The Fire Dance

by Helene Tursten

  Other evenings they’d play games, although things could get hot when one of the girls lost her temper. Both girls hated to lose; for the sake of peace in the home, the girls often would play on the same team and were often allowed to win.

  Irene went into the kitchen to prepare Sammie’s food.

  Sammie was now lying in the hallway, watching to make sure the process was done correctly. He could hear the sound of dry food dropping into the bowl. Then there were leftover bits of Värmland sausage from Wednesday’s dinner. Warm water was spread over all of it.

  When Irene put the bowl on the floor, Sammie flung himself at it with enthusiasm. He began to chew, loudly content. At least one being on this planet appreciated Irene’s food preparation abilities.

  What were the humans going to eat this evening? Irene had no idea, but trusted that her husband was going to see to this part of the program. Krister always finished at 4 p.m. on Fridays when he had the weekend off. He’d often go to Saluhallen, the Food Market, and shop before he headed home.

  For the past few months, the family had had two cars. They still had their Saab, now thirteen years old, and they’d also taken over the Volvo that had once belonged to Krister’s father. Both cars still ran well, though the Volvo was fairly old as well. According to Krister, they’d last for another few years. He’d given them names to boot: “Old Betty” and “Bosse”. Their cars were the oldest ones in the townhouse parking lot. Irene felt it was a touch too luxurious to have two cars in the family, but it made things so much easier, especially since she and Krister had odd work schedules.

  It was quarter past six and Krister still hadn’t come home.

  Irene tried to reach him on his cell phone, but only got the message that “this number cannot be reached now.” She called Glady’s Corner and asked for him, but found out that he’d left the restaurant at the normal time.

  A dull apprehension churned in her stomach, but she told herself that there was nothing to worry about yet. Perhaps Krister had run into a friend and they had decided to have a cup of coffee together. Or perhaps he’d remembered an important errand. Or…or…what? Irene glanced at the clock and saw it was now six thirty. Why had Krister turned off his cell phone?

  Sammie began to whine and circle in front of the door. What goes in must come out. The dog had to be walked. Irene snapped on Sammie’s leash and threw on her coat.

  They took a brisk walk through the wind and rain without running into any other humans or dogs. The other houses looked warm and inviting. Everyone was enjoying their Friday evening except her. She knew this was an illusion. As a police officer, she knew what was often hidden behind respectable house facades. For instance, the man suspected of child abuse lived in a brand new house in Askim with a wife and two young children. He’d been an elite athlete in the past and had a degree in sports psychology. When he was arrested, he’d just gone to pick up a brand new BMW 530i.

  He had certainly kept up appearances.

  Every ten minutes, Irene called Krister’s cell phone number. Still no answer. After an hour, Sammie wanted to go in. It was too wet and rainy even for him. When Irene opened the front door, she was hoping to be met with the aroma of wonderful food being prepared in the kitchen.

  The house was just as empty as when she’d left. Krister had not come home.

  At a quarter to eight, the phone rang, cutting through the silence of the house. Irene rushed to pick up and she could hear her own lack of breath as she answered. “Irene here.”

  “Mrs. Huss?” The voice was that of a young woman. She sounded chilly and impersonal, but perhaps she was just being firm. “This is Ellen Brinkman. I’m a doctor at Sahlgren Hospital. We have admitted your husband through the emergency wing. He—”

  “What happened?” Irene was practically screaming. She was surprised at how emotional her reaction was. She could hear her heart begin to pound wildly and she felt dizzy, as if she might faint.

  “He’s not in danger. He seems to have suffered temporary amnesia. He did not remember his name or where he lived. He’s lost his cell phone and his wallet, so we weren’t able to identify him right away. His memory’s begun to come back, which is how I knew to reach you. Can you come here?”

  “Of course, of course,” Irene managed to croak out.

  Her mouth felt dry and her hands were shaking as she replaced the receiver. She had to sit down on a kitchen chair to recover for a minute before she got ready to drive to Sahlgren Hospital.

