The Fire Dance (8 page)

Kajsa was the person who had received the missing person report. Angelika Malmborg-Eriksson had been expecting Sophia for a dance recital on September twenty-fifth. When she was unable to reach her the following day, she reported her daughter missing. When the charred body at the Högsbo industrial park was identified as Sophie, Kajsa had handed over the investigation to her former colleagues in the Violent Crimes unit.

Irene sneaked a glance at Tommy. Kajsa had been a source of comfort for him right after his divorce. Tommy’s divorce had been a complete surprise for Irene—and also a hard blow. Tommy and his ex-wife, Agneta, had been best friends with her and her husband, Krister. Nothing would be the same again. No more shared vacations or midsummer celebrations … no more New Year’s Eves together …

Suddenly Irene was aware that everyone at the table was looking at her. She said, confused, “What? I was just sitting here and …”

“We know. Taking a cat nap,” said Jonny Blom.

“Thinking,” Irene countered. She stared at Jonny angrily. It didn’t help a bit. Jonny was grinning, as he’d been able to get in his little dig.

“Yes? And what was the result of all your thought?” asked Andersson.

Irene mentally pulled up her earlier speculations about the case. “We can all agree that it is a remarkable coincidence that Sophie burned to death in that shed. Especially the burning, I mean. Fifteen years have gone by since we questioned Sophie about what really happened at Björkil, but we could never get her to talk. I think we must start again there: the fire at Björkil when Magnus Eriksson died.”

Fredrik Stridh swallowed the last bit of his slice of cake. He indicated that he wanted to ask a question. “Tommy told
me that you’d gone to the scene of the fire fifteen years ago. Why? You were working at the central station.”

Since both Fredrik and Birgitta had still been in training when the Björkil fire had taken place and Hannu was just starting at the Police Academy, Irene and Tommy had gone through the case with the entire group last Friday. Obviously Fredrik had been wondering how Irene and her colleague, Håkan Lund, who both worked in the central district at the time, had come to be in the northwest corner of Hisingen.

“Håkan and I were chasing a car thief. We lost him near Torslanda. When the alarm had come in at around five, we were the closest patrol car to the scene. All the cars in the seventh district were at the station for the shift change. We had been planning to head back to the station ourselves for the same reason, but as it turned out, we took the call on the fire in Björkil. We weren’t able to leave until about nine that evening, which is when we found Sophie next to her bicycle by the side of the road.”

“Did she say anything to you?”

“Not a word. I interpreted it as shock, but I’m not so sure.”

The superintendent gave her a gloomy look. “So you really think we should drag up that old investigation again?”

“I believe we
do
need to look at it.”

“Well, yes, I am aware that you were unhappy about how the investigation had gone before you took it over. Still, it didn’t last long. It was written off as a case of smoking in bed.” He didn’t even try to hide the sarcasm in his voice. When he was in that mood, no good came from arguing with him. Irene knew her boss much too well after all the years they’d spent working together. Perhaps he was aware of the holes in the case and also thought that the investigation of the Björkil fire had gone wrong. Andersson stared at her, but when Irene said nothing, he decided to keep talking.

“We must question everyone who was at the Park Aveny Bar the last night that Sophie was seen alive. There are no traces of her in the hotel, so she must have left. Why didn’t anyone see her go? There can’t have been that many young women walking around town in bright pink tights, am I right?”

The superintendent had a point there. He fell silent and began to drum his fingertips on the table.

How had Sophie left the hotel unnoticed? Her trail after that was still a puzzle. They’d grilled the security guard, Thomas Magnusson, to within an inch of his life, but no results. It had been a fine night with clear skies. There’d been crowds of people—most of them young and in various states of inebriation—walking up and down Göteborg’s main boulevard, Avenyn. Perhaps no one noticed Sophie because they were all too intoxicated.

“She went out the rear door. She did not want to be seen,” Hannu said calmly.

This was a theory they were all considering: the suspect had gotten Sophie to sneak out the back door of the hotel.

“Still, someone must have seen her. Someone must have driven her somewhere. We will have to have an all-out search. Question everyone. Taxi drivers, hot dog sellers, doormen and the usual gang. Fredrik, Jonny, Birgitta, you’re on it,” Andersson said.

