The Fire Witness (50 page)

“You silly!” she shouted.

“Lumi,” Joona whispered against her cheek. “Never forget that I love you more than anything else.”

“Time to go,” Summa said.

Joona set his daughter down. He wanted to pet her on the cheek but couldn’t bring himself to do so. He felt as if he was shattering into pieces. Summa was staring at him in fear. Her neck was stiff. She grabbed Lumi’s hand and pulled her away.

They waited for the train in silence. There was nothing more to say.

Downy dandelion seeds blew over the tracks.

There was a burned smell from the brakes as the train rolled away from the platform. He stood and stared at his daughter’s pale face through the train window. Her little hand was waving slowly. Summa was a black shadow sitting rigidly next to her. She did not look at him. Before the train reached the bend toward the harbor, Joona turned and walked back to his car.

188

Joona drove the 145 kilometers to Ludvika without thinking. His head was roaring but empty—frighteningly so.

He drove without thinking and finally arrived.

His headlights lit up massive metal structures. He turned into the industrial area and drove down to the empty harbor near the power station. A large gray car was already parked between two huge piles of sawdust. Joona pulled up next to it. He was remarkably calm; so calm that he knew he was in some form of shock.

He got out of his car and looked around. The Needle was waiting for him, standing next to a door. He was wearing white overalls and his face looked worn and serious.

“So? They’ve left?” he asked in the sharp tone he used whenever something bothered him.

“They’re gone,” Joona said.

The Needle nodded a few times. The white frames of his glasses shone coldly in the weak light.

“You didn’t give me a choice in this matter,” The Needle said glumly.

“True enough,” Joona said. “You had no choice.”

“We’re both going to get fired if this comes out.”

“Then we’ll be fired.”

“Two at the same time. I moved as fast as I could when they arrived.”

“Good.”

“Two of them,” The Needle repeated, almost to himself.

Joona thought back to just a few days ago, when he woke up next to his wife and daughter. His cell phone was ringing in his jacket in the hall.

Someone had sent a text message. The minute he saw it was from The Needle, he knew what it was about.

They had agreed. Once The Needle found two bodies that were approximately right, Joona would leave town with Summa and Lumi on the pretext of going on the vacation they’d been talking about for such a long time.

Joona had waited to hear from The Needle for more than three weeks. Time was running out. He was keeping watch over his family as best he could, but he recognized that this was not going to work in the long run. Jurek Walter was a man who could wait.

Joona knew right away that The Needle’s message meant he was about to lose his family. He could ensure that Summa and Lumi would be protected, but only if he never saw them again.

The Needle opened the hatchback of his gray car.

On two stretchers, covered in a cloth, were two body bags, one large and one small.

“A woman and a girl. They died in a car crash three days ago,” The Needle explained. He began to pull out the larger body.

“I’ve worked on them a little. There’s not a trace left that could identify them. Not a single identifying mark.”

He groaned as he removed the body from his car. The undercarriage of the stretcher fell into place. The small wheels clattered as they hit the gravel.

Without saying a word, The Needle zipped open the body bag.

Joona clenched his jaw and forced himself to look.

A young woman lay there. Her eyes were closed and her face was calm. Her chest was crushed. Her arms appeared to have been broken in many places and her pelvis had been wrenched awry.

“The car drove off a bridge,” The Needle said. “The reason she has so many injuries is that she’d unbuckled herself. Perhaps she was picking up the pacifier for the little one. I’ve seen it before.”

He reached for the second stretcher and pulled it out of the car.

Joona contemplated the woman. He could see no fear or pain in her face. Nothing in her expression revealed the injuries done to her body.

The Needle unzipped the small bag. When Joona saw the little girl inside, tears filled his eyes.

The Needle mumbled something to himself and then zipped the body bags up again.

“Well, then,” he said. “No one will ever find Catharina and Mimmi. No one will ever identify their bodies.”

His emotions overwhelmed him for a moment, and then he continued, almost angry.