  * * *

  Before Irene was allowed to see Krister, the nurse in charge of his case told her what had happened. Someone had called the police at 4:35 p.m., a butcher from Saluhall who said one of his customers was acting in an odd manner. He had purchased almost 2000 Swedish kronor worth of meat and had not blinked as he paid in cash. When the butcher went for change, the customer had looked at him strangely. Then he’d turned on his heel and walked out, leaving both his money and his purchase.

  The next call had come from NK half an hour later.

  They’d phoned to ask the police to come get a man who seemed sad and confused. He did not know his name or where he lived. His wallet was gone. The police officer who took down the call noted that the description matched the man the butcher at Saluhall had reported earlier.

  When the police picked him up, they drove him straight to the emergency room.

  The nurse laid a comforting hand on Irene’s arm. She said, “The doctor who examined him says that he is not in danger of any acute mental harm. He is back to normal. On the other hand, we have no idea what made him suffer this temporary memory loss. Often when something like this happens, we find the patient is suffering from overwhelming stress and over-exertion. Does this fit your husband?”

  “Well…yes…he often works overtime. There’s always so much to do, and they often don’t have enough help,” Irene replied.

  Krister looked pale and exhausted. He tried to smile as Irene leaned over to give him a kiss on the mouth, but his smile seemed more like a grimace. At least he was making an effort, and he looked happy to see her.

  “I want to go home,” he said, tiredly.

  “Tomorrow. Nurse Lena said you have to stay here overnight for observation.”

  “That’s fine. I guess I am feeling a little weak.”

  The nurse who had brought Irene to his room shook his shoulder gently and said, “Krister, you can’t fall asleep. Right now I need to check your pulse and blood pressure and look at the size of your pupils.” She glanced up at Irene and smiled. “Just routine. We are going to do an ACT in about an hour. There is a small risk there is some intracranial bleeding, so we always check just to make sure.”

  The nurse performed the examination quickly and efficiently. Then she jotted the results on his chart on the nightstand next to a stethoscope and a blood pressure cuff.

  She was middle aged, slightly plump and rather short, but somehow she gave Irene a sense of comfort. She seemed competent and had a friendly, motherly way about her, which was just what Irene needed that moment.

  Irene picked up her courage to ask: “What does intracranial bleeding mean?”

  “We don’t know why Krister lost his memory. We have to rule out a stroke or a blood clot. These things can be seen on an X-ray.”

  The nurse glanced at Krister, and Irene knew she didn’t want to worry him. She felt worry gnaw at her own heart.

  How sick is Krister really? What is going to happen to him? What will it mean if the doctors find something on the X-ray? What will it mean if they don’t?

  Mostly to calm her own fearful thoughts, Irene asked, “Have the police been here yet? It seems someone took his cell phone and wallet.”

  “Since Krister had trouble with his memory, the police decided to wait until tomorrow morning to question him. Perhaps everything will be clearer then,” Nurse Lena replied.

  The police had probably made a good call, but Irene still felt frustrated. Her husband was likely the victim of a crime, and she wanted her
colleagues to get right to work. At the same time, she knew it was Friday night in a big city. Parties were just getting started. There’d be many more thefts, fights and assaults before the night was through. Perhaps even a murder. The police department’s resources were already stretched thin, so if they could put off questioning someone until the following morning, when things were calmer, they would do so.

  Irene was suddenly overwhelmed by exhaustion. All her strength was gone, and all she wanted to do was cry. She couldn’t upset Krister by giving in to that impulse. She’d have to keep her spirits up. She took his hand and gave it a squeeze.

  “Do you remember anything at all about what happened?” she asked.

  Krister turned his head to look at her. He wet his dry lips with his tongue before he replied. “I parked my car at the usual spot. It’s on the top floor of the parking garage. I remember walking over Kungsportsplatsen and into the Saluhall. Then nothing. Everything went black. The next thing I remember is lying here in this hospital bed.”

