The Fire Witness (30 page)

“Well, what the fuck do you want from me, then?”

“I’m looking for a girl named Vicky.”

“So how does that make it my business?”

Joona pulls out the photo of Vicky that was used for the bulletin.

“No one I know,” she says automatically.

“Take another look.”

“You wanna give me some money?”

“No.”

“Come on, can’t you help me out here?”

A subway train passes by them, small sparks flying from its wheels.

“I know that you’ve been hanging out in the driver’s cab,” Joona says.

“Susie started it,” she says, not wanting to be blamed.

Joona shows her the photograph of Vicky again.

“It’s Susie’s daughter,” Joona explains.

“I didn’t know she had kids,” the homeless woman says, and rubs her nose.

The buzz of electricity in the lines overhead gets louder.

“How did you know Susie?”

“We kept to ourselves in the garden plots as long as we could. I felt really bad when I ran into her. I had hepatitis and this guy, Vadim, was after me. He used to beat me up and Susie helped me out. She was a tough bitch all right, but I wouldn’t have made it through the winter without her, I wouldn’t have had a chance, but when Susie died, I took her stuff, because…”

The woman mutters something to herself and starts rummaging through her shoulder bag. She takes out a key identical to the one Vicky had in her purse.

“Why did you take it?”

“Anyone would. Anyone. That’s the way it is. I took it from her before she died, even,” the woman confesses.

“What else was in the subway car?”

She scratches the cracked corner of her mouth and mutters “Fuck this” to herself. She takes a step to the side, farther away from Joona.

Two subway trains are heading closer in the same direction on separate tracks. One is coming from Blåsut and the other from Skärmarbrink station.

“I need to know,” Joona says.

“All right, what the fuck,” the woman says, rolling her eyes. “There was some stuff to eat and a cell phone.”

“Do you still have the cell phone?”

The sound of metal scraping and the thunder of the subway trains keep getting louder.

“You can’t prove it’s not mine.”

The first subway train passes them, shaking the ground beneath their feet. Loose stones jump from the embankment and the weeds twist in the draft. An empty McDonald’s cup rolls between the other set of rails.

“Just let me look at it!” Joona yells.

“Yeah, right!” she laughs.

The second train speeds by and their clothes flap in its wake. The dog next to the woman begins to bark. The woman moves backward along the embankment and says something Joona can’t hear, then she turns and starts running across the tracks. Joona has no time to react.

The woman doesn’t see the third train coming in the opposite direction at top speed. Its thunder is drowned out by the two other trains, but now it is deafening. Yet when its front hits the homeless woman, the impact is silent. She disappears beneath the first car.

The train screams as the brakes are slammed on, and its cars smack one another as they slow to a stop.

Now the only sound is the buzz of insects and the far-off hum of traffic.

The driver is sitting in his seat as if he’s turned to stone.

A long trail of blood runs over the rails. There’s a dark clump of cloth and flesh under one of the cars. The stench of the brakes starts to spread.

The dog starts to trot back and forth along the tracks with its tail between its legs. It doesn’t seem to know where to go or where to stop.

Joona picks up the woman’s shoulder bag, which has landed in the ditch.

The dog comes up to him and sticks its nose in the bag as Joona empties out its contents. Candy wrappers flutter away in the wind, followed by a few banknotes. Joona takes the black cell phone and leaves the rest.

He walks over to a concrete piling next to the embankment and sits down.

The westerly wind smells of garbage and city.

He clicks until he reaches the cell phone’s voice mail. He calls it and finds out there are two messages.

“Hi, Mamma,” says a girl’s voice. It can only be Vicky. “Why aren’t you picking up your phone? If you’re in detox, let me know. I like this new place. Maybe I told you already the last time I called—”

The automatic voice says, “Message: August first, eleven ten p.m.”

“Hi, Mamma,” Vicky says. Her voice is tense and breathless. “Stuff has happened here and I need to find you. I can’t talk long. I’ve just borrowed this phone. Mamma, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go.”

“Maybe I need to ask Tobias for help?”

