The Fire Dance

by Helene Tursten

  Translation by Laura A. Wideburg

  SOHO

  Copyright © 2005 by Helene Tursten Published in agreement with H. Samuelsson-Tursten AB, Sunne, and Leonhardt & Høier Literary Agency, Copenhagen English translation copyright © 2014 by Laura A. Wideburg

  All rights reserved.

  First published in English in 2014 by Soho Press

  853 Broadway New York, NY 10003

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data TK ISBN 978-1-61695-010-1

  eISBN 978-1-61695-011-8

  Printed in the United States of America

  To my nieces Karin, Sara and Lisa.

  Prologue

  The noise and heat from the crowd rose toward the ceiling and mixed with cigarette smoke in a thick smog around the chandeliers. People crowded at the enormous bar and tried to catch the bartender’s attention. The atmosphere was frenzied and excited, as it usually was in the Park Aveny Hotel Bar during the annual meeting of the Göteborg Book Fair. Some guests were already showing signs of incipient intoxication. Famous cultural personalities, as well as some not-so-famous ones, were hanging around the bar, though a few of them had wandered to the pub’s armchairs and were starting to doze.

  People kept coming and going through the revolving door, mingling as they headed toward the bar or to join the groups sitting at tables. Many still kept one eye on the entrance—a high-level celebrity could walk in at any moment since most of the important authors were booked at the hotel. Unfortunately, most of the people who appeared were publishers and their employees, a goodly number of librarians and one or two poets, drunk from the attention given to their readings.

  So many eyes were on the door that people remembered the moment she stepped into the lobby and paused just inside the revolving door. Even if their other memories were diffuse—or totally absent, in some cases—many people reacted to her entrance, and not just because of her extraordinary appearance. Many witnesses recalled a certain “vibe” or “aura” about her.

  She was tall and thin. She wore a black miniskirt that ended just below her rump, shiny bright pink tights and black knit leg warmers that were pushed down around her ankles above her ballet flats. Even without high heels, her legs appeared to be sensationally long. She wore a short black leather jacket over her thin pink T-shirt, which revealed more of her small perky breasts more than it covered. Metal studs decorated her jacket. But despite her conspicuous outfit, her pale face drew most of the attention.

  It was heart-shaped with high cheekbones, and her full lips seemed made for kissing. The way she pursed them, however, made it clear that any attempt to kiss her would be met with failure. Her eyes only magnified that message. They were slightly almond-shaped and had thick, long lashes, which she accentuated with heavy black eyeliner. But her brown eyes themselves showed no emotion. As a hungover poet would say later during questioning, “Her eyes were bottomless wells that led to the permafrost of her soul.”

  She turned her head to search the crowd. When she found the face she was looking for, she began to walk straight toward a table in the middle of the pub. All her movements were graceful and smooth.

  One man, his back to the entrance, had not seen her when she came in. As she passed him, he lost his grip on his frosted beer glass. He blew on his hands and shook his fingers as if they’d been frozen with cold.

  A children’s book author, who was already hammered, began to pull on his suit jacket clumsily, complaining about the draft from the door.

  The truth was that the woman could move through the compact crowd with ease, and yet every person drew away from her, either intentionally or unconsciously.

  She reached the table she wanted and quietly regarded the boisterous people gathered there. One by one, the young people, uniformly dressed in black, fell quiet and looked at her with astonishment. There was only one man who didn’t seem to have noticed her. He kept singing: “Poeira, poeira, poeira, Levantou poeira.” His voice was deep and pleasant, and his entire appearance differed from his companions’ in their black uniformity.

  A red skin-tight T-shirt emphasized his buff upper body, and his jeans clung to his narrow hips. Around his neck, a wide gold chain glittered against his café au lait skin, and a few tiny gold rings in his ear lobe shone with an intensity to match his gleaming white teeth.

  When he finished singing, he calmly turned to face the silent young woman. His entire face broke into a smile.

  “Hóla!” he exclaimed with great happiness. He gestured for her to join them at the table.

  A slightly worse-for-wear blonde, her eyelids soot-colored and her lips painted black, gave the newcomer a disgruntled look. She left her seat beside the man and headed to the restroom on unsteady feet.

  The silent woman sat on the chair and stared at the man without blinking. Totally unaware of the icy chill she was spreading all around her, he draped his arm over her shoulders. Begrudgingly, she allowed him to draw her close. The tension in her face and body began to soften somewhat. One of the young men began to recite a poem at a volume more suited for a poetry slam. The brown-eyed woman kept watching him.

  Though it appeared that she didn’t understand the poem, she applauded politely when he was finished. She even smiled a little at a joke the black-clad poet made.

  A bouncer in a dark suit walked between the tables to warn the pub’s customers that it was closing time. A few older people had come to join the group at the table. At the center was a tall man with scraggly white hair who was twice as old as most of the others, but he was a famous author and seemed to know one of the young people in the group. The sulky blonde had returned after an extremely long visit to the restroom.

  “Let’s go up to my room and keep the party going,” the white-haired author offered, his words slurring. “I have a suite on the top floor.”

