The Fire Witness (22 page)

“No, no, no,” she moans. “Not like this. No … no…”

The last thing she’d heard of Vicky was her crying in the stairwell, and now she is dead.

“I don’t want this!” she screams.

She walks over to the china cabinet with the heirloom Seder plate she inherited from her father. She grabs the upper edge of the cabinet and hurls it over with all her strength. Its glass front splinters and shards whirl over the parquet. The beautifully detailed Seder plate breaks into five pieces.

Elin doubles over and drops to the floor as a single thought churns in her mind.
I had a daughter. I had a daughter. I had a daughter.

She sits up, takes a slice of the Seder plate, and drags its point across her wrist. Blood starts to run out, dripping down onto her knees. Elin makes a second cut, inhaling sharply from the pain. A key rattles in the front-door lock. Someone opens the door and comes in.

75

Joona is browning two thick ox fillets in a cast-iron skillet. He has tied up the meat and seasoned it with roughly ground black and green peppercorns. When the surfaces of the tournedos are glazed, he places them over sliced potatoes in a clay baking dish and salts them, then moves the dish into the oven. As the meat cooks, he makes a sauce of port, currants, veal stock, and truffles. Then he pours two glasses of a red Saint-Émilion.

The earthy aroma of the wine has spread through the kitchen when the doorbell rings.

Disa is there, wearing a red-and-white polka-dot raincoat. Her pupils are large and her face is damp from the rain.

“Joona, I’m going to test you and see if you are as good a detective as they say.”

“How can you test that?”

“By asking you if I look normal.”

“You’re more beautiful than ever.”

“That’s not it.” Disa smiles.

“You’ve cut your hair and you’re wearing that barrette from Paris for the first time in more than a year.”

“Anything else?”

Joona runs his eyes over her thin, blushing face, her shining hair, and her slim body.

“Those are new,” he says, and points to her high-heeled shoes.

“Marc Jacobs. A little too expensive for me.”

“They’re nice.”

“Anything else?”

“I’m not done yet,” he says, and takes her hands in his, turns them over, and inspects her fingernails.

He can’t help smiling as he says she’s wearing the same lipstick as the time they went to Södra Theater. He gently touches her earrings and meets her eyes and rests his gaze there a moment. Then he moves so that the light from the floor lamp falls on her face.

“It’s your eyes,” he says. “Your left pupil is not shrinking in the light.”

“Good detective,” she says. “I’ve had my eye examined.”

“Is there anything wrong?”

“The cornea has developed an astigmatism, but it’s not anything I have to worry about.”

Disa walks into the kitchen.

Joona says, “The food’s almost ready. The meat just needs to rest.”

“It smells wonderful,” Disa says.

“It’s been a long time since we saw each other last,” Joona says. “I’m very happy that you’ve come.”

They raise their glasses without saying a word. As always, when Joona looks at her, Disa feels as if she’s starting to shimmer. She forces herself to look away from his eyes, then tilts the wine in her glass, sniffs the aroma, and tastes it again.

“Perfect temperature,” she says.

Joona starts to arrange the meat and potatoes on a bed of arugula, basil, and thyme. He slowly pours the sauce over the plate as he thinks he should have talked with Disa long before now.

“How have you been?” he asks.

“Without you, you mean?” Disa says. “Pretty darn good.”

There’s silence at the table and she gently places her hand on his.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “But I’ve been so angry with you. Especially when I’m my bad self.”

“Who are you now?”

“My bad self.”

Joona takes a sip of wine.

“I’ve been thinking about the past lately,” he starts.

She smiles and raises an eyebrow. “Lately? You’re always thinking about the past.”

“I am?”

“Yes, you’re thinking about it but you never talk about it.”

“You’re right, I…”

He falls silent and his gray eyes seem to shrink. Disa feels a shiver go down her back.

“You asked me here for dinner because we needed to talk,” Disa says. “I had decided never to talk to you again. But now … Several months have gone by. And when you called—”

“Yes, because I—”

“You’re screwing around with me, Joona.”

“Disa, you can think of me however you want,” Joona says gravely. “But I want you to know that I care … I care about you. I think of you all the time.”

