The Fire Witness: A Novel

  “Quiet!”

  The SWAT team leader tapes the gas cylinder’s vent shut.

  Joona rushes toward the driver’s cab.

  There’s no sign of Vicky Bennet or Dante.

  The car stinks of sweat and old food. The walls and windows are scratched and covered with scrawls. Someone has recently eaten grilled chicken; the greasy paper is lying on the floor among beer cans and candy wrappers. Newspaper rustles beneath Joona’s feet. The light from outside is dappled by the broken windows.

  Joona reaches the driver’s cab. He’s certain the name Dennis on the key ring points to this place, where Vicky’s mother used to hide.

  The SWAT team has already broken the door open, and Joona steps inside. The cramped space is empty. The walls are covered with graffiti. A syringe without its needle is lying on the instrument panel beside pieces of sooty aluminum foil and empty plastic capsules. On the small shelf beside the pedals, there’s a package of painkillers and a tube of toothpaste.

  Joona keeps searching and finds a rusty food knife stuck to the foam under the ripped driver’s seat. There are more candy wrappers and an empty baby-food jar, which once held plum puree. Through the side window, Joona can see the SWAT team has captured the man in jeans. His face is heavily wrinkled and his eyes are wide with fear. He’s coughing blood into his beard. He’s yelling. His arms are bound behind his back with plastic handcuffs. He’s forced onto his stomach and the muzzle of an automatic rifle is pointed at the back of his head.

  Joona keeps searching the cramped cab. His eyes fly over buttons and knobs, the microphone and the stick with its polished handle, and he doesn’t know where else to look.

  Why did Vicky and her mother have keys to this place? There’s nothing here.

  He’s examining the screws fastening the grille over the ventilation outlet when his glance falls on a word scratched on the wall: Mamma.

  He takes a step backward and sees right away that everything scrawled on the walls are messages between Vicky and her mother. This must have been a place where they could meet in peace, and whenever they missed each other, they left messages:

  Mamma, they abused me, I couldn’t stay.

  I’m freezing and I need food. Have to go back, but will be here again on Monday.

  Don’t be sad, Vicky. They put me in detox so I missed you.

  Thanks for the candy.

  Sweetie!! I’m sleeping here for a while. Uffe’s a pig!! If you can leave some money, that’ll be great!!

  Merry Christmas, Mamma!

  You gotta know I can’t call you back for a while.

  Mamma, are you angry with me for something?

  107

  Joona leaves the cab and joins the SWAT team. They surround the shaggy man, who’s sitting with his back to the wall. He’s crying and seems bewildered.

  Joona takes off his bulletproof vest, squats down in front of the man, and says, “I’m looking for a girl and a little boy.”

  “Don’t hit me,” mumbles the man.

  “Nobody is going to hit you. I need to know if you’ve seen a girl here in this subway car.”

  “I didn’t touch her! I just followed her!”

  “Was she alone?”

  “I don’t know. She locked herself in the cab.”

  “Did she have a little boy with her?”

  “A boy? Yes, maybe … maybe—”

  “Answer the question!” barks the SWAT team leader.

  “You followed her here,” Joona says. “What did she do after she got here?”

  “She left again,” the homeless man answers. His eyes still show his fright.

  “Where did she go? Do you know where she went?”

  “That way,” the man says, using his head to make a helpless gesture toward the opening to the tunnel.

  “So she headed toward the opening? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “Maybe not … maybe—”

  “Answer the question!” snaps the SWAT team leader.

  “But I don’t really know,” the man snivels.

  “When was she here?” Joona asks carefully. “Was it today?”

  “She left just a minute ago,” he says. “She started screaming and then she took off.”

  Joona begins to run down the sidetrack. Behind him, he can hear the SWAT team leader take over the questioning. His voice brusque and hoarse, he demands to know if the man has done anything to the girl or molested her in any way.

  Joona runs along the rusted track to its end, up a set of metal stairs, and into a long hall ribbed with pipes running along the ceiling. At one end, there’s a large door, and the damp concrete floor before it shines with the light from outside creeping in. When Joona reaches it, he finds it is broken and is able to push his way through the gap. He’s outside, in the middle of a rough stone crossway that spans more than fifteen or so pairs of train tracks. The tracks gather like a ponytail farther up and then curve smoothly to the side.

  He can spot the thin figure of a woman farther down the embankment. She has a dog with her. A subway train starts to thunder and passes him, shaking the ground beneath his feet. Joona sees glimpses of her figure as the windows of the train flash by. He keeps running along the embankment through tall weeds and over broken glass, crushed tins, and used condoms. There’s electric buzzing and a new train approaches from Skärmarbrink. Joona has almost caught up to the thin figure. He jumps over the tracks in front of the train and grabs her thin arm. He pulls her around to face him. She’s surprised and tries to hit him, but he dodges her blow. He loses his grip on her arm, but still has her jacket. She tries to hit him again while she wriggles out of her jacket. She drops her shoulder bag and falls backward onto the gravel.

  108

  Joona pins the woman down among the thistles and browning cow parsley alongside the tracks. He grabs her hand as she reaches for a stone and tries to calm her. The dog cringes beyond arm’s reach.

  “I only want to talk to you.”

  “Fuck you!” she yells as she tries to wriggle out of his grasp.

  She kicks, but he blocks it and keeps her down. Her small breasts are heaving. She’s extremely thin and her face is wrinkled and her lips badly cracked. She’s perhaps forty years old, maybe only in her thirties. When she can’t get free, she starts to whisper soothing phrases to placate him.

  “Calm down, now,” Joona says again, and lets her go.

  She looks at him shyly as she stands up. She picks her shoulder bag up from the ground. Her filthy black T-shirt declares “Kafka Didn’t Have Much Fun Either” and her thin arms are mottled with injection scars. On the inside of her forearm there’s a tattoo, which has been cut to pieces. She runs her hand over her mouth and glances down the tracks. She shuffles sideways, testing him.

  “Don’t be afraid. I really have to talk to you.”

  “I’m busy,” she replies quickly.

  “Did you see anyone inside the subway car when you were there?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You were staying in a subway car.”

  She doesn’t reply. She shuts her mouth tightly and scratches her throat.

  Joona picks up her jacket and turns it right-side out. He hands it to her and she takes it without thanking him.

  “I’m looking for a girl who—”

  “Fuck you. I haven’t done anything.”

  “I’m not saying you have,” Joona says.

  “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.”