The Fire Witness (35 page)

The man keeps retreating. He sees a quick shadow against the wall and raises his weapon.

All of a sudden, there’s an electric buzz from the ceiling and all the pigs start swaying. It’s hard to make out where one carcass starts and the next leaves off. Then the conveyor system roars to life. The heavy carcasses start to revolve. They are moving along the conveyor and pulling an ice-cold breeze through the room.

The man turns around and blinks. He tries to look in all directions at once and thinks that the job isn’t worth this.

It was supposed to be simple: buy a Swedish boy the police believed was dead. He’d get a good price for him without going much farther than Holland or Germany. It’s not worth all this trouble.

The pigs stop suddenly and swing in place. A red lamp glows on the wall. The cop has hit the emergency button. The room falls silent and the man feels uneasy.

What the fuck am I doing here?
he asks himself.

He bends down to look beneath the carcasses and then takes two steps forward.

The exit to the street is still closed.

He turns around to check the exit with the plastic slats. The cop is standing right in front of him.

A shiver goes up his back.

128

Joona can see the short man starting to take aim at him. He tracks the man’s arm motion as he steps toward him and knocks his pistol upward as he grabs his wrist. He slams the man’s hand over his head against a pig carcass and drives the knife through the palm. The blade plunges deep between two ribs. The man screams.

Joona lets go of the knife and moves away.

The short man fumbles his lifeless prosthetic fingers over the knife handle, then gives up. He’s caught. He can’t move or the pain will increase. Blood runs from his palm and down his shirtsleeve.

Joona picks up the pistol and leaves the refrigerated room without looking at the man.

The air in the large machine hall feels warm. He races along one of the walls in the direction Tobias disappeared with Dante. He stops at a green metal door and checks the pistol. There is at least one bullet in the chamber. There could be more in the magazine. He opens the door and steps into a warehouse area. Goods are stacked on pallets and there are forklifts standing still.

He can hear a rustling, moaning sound.

Joona determines the direction and runs over to a large garbage container. Blue light is dancing through a window and over the floor. He raises the pistol and creeps around the container. The fat man in the leather vest is on his knees with his back to Joona. He’s breathing heavily as he bangs Vicky’s head on the floor. Dante is lying a few feet away, curled into a ball and crying as if he’s been completely abandoned.

Joona reaches the fat man before he can get up. He grabs him around his throat with his arm and pulls him up and away from Vicky. He cracks him on the collarbone with his pistol, heaves him backward, and then lets go of the man’s throat and kicks him in the chest so hard that he flies through the glass door. The fat man lands on his back among the splinters of glass and the blue lights revolve over him.

Three uniformed policemen run up with drawn weapons. They aim at the man on the ground, who is trying to sit up.

One of the policemen looks up. “Joona Linna?”

The policemen stare at the tall detective standing in the broken door. Glass is still falling from the frame.

“I’m just an observer,” Joona says.

He throws the Glock on the ground and heads back to Vicky. He kneels on the ground. She is on her back and her breathing is irregular. Her arm is at an odd angle. Dante has stopped crying and looks at Joona in surprise. Joona rolls Vicky onto her side into the recovery position then squats beside her. He strokes her cheek and whispers that everything is all right now. An even stream of blood starts flowing from her nose. She does not open her eyes or respond to his words, but her feet are twitching.

129

The man who flew through the glass door tried to sit up, but two policemen grabbed him and forced him onto his stomach before they handcuffed him.

The first paramedics to arrive put an oral airway into Vicky’s throat and immobilized her head before they lifted her onto a stretcher.

Joona told the operations leader what had happened while two police units entered the building, one on each side.

In the refrigeration room, they found a silent, pale man with one hand impaled to a pig carcass by a knife. The police officer who found him called the paramedics and needed the assistance of a fellow officer to wrestle the knife out of the meat. The blade grated against the ribs and came out with a sucking sound. The injured man pulled his hand to his stomach using his other, prosthetic hand but then twirled to the ground.

