The Fire Witness (24 page)

That’s what happened.

She closes her eyes and smiles to herself. Then she notices a strange smell in her room—the odor of burned hair.

There’s something under her pillow. She sits up and shivers then picks up the pillow. The large, sharp rock is lying on her white sheet.

“Why aren’t you closing your eyes?” a voice says.

The girl is standing in the dark, behind the lamp on her nightstand, and is looking straight at Flora. She’s not breathing. Her hair is sticky and black from dried blood. The light from the lamp interferes with her view, but Flora can see that the girl’s thin arms are gray and her brown veins look like a rusty network beneath her dead skin.

“You’re not supposed to look at me,” the girl says, and turns off the light. It’s completely dark and Flora falls off the bed. Light blue spots dance in front of her eyes. The lamp drops to the floor beside her and she can hear the rustle of bedclothes and the sound of naked feet running across the floor, the walls, the ceiling. Flora crawls to the door and pulls herself to her feet. She fumbles with the door handle and stumbles into the hall, her lips clamped to keep from screaming. She walks down the hall, holding the wall so she doesn’t fall over. Panting hard, Flora grabs the telephone from the hallway table but drops it on the floor. She crouches down and calls the police.

81

Robert had found Elin on her knees next to the smashed china cabinet.

“Elin, what is going on?”

Without looking at him, she’d climbed to her feet and started walking over the shards of glass en route to her office.

“You’re bleeding!”

Elin had glanced impassively at her cut-up left hand, and kept going. He’d offered to call her doctor. “No, I don’t want him to come. I don’t care.”

“Elin,” Robert protested, agitated. “You need help.”

Elin had studied her wrist again, and admitted that it might be wise to have it bandaged. Then she’d walked into her office, drops of blood marking her path, and she’d shut her door.

Now, she was in front of her computer, searching for the phone number of the National Police. She asked the operator to put her through to the person responsible for the investigation into the murders at Birgittagården.

A man with a high voice answered. “The preliminary investigation is being headed by the prosecutor’s office in Sundsvall,” he said.

“Is there a police officer I can speak with?”

“The prosecutor’s office is working with the Västernorrland police department.”

“I was visited by a detective inspector from the National Police. A tall man with gray eyes and—”

“Joona Linna.”

“Yes.”

The man read a number and Elin scribbled it on the glossy cover of a fashion magazine. She thanked him for his help and ended the call. She dialed the number for the detective, but he did not pick up, and she couldn’t figure out a message to leave, so she left none.

Elin was about to call the Sundsvall prosecutor’s office when her doctor arrived. The doctor didn’t ask her any questions. He had known her since childhood and knew quite well when a conversation was over. Elin sat quietly as he cleaned and wrapped her wound. She looked at her cell phone, which was lying on the August issue of British
Vogue
. Right between Gwyneth Paltrow’s breasts was Joona Linna’s number.

By the time the doctor had finished and Elin returned to the large salon, the cleaning service had removed all the glass and mopped the floor. The china cabinet had been removed and Robert had spoken to the restorer at the Mediterranean Museum about the broken Seder plate.

82

Elin Frank is not smiling at anyone as she walks down the hall to Joona Linna’s office at the police station. Her graphite-gray coat from Burberry is tightly belted and there is a silver silk scarf around her hair. She hides her eyes behind black sunglasses and her wrapped wrist under a long gray cashmere sweater. The wrist throbs. Her heels clack against the scratched floor, and a poster reading
IF YOU BELIEVE YOU’RE WORTHLESS AND DESERVE THE BRUISES, COME TALK TO US!
flutters in her wake.

A powerfully built woman wearing a bright red angora sweater and a tight black skirt comes out of an office to wait for Elin.

“I’m Anja Larsson,” the woman says.

Elin tries to say that she wants to speak to Joona Linna, but her voice won’t come out. The large woman smiles at her and offers to show Elin to the detective’s office.

“I’m sorry,” Elin whispers.

“Not to worry,” Anja says. She leads Elin to Joona’s door, knocks, and opens it. Anja and Joona exchange a glance, and Joona gently pulls out a chair for Elin.