  They all got up and headed toward the elevators. As the doors opened, everyone jostled inside, pushing and shoving a bit, but laughing all the while. Everyone except the woman in the miniskirt and pink tights.

  “I’m leaving,” she said.

  These were the only words she said all evening. The others called to her and tried to convince her to join them in the packed elevator. She didn’t turn back, but walked steadily past the security guard toward the wide stairs. The last they saw of her, before the elevator doors shut, was the reflection of the chandeliers shining down on her pageboy haircut.

  PART ONE

  1989 – 1990

  She had to pee but tried not to think about it. She had to bike as fast as she could in order to get to the convenience store. Tessan’s mother would not wait for her. She was that kind of mother. If you weren’t where you were supposed to be on time, there’d be no ride for you. She had to get that ride or her dance class would be over before she even got there since the bus took twice as long. Her bicycle was almost new, and she pedaled as hard as she could. The narrow gravel road spread out before her. There were no streetlights, and it was getting dark. She didn’t mind that, as she knew the way by heart, but she felt uneasy thinking about what could be hiding behind the shrubbery along the side of the road. What if there was a flasher behind one of the bushes?

  Stupid flashers, stupid flashers, stupid flashers, stupid flashers. The words tumbled in her brain while her feet mechanically drove the pedals.

  She began to feel relief as she caught a glimpse of the streetlights on the main road. Once she got to the turnoff, she had to wait to let some cars pass. She got off her bike and glanced at the convenience store on the other side of the street. Her heart skipped a beat as she saw Tessan’s mother’s red car parked in front of the building. She leaped back onto her bike and darted across the street, almost getting hit by a truck but missing it by a hair. The truck braked w
ith a loud squeal and the driver laid on the horn. She skidded in beside the Audi, and, breathless, jumped off the bike and threw it into the bushes beside the store. She grabbed the back door handle and scooted into the backseat. Tessan was sitting in the front seat, as usual, beside her mother.

  “Really, Sophie! You were almost run over! That could have been a terrible accident. And you didn’t lock your bike.”

  Her pulse was pounding so hard in her ears that she didn’t hear what Tessan’s mother was saying. She panted, trying to get her breathing under control.

  “Didn’t you hear me? You have to lock your bike,” Tessan’s mother repeated. She was very strict. She often sounded irritated, though she routinely tried to hide it with pleasant words.

  Sophie got out, dragged her bike out of the bushes and led it to the bike stand. She locked it and hurried back to the car.

  Drive now, drive now, drive now, drive now…the words ricocheted through her head with the same rhythm as before.

  Finally the car was moving and leaving the parking lot. Sophie leaned back in her seat and relaxed with a great sigh.

  Made it, made it, made it, made it…

  An ice-cold wind was blowing in from the sea. The chill bit Sophie’s ears and fingers as she biked back home a few hours later. In her hurry, she’d forgotten her mittens and knit cap, of course.

  In the distance, she saw swirling blue lights pulsing through the darkness. Farther away She could just make out people moving in front of a red glow.

  Her legs did not want to keep moving. She couldn’t make it the last few hundred yards. She didn’t want to make it…don’t want to…don’t want to…don’t want to…

  * * *

  “We found the girl at the side of the road over there. It looked like she’d fallen over, and the bike was in the ditch below her. We were leaving the fire scene because we’d finished there, and our headlights caught her just sitting there. We thought it was strange, because the ambulance should have spotted her when it passed by just a few minutes earlier.”

  “Did she say anything?”

  “No, she just looked at us.”

  “Was she in shock?”

  “Absolutely. We drove her to Östra Hospital. Her little brother and her mother had already gone.”

  “Did you talk to her in the car?”

  “No. I wrapped her in a blanket and sat with her in the backseat. I tried to say something comforting, but she didn’t say a single word. It was odd.”

  “What was odd about it?”

  “Hard to put my finger on it…just the fact that she didn’t say anything. She wasn’t calling for her mother or brother. She didn’t even ask about them. She wasn’t crying, either.”

  “She just sat and stared?”

  “That’s right.”

  Superintendent Sven Andersson looked at his newest inspector thoughtfully. She’d joined the department just a month earlier. He had a hard time hiding his irritation that he’d gotten a female inspector, and one with two small kids to boot. He didn’t like it one bit. The Superintendent sighed and got a questioning look from his fresh-baked detective inspector.

  Irene Huss had a great deal of respect for her new boss. He had a good reputation as a policeman, even if he had some rough personality quirks and was known to have a short fuse.

  She’d been nervous her first few days on the job, but she was beginning to get used to him. As long as she did her job, he would come to change his mind about her. And besides, women officers were no longer so unusual on the force.

  “It’s been three months since the day you and your partner found the girl on the side of the road. Let me tell you, she still just sits and stares, saying nothing at all!”

  The Superintendent’s voice rose; his anger was apparent. Or perhaps he was just frustrated, not angry. Irene knew that the Superintendent had no children of his own.

  Irene raised her eyebrows but remained quiet. She didn’t really know what she should be saying. She was not part of the Björlanda District house fire investigation. She and her colleague, Håkan Lund, had been the first patrol car on the scene, but that was all. The only thing she knew about the investigation was what she’d read in the newspapers.

