The Fire Dance

by Helene Tursten

  The gang killings were beginning to feel like one long nightmarish investigation with the certainty that these were not the first incidents, and were definitely not going to be the last. Gang criminal activity was on the rise. It cost time and real money to conduct these difficult investigations, during which neither side was going to help the police.

  Instead, the gangs carried out their own justice. Now there was the risk that more young men would be injured or killed.

  One light in the darkness was the new 24-hour hotline that the social services had set up with the local police in the districts of Bergsjön, Gunnared and Biskopgården. The aim was to break the gangs’ recruiting cycle. At-risk young people would be counseled to try to keep them from starting down a path of crime. The boys and girls were between the ages of twelve and eighteen; they’d been caught with drugs or were suspected of theft and breaking and entering. Each one caught was brought into the group with a plan that would help them return to society. The head of the local police had already expressed his surprise that so many young people had been brought in—many of them quite young indeed.

  On Thursday everything began to happen at once.

  Irene’s phone rang at quarter past eight. She almost knocked over her cup of coffee as she reached for the receiver. Before she could speak, a sharp female voice trumpeted over the line: “Nurse Ulla at Happy River Assisted Living here. Are you the policewoman who visited Ingrid Hagberg last week? Who brought the sweets?”

  “Yes…I’m Detective Inspector Irene—”

  “Why are you here again?”

  Irene was confused. “What do you mean? You think I’ve come and visited Ingrid Hagberg before?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. Did you?”

  “No, I didn’t. I’ve been much too busy here. I—”

  “She’s back in the hospital. Same reason. Someone has given her sweets. This time it was a box of Viennese nougat candy.”

  “Wha…” was the most intelligent thing Irene could manage to say.

  “Viennese nougat. Someone gave her a big box of candy. We found the box and it was completely empty.”

  Before Irene could say anything else, the nurse continued, “Ingrid was released last Saturday despite the fact that her blood sugar levels were still high. They are always high, but this time catastrophically so. Her diabetes is in its last stages. One reason is that, especially after her head injury, she can’t manage her diet. I found her this morning in a diabetic coma again when I came to check her blood sugar levels.”

  “Is the box the candy came in still there?” asked Irene when the nurse paused to take a breath.

  “Yes, it’s still on her kitchen table.”

  “Please don’t touch it. And please don’t let a cleaning person into the room.”

  “I’ll tell them to wait if her room is scheduled to be cleaned today.”

  “Good. I’ll be there in about an hour. Could you let me and a police technician into her apartment?”

  “Sure. You have my cell phone number. Call me when you get here.”

  Irene called down to the lab and reached Svante Malm. He promised to come with her to Torslanda.

  Tommy walked into the room and Irene was just about to give him the whole spiel about the Sophie case, from the Halloween party to the box of candy, when the phone rang again.

  “Detective Inspector Irene Huss.”

  “Hi, Erik Johansson here!” a young male voice trumpeted.

  “I see,” Irene said uncertainly. She couldn’t place the voice right away.

  “From Berzén Real Estate Agency. We met last Friday at the farm.”

  “Yes, yes, of course.” The coin dropped. “Sorry I didn’t recognize your voice.”

  “Not to worry. I’ve just sold the farm. And when the new owner and I were going through the place really thoroughly, I happened to remember what you told me. Like, if a room stood out in any way. If it was messier or something. I didn’t think of anything when you were here. Mostly I was thinking about the house itself. It was just messy all over. But the owner and I went through the barn, too. You know there was a riding school there, right?”

  “Yes, I know about that.”

  “The riding club rented the place from the old lady for years. But then they didn’t renew the lease.”

  “Yes, I heard they built their own place.”

  “Exactly. They moved on two years ago, according to the papers I have in front of me. The riding club had a changing room and an office built in the barn. It has been abandoned since they left. When the new owner and I went in, it hit me that the office was sparkling clean. In fact, unnaturally clean.”