“I’ll bring you some water,” says Anja, and closes the door behind her.

The room is silent. Elin tries to calm down enough to be able to speak. She has to wait for a long time. Finally she says, “I know it’s too late. I know I wasn’t helpful when you came to see me a few days ago. I can just imagine what you think of me.”

She can’t go on. Tears start streaming down her face from behind her sunglasses. Anja comes in with a glass of water and a bunch of grapes on a tray and leaves again.

Elin collects her thoughts. “I would like to talk about Vicky Bennet now.”

“Then I will listen,” Joona says in a friendly way.

“She was just six years old when she first came to me and I had her … I had her for only nine months.”

“I know that.”

“What you don’t know is that I … I let her down. No one should disappoint another human being the way that I disappointed her.”

“Sometimes people do that,” Joona says.

She takes off her sunglasses and studies the detective sitting across from her: his tousled blond hair, his serious face, and his eyes that mysteriously shift color.

“I can’t excuse my own behavior,” she says. “But I have an offer for you. I am ready to pay all the costs for finding the bodies … so that the investigation can continue and not be shut down.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“Even if things can’t be made right, I can … I mean … What if she’s not guilty?”

“There’s no evidence pointing that way at the moment.”

“No, but I just can’t believe that…”

Elin’s eyes fill until it seems that the whole world is swimming in water.

“Because she was a sweet and good child?”

“She was hardly sweet and good.” Elin smiles faintly.

“So I gather.”

“Would you be able to continue the investigation if I pay you?”

“We can’t take your money.”

“I’ll find a way to solve the legal issues.”

“Maybe so, but that won’t change a thing,” Joona explains softly. “The prosecutor is ending the investigation.”

“What can I do?” asks Elin.

“I am not supposed to say anything, but I will continue the investigation myself because I am absolutely sure that Vicky is still alive.”

“But the news on television said—” Elin’s hand flies to her mouth.

“I know for a fact that they did not drown in the river,” Joona replies.

“Good Lord,” whispers Elin.

83

Elin is crying with her face turned away. Joona gives her time. He walks to the window and looks out. A misty rain is falling and the trees are swaying in the afternoon wind.

“Do you have any idea where they could be hiding?” Joona asks after a few minutes have passed.

“Her mother used to sleep in various garages. I did meet Susie once when she was going to try to take care of Vicky one weekend. She’d gotten a place to live in Hallonbergen, but it didn’t work out. Vicky was found in the subway tunnel all by herself between the Slussen and Mariatorget stations.”

“It could be hard to find her,” Joona says.

“I haven’t seen Vicky in nine years, but the staff at Birgittagården, they must have talked to her. They have to know something,” Elin says.

“I agree,” Joona says.

“So what’s wrong?”

Joona looks her in the eye. “The only people Vicky talked to were the nurse who was murdered and her husband, who was the therapist. He should know a great deal—or at least something—but mentally he’s not well at all and his doctors think that a police interrogation will worsen his condition. We can’t do anything.”

“But I am not a police officer,” Elin says. “I could speak to him.”

She keeps looking him in the eye and realizes that this is exactly what he’s been hoping she’d say.

Going down in the elevator, Elin feels the heavy exhaustion that comes after prolonged crying. She remembers the detective’s voice and his soft Finnish accent. He had unusual eyes, gray and oddly sharp.

His colleague in the red sweater had called the provincial hospital in Sundsvall and found out that Daniel Grim had been moved to the psychiatric ward and that his doctor was still forbidding the police to interview him.

Elin crosses the street and gets into her BMW. She calls the number for the hospital that she’s been given and finds out that Daniel Grim is in Ward 52A but that he’s not allowed to receive phone calls in his room. However, he can receive visitors daily until six p.m.

She puts the address into her car’s GPS, which calculates that it is 407 kilometers from here to Sundsvall. If she starts driving right now, she’ll get there at a quarter to seven. She turns around at Polhemsgatan, her tires mounting the sidewalk, and drives down Fleminggatan.

When she reaches the first traffic light, Robert calls her to remind her that she has a meeting with Kinnevik and Sven Warg in thirty minutes at the Waterfront Expo.

