93
Elin’s heart is racing as she enters the small room. There’s a narrow bed, a chair, a wooden dresser, and a single window. A table lamp is lying on its side on the floor, lighting the room from below. On one white wall, an embroidered hanging promises “The best thing we have is each other.”
Elin can still see Tuula licking her dry lips and shaking right before she tried to stab her face with a fork.
There’s an odd, sweet, almost rotten smell in the stale air of the room.
She hopes that Daniel realizes that she’s here and will keep Tuula occupied for a while.
The mattress is missing from the narrow bed and beneath the bed slats Elin can see a small red suitcase. Her shadow grazes the slats as she leans over and pulls it out. Inside there’s a photo album, some wrinkled clothes, a perfume bottle with Disney princesses on it, and a candy wrapper.
Elin closes the suitcase and pushes it back under the bed. She looks around the room and notices that the dresser has been moved out from the wall. The mattress and bedclothes are on the floor behind it. Tuula has been sleeping there instead of in the bed.
Elin walks over slowly, stopping for a moment when a floorboard creaks. She pulls open each dresser drawer but there are only tangled sheets and small cloth bags of lavender inside. She lifts the sheets, but there’s nothing underneath. She hears steps in the hallway. She stands still and tries to breathe without making a sound. She hears the bell ring on Caroline’s door. Then silence.
Elin waits a moment, then looks through the bedclothes behind the dresser. She lifts the mattress, and the stench of rotting food makes her rear back. On a newspaper on the floor lies a mound of old food: moldy bread, chicken bones, brown apples, sausage, and fried potatoes.
94
Tuula mumbles that she’s tired. She wiggles out of Daniel’s embrace and walks to the window. She starts to lick the glass.
“Have you ever heard Vicky say something?” asks Daniel.
“Like what?”
“That she has a hiding place somewhere or places where—”
“Nope,” Tuula says, turning toward him.
“But you like to listen to the bigger girls when they talk,” Daniel says.
“So do you,” Tuula replies.
“I know,” Daniel says. “But right now I’m having trouble remembering things. The doctor calls it ‘arousal.’ ”
“Is it dangerous?”
He shakes his head but he does not try to smile.
“I go to a psychologist and I get drugs for it.”
“Don’t be sad,” she says, and she cocks her head. “It was a good thing that Miranda and Elisabet were killed. There are too many people on the planet anyway.”
“I loved Elisabet, I needed her and—”
Tuula slams her head backward into the windowpane and cracks the glass.
“The best thing for me to do right now is to hide behind the dresser in my room,” she says.
“Wait a moment.”
95
Elin is on her knees at the end of the bed looking at a trunk. She can tell it’s an American chest from the name and address written on the lid in elegant lettering: “Fritz Gustavsson 1861 Harmånger.” At the beginning of the twentieth century, more than a quarter of the Swedish population emigrated to America, their belongings packed into these trunks, but perhaps Fritz never got away. Elin tries to lift the lid. She can’t get it open and breaks a nail. The trunk is definitely locked.
She hears the sound of glass shattering. Someone screams.
Elin shudders and walks to the window. There are seven small containers on the sill, some tin and others porcelain. She opens the first two. One is empty and the other has a coil of old string.
Through the small window, she can see the dark abyss of the lawn. Beyond it, light from another window falls on the outhouse and the stinging nettles beside it.
She opens another porcelain jar and sees a few old copper coins. A tin jar with a painted harlequin on the side contains a few nails and a dead bumblebee.
She glances outside again as she feels her pulse rise in her temples. Everything is quiet. All she can hear is her own breathing. The shadow of a figure passes over the nettles and Elin drops the jar. Someone could be standing outside and looking right at her. She moves away from the window and is heading for the door when she spots a small sticker on the closet door. It’s Tigger from Winnie-the-Pooh.
Tuula had said that a tiger keeps watch over the flower button.
Inside the closet, oilskins are hanging from a hook and behind them is an ancient vacuum cleaner. Elin’s hands shake as she pulls the vacuum cleaner out. Beneath it, there are flattened tennis shoes and a dirty pillowcase. She grabs a corner of the pillowcase and can feel the weight of what’s inside.
She pours out the glittering contents onto the floor: coins, buttons, hair clips, glass marbles, a SIM card for a cell phone, a shiny ballpoint pen, capsules, earrings, and a key ring attached to a little metal fob with a light blue flower. Elin looks at the fob closely. She turns it over and sees the name Dennis engraved on it.
This must be what Vicky’s mother gave her.
Elin pockets the key ring and stuffs everything else back in the pillowcase. She puts it back in the closet, lifts the vacuum cleaner back on top, and pulls the oilskins to the front. She hurries over to the bedroom door. She listens for a moment, then opens it and walks out.
Tuula is standing there.
She is waiting in the dark hall a few steps away and she stares at Elin without saying a word.
96
Tuula takes a step toward Elin and holds out a bloody hand. Her face is pale and her eyebrows are invisible. Her hair is hanging in red wisps around her cheeks.