  The Nurse jokingly wagged her forefinger at Irene and Krister as she said, “No more interrogations today! Krister needs to rest.”

  As she was speaking, the door opened and a rolling bed was pushed into the room.

  “Now you’ll have some company,” the nurse said to Krister. She turned to Irene and said, “Unfortunately, I’ll have to ask you to leave now. This patient is in a bad state.”

  Irene nodded and got up from the chair beside Krister’s bed. She gave Krister another kiss, and he did his best to respond. His eyes were already half-closed, and it looked like he was going back to sleep.

  Irene glanced at the new patient. He was an old man lying completely still, his eyes closed. He was extremely thin and his yellow-tinged skin seemed to be glued to his cranium. In a bad state, the nurse had said. Irene thought the man looked dead, and she had certainly seen enough corpses in her line of work to know.

  On the way home, Irene suddenly felt hungry; she hadn’t eaten since lunch. For simplicity’s sake, she drove to the pizzeria on Frölunda Square and bought a pizza to go.

  Then, as she held the warm pizza carton in her hands, she realized it had been a mistake. Now it was too late.

  Sammie was overjoyed when she got home. He hated to be left home alone, and the feeling only intensified as the years passed, perhaps because his sight and hearing were starting to decline. Or perhaps he was fearful, as many old folks can be. He would be twelve in the spring, a considerable age for a dog.

  Irene didn’t bother to get out a plate; she’d eat the pizza right from the carton. Krister would have gotten angry if he saw her. Style and good manners at the dinner table were important to him. At least she’d gotten a glass for her beer. Even for her, drinking directly from the can was too much.

  She put the pizza, the glass of beer, a small salad, tableware and the can containing the rest of the beer onto a tray and brought it upstairs to the television room. She surfed through the channels and finally found a Goldie Hawn film.

  Goldie was playing a confused, cute blonde as usual. She’d get herself into trouble and then get herself out again by the end of the film. Irene couldn’t handle even that level of mindlessness. Her thoughts and concern for Krister overwhelmed her mind. She took a bite of pizza, and it tasted like silicon. The mouthful seemed to expand until, finally, she spat it out.

  She’d ordered a Quattro Stagione with ham, cheese, tomatoes, shrimp, mussels and artichokes. How could she have been such an idiot and believed she’d be able to eat an entire pizza with all this happening? How had she…?

  The cold pizza in front of her unlocked a barrier in her mind. She understood the truth in a sentence, which had been repeated many times during the investigation into Sophie’s murder. Sophie had her idées fixes, such as choosing the same pizza every single time. Sophie never lied. She could keep silent, in order not to tell the truth, but she never lied.

  * * *

  “How's Krister doing?” asked Tommy right away on Monday morning. Tommy and Irene usually met in their office a few minutes before they would have to gather for morning prayer.

  “Under the circumstances, he’s doing fine,” Irene replied.

  “But I have to tell you that this has been the worst weekend of my life.” She gave Tommy an exhausted look.

  “Have they found his wallet and cell phone?”

  “No. He seems to have just put them down somewhere and then walked away from them, just like he did with the bags of food. He also has no idea why he bought so much meat. It was enough to throw a party or something! He…he started to cry when he told me this. He’s frightened about what he could have done during the time he had his memory loss. He’s…deflated. Completely lacking energy.” Irene sighed.

  Tommy nodded and said in all seriousness, “That’s probably exactly what’s happened to him. He’s used up all his energy and is burned out.”

  “Probably. The doctor says that there’s nothing physically wrong with him. It’s his mind, but he’s not mentally ill. Just exhausted and depressed. The doctor says that this is a definite sign of burnout.”

  “Depression can be serious. It might even be easier if he had a physical illness. People are more sympathetic when it comes to physical illnesses and injuries. People can’t see something invisible. They don’t understand.”