  “Unnaturally clean?” Irene echoed.

  “Yes. You can eat off the floor. Not even a dead fly, so to speak. And the toilet is squeaky clean and the water has not evaporated out of the bowl and…”

  “Erik, could you let me and a police technician into the barn today?” Irene could hear the tension in her own voice.

  All signals were go. This was definitely something.

  “Sure. I can meet you there at one p.m. Right now I have a showing.”

  “After one is fine. Thank you very much for calling.”

  Tommy was giving Irene a questioning look. She smiled back, suddenly full of energy. “Get more coffee. This is going to take a while. Then let’s go over to Sven, so I don’t have to say everything twice.”

  Nurse Ulla unlocked the door to Ingrid Hagberg’s apartment. The smell of an old, sick person hit Irene as they entered, just like the previous time she had been there.

  When Irene stuck her head briefly into the bedroom, she smelled ammonia. She couldn’t explain why. Maybe it was her imagination.

  An open box sat in the middle of the kitchen table. It was empty. They could see the square niches for the missing nougat. The cover showed a couple dancing a Viennese waltz—Viennese nougat, of course. The sweetest candy ever made. And easiest to eat, too, as far as the wrappers strewn about the table revealed. Only one piece was left. Ingrid had eaten each and every piece except this last one. Hardly a healthy thing to do for a diabetic, especially if she’d gobbled them all at once.

  “I can’t understand who would give her candy,” Nurse Ulla said indignantly.

  Irene thought that the nurse was giving her a distrustful look, but perhaps she was just imagining it.

  “Did anyone visit her yesterday?” asked Irene.

  “Not that I know of. Ingrid is fairly solitary. She almost never has visitors. Just that young man who comes around sometimes.” Nurse Ulla pointed to Frej’s graduation picture.

  Svante Malm placed the empty nougat box and all the wrappers into a plastic bag. He had already put on full protective covering so he would not contaminate anything as he searched for evidence. Irene and Nurse Ulla wore only paper shoe covers and paper head coverings. They had strict orders from Svante not to touch anything and to move as little as possible while in the apartment.

  “No indication the candy came through the mail,” Svante said. His voice was muffled as he was on his knees with his head under the countertop. “There’s no mailing envelope in the garbage. But there is this.”

  He held a plastic bag from a convenience store with a pair of tweezers. There was no Pressbyrå anywhere near Happy River, which showed that Ingrid Hagberg did have a visitor yesterday.

  Operation Knock-on-Doors did not yield any results. None of Ingrid’s neighbors had seen, or heard, anyone visit Ingrid. Irene figured out that her neighbors did not have much contact with Ingrid.

  The neighbor next door was a tiny woman who boasted that she was about to turn ninety-four next month. She kept telling Irene this. She seemed very glad to have a visitor—a person who, most importantly, listened to everything she had to say. After twenty minutes, Irene was exhausted. Nevertheless, she was able to confirm that the talkative old lady had neither seen nor heard anyone come to Ingrid’s apartment yesterday. Of course, as she put it herself, her hearing and sight were
not what they’d been, but since she was just about to turn ninety-four, that could be overlooked.

  The woman reminded Irene of a porcelain doll, but she had tough opinions about her neighbor. Ingrid had been, “antisocial” and “unpleasant,” and she never wanted to participate in any activities the assisted living center arranged for the residents.

  All the other residents Irene talked to confirmed this description of Ingrid as “antisocial.” She was not exactly well-liked.

  Irene and Svante decided that Sven Andersson would have to decide if there would be a larger-scale Operation Knock-on-Doors at all three buildings in the apartment complex. Even if it had been rainy and dark yesterday afternoon, someone might have seen something suspicious.

  Irene and Svante managed to wolf down a pizza at Torslanda Square before they drove to the farm in Björkil.

  Erik Johansson’s sports car was already parked in the farm driveway. He was opening the barn door and waving to them as they got out of the car.

  “Over here!” he called. His smile was wide and inviting.