“The little girl’s father has been going from hospital to hospital looking for them. He’s even called my department. I had to talk to him.”

The Needle’s mouth twisted.

“They’re going to be buried as Summa and Lumi. I’ve already arranged false dental records for them.”

He gave Joona one last questioning look.

Joona said nothing.

Then they put the bodies in Joona’s car.

189

It felt strange to be driving with a dead woman and child as passengers. The roads were dark. Roadkill hedgehogs were lying beside ditches. A badger stood on the narrow shoulder, hypnotized by Joona’s headlights.

When he arrived at the hill he’d chosen weeks earlier, he dislodged the airbag fuse. Then he placed the woman in the driver’s seat and loosely strapped the little girl into Lumi’s child seat. The only sounds were his breathing, the rustle of cloth against cloth, and the thud of lifeless arms and legs.

He leaned into the car and released the emergency brake. He gave the car a shove from behind and it started to roll down the hill. He walked beside it and reached in to give the wheel a tug in the right direction. The car picked up speed and he ran to keep up. The car hurtled away from him, then it left the road and crashed into a massive Scotch pine. The woman’s body smashed into the steering wheel. The little girl’s body jerked violently in the car seat.

Joona took a gasoline can out of the trunk and began to splash it inside the car. He poured gasoline over the little girl’s legs and the woman’s heavily damaged body.

It was getting hard for him to breathe. He had to stop.

He leaned over, holding his knees, and tried to calm himself down. His heart was breaking.

Joona couldn’t bear it. He pulled the little girl’s body from the car and walked with it back and forth, cradling it and singing lullabies and whispering in her ear and crying. Then he placed her on her mother’s lap in the front seat.

He closed the car door in silence. He poured the rest of the gasoline over the car. Then he threw a lit match through the open window into the backseat. Flames leaped up and raced through the car.

He stared at the woman’s unnaturally calm face while her hair caught fire.

The fire was voracious. To Joona it looked as if a blue-tinged angel of death was claiming its own. The flames began to roar and they seemed to contain the sound of weeping.

Joona suddenly snapped awake. He wanted to get the bodies out. He burned his hands on the car door, but he was able to get it open. The fire in the car burned higher once the door let in more oxygen. He tried to grab the woman’s jacket, which was already on fire. Her slim legs were already smoking and licked by flames.

Pappa, Pappa, help me, Pappa!

Joona knew that it couldn’t be real. He knew they were already dead. He still couldn’t bear it. He reached into the fire again and grabbed the girl’s hand.

Then the gas tank exploded. Joona heard the bang just as his eardrums burst. He fell backward and felt the blow as his head hit the ground. His hands were empty. Blood trickled from his ears.

His heart was screaming and burning.

Before he lost consciousness, he watched the blazing pine needles come swirling down.

190

Joona is staring out the window and doesn’t hear the announcement that the plane has started its descent into Helsinki International Airport.

Twelve years ago, he’d cut off the finger of the Devil himself, and his punishment had been loneliness. It was a high price, yet he felt that it was still too mild. The Devil was waiting to take more from him. The Devil was waiting for him to imagine that everything was forgotten or forgiven.

Joona bends over in his seat and waits, trying to slow his breathing. The man sitting next to him looks at him nervously.

It’s not the migraine, it’s that other thing, the immense darkness behind everything.

He had stopped the serial killer Jurek Walter. That can’t be written off or forgotten.

He had no choice, but the price was too high, much too high. It hadn’t been worth it.

His skin is covered with goose bumps. He pulls at his hair with one hand. He presses his feet against the floor with all his strength.

He is going to see Summa and Lumi. He is going to do the most unforgivable thing. Only as long as Jurek Walter believes they are dead are they safe.

Perhaps he’s already leading the serial killer to his family.

*   *   *

Joona has left his cell phone in Stockholm. He’s using a forged passport and is paying for everything in cash. When he gets out of the taxi, he walks two blocks to the door of the apartment.