  “Both Hasse and I tried to get her to talk, but it was impossible! She just sat and glared at us with those big brown eyes of hers.”

  “Is she able to speak? I mean, are you sure she’s not mute?”

  “No, she can talk. She’s apparently the silent type, even before the fire, I mean. Do you know how old she is?”

  Andersson gave her a look before he replied, “Read it for yourself. It’s all in the paperwork. You and Sophie Malmborg are going to take over the questioning.”

  “But why should…I mean, if she won’t talk to you or Hans…”

  “You’ve just answered your own question. She does not want to talk to us. Why? Maybe because we’re men. So the shrinks say. We’re going to test that by putting you in. You’re a woman. You have kids yourself.”

  Irene was floored. This was a big case to be just dumped in her lap. A man had died in the fire and there were still lots of unanswered questions. There were even indications that Sophie might know something important, or maybe more than that…

  “Or do you think you can’t handle it?” Andersson challenged.

  There was a threat beneath his sarcasm. If you can’t figure this out, you won’t stay long in this department.

  Irene felt her stomach turn into a lump of ice. Then a warm wave swept through her body and she forced herself to look her boss in the eye and steady her voice before she replied.

  “I’ll talk to her.”

  “Good. She’ll be here tomorrow.”

  * * *

  Irene was sitting at her desk in the office she shared with Tommy Persson. He’d started working as a detective inspector the previous year, and he was also the one who’d convinced her to apply for the job in the department.

  They’d met at the Police Academy in Stockholm and they’d become good friends—perhaps, in the beginning, because they were the only ones from Göteborg at the Academy. Irene’s then-boyfriend, Krister, had been wary of Tommy at first, but now they were all close, and Tommy had even been Krister’s best man at their wedding five years ago. Irene was seven months pregnant with the twins when she married, and she thought she looked like the Potemkin in her wedding pictures. She was twenty-four at the time. Her own parents had been older when she’d been born. Her mother, Gerd, was thirty-six and her father, Börje, forty-five. Irene found it funny that her parents had the same age difference she and Krister had.

  “So here you are—daydreaming!”

  Tommy’s happy greeting jerked Irene out of her thoughts. She hadn’t heard him open the door. He was grinning from ear to ear as he headed for his desk.

  “Martin can say ‘Pappa!’ Well, he says ‘pa-pa-pa-pa.’ It’s almost his first birthday. He’s obviously advanced for his age, just like his old man.”

  Tommy was filled with pride. Martin was his first son with his wife, Agneta. Irene was the boy’s godmother.

  She couldn’t help but smile. “Great! Or should I say congratulations? Just be happy that ‘pa-pa-pa-pa’ is all he can say. Once he’s started talking, you’ll wish you were back in the good old days. I was almost late this morning because Jenny threw a fit the minute we walked in the door at preschool.”

  “Did she want to go?”

  “Oh, yes, she loves preschool. But she wanted me to promise to buy her a pet tiger before I left.”

  “The tiger she wants to keep in the yard?”

  “That’s the one. She’s not letting go of the idea.”

  Krister and Irene had brought the twins to Borås Zoo one fine Sunday afternoon in August. Jenny and Katarina had run around from animal to animal and jumped with joy whenever they caught sight of a new one. Katarina liked the monkeys the best, but Jenny had fallen head over heels for the tigers. She wanted one for herself. She said they could put a high fenc
e around the backyard they shared with the other people in their townhouse row. Jenny was not dissuaded by the argument that tigers were dangerous and might like to make a meal of the residents. She insisted it would be the nicest tiger in the world. She’d raise the tiger from a cub and teach it not to eat meat, so the neighbors would be safe. She started to save all her allowance toward the tiger, putting her money into her red plastic piggy bank. Jenny called it her tiger bank. Every bit of money that came her way would go toward the tiger.

  Last weekend, Jenny had demanded that Irene open the piggy bank so she could count the money. Irene struggled with the lid on the piggy’s stomach, but finally got it open. She counted to thirty-two Swedish kronor and 50 öre. Jenny looked at Irene with her big eyes and asked breathlessly, “Is that enough?”

  “No, a tiger is pretty expensive. Keep saving and maybe you’ll have enough money in…oh…two or three years. Or maybe you could buy something else that you’d like.”

  “A Barbie house!” Katarina suggested.

  “No, I want a tiger!” Jenny said with determination.

  Katarina loved to play with her Barbie doll. She could occupy herself for hours combing the doll’s long hair and changing her clothes. Jenny, on the other hand, was completely uninterested in Barbies. She would rather stand in front of the mirror and sing, imitating her idol, Carola.

  “She’s old enough now that she’s beginning to understand she will hardly be able to come up with enough money for a tiger, so this morning she decided to see if throwing a fit would work. It was awful. All the preschool teachers came running. They probably thought I was abusing that child,” Irene said with a sigh.

  “If I know Jenny, I believe she’ll settle this tiger issue one way or another,” Tommy was laughing.

  “I’m sure she will. Speaking of children, I just got the word from Andersson that I’m supposed to take over the questioning of that girl, Sophie Malmborg.”