“I see,” she says as she starts to get up without looking at him.

“It’s something else. Something horrible, which—”

Joona watches her put on her polka-dot raincoat.

“Goodbye,” Disa whispers.

“Disa, I need you.” Joona is surprised to hear himself say these words. “You’re the one that I want.”

She’s staring at him now. Her shining black bangs reach her eyelashes.

“What did you say?” she asks after a few seconds.

“You’re the one that I want, Disa.” He gets up from the table.

“Don’t say that.”

“I need you. I’ve needed you all this time,” he says. “But I didn’t want to put you in harm’s way. I didn’t want anything horrible to happen to you if we—”

“What could happen to me that is so horrible?”

“You could disappear,” he says simply. He is holding her face between his hands.

“You are the one who disappears,” she whispers.

“I’m not easily frightened,” Joona says. “I’m talking about real events.”

Disa goes up on her toes and kisses him on the mouth and stays to feel his warm breath on her face. He searches for her mouth and kisses her again and again until she parts her lips.

As they kiss, Joona unbuttons her raincoat and lets it fall to the floor.

“Disa,” he whispers. He strokes her shoulders and slides his hands to her waist. He presses against her and breathes in her silky aroma. He kisses her collarbone and her throat and takes her gold necklace between his teeth. He kisses her chin and her soft, moist mouth.

He searches for her warm skin beneath her thin blouse. The small fasteners snap open. Her nipples are hard. She looks him in the eye then pulls him after her into the bedroom. Her blouse is open and her breasts are gleaming like polished porcelain.

They stop and kiss again. His hands stroke the small of her back, her ass, and then slip beneath the sheer cloth of her panties. Disa slowly draws away and feels warmth pulse in her body. She’s already wet. Her cheeks are bright red and her hands tremble as she unbuttons his pants.

76

After breakfast, Disa is propped up in bed, drinking coffee and reading
The Times
on her iPad. Joona is taking a shower.

Yesterday, he decided he would skip going to the Nordic Museum to look at the Sami bridal crown made from braided roots. Sometimes he just had to be near the crown in order to remember his former, entirely different, life. Instead, he is with Disa. He didn’t plan what had happened. Perhaps this was because Rosa Bergman’s dementia has cut his last remaining tie to Summa and Lumi.

It has been more than twelve years.

He has to understand that he has nothing to be afraid of now.

Still, he knows he should have warned Disa earlier. He should have told her what frightens him so that she could decide for herself. He stands in the bedroom doorway and watches her, unnoticed, for a long time, then slips into the kitchen to call Holger Jalmert.

“I heard that Gunnarsson was being difficult,” Holger says, amused. “I’ve had to promise him not to send you any copies of my reports.”

“Are you allowed to talk to me?” asks Joona.

He moves his sandwich and coffee cup from the counter to the table and waves at Disa, who’s reading her iPad with a wrinkled brow.

“Probably not,” Holger says with a laugh.

“Were you able to look at the purse we found at the dam?” Joona asks.

“Yes, I’ve finished my examination. At the moment, I’m in my car on my way back to Umeå.”

“Were there any notes or papers in the purse?”

“Only a receipt from Pressbyrån.”

“A cell phone?”

“No, unfortunately.”

“So what do we have?” Joona says as he lets his eyes rest on the gray sky above the rooftops.

Holger takes a deep breath and starts speaking as if he’s reading aloud from a list: “There are traces of what is most probably blood on the purse. I cut out a sample and sent it to the National Forensic Laboratory. Some makeup—two different lipsticks and a stump of a kohl stick—a pink plastic barrette, a wallet with a skull on it, some cash, a photograph of Vicky herself, some kind of bike tool, a prescription bottle without its label, which I also sent to the National Lab. A few pills of diazepam. Two pens. And hidden in one of the purse pockets I found a table knife as sharp as a sushi knife.”

“Nothing written at all? No names? No addresses?”

“No, that was everything.”

Joona hears Disa’s footsteps on the wooden floor behind him. He stays where he is. He shivers and a few seconds later he feels her soft lips on the back of his neck and her arms slip around his body.