  “I know. I remember when I was attacked out in Billdal. It’s been more than six years, but just hearing the words ‘Hell’s Angels’ makes me physically ill. Sometimes my heart starts to pound if I hear a loud motorcycle. Now and then, I still have nightmares. And now this damned Hoffa reappears in another murder investigation!”

  “Yep. And we know why, now. Narcotics has informed us that Milan’s gang is definitely linked to the Banditos. Just as we expected at the beginning—Roberto Oliviera was killed as part of a turf war. Hell’s Angels was following Milan. When Milan knifed Roberto, it was a gift from heaven as far as Hoffa and his gang were concerned. Even those small players, the Pumas, suffered a blow when their leader was killed.”

  “Are all the guys in Roberto’s gang from Latin America? The ones I’ve questioned were.”

  “Most of them are. The local police tell us that there are some Swedish guys, too, as well as two guys from Kosovo. They’re not united by race or background; they are all part of the underclass.”

  “Any girls involved?”

  “Nope. Their motto is No Girls Allowed.” He smiled a teasing smile and got up from his desk chair. It was seven thirty. In other words, time for morning prayer.

  Svante Malm looked over the collection of police officers, who appeared half awake. Svante had forgotten to comb his hair after his bike ride into work. Since it was a cold morning, he had been wearing a small knit cap so now his red hair, touched with grey, stuck out in all directions.

  The forensic technician never bothered about his appearance. His freckled face lit up when he smiled at Irene. He laid a few plastic bags on the table.

  “Good news!” he exclaimed and gave her a meaningful wink.

  In anticipation, she sat at the head of the table.

  “We’ve made some breakthroughs in the Sophie murder investigation,” Svante said. “But I’m going to start with the box of nougat candy from Ingrid Hagberg’s apartment. We found no prints whatsoever on the box, which seemed to have been wiped clean before it was given to her. On the other hand, we did find a great number of prints on the Pressbyrå plastic bag. They belong to Angelika Malmborg-Eriksson.”

  Although Irene had somewhat expected it, she was still rather surprised. It was just plain stupid to clean the box but not to use gloves when handling the plastic bag.

  “We’re going to look at the silver clasps found on Sophie’s body. The maker’s mark showed that they we made in Norway in 1959. I’ve contacted some of our Norwegian colleagues, and they were able to fill me in. The clasps come from a Norwegian sweater. In the olden days, people used silver buttons and silver clasps to dress up their clothes. They were
part of folk costume. The more wealthy people used more silver on their sweaters. Today the use of real silver is rare. These days, they use tin. It’s our good luck that these were made of silver, because tin would have melted at this temperature.”

  Svante held up the plastic bags with the beautiful silver clasps. Then he placed them back in the small red plastic box and reached for a new bag, which he also held up. It looked empty.

  “Inside this bag we have two strands of hair. They were caught in the hinges from an old fold-up bed we found in the stable at Björkil, the farm owned by Ingrid Hagberg. The hair belongs to Sophie.”

  There was silence in the room as his words sank in.

  Svante was pleased with their reaction. He continued. “There are no fingerprints on the bed frame. It had been wiped down—actually, thoroughly cleaned. We found traces of cleaning fluid on it.”

  “She must have been lying on top of the mattress,” said Birgitta. “So how the heck did her hair get on the underside of the bed?”

  Irene cleared her throat and said, “I can answer that. When I was young and visited my grandparents, I used to sleep in a bed like that. Whenever I wanted to retrieve something that had fallen under the bed, I would get my hair caught on those hinges underneath. It hurt because it was hard to get my hair loose again.”

  “Most likely that is how it happened. I also found Sophie’s hair in the bathroom right next to the office, where we now believe Sophie was kept prisoner. Both the bathroom and the office had been thoroughly cleaned. Quite a bit of cleaning fluid was used, too,” Svante said.

  “How do we know that the hair belongs to Sophie?” protested Jonny. “The top half of her body was burned completely up!”