he knew he was in some form of shock.

  He got out of his car and looked around. The Needle was waiting for him, standing next to a door. He was wearing white overalls and his face looked worn and serious.

  “So? They’ve left?” he asked in the sharp tone he used whenever something bothered him.

  “They’re gone,” Joona said.

  The Needle nodded a few times. The white frames of his glasses shone coldly in the weak light.

  “You didn’t give me a choice in this matter,” The Needle said glumly.

  “True enough,” Joona said. “You had no choice.”

  “We’re both going to get fired if this comes out.”

  “Then we’ll be fired.”

  “Two at the same time. I moved as fast as I could when they arrived.”

  “Good.”

  “Two of them,” The Needle repeated, almost to himself.

  Joona thought back to just a few days ago, when he woke up next to his wife and daughter. His cell phone was ringing in his jacket in the hall.

  Someone had sent a text message. The minute he saw it was from The Needle, he knew what it was about.

  They had agreed. Once The Needle found two bodies that were approximately right, Joona would leave town with Summa and Lumi on the pretext of going on the vacation they’d been talking about for such a long time.

  Joona had waited to hear from The Needle for more than three weeks. Time was running out. He was keeping watch over his family as best he could, but he recognized that this was not going to work in the long run. Jurek Walter was a man who could wait.

  Joona knew right away that The Needle’s message meant he was about to lose his family. He could ensure that Summa and Lumi would be protected, but only if he never saw them again.

  The Needle opened the hatchback of his gray car.

  On two stretchers, covered in a cloth, were two body bags, one large and one small.

  “A woman and a girl. They died in a car crash three days ago,” The Needle explained. He began to pull out the larger body.

  “I’ve worked on them a little. There’s not a trace left that could identify them. Not a single identifying mark.”

  He groaned as he removed the body from his car. The undercarriage of the stretcher fell into place. The small wheels clattered as they hit the gravel.

  Without saying a word, The Needle zipped open the body bag.

  Joona clenched his jaw and forced himself to look.

  A young woman lay there. Her eyes were closed and her face was calm. Her chest was crushed. Her arms appeared to have been broken in many places and her pelvis had been wrenched awry.

  “The car drove off a bridge,” The Needle said. “The reason she has so many injuries is that she’d unbuckled herself. Perhaps she was picking up the pacifier for the little one. I’ve seen it before.”

  He reached for the second stretcher and pulled it out of the car.

  Joona contemplated the woman. He could see no fear or pain in her face. Nothing in her expression revealed the injuries done to her body.

  The Needle unzipped the small bag. When Joona saw the little girl inside, tears filled his eyes.

  The Needle mumbled something to himself and then zipped the body bags up again.

  “Well, then,” he said. “No one will ever find Catharina and Mimmi. No one will ever identify their bodies.”

  His emotions overwhelmed him for a moment, and then he continued, almost angry.

  “The little girl’s father has been going from hospital to hospital looking for them. He’s even called my department. I had to talk to him.”

  The Needle’s mouth twisted.

  “They’re going to be buried as Summa and Lumi. I’ve already arranged false dental records for them.”

  He gave Joona one last questioning look.

  Joona said nothing.

  Then they put the bodies in Joona’s car.

  189

  It felt strange to be driving with a dead woman and child as passengers. The roads were dark. Roadkill hedgehogs were lying beside ditches. A badger stood on the narrow shoulder, hypnotized by Joona’s headlights.

  When he arrived at the hill he’d chosen weeks earlier, he dislodged the airbag fuse. Then he placed the woman in the driver’s seat and loosely strapped the little girl into Lumi’s child seat. The only sounds were his breathing, the rustle of cloth against cloth, and the thud of lifeless arms and legs.

  He leaned into the car and released the emergency brake. He gave the car a shove from behind and it started to roll down the hill. He walked beside it and reached in to give the wheel a tug in the right direction. The car picked up speed and he ran to keep up. The car hurtled away from him, then it left the road and crashed into a massive Scotch pine. The woman’s body smashed into the steering wheel. The little girl’s body jerked violently in the car seat.