She releases him and wanders off to take a shower. Joona sits at the kitchen table and dials the number for Solveig Sundström, the nurse responsible for the girls from Birgittagården. Maybe she knows what kind of medications Vicky took.

The phone rings eight times before it’s picked up.

“Caroline here, answering an ugly telephone that was left on a chair.”

“Is Solveig there?”

“I don’t know where she is right now. Can I tell her who’s calling?”

Caroline is the older girl. She’s a head taller than Tuula. He remembers she had old injection scars on the insides of her elbows, but she seemed to have things together. She appeared intelligent.

“Is everything going all right for you girls?” he asks.

“You’re the detective, right?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Is it true that Vicky is dead?”

“Unfortunately it seems so,” Joona replies.

“It feels strange,” Caroline says.

“Do you know what kinds of medications she was prescribed?” Joona asks.

“You mean Vicky?”

“Right.”

“I dunno, probably Eutrexa, but it’s hard to believe—she was so thin.”

“That’s an antidepressant, right?”

“Yeah, I used to take it. Now I just take Imovane,” Caroline says. “It’s fucking nice not to have to take Eutrexa.”

“What are its side effects?”

“Different for different people. I put on twenty-two pounds.”

“Does it make you tired?” Joona asks. In his mind’s eye, he sees the bloody sheets where Vicky slept.

“At first it’s the opposite. All I had to do was start sucking on the pill and it took off like gangbusters. It creeps through your entire body and you get angry and yell. I threw my phone against the wall once and another time I ripped down the curtains in my room. After a while, it stops making you angry and does the opposite. It’s like you have a warm blanket wrapped around you. You get tired and all you want to do is sleep.”

“Do you know if Vicky was taking any other medications?”

“I imagine she was like the rest of us and held on to anything that worked—diazepam, Lyrica, Stesolid, Ketogan.”

There’s a voice in the background and Joona realizes the nurse has come into the room and seen Caroline talking on the phone.

“I’m going to report you for theft,” the woman is saying.

“It rang and I answered,” Caroline says. “It’s for you, anyway. It’s the detective on the line. You’re a suspect in the murder of Miranda Eriksdotter.”

“Don’t be stupid,” the nurse says. She takes the phone and clears her throat before saying, “Solveig Sundström.”

“I’m Detective Inspector Joona Linna with the National Police and I’m investigating—”

The woman hangs up without a word and Joona doesn’t bother to call back since he’s already gotten the answer he wanted.

77

A white Opel pulls to a stop underneath the flat roof of the gas station. A woman in a light blue sweater gets out and stands at the pump while searching through her purse.

Ari Määtilainen turns his gaze back to the two thick grilled hot dogs on their bed of mashed potatoes with chili sauce and roasted onions. He glances up at the heavyweight motorcyclist waiting for his food and says mechanically that coffee and soft drinks are available at the opposite counter.

The zippers on the motorcyclist’s leather jacket scrape against the glass counter as he leans over to take his food.

“
Danke
,” he says and then heads over to the coffee machine.

Ari turns up the volume on the radio. The woman in the blue sweater has walked away from the pump as it’s filling the Opel’s tank.

On the radio the news announcer is reporting developments in the recent kidnapping case: “The search for Vicky Bennet and Dante Abrahamsson has been called off. The Västernorrland police are not commenting, but sources have told us that they are feared to have drowned last Saturday. The police are being criticized for sending out a general bulletin. Radio Eko has been trying to reach the chief of the National Police, Carlos Eliasson, for a statement…”

“What the hell,” Ari whispers.

He looks at the sticky note, which is still next to the cash register. He picks up his cell phone and calls the police again.

“Police, Sonja Rask speaking,” a woman says.

“Hi,” Ari says. “I saw them, the girl and the little boy.”

“May I ask who is calling?”

“Ari Määtilainen. I work at Statoil gas station in Dingersjö. I was just listening to the radio and they said that the kids drowned on Saturday. But they didn’t. I saw them here in the early-morning hours Sunday.”

“You’re talking about Vicky Bennet and Dante Abrahamsson?” asks Sonja skeptically.

“Yes, I saw them here. It was just after midnight, so it was already Sunday. They couldn’t have drowned on Saturday and then showed up here on Sunday, right?”