“I won’t be able to make it.”

“Shall I tell them to start without you?”

“Robert, I don’t know when I will be back, but it won’t be today,” Elin says.

When she reaches the E4, she sets the cruise control to precisely twenty-nine kilometers over the speed limit. She doesn’t mind paying a fine, but it would be ridiculous to lose her driver’s license.

84

Joona feels deep down that Vicky Bennet and the little boy are still alive. He can’t give up on them now.

A girl who once slashed two people in the face with a broken bottle has taken a tiny boy from his mother and is hiding somewhere with him. The police have concluded that they are dead. No one is looking for them.

Joona thinks about where he is in the investigation now he’s seen Vicky and the boy on the security camera video. He knows that Vicky has taken Eutrexa, and he’s checked on the side effects of this medicine with The Needle’s wife, who works as a psychiatrist.

There’s too much that’s still not known, Joona thinks. It is possible that Vicky was suffering from an overdose of Eutrexa. Caroline had told him that the medicine starts to work when a person still has the pill in his or her mouth, inducing restlessness and anger.

Joona closes his eyes and tries to imagine Vicky demanding the keys from Elisabet. She threatens Elisabet with a hammer. Elisabet flees across the yard to the old brewery. Vicky follows and flies into a rage and hits Elisabet again and again. Then she takes the keys from the dead woman, crosses the yard still carrying the hammer, picks up a rock, and opens the door to the isolation room. Miranda is sitting on a chair with a blanket around her. Vicky smashes her head repeatedly with the rock. She carries Miranda’s body to her bed and puts her hands over her face. Then her rage dies down.

Vicky must have become confused, Joona thinks. She took the bloody blanket with her and hid it beneath her bed as the drug’s calming effect began to work. She probably felt unbelievably tired. All she did after that was kick off the boots into the closet, put the hammer under her pillow, and fall sleep. She woke up a few hours later, realized what she’d done, and became frightened. She fled through the window and headed straight into the forest.

The side effects of the medicine could explain her rage as well as the bloody sheets.

But what did she do with the rock? Had there really been a rock?

Joona feels the tug of doubt—for the second time in his life, he wonders if The Needle could be wrong.

85

At five minutes to six, Elin walks through the door to Ward 52A. She greets a nursing assistant and says that she’s here to see Daniel Grim.

“Visiting hours are over,” the woman says, and walks away.

“I’ve driven the whole way from Stockholm,” Elin pleads.

The nurse turns and looks at her. “If we make an exception for everyone, we’ll be running around twenty-four hours a day,” she says.

“Please, just let me—”

“You won’t even have time to drink a cup of coffee.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Elin insists.

The nurse looks at Elin doubtfully, but then nods to Elin to follow her. She goes down the hall and knocks on the door of a patient’s room to the right.

“Thanks,” Elin says, and waits until the nurse leaves before she walks in.

Standing by the window is a man with an ashen face. He hasn’t shaved this morning and perhaps not the day before, either. He’s wearing jeans and a wrinkled shirt. He looks at her with a slight frown and runs his hand through his thin hair.

“My name is Elin Frank,” Elin says softly. “I know I’m disturbing you and I apologize in advance.”

“No, it’s … it’s…”

He appears to have been crying, crying for many days. In a different context, Elin might have thought he was handsome. He has a friendly face and intelligent eyes.

“I need to talk to you, but I understand if you’re not up to it,” she says.

“It’s all right,” he says in a voice that sounds as if it will break at any moment. “The reporters kept coming by the first days, but I couldn’t speak … I couldn’t handle talking to them. There was nothing I could say. I mean, I wanted to help the police, but I couldn’t make it work. I couldn’t get my thoughts together…”

Elin tries to think of a way to bring up the subject of Vicky. She understands that Vicky is a monster as far as he is concerned. She’s ruined his life. It won’t be easy to make him want to help out.

“Do you mind if I ask you a few things?”

“Honestly, I don’t know.” Daniel rubs his face.

“Daniel, I’m very sorry about what happened to you.”