The man who had been hit in the chest by the homemade automatic rifle was dead. The young man who had pulled the trigger when Joona shot him was still alive. He’d saved himself from bleeding to death by cinching his belt just below his knee as a tourniquet. When the police patrol unit approached with raised guns, he pointed to his foot, which had been shot off. It was lying beneath the cutting counter.

The last man they found was Tobias Lundgren. He’d hidden among the garbage in the warehouse room. His face was cut to bits and was bleeding profusely, but none of his wounds were life-threatening. He tried to crawl deeper into the mound of garbage. When the police pulled him out, he was shaking from fear.

*   *   *

Carlos Eliasson has already been informed of what took place in the slaughterhouse area when Joona calls him from the ambulance.

“One dead, two seriously wounded, and three slightly injured,” Carlos reads out loud.

“But the children are alive. They survived.”

“Joona.” Carlos sighs.

“Everyone decided they’d drowned, but I—”

“Yes, you were right. Absolutely,” Carlos interrupts. “But you are still the subject of an internal investigation and you had other orders.”

“So I was supposed to just let it be?”

“Yes, that’s what you were supposed to do.”

“But you know I couldn’t do that.”

The sirens abruptly stop wailing as the ambulance turns into the entrance of the Söder Hospital emergency receiving area.

“The prosecutor and her people are going to be the ones to question the witness. You are now on sick leave and cut off from everything.”

Joona takes this to mean that the internal investigation is not going his way, and it crosses his mind that he may even be charged with dereliction of duty. Nevertheless, the only emotion he feels is relief. Vicky Bennet has been found and the little boy ripped from the jaws of wolves.

Joona climbs out of the ambulance unassisted, but he heeds the paramedics’ request to lie down on a stretcher. They lift the rails and roll him away.

Instead of waiting in line for an X-ray after he’s been examined and his wounds dressed, he heads out to find the doctor in charge of Vicky’s care.

A nurse points to where a short woman is studying the automatic coffee machine.

Joona explains that he has to know whether Vicky can be questioned today.

The short woman listens to him without looking up. She presses the button for mocha and waits for her cup to be filled. Then she says that she’s done a CT scan of Vicky’s brain in order to determine whether there has been intracranial bleeding. Vicky has received a severe concussion, but luckily there has been no cerebral hemorrhage.

“We must keep her here for observation, but there’s nothing to indicate she can’t be questioned tomorrow morning if it’s important,” the doctor says. She walks away with her coffee cup in her hand.

*   *   *

The prosecutor Susanne Öst is on her way from Sundsvall to Stockholm. Tomorrow morning at eight o’clock sharp, she intends to start her initial interrogation of Vicky Bennet, the fifteen-year-old girl who has just been arrested and charged with two murders and one count of kidnapping.

130

Vicky is sitting up in bed, the curtains drawn around her, when Joona Linna shows his ID to the young policeman guarding the door and walks in. Her head is bandaged; her face is covered in bruises and grazes; her broken thumb is in a cast. Susanne Öst is also there. With her is a younger woman. Joona does not greet them but pulls up a chair beside the girl.

“How are you feeling?” he asks.

She gives him a muddled look and asks, “Is Dante with his mother now?”

“He’s here at the hospital and his mother is sitting next to him.”

“Was he hurt?”

“No, he’s fine.”

Vicky nods and then stares into space.

“And you? How are you feeling?” Joona asks again.

She looks at him but is not able to answer before the prosecutor clears her throat.

“I would like Joona Linna to leave this room right now,” Susanne says.

“Now you’ve done it,” Joona says, and doesn’t look away from Vicky.

“You are not part of this initial investigation.” Susanne raises her voice.

“They’re going to ask you a ton of questions,” Joona says to Vicky.

“I want you to stay here,” she says in a quiet voice.

“Honestly, I can’t,” Joona says.

Vicky whispers something to herself and then she looks at the prosecutor.

“I’m not saying anything unless Joona stays.”

Susanne says, “He can stay if he keeps quiet.”