“Go back inside the room,” Tuula says.
“I have to talk to Daniel.”
“We can go inside together and hide.”
“What’s happened?”
“Go inside the room,” Tuula says, licking her lips.
“Is there something you’d like to show me?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a game. Vicky and Miranda played it last week,” Tuula says. She raises her hands in front of her face.
“I have to go,” Elin says.
“I’ll show you how it’s done,” Tuula whispers.
Elin hears other footsteps in the hallway and catches sight of Daniel carrying a first-aid kit. Lu Chu and Almira are coming from the direction of the kitchen. Tuula runs her fingers through her hair, and they come away coated with fresh blood.
“Tuula, you were supposed to stay in the dining room,” Daniel says. He takes her other hand and leads her away. “We have to wash your wound and see if it needs stitches.”
Elin stays still and waits until her heart calms down. Reaching into her pocket, she fingers the key ring Vicky got from her mother.
A few minutes later, the door to the kitchen opens again. Tuula walks out, trailing her hand along the wooden paneling. Daniel is beside her, saying something in a serious but calm tone. Tuula nods and then goes inside her room and shuts the door. Elin waits until Daniel turns to her before she asks what happened.
“She’s all right. She banged her head on the window a few times until she broke the glass.”
“Has Vicky ever mentioned someone named Dennis?” asks Elin. She keeps her voice low as she gives Daniel the key ring.
He looks at it and turns it over in his hand. He whispers the name Dennis to himself.
“Well,” he says at last. “I think I’ve heard the name, but I … Elin, I’m embarrassed. I feel totally worthless, because—”
“You’re trying—”
“Yes, but I’m not at all sure that Vicky has told me anything that could help the police. She didn’t really tell me all that much, and …”
He stops talking as they hear the sound of footsteps coming up the steps outside and the front door opening. A massive woman in her fifties enters and she’s
about to lock the door from the inside when she catches sight of them.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” she says as she heads toward them.
“My name is Daniel Grim and I’m—”
“The girls cannot receive visitors at this time of night,” the woman interrupts him.
“We’re just about to leave,” Daniel says. “We just need to ask Caroline about—”
“You’re not going to ask anyone about anything.”
97
Joona is in the police station, riding up the elevator. He’s holding a small plastic bag containing the key ring. The fob looks like a large coin, a silver dollar. “Dennis” is engraved on one side and a light blue flower with seven petals is embossed on the other. The coin is linked to a large, empty key ring.
Late last night, Elin called Joona. She was in her car driving Daniel back to the hospital and was planning to stay in a hotel in Sundsvall for the night. She told Joona that Tuula had stolen this key ring from Vicky’s purse early on Friday.
“It was important to Vicky. Her mother gave it to her,” Elin said. She promised to courier it to him as soon as she’d checked in.
Now Joona is turning the plastic bag over and over in the fluorescent light of the elevator. Then he stuffs it in his pocket and gets off at the fifth floor.
He wonders why Vicky’s mother would give her a key ring with the name Dennis on it.
Vicky Bennet’s father is unknown. Her mother gave birth outside the health-care system. The child did not enter state registers until she was six. Perhaps the mother knew the name of the father the entire time. Was this a way to let Vicky know?
Anja is at her desk and, before he can ask her if she’s learned anything about who Dennis is, she says, “There is no person by the name of Dennis in Vicky Bennet’s life. Not at Birgittagården, not at Ljungbacken, and not with any of the foster families.”
“Strange,” says Joona.
“I even called Saga Bauer from Säpo,” Anja tells him, and smiles. “They have their own records, of course.”
“Someone must know who Dennis is,” he says as he sits on the edge of her desk.
“Nope,” she sighs, and drums her fingers on her desk. Her nails are long and red.
Joona looks out of the window. Clouds are chasing each other in the strong wind.
“I’m stuck,” he says. “I can’t look at the reports from the National Forensic Laboratory, I can’t ask questions, and I have nothing more to go on.”
“Perhaps you should recognize that this is not your case,” Anja says quietly.
“I can’t let it go,” he whispers.
Anja smiles, pleased, and her plump cheeks turn red.
“Since you’ve nothing better to do at the moment, I’d like you to listen to something,” she says. “And it’s not Finnish tango, for a change.”
“I didn’t think it was,” he says as he pulls up a chair.
“Of course you did,” she mutters, typing on her computer. “This is a telephone call I answered earlier today.”
“Do you record your calls?”
“As a rule, yes,” she replies in a neutral voice.
A woman’s thin voice starts speaking.
“I’m sorry that I keep calling,” the woman says. Her voice is almost breathless. “I talked to a policewoman in Sundsvall and she said that a detective by the name of Joona Linna might be interested.”
“Talk to me,” Anja’s voice says.
“If you’ll listen to me, only listen, there’s something important I have to tell you about the murders at Birgittagården.”
“The police have a tip line,” Anja’s voice explains.
“I know,” the woman says quickly.
