The Fire Dance

by Helene Tursten

  The diagnosis of prostate cancer had been a shock to them all, not the least for Irene’s mother, Gerd. Gerd still had a few years to go before her retirement from the post office. She’d said many times that she dreamed of traveling the world with Rune once she was done working. She hadn’t considered the possibility of a serious illness.

  Hope they’ve had fun in this great weather, Irene thought as she climbed into her freezing car. Twilight had come, but a light pink shimmer still dallied on the roofs of the houses.

  Here in the center of town, yesterday’s snow had turned into slush. Irene hoped that the slope in their townhouse neighborhood still had enough snow for sledding. The temperature had hovered around freezing the entire day, so perhaps snow still covered the tiny hill in the playground. It was the first winter the Huss family had spent in the townhouse neighborhood, and the twins had gotten used to their new surroundings quickly. They’d found lots of new friends, but that had created some friction between the Huss family and their childless neighbors who did not appreciate the children running through their flowerbeds during their wild games. Mr. Bernhög had come over to Irene and Krister to complain many times. Their relationship with the neighbors remained strained, but it was something they had to deal with now that they were living in a townhouse.

  Instead of taking her usual route over the Västerleden highway after her workout, Irene drove over the Älvsborg Bridge. Sinéad O’Connor’s new hit, “Nothing compares 2 U”, was on the radio. Irene sang along with the refrain and let her thoughts run freely.

  Even if Superintendent Andersson had decided to put aside the Björkils fire case, he couldn’t stop her from going out and taking a look at the area on her own time. Even though they were swamped with other cases, Irene couldn’t let this one go. Perhaps it was a nagging feeling that she’d failed somehow. Perhaps it was the riddle that was Sophie.

  During the past few nights, the girl and her dark eyes had been haunting Irene’s dreams…and there was that unusual electric aura surrounding her. There were too many unanswered questions in this investigation. For her own peace of mind, Irene decided to keep digging. She was now convinced that they would never get the truth from Sophie.

  Lost in thought, Irene missed the turnoff and had to drive a few hundred meters past it before she could turn back. The road was not plowed, but there wasn’t much snow left, so Irene had no trouble driving on it. The shadows had deepened between the trees, but the thin snow cover reflected the last glimmer of the fading sun.

  Irene sat in the car for a while and looked at the blackened remains of the house. A bit of the north-side wall and the foundation were still there and looked like rotting teeth standing upright in the twilight. The rest of the remains were piles shoved into various corners of the burned area, covered by the thin snow.

  What had happened that late afternoon in November?

  There were a number of scenarios.

  The first one was the one Angelika insisted was the truth as Sophie had told her: the girl had come home, had a snack, and then rushed off on her bicycle to make it to class. She did not notice that Magnus Eriksson was sleeping in the upstairs bedroom and she also had not smelled any indication of a fire.

  In that case, there were also four possible ways the fire could have started.

  The first was most probable: Eriksson had been smoking in bed and had fallen asleep while his cigarette was still lit. It had happened before.

  The second was that the unknown Björland arsonist had struck again. Perhaps the arsonist had thought no one was home when he lit the fire.

  Naturally there was a third possibility: there could have been a short in the electrical system of the old cottage. However, the technicians had not found any indications that this was the case. In fact, they’d stated just the opposite. The electrical system had been replaced and was completely new.

  Then there was the question of candles. Angelika had been asked whether there were any candles in the house, which could have been lit and not snuffed out. Angelika had replied that she had no candles in the house at all since she’d not yet put out any for Advent. She was certain that her husband would not have lit any candles and then forgotten about them. “He wasn’t the kind to have any candles around,” she’d said firmly.

  So that left the theory that kept bothering Irene. Sophie had come home from school and found her stepfather asleep, or passed out drunk, more likely, and therefore unable to wake up. The girl, in cold blood, could have set a fire and then ridden away on her bicycle for her ballet class.

  Premeditated murder.

  Would an eleven-year-old girl be capable of such a crime?

  If Irene had been asked that question a few weeks ago, she would have said a definite no. Now that she’d met Sophie, she was no longer so sure.

  But why would Sophie have wanted to kill Magnus Eriksson? According to Angelika, they’d gotten along just fine, even though “Sophie is the way she is.” They probably didn’t have a close relationship, but it appeared that Sophie didn’t have a close relationship with anyone, with the possible exception of her father. Ernst Malmborg was second on Irene’s list of people to contact.

  Irene opened the car door and got out. She took her flashlight, as nightfall was approaching. The snow crunched beneath her snow boots. She felt the temperature falling.

  She turned on her hefty walking stick flashlight and let the beam dance over the snow-covered remains of the house.

  She hadn’t expected to see much, and there really wasn’t anything to see. There were tracks left from birds and small animals in the snow.

  Not far from the main house, there was an outbuilding that was so rickety it seemed that the only reason it hadn’t yet fallen over was that it hadn’t decided which way to go.

  Irene walked up to it and unlatched the hook that kept the broken door closed. The hinges creaked as she opened it.