He waits for a moment and then goes to a café down the street. He pays ten euros to borrow a phone and calls Saga Bauer.

“I need help,” he says in a voice thick with emotion.

“Don’t you know everyone is looking for you? Things have gone completely haywire here.”

“I need help with one thing.”

“Yes,” she says without hesitation.

“When you’ve given me the information I need, erase the search history,” Joona says.

“All right.”

Joona swallows hard and looks at the slip of paper Rosa Bergman gave him. Then he asks Saga to search the Finnish health records for a woman named Laura Sandin who lives at Liisankatu 16 in Helsinki.

“Let me call you back in a minute,” she says.

“No, I’ll hang on while you search,” he says.

Those minutes are the longest of his entire life. He stares at the glittering dust on the countertop. He looks at the espresso machine and the marks on the floor where chairs have been pushed in.

“Joona?” Saga says at last.

“I’m here,” Joona whispers.

“Laura Sandin was diagnosed with liver cancer two years ago.”

“Go on,” Joona says.

“Well, she had surgery last year, a partial hepatectomy. And she … well…” Saga Bauer is whispering something to herself.

“What is it?” Joona asks.

Saga clears her throat and says, “She just had surgery again last week.”

“Is she still alive?”

“Apparently so. She’s still in the hospital.”

191

As Joona walks down the hospital corridor, it seems as if everything is sinking. His steps are heavy and the distant murmur of voices and televisions seems to get slower and slower.

He opens the door to Summa’s room and walks in.

A thin woman is in the bed, her back to the door.

A light cotton curtain is drawn across the window. Her thin arms lie on top of the covers. Her hair is sweaty and dull.

He doesn’t know if she’s sleeping or not. He must see her face. He walks up to her. The room is completely silent.

*   *   *

The woman who had been Summa Linna in another life is extremely tired. Her daughter sat up with her most of the night. Now Lumi is sleeping next door in the room reserved for relatives.

Summa can see the weak light of dawn filtering through the curtain. She’s thinking that human beings are helplessly alone. She has a few good memories, which she tries to bring to mind when she feels most alone and frightened. When they put her under for the operation, she’d remembered the light, light summer nights of her childhood; the first hours after her daughter was born and her baby fingers wrapped around her own; the wedding that summer day when she wore the bridal crown her mother had woven from birch root.

Summa swallows, fully aware of the life in her body. She is breathing and her heart is beating. She is so afraid of leaving Lumi all on her own.

The stitches from her operation burn as she turns over. She closes her eyes, but then opens them again. Joona Linna is standing over her.

She blinks a few times. Her message has reached him.

He sits beside her on the bed and she reaches up to touch his face. She runs her hand through his thick blond hair.

“If I die, you must take care of Lumi,” she says.

“I promise.”

“You must see her before you leave again,” Summa says. “You must see her.”

He strokes her face and whispers she’s the most beautiful woman ever. She smiles at him. Then he leaves the room and Summa no longer feels so afraid.

*   *   *

The room for relatives is simply furnished. There’s a TV suspended from the ceiling and a pine table scarred with cigarette burns alongside a saggy corduroy sofa.

A fifteen-year-old girl is lying on the sofa, fast asleep. Her eyes are swollen from too much crying. One of her cheeks is creased from the pattern of the cushion. She wakes with a start. Someone has put a blanket over her. Her shoes have been taken off. They are lined up on the floor by the sofa.

Someone has been here. In her dream, she’d felt someone sit next to her and hold her hand.

192

Between Stockholm and Uppsala, on the old highway, is the old Löwenströmska Hospital. Gustaf Adolf Löwenström had it built at the beginning of the nineteenth century in penance for his family’s guilt. His brother had assassinated King Gustav III at a masquerade for the Royal Opera.

Anders Rönn is thirty-three years old and has just received his license to practice medicine. He’s slender and has a handsome, sensitive face. He has just been hired to work at Löwenströmska and today is his first day on the job.

The low sunlight of autumn is playing between the leaves of the trees as he enters the building.