There’s a waving Japanese cat on top of Anja’s computer. Each time it waves, it clicks.
“I saw the girl. She didn’t want to show her face,” she says. “There was a large rock. A bloody rock. You have to look for it.”
“Are you saying you witnessed the murders?”
They can hear the woman breathing before she answers.
“I don’t know why I’ve seen this,” she says. “I’m frightened and I’m very tired, but I am not crazy.”
“Are you telling me you saw the murder?”
“Or maybe I’m going crazy,” the woman says, as if she didn’t hear Anja’s question.
The telephone call ends abruptly.
“This woman’s name is Flora Hansen. She has a report made against her.”
“Why?”
“Brittis at the tip line got tired of her calls. Flora has called in a number of false tips and wanted to be paid for further information.”
“Does she call the tip line often?”
“No, she’s never called before. It’s just the murders at Birgittagården. I thought you should hear this before she calls back. She’ll certainly phone you. She keeps calling even though the police have reported her. And now she has my telephone number.”
“What do you know about her?”
“Brittis says that Flora has an alibi for the evening of the murder. She held a séance for nine people at Upplandsgatan 40 here in Stockholm,” Anja says, amused. “She calls herself a medium. She says she can get answers from the dead if she gets paid for it.”
“I’m going to go see her,” Joona says, getting up from the chair.
“Joona, people know about this case,” Anja says. Her smile is uncertain. “And before too long, someone else will have a tip. If Vicky Bennet is alive, someone will see her sometime.”
“Right,” he says as he buttons his jacket.
Anja is about to start laughing but catches Joona’s gaze and suddenly realizes what he knows.
“It’s the rock,” she says. “So it’s true there was a rock.”
“Right,” he says. “But only The Needle, Frippe, and I know that the killer used a rock.”
98
Joona knows that in rare, difficult cases the police turn to mediums and psychics for help. He remembers the murder of Engla Höglund. The police consulted a medium who described two killers—both descriptions turned out to be completely wrong. The true killer was caught because someone trying out a new camera just happened to take a photograph of the girl and the killer’s car.
Joona had read an independent study done in the United States about a medium the police turned to more often than any other. Although the woman had been used in one hundred and fifteen investigations, the study concluded that she’d never contributed any valuable information in any case.
Joona shivers in the chilly afternoon air as he gets out of his car and walks toward a gray apartment building with satellite dishes on every balcony. The door to the entrance has a broken lock and someone has sprayed graffiti in pink all over the entrance hallway. Joona takes the stairs to the second floor and rings the bell at a door with the name Hansen on the mail slot.
A pale woman in gray clothes opens the door. She looks at Joona shyly.
“My name is Joona Linna,” he says. He shows his police ID. “You’ve called the police a number of times.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, and looks at the ground.
“People are not supposed to call the police unless they have something to say.”
“But I called because I saw the dead girl,” she says. She looks up into his eyes.
“May I come inside for a minute?” Joona asks.
She nods and leads him through a dark hall with worn-out vinyl flooring to a small, clean kitchen. Flora sits in one of the four chairs and wraps her arms around her body. Joona walks to the window and looks out. The façade of the building across the street is covered in plastic sheeting. The thermometer fastened to the outside window frame rocks slightly in the wind.
“I believe that Miranda is coming to me because I let her in accidentally when I was doing a séance,” Flora starts. “But I don’t know what she wants.”
“When do you hold your séances?”
“Every week. I earn my living
by speaking with the dead,” she says, and a muscle twitches near her left eye.
“In a manner of speaking, so do I,” says Joona quietly.
He sits down across the table from her.
“I’ve run out of coffee,” she says apologetically.
“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “You said something about a rock when you called.”
“I didn’t know what to do. Miranda keeps appearing and showing me a bloody stone.” She indicates how large it is with her hands.
“So you held a séance,” Joona prompts her. “A girl comes and tells you—”
“No, it was later,” she interrupts. “It was after the séance, when I got back home.”
“And what did this girl say to you?”
Flora looks at him directly, her eyes dark with the memory. “She shows me the rock and tells me to close my eyes.”
Joona looks back steadily with his gray fathomless gaze. He has only one thing to say.
“If Miranda comes back, I would like you to ask her where the killer is hiding.”
99
Joona takes the plastic bag out of his pocket and dumps the key ring on the table in front of Flora.
“This belongs to the murder suspect,” he says.
Flora looks at it without picking it up.
“Dennis?” she asks.
“We don’t know who Dennis is, but perhaps … perhaps you can feel something from it,” Joona says.
“Maybe, but this is my job.” She smiles, embarrassed, and hides her smile with her hand.
“Of course,” he says. “How much?”
She looks down at the table as she tells him the price for a half-hour sitting. Joona opens his wallet and pays for one hour. Flora thanks him and gets her purse. Then she turns off the ceiling lamp. There’s still some light outside, but inside the kitchen it’s fairly dark. Flora takes out a tea light and a silk cloth with golden edges. She lights the candle and places it in front of Joona. Then she places the cloth over the key ring.