  The interior was almost entirely empty. There were a few broken gardening tools in a corner, and an empty cement bag fluttered in the draft from the open door. There was a rustling sound in the trash along the side of the wall, and Irene realized that the old shed still had some tiny inhabitants. She let the beam sweep over the junk on the floor.

  The voice behind her almost gave her a heart attack.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Irene swung around and the flashlight beam fell across a heavyset woman with a German shepherd. From the dog’s chest came a low growl. The woman held the leash in a tight grip as she stood in a wide stance.

  “Get that flashlight out of my face! Get out of here before I call the police!”

  The woman's kitchen was redolent of freshly baked cinnamon buns and good coffee. All the kitchen fixtures were avocado, which, together with the fir cabinet doors, revealed a renovation completed in the early seventies.

  Irene sat at the kitchen table and enjoyed a cinnamon bun while the German shepherd snored at her feet. The hefty woman stood at the stove filling a small pressed glass bowl with sugar cubes. She had on black corduroy pants and a black turtleneck covered by a beautiful knitted poncho in various shades of blue. The metal clasps on her clothing caught the light from the kitchen lamp.

  “You must forgive me. There have been so many strange people running around. Curious people or people looking to steal something. Just the thrill of gawking at a place where someone died…”

  The woman stopped speaking and her gaze fell on the flaps of the box holding the sugar cubes. Irene understood that this was a sensitive conversation. The woman had turned out to be Ingrid Hagberg, born Eriksson, the sister of the deceased. She had taken the death of her brother very hard.

  Once Ingrid had realized that Irene was a policewoman, she’d immediately invited her in for coffee. Irene, who knew she could use a cup, had agreed. In their conversation, Ingrid Hagberg revealed that she’d been widowed a few years previously and had no children.

  “So you see, when Magnus died, it was a big shock for me. He was the only
relative I had left…well, and Frej, of course…”

  By now, Ingrid was at the table and she stopped in midsentence to look down at her hands resting on the tabletop.

  They were unusually large for a woman’s. Her fingers were red and swollen and the fingertips were covered with deep cracks.

  “So Magnus was your only sibling?” Irene asked. She took another bite of the bun, breathing in the scent of cinnamon.

  “There were three of us all together. I was the oldest. Magnus was the youngest. Between us was Einar. He died in a moped accident. He’d gotten a moped for his fifteenth birthday and crashed it into a car the next day. Mamma grieved her way into an early grave—she had a heart attack a year later. She was only fifty-six years old. That’s the age I’m going to be this coming year, though not until October.”

  Ingrid took another bun. The woman was heavily overweight, and Irene thought she would be better off shedding a few pounds given her family’s health history, but there was also sense warmth under Ingrid’s rough exterior. Irene decided to change the direction of the conversation.

  “You mentioned Frej. How did you happen to arrive at the house with him in tow? You arrived at the same time as Angelika.”

  “Yes. Well, I was keeping an eye out for Angelika’s car. My farm is just across from the convenience store so I can see the bus stop from my kitchen window. I can also see whenever a car turns onto the road to the other farm. It’s the only house on that road and so there aren’t a lot of cars turning off there. I can recognize Angelika’s Golf—it has a dim headlight. So when I saw her car, I took Frej and drove after her. Of course, I couldn’t leave him here by himself. Though I still don’t know whether or not I did the right thing. Now he’s seen the house…the remains…but he wanted his mother and how could I have known?”

  Ingrid’s eyes were almost pleading. Irene nodded as if she understood. Of course the situation was difficult to deal with. Ingrid apparently felt very responsible for her nephew and, not only that, she’d never had children of her own so she wasn’t used to them. Irene took the natural follow-up question.

  “Why was Frej with you that Monday?”

  Ingrid looked away and Irene could tell that her confidence evaporated. “Magnus had asked me to pick him up from the school bus,” Ingrid replied shortly.

  “Did you often pick him up?”

  “Sometimes. Angelika teaches on some days and doesn’t come home until late in the evening. She has her daughter with her, of course. The girl also does ballet.”

  “But Magnus was home writing, wasn’t he? Why couldn’t he pick up his son himself?”

  Ingrid’s lips firmed into a thin line and she looked like she didn’t want to reply. She ran her chapped fingers through her grey-streaked hair. For a brief moment, she appeared truly angry, but then she sighed heavily and sank down into her chair. When their eyes met again, Ingrid’s were filled with tears.

  “Magnus had some problems. He and Angelika…that woman drove him to drink!” she whispered.

  “How so?”

  “That little bitch! She was always cheating on him. I warned him when he met her. I could tell at first glance what she was all about. A real whore! She was after his money, of course.”

  Ingrid’s broad face flushed bright red from her outburst. Shaking with anger, she grabbed another cinnamon bun and ate it in three quick bites. Irene’s ears had pricked up at Ingrid’s last sentence.

  “Magnus had money?” she asked.

  “Yes, he did. He’d won some and then he’d sold his half of our parents’ house to me and my husband. The same house that just burned. Magnus and I had grown up there. It was only five acres, so my husband and I bought it. Magnus wasn’t interested in keeping it. We redid the cottage so we could rent it out and maybe even sell it eventually. Then Magnus and Angelika lost their apartment…it was supposed to be renovated. So I let him rent the cottage.”