  Joona took a gasoline can out of the trunk and began to splash it inside the car. He poured gasoline over the little girl’s legs and the woman’s heavily damaged body.

  It was getting hard for him to breathe. He had to stop.

  He leaned over, holding his knees, and tried to calm himself down. His heart was breaking.

  Joona couldn’t bear it. He pulled the little girl’s body from the car and walked with it back and forth, cradling it and singing lullabies and whispering in her ear and crying. Then he placed her on her mother’s lap in the front seat.

  He closed the car door in silence. He poured the rest of the gasoline over the car. Then he threw a lit match through the open window into the backseat. Flames leaped up and raced through the car.

  He stared at the woman’s unnaturally calm face while her hair caught fire.

  The fire was voracious. To Joona it looked as if a blue-tinged angel of death was claiming its own. The flames began to roar and they seemed to contain the sound of weeping.

  Joona suddenly snapped awake. He wanted to get the bodies out. He burned his hands on the car door, but he was able to get it open. The fire in the car burned higher once the door let in more oxygen. He tried to grab the woman’s jacket, which was already on fire. Her slim legs were already smoking and licked by flames.

  Pappa, Pappa, help me, Pappa!

  Joona knew that it couldn’t be real. He knew they were already dead. He still couldn’t bear it. He reached into the fire again and grabbed the girl’s hand.

  Then the gas tank exploded. Joona heard the bang just as his eardrums burst. He fell backward and felt the blow as his head hit the ground. His hands were empty. Blood trickled from his ears.

  His heart was screaming and burning.

  Before he lost consciousness, he watched the blazing pine needles come swirling down.

  190

  Joona is staring out the window and doesn’t hear the announcement that the plane has started its descent into Helsinki International Airport.

  Twelve years ago, he’d cut off the finger of the Devil himself, and his punishment had been loneliness. It was a high price, yet he felt that it was still too mild. The Devil was waiting to take more from him
. The Devil was waiting for him to imagine that everything was forgotten or forgiven.

  Joona bends over in his seat and waits, trying to slow his breathing. The man sitting next to him looks at him nervously.

  It’s not the migraine, it’s that other thing, the immense darkness behind everything.

  He had stopped the serial killer Jurek Walter. That can’t be written off or forgotten.

  He had no choice, but the price was too high, much too high. It hadn’t been worth it.

  His skin is covered with goose bumps. He pulls at his hair with one hand. He presses his feet against the floor with all his strength.

  He is going to see Summa and Lumi. He is going to do the most unforgivable thing. Only as long as Jurek Walter believes they are dead are they safe.

  Perhaps he’s already leading the serial killer to his family.

  Joona has left his cell phone in Stockholm. He’s using a forged passport and is paying for everything in cash. When he gets out of the taxi, he walks two blocks to the door of the apartment.

  He waits for a moment and then goes to a café down the street. He pays ten euros to borrow a phone and calls Saga Bauer.

  “I need help,” he says in a voice thick with emotion.

  “Don’t you know everyone is looking for you? Things have gone completely haywire here.”

  “I need help with one thing.”

  “Yes,” she says without hesitation.

  “When you’ve given me the information I need, erase the search history,” Joona says.

  “All right.”

  Joona swallows hard and looks at the slip of paper Rosa Bergman gave him. Then he asks Saga to search the Finnish health records for a woman named Laura Sandin who lives at Liisankatu 16 in Helsinki.

  “Let me call you back in a minute,” she says.

  “No, I’ll hang on while you search,” he says.

  Those minutes are the longest of his entire life. He stares at the glittering dust on the countertop. He looks at the espresso machine and the marks on the floor where chairs have been pushed in.

  “Joona?” Saga says at last.

  “I’m here,” Joona whispers.

  “Laura Sandin was diagnosed with liver cancer two years ago.”