He wrinkled his brow in thought for a moment. Then he hit the table with the palm of his hand.

“Tommy and Irene. You’re the most familiar with what happened fifteen years ago. Go dig up that old crap again. And you, Hannu, since you’re a … well, you can go talk to that foreign kid who lived with the girl.”

It was obvious that Andersson meant that Hannu should question Marcelo because he thought Hannu was also of foreign extraction, but he was completely off the mark.
Hannu was Swedish. He came from the Finnish-speaking area of Sweden called Tornedalen, so he did have a Finnish tinge to his Swedish when he spoke. That is, if he spoke at all. He was a man of few words. Why he would be the best person to talk to a Brazilian was anyone’s guess. Irene knew that Andersson didn’t make these kinds of gaffes on purpose, but she was starting to wonder. With a pang in her heart, she remembered that Andersson had mentioned retiring at the beginning of the year. In spite of everything, she was fond of her boss.

I
RENE SPENT ALL
of Tuesday going through the material about the fire in 1989. Now that she had fifteen more years of experience, Irene could see all the holes in the earlier investigation clearly.

Not a single detective had interviewed Sophie’s father, Ernst Malmborg. Now it was too late.

There’d been a short interview with Magnus Eriksson’s sister, Ingrid Hagberg, on the day after the fire, as she’d been the one to raise the alarm. Since her boss had told her to set aside the investigation, Irene had not dared to write a report about her informal conversation with the sister, and now she could remember only fragments of their talk.

There were no conversations recorded between Frej Eriksson and investigators. He’d been only eight years old when his father died, and he’d been at his aunt’s place when the fire broke out. According to Ingrid Hagberg, he’d fallen asleep after having a snack.
The boy must have had a long nap
, Irene thought. Ingrid had said that she couldn’t go to the scene of the fire while the boy was sleeping at her place. She had not wanted to awaken him. The fire alarm had come in at 4:56
P
.
M
. Irene had seen Ingrid and Frej arrive at the scene at around 8:45. This meant that the boy had been napping for over three and a half hours. It wasn’t
completely impossible, but it was strange for an eight-year-old to have an afternoon nap last so long into the evening.
Don’t people wake kids up if they nap too long? Just to make sure the kids sleep at night?
Well, Ingrid did not have children of her own, so perhaps she didn’t think about it.

Not a single one of Sophie’s teachers had been interviewed.

She would have to contact child services. They must have records on Sophie’s personality and mental states.

Perhaps it would even be possible to track down Tessan, the girl in Sophie’s ballet class? Her mother, Maria Olsén, had driven the girls to their ballet class. Hans Borg had talked to her, but the questioning session had been brief. Why had Sophie been out of breath when she’d biked to the store? Usually she was already standing there waiting in good time.

This was the detail that had made the police suspicious about Sophie in the first place. Did she set fire to the cottage, whether or not she knew Magnus Eriksson was sleeping there? Was this why she was burned to death fifteen years later? Or was this pure coincidence that both the girl and her stepfather died in the same manner?

Irene had no idea.

The only thing she could do was to go back to the beginning. But fifteen years had passed. Irene didn’t feel very optimistic that a renewed criminal investigation would yield results.

A
N IDEA CAME
to Irene about how she could find more information about Ernst and Sophie Malmborg. Perhaps it was a long shot, but she’d try.

When she arrived home, she spent a few minutes with her overeager dog, Sammie, who was always overjoyed when a family member returned home.

Jenny was in the kitchen, stirring a pot. Katarina was out practicing jiujitsu and wouldn’t be home until after eight. Krister would turn up at any minute. It was a rare day when the entire family sat at the table for dinner.

“Hi, sweetie, what are you making? It smells wonderful!” Irene called to her daughter in the kitchen.

“Lentil soup. I’ve made baked bananas for dessert,” Jenny informed her. “You can go ahead and pour yourself a glass of wine.”