The automatic voice says, “Message: Yesterday. Two p.m.”

The sun breaks through the clouds all of a sudden. The tops of the subway rails shine in the light.

109

Elin Frank wakes up. She’s in a large, strange bed. The green shine of the television clock dimly lights the bedroom of the presidential suite. She can see the decorative curtains hanging in front of the heavy curtains that block the sunlight.

She’s been asleep for a long time.

There’s a sweet aroma from an arrangement of cut flowers in the living room of the suite. The smell nauseates her. The air conditioner has been spreading an uneven chill, but she is still too weary to get up and turn it off or call the reception desk.

Elin thinks about the girls in the house by the coast. One of them must know something more. There must be one witness to what happened at Birgittagården.

That little girl Tuula was speaking and moving as if she were near the boiling point. Perhaps she saw something that she doesn’t dare tell anyone.

Elin has a vivid mental image of the girl grabbing her hair and trying to stab her face with a fork. The memory should make her more frightened than it does.

It’s almost impossible for her to understand yesterday’s events.

She slides her hand beneath the pillow. The wounds on her wrists ache. She remembers how the girls went on provoking Daniel when they found his weak spot.

Elin twists inside the sheets as she pictures Daniel’s face. He has a pleasant mouth and sympathetic eyes. It’s ridiculous how she’s been faithful to Jack except for that misadventure with the French photographer. She hadn’t intended to be faithful. She knows that they’re divorced and that he will never come back to her.

After she takes a shower, Elin rubs body lotion into her skin, using the no-name brand provided by the hotel. She rewinds the bandages around her wrist and, for the first time in more years than she can recall, she dresses in the clothes she wore the day before.

During the car ride back, they talked about Vicky’s key ring. Daniel did his best to recall Vicky mentioning someone named Dennis. He was frustrated that he couldn’t remember anything.

Her stomach has butterflies when she thinks about Daniel Grim. She feels as if she’s falling from a great height—and enjoying every minute.

She roots around in her purse and finds an eyeliner pencil and applies it lightly along her eyelids. Her movements are slow and her face shows her conflicting emotions.

It had been very late when they arrived at his house in Sundsvall. A gravel path led through an old garden, and the dark silhouettes of fruit trees waved in the wind before a small red house with a white veranda.

If he’d asked her to come inside, she would have done so. If he’d asked her to sleep with him, she’d have done that, too. But he hadn’t asked. He was careful and pleasant, and when she’d thanked him for his help, he’d said that taking this trip had been much better than any amount of therapy. She’d missed him as she watched him walk through the low gate and head toward his house. She’d stayed in her car for a while before she’d driven back to the center of the city and checked into First Hotel.

She can hear her cell phone purr in her purse, which is next to the fruit bowl in the living room. She hurries to answer it. It’s Joona Linna.

“Are you still in Sundsvall?” the detective inspector asks.

“I’m just about ready to check out of the hotel,” Elin says as a wave of fear rushes through her. “What’s happened?”

“Nothing, don’t worry,” he’s quick to say. “I just need some help with one thing if you have the time.”

“What’s it about?”

“If it’s not too much trouble, I want you to ask Daniel Grim about something.”

“I can do that,” she says in a low voice, a big smile crossing her face.

“Ask him if Vicky has ever mentioned someone named Tobias.”

“Dennis and Tobias,” she says, thoughtfully.

“Just Tobias. Tobias is the only lead to Vicky we have left.”

110

The sun is fairly high in the sky by the time Elin Frank pulls away from the hotel. A few minutes later, she drives along Bruksgatan, past its neat single-family homes, and parks beside a thick hedge. She leaves the car and walks up to the low gate.

Daniel Grim’s house is well cared for. Its black gabled roof appears new and the gingerbread trim on the veranda is covered in bright, fresh paint. This was the home Daniel and Elisabet Grim shared until just over a week ago. Elin shivers as she rings the doorbell. She waits for a long time, listening to the wind moving through the leaves of the birch trees.

A motorized lawn mower on one of the lawns nearby shuts off.

Elin rings the bell a second time. She waits a bit more, then decides to walk around the house.