Joona is watching Vicky and thinking about how to get through to her.

Two murders are a heavy burden to bear. Most girls her age would have already broken down and confessed, but Vicky is calm and expressionless. She won’t let anyone inside her mind. She creates quick alliances, he thinks, but hides her true motives to keep as much control as she can over her situation.

“Vicky Bennet,” the prosecutor starts with a smile, “my name is Susanne and I’m going to be asking you questions, but before we begin, I have to let you know that we are recording everything so that we can listen to it later. This means I don’t have to write much down, which is nice … I’m lazy that way.”

Vicky is not looking at her and doesn’t react. Susanne waits a moment and keeps wearing her smile. Then she rattles off the time, date, and the names of the people in the room.

“We usually do this before we get started,” she explains.

“Do you understand who we are?” asks the second woman. “My name is Signe Ridelman and I’ve been appointed as your lawyer.”

“Signe is here to help you,” the prosecutor says.

“Do you know what a lawyer is?” asks Signe.

Vicky gives a slight nod.

“I need an answer,” Signe says patiently.

“I understand,” Vicky says, and then she smiles broadly.

“What’s so funny?” asks the prosecutor.

“All of this,” Vicky says. Then she lifts her arm and pulls out the narrow tube from the inside of her forearm and watches her blood trickle down.

131

The room is silent except for a scraping noise from outside. A bird has landed on the windowsill. The fluorescent light hums overhead. A nurse has been summoned and Vicky’s IV is fastened once more to the catheter in her arm. The nurse pulled open the curtain around the bed before leaving the room, the better to keep an eye on this patient.

Susanne Öst drags a chair back to the side of the bed.

“I will be asking you about some things that you’ve done,” she says. “I want you to tell us the truth.”

“And nothing but the truth,” Vicky says, looking down.

“Eleven days ago you left your bedroom at Birgittagården in the middle of the night. Do you remember this?”

“I haven’t been counting the days,” Vicky says. There’s no emotion in her voice.

“But you remember leaving Birgittagården in the middle of the night?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you leave?” Susanne Öst asks.

Vicky pulls at a loose thread on the bandage around her hand.

“Had you ever done it before?”

“Done what?”

“Left Birgittagården in the middle of the night?”

“No,” says Vicky. She sounds bored.

“Why did you do it this time?”

When the prosecutor doesn’t get an answer, she smiles and asks in a milder tone, “Why were you awake in the middle of the night?”

“Don’t remember.”

“And so let’s move back a few hours. Do you remember what was going on then? Everyone went to bed and you were awake. What did you do?”

“Nothing.”

“You didn’t do anything until you left Birgittagården in the middle of the night. Don’t you think that’s strange?”

“No.”

Vicky is staring out the window. The sun is playing hide-and-seek in the clouds crossing the skies.

“I want you to tell me why you left Birgittagården,” Susanne says. Her tone turns serious. “I won’t stop asking until you tell me what happened. Do you understand?”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Vicky replies quietly.

“I know it’s difficult but I want you to tell me anyway.”

The girl looks up at the ceiling and her mouth moves as if she’s searching for words. Then she says in amazement, “I killed…”

She stops and pulls at the IV tube.

“Keep going.” Susanne is tense.

Vicky shakes her head and moistens her lips.

“You might as well tell me,” Susanne said. “You just said you killed—”

“Right … There was an irritating fly in the room and I killed it and I—”

“What the hell? Excuse me, I’m sorry, but isn’t it strange that you remember killing a fly but not why you left Birgittagården in the middle of the night?”

132

Susanne Öst and Signe Ridelman have requested a break and have left the room for a moment. The gray morning light is reflected in the IV pole and the chrome bed railings. Vicky Bennet is sitting up in bed and cursing to herself.

“Isn’t that the truth,” Joona says. He has taken Susanne’s place on the chair beside the bed.

“All I can think about is Dante,” she says.

“Dante is going to be just fine.”

Vicky is going to say something else, but the two women return. Joona gets up and walks over to the window.