  “Are you sure he’s a real estate agent and not an entertainer?” Svante muttered to Irene as they walked toward him.

  Irene introduced Svante to Erik as they went into the barn. It was a large building with a large space between the ground and the ceiling. The ceiling was lower over the horse stalls, with the hayloft above them. Erik led them right through the barn to a heavy wooden door, which looked rather new.

  “This is the changing room,” he said. He held the door open for them.

  It was a long, narrow room with orange metal lockers along the walls. There were also massive hooks on which the students probably kept various pieces of horse equipment. There were a few small windows over the lockers.

  “Why did the riding school leave the lockers behind?” asked Irene.

  “All the interior fixtures belonged to the aunt,” Erik said.

  Next to the door was a small toilet.

  The young agent walked over to a smooth oak door on the other side of the changing room. He unlocked it. He used a common ASSA key, but Irene saw that there was also a 7-lever tumbler lock.

  “Here’s the office,” he said.

  The room had no windows. It was hardly more than ten square meters and was completely empty of furnishings, except for one poster on the wall showing the anatomy of a horse. Erik Johansson strode across the floor and opened another door. “There’s a toilet here, too.”

  “I’d prefer it if you wouldn’t touch the door handles too much,” Svante said and smiled. “Fingerprints and the like, you know.”

  “Oh, jeez! I hadn’t thought of that!” Erik said with a guilt-stricken face. He let go of the door handle as if it were red hot. “But I do have to tell you,” he added. “A number of people have come through here—potential buyers.”

  “Don’t worry, but it would be nice if we didn’t add any more traces,” Svante said, as he pulled out protective gloves and hats. He gave Irene a meaningful look. “Why don’t you and our friend Erik here take a look at the stalls?”

  Irene read his mind and told the young man, “Here’s the deal. We’ll just be in his way here. We’ll be more useful looking around somewhere else.”

  Erik Johansson nodded, appearing relieved to turn the office room over to Svante. He looked curiously into Svante’s toolbox.

  He’s observant and curious, Irene thought. He’d make a good police officer.

  The stalls still had a slight smell of horse and hay, although two years had passed since the animals were taken away. There was a rusty bridle hanging on one of the pegs, and some pitchforks and shovels were propped in a corner. Otherwise, the place was empty. It was neat and tidy, but nowhere near as sparkling clean as the office room had been.

  Erik was right. Someone had recently cleaned that area thoroughly.

  “Not so much to see here,” Erik said, gesturing as if to include the entire barn.

  He went toward an old wooden door hanging crookedly on its hinges. He could walk through upright, but Irene had to bow her head.

  “This was a large storage space or maybe even a garage. An old tractor and a few pieces of ancient machinery. Old stuff.” Erik seemed to have little understanding of farm machinery.

  The light was dim in the storage space. The tiny windows were covered with spider webs and layers of dust. In the dark, Irene could see the tractor and something that looked like a harvester.

  “Are there any lights here?” Irene asked.

  “Sure, just a moment,” Erik said.

  A few tired fluorescent light strips began to sputter. Even though the windows were as dim as ever, Irene was now able to see much more clearly what was in the storage area.

  “Why don’t you start over by the door and I’ll start from this end,” Irene said. “If you see anything interesting, don’t touch it!”

  “Aye-aye, Chief Inspector,” Erik replied and gave a perfect military salute.

  Irene couldn’t help thinking that the influence of American television shows was getting much too strong.

  Obviously this area had been used to store all kinds of broken down machinery during the past decades. Irene felt as sting of nostalgia as she spied her father’s old light blue moped. Well, of course, it wasn’t her father’s, but one exactly like it, just missing tires. He’d ridden his moped to work for years no matter what the weather until her parents bought their first car in 1962. Irene had been much too young to remember the time before her parents had the car. Still, she remembered the moped very well. Her father, Börje, had kept it and fixed it up to give to her on her fifteenth birthday.