Sparrows take flight from the lawn. A dark blue settee sways gently beside two large lilac bushes. Daniel is lying there, asleep. His face is pale and he’s curled up as if he’s freezing.

Elin keeps walking toward him and he wakes with a jerk. He sits up and looks at her with a question in his eyes.

“It’s too cold to be sleeping outside,” Elin says as she sits down on the settee beside him.

“I couldn’t go inside the house,” he says, and shifts so she has more room.

“The police called me this morning,” she says.

“What did they want?”

“Did Vicky ever mention someone named Tobias?”

Daniel wrinkles his forehead and Elin is about to ask his forgiveness for her intrusion when he stops her.

“Wait,” he says quickly. “He must be the guy with the loft apartment in Stockholm. Vicky lived with him for a while.” His tired face breaks into a large, warm smile. “Wollmar Yxkullsgatan 9.”

Elin is surprised. She takes her cell phone out of her purse as Daniel shakes his head.

“How the hell did I remember the address like that?” he asks. “I forget everything these days. I can’t even remember my parents’ middle names.”

Elin gets up from the settee and steps into the sunshine. She calls Joona to tell him what she found out. While she’s speaking to him she can hear him start to run, and before she says goodbye, she hears a car door slam.

111

Elin’s heart is skipping as she sits back down next to Daniel in the settee. She feels the warmth of his skin next to her leg. He’s found an old wine cork between the pillows and is peering at it nearsightedly.

“We took a course in wine and decided to start collecting. Nothing special, but some wines are very nice. I got them as Christmas presents … from Bordeaux. Two bottles of Château Haut-Brion, 1970. We were going to drink them when we retired, Elisabet and I. People make tons of plans like this. We even saved some marijuana. It was a joke. We often joked that we’d finally act like kids when we were old, kids who play loud music and sleep in.”

“I should head back to Stockholm,” Elin says.

“Yes, you should.”

They swing for a while and the ropes of the hammock creak against the hooks in the trees.

“You have a nice house,” Elin says softly.

She places her hand on his. He turns it over and their fingers intertwine. They sit in silence as they continue to swing. The hammock keeps creaking.

Her glossy hair falls into her face, and she sweeps it away and meets his gaze.

“Daniel,” she says.

“Yes,” he replies in a whisper.

Elin looks at him. She thinks she’s never needed the tenderness of another human being as much as now. Something about his gaze and his wrinkled forehead touches her deeply. She kisses his mouth softly, smiles, and kisses him again. She takes his face between her hands and kisses him deeply.

“Dear Lord,” he says.

Elin kisses him again and skims her lips over his beard stubble. She opens her blouse and pulls his hand to her breast. He touches her gently and caresses her nipple.

She kisses him again and slips her hand into his shirt. His stomach trembles at her touch.

Waves of desire go through her body and she feels weak. She wants either to lie in the grass with him or sit astride his hips.

She closes her eyes and pulls him to her. He says something that she doesn’t hear. Her blood pulses inside her. She feels his warm hands on her body but then he stops and pulls away.

“Elin, I can’t…”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean…” She tries to breathe more calmly.

“I just need some time,” he says. There are tears in his eyes. “It’s too much for me now, but I don’t want to scare you off.”

“You’re not scaring me off,” she says and tries to smile.

Elin gets up and adjusts her clothes as she leaves the garden. She gets into her car.

Her cheeks are flushed and her legs are still trembling as she drives away from Sundsvall. Five minutes later, she has to turn off onto a forest road. Her panties are soaking and her heart hasn’t stopped racing. Her blood throbs through every vein. She looks at her face in the rearview mirror. Her eyes are heavy and glistening and her lips are swollen.

She can’t remember the last time she felt such sexual power stream through her body. Daniel seems unimpressed by her beauty. Instead, it feels as if he can look right into her heart.

She tries to breathe slowly and waits, but finally she looks around the small forest road. She shifts her dress and lifts her ass so she can pull her panties down over her hips. She touches herself quickly with both hands. Her orgasm comes violently, in quick bursts.