  “So the house had been your childhood home,” Irene stated with surprise.

  “That’s right.”

  “Was it insured?”

  “Yes.”

  Irene hurriedly thought how to put the next question delicately. “You mentioned that Magnus was having problems and had started to drink. Was he drunk that afternoon when the cottage caught fire?”

  Ingrid nodded. “I would go past when I walked Rex every afternoon…to check on the situation, you might say. I was worried. Sometimes I noticed that Magnus had…had a bit too much, and I offered to pick up Frej at the bus stop. Then I’d keep Frej at my place until Angelika came home.”

  “When did you pass by that particular Monday?”

  “Right after two in the afternoon. The usual time I go past there with my dog.”

  As if he understood he was being talked about, the German shepherd got up and put his head onto Ingrid’s lap. Ingrid scratched him tenderly behind the ears. Irene could see that Ingrid’s thoughts were far away from her pleasant kitchen.

  “So at two p.m., you found Magnus under the influence?”

  “Yes. It wasn’t that bad, but I still told him I would go ahead and pick up Frej.”

  “Did you talk to your brother later that afternoon?”

  “No.”

  “I read in the report that you were the one who called in the fire alarm. How did you find out? And when?”

  “It was right before five. I just happened to look out the window and I could see flames over the tops of the trees. There’s just a bit of forest between our properties. I realized at once that it must be the house burning, since there aren’t any others on that road. So I called the fire department.”

  “You didn’t go over there yourself?”

  “No, Frej was asleep and I didn’t want to wake him up. I also didn’t want to leave him alone.”

  “Weren’t you worried about your brother?”

  Ingrid looked at Irene for a long time before she answered.

  “No, not then. When I was at his place around two, he told me he was planning to go to Göteborg to turn in an article.”

  “So you assumed he wasn’t home when the house caught fire.”

  Ingrid nodded and looked down. A tear fell on the back of one chapped hand. She rubbed it dry on her pants. Then she took a deep breath and looked directly into Irene’s eyes.

  “He borrowed some money from me. For the bus. He said he had to get some new clothes, too. It was that article he was going to turn in…he said it was important that he look presentable. He hoped that the newspaper would give him a job.”

  “Which newspaper was it?”

  “I think he said it was GT.”

  Irene made a note inside her head to contact Göteborgs-Tidningen and see if Magnus Eriksson had an appointment to turn in an article on the same day he died.

  “When did you start to worry that he might have been in the house after all?”

  Ingrid gazed again at her work-worn hands for a long time before she answered. “The fire trucks and police cars came and went. An ambulance, too. Magnus didn’t show up. As I said, I can see when the buses stop outside the convenience store. Every time a bus stopped, I expected him to storm into my kitchen and demand to know what was going on. Still, as the evening wore on and he didn’t show up, I realized he wasn’t coming. I was still hoping up until the last…but…”

  Ingrid couldn’t keep talking. Her despair appeared genuine. Irene got the feeling that Magnus Eriksson’s sister was the only person who was actually grieving the fact that he had passed away. One could only guess what Sophie was thinking. Angelika seemed mostly angry that he hadn’t been insured. She needed money. On the other hand, Angelika did seem to think that Frej missed his father.

  “Why didn’t you call the House of Dance and try to reach Angelika?” asked Irene.

  Ingrid Hagberg stiffened. “We never talk. I didn’t even think of calling her.”

  Ingrid got up and went over to the sink and tore off a huge wad of paper towels. She blew her nose. Her back was to Irene as she su
ddenly said, “Do you think she did it?”

  “Excuse me, who do you mean?” Irene asked, confused.

  “That she did it. The girl. Do you think she set fire to the house?” Ingrid said with emotion. She turned and looked at Irene. Her eyes were now red from crying. Still, Irene could see something glowing inside them that resembled hate.

  “There is nothing to indicate that Sophie caused the fire. Neither on purpose nor by accident,” Irene said as calmly and definitively as she could.

  She got up from the table and thanked Ingrid for her time and for the coffee.

  As she drove away from Ingrid’s house, she glanced in her rearview mirror. The woman and her German shepherd stood like unmoving silhouettes in front of the open door and watched her go.

  * * *

  Irene and Tommy sat with the investigative material from the Guldheden rape cases in front of them, but somehow they’d gotten onto the topic of the Björkil fire.

  Irene told Tommy about her meeting with Ingrid Hagberg and how she had been unable to get through to Sophie. She was feeling more and more frustrated.

  “If only I could figure out what she’s hiding behind that mask of hers! What do you think?” she asked her colleague.

  Tommy shrugged slightly. “No idea. My son screams and the tears flow like a waterfall when there’s something going on he doesn’t like. When he’s happy, he bubbles with laughter. He can’t even try to hide what he thinks. Perhaps when kids get a little bit older, though…maybe if they’re ashamed or if they don’t want to talk about something…or want to protect someone.”

  “That’s right. Kids are loyal and they don’t tell. Who do you think Sophie is protecting? Or do you think she’s just trying to protect herself?”