  It ran like clockwork. Some of her friends had made fun of her old moped, but she didn’t care. She loved her light blue Puch and rode around on it for many years.

  She was pulled out of memory lane by Erik’s voice on the other side of the storage area.

  “Ahoy! A bed!”

  Irene made her way over. He was pointing to an area where stairs went to the hayloft. Underneath it, between two slabs of Masonite, a wooden cot was folded up and stashed. Irene remembered sleeping in a bed like that when she spent her summer vacations at her paternal grandparent’s place in Falkenberg. The edges of the bed were heavy wood and there was a metal hinge in the middle. It had links on the bottom that rattled whenever the bed was unfolded or folded back up.

  “It’s not as filthy as the other stuff,” Erik pointed out.

  He couldn’t hide his excitement. Police work often had that effect on people, as long as they were not feeling threatened themselves.

  “You’re right. Let it be for now, and let’s see if there’s anything else, like clothes or sheets,” Irene said.

  Erik quickly rushed up the stairs and into the hayloft. He didn’t seem to mind that his light blue pants and his mocha jacket were not suited to mucking around in a filthy old barn. Irene heard his footsteps above her head. I hope he doesn’t fall through the floor, she thought. She hoped that his real estate insurance would cover any accidents in the course of a workday. But is he actually doing real estate work now? They’d have to say he was if anything happened to him.

  Irene poked around the junk without finding anything else of interest. Yet the bed is a good find, she thought.

  Erik came back down from the hayloft and reported that up there were just rotten hay and an impressive number of rats. Without thinking, he wiped his hands on his light blue pants, which was unfortunate. Palm prints now ran down both sides. He looked even worse when he rubbed his hand on his forehead. It looked like he was putting on camouflage.

  “You’ll have to go home and wash up before you meet your clients this afternoon,” Irene said, laughing.

  “Oh, it’s not so bad. I’ll have time to change. My next showing is at four thirty,” he said happily.

  Svante Malm thought the bed was an interesting item. Irene also put on protective gear, and together they managed to wrap the heavy bed in plastic.

  “No bedclothe
s?” asked Svante.

  “No, but she was on a mattress when she died in the fire.

  And fragments of the fabric used to set the fire indicated a cotton like the kind used in sheets. And there was a woolen blanket,” Irene reminded him.

  At her words, Erik turned a little pale. It had dawned on him that this was no game. They had gone on a scavenger hunt to find anything relevant to Sophie’s murder, and she had not been much older than Erik.

  Frederik Stridh needed help investigating the pedophile sports trainer. As they went through the man’s computers, both his home computer and the one he used at the office of the Sports Club, they found thousands of pictures of child pornography. Many of them were hard-core, showing rapes of boys not much older than three or four.

  “He’s been passing them around. We’ve found a whole new damned porn ring,” Fredrick said with a sigh.

  Simultaneous with this investigation was the need for a great deal of work on the gang killings. Irene decided to suspend her investigation over the weekend. Svante had promised to get back to her with some concrete results by Monday or Tuesday.

  When Irene went home Friday evening, she felt drained.

  She needed to take it easy the entire weekend and rest up.

  Sammie came rushing to greet her as soon as she stepped into the house, but no one else was around. The twins must have been home at some point, because they’d picked Sammie up from his dog-sitter. There was also a note on the kitchen table: Hello Parental Units! Jenny is making her record this weekend (the studio changed the day because they had something else come up for next weekend). She’s on the way to Skara with her band, and they won’t be home until Sunday evening. I’m going to capoeira, and Felipe and I will be going out afterward. Love, Katarina

  So only Irene and Krister would be home that evening.

  That would be nice and relaxing—just what she needed in her exhausted state. Still, she felt a twinge of missing her girls. Of course the twins were much more independent at their age and had their own activities and friends. Irene missed her Friday night family time, tubs of hot popcorn and good movies on television. But most importantly she missed the sense of security as the four of them cuddled on the sofa.