Jenny had been a vegan for a few years now. Lately, she’d developed an interest in cooking. Since Krister was a professional chef, he found inspiration in her vegan creations. He’d lost about twenty pounds, a very good thing, but Irene found that she couldn’t reconcile herself to vegan food. She begged them to limit the vegan meals to three times a week. On the other nights, Jenny had to fend for herself and often got by on leftovers from the previous night.

Irene could hear the jangle of Jenny’s many thin silver bracelets as she stirred the soup.

Recently, Jenny had been dyeing her hair raven black and wearing a lot of red and lime green. Many years had passed since Irene had argued with her daughter about her choice of clothes. Jenny was grown now and could wear whatever she wanted. Her old-fogey mamma had been forced to realize that her daughter’s role as a singer in a rock band with a punk edge demanded a certain look.

“Pappa called. He’s running late. Someone got sick,” Jenny said from the kitchen. Irene sighed as she thought about her poor husband, who often had to stand in when one of the other cooks got sick. He’d been complaining of being too tired lately, which was certainly to be expected. Gladys’s was one of Göteborg’s most popular restaurants and even had a one-star rating in an international guidebook, so expectations from both the boss and the patrons were high.

As soon as Sammie had enjoyed his fill of petting and tickling, Irene went into the living room to search through the bookshelves. She found the paperback by Max Franke. His name was in bigger letters than the title. As she pulled the book from the shelf, a few grains of sand fell to the floor—a greeting from the sunny beaches of Crete. On the back cover was the name of the publisher and there she found what she was looking for: Borgstens Förlag AB. She wrote down the name on a slip of paper and put it in her wallet.

A
LL THE GATHERED
detectives sat as straight as candles in a candleholder as morning prayer was about to start. Even Superintendent Andersson sat quietly in his chair, waiting, because, as they found out that morning, Yvonne Stridner intended to grace them with her esteemed presence. Professor Stridner was practically a legend as the Head of Forensic Medicine in Göteborg and was known as one of the best pathologists in Europe. She herself would have insisted she was one of the best in the world.

A few minutes after the clock showed it was time to start, they could hear the energetic click of Stridner’s high heels on the hallway floor. Professor Stridner appeared in the doorway and surveyed the auditorium before making her entrance. She walked to the podium, leaving a waft of expensive perfume in her wake. She shrugged off her fur coat and fluffed her bright red hair. As always, her clothes were modern and tailored. This autumn morning, she wore dark brown linen trousers and an emerald green angora sweater with an eye-catching brooch fastened to the collar. The brooch was a leopard whose glittering red eyes caught the light. Irene assumed that the red stones were real rubies.

Yvonne Stridner spoke without further ado.

“Since I was coming to meet with the chief of police
anyway, I thought I would inform you of the results of Sophie Malmborg’s autopsy to save us all time.”

Stridner stared down the auditorium, and Superintendent Andersson shrank as her sharp blue-green eyes bored into his. Most people would have had the same reaction.

Satisfied with the attention of her audience, Stridner continued.

“Sophie was still alive when the fire began. Her nostrils and lungs are filled with soot. The soot particles reach as deep as the alveoli. In the lower lobes of the lung, the concentration of soot is fairly slight, which means that she was breathing shallowly. The cause of death was carbon monoxide asphyxiation. The fire was intense, but the lower body was not totally incinerated since it was covered by a thick rug. Therefore, we were able to run a number of tests. Prior to her death, she’d had a small meal, which consisted of tomatoes, cheese, bread, peppers and olives—probably a slice of pizza.”

“A capriccioso?” smirked Jonny, who couldn’t hold back a grin.

The glare Jonny received from the professor would have stopped a tiger in its tracks. They could hear the ice in her voice. “You must order an analysis from the lab if you need to know the kind of pizza in question. That is not my job.” She took her glare from Jonny and redirected it at the superintendent.

“I would like to continue without foolish interruptions.”

All Andersson could do was nod and send a warning glare at Jonny, who, for once, looked down at the floor and kept completely still.

“The toxicology report showed high levels of various sedatives and other narcotics in the contents of the intestine and in the tissues. Mostly diazepam and ketobemidone hydrochloride, as well as traces of dextropropoxyphene. The body also suffered from malnutrition. And …”