“Ladies and gentlemen,” says the leader of the band after the applause dies down. “We have a special request.”
Carlos Eliasson smiles and looks at someone behind the stage.
The singer smiles. “I have my roots in Oulu, and I am going to sing a special Finnish song for you. It’s a tango called ‘Satumaa.’ ”
Magdalena Ronander is wearing a wreath of flowers in her hair as she heads toward Joona and tries to catch his eye. Anja stares at her feet. The band starts playing the tango.
Joona has already turned to Anja and he bows slightly. He asks quietly, “May I have the honor?”
Anja’s face, and even her neck, blushes bright red. She looks up at him and nods seriously.
“Yes, yes you may.”
She puts her fingers on Joona’s arm and throws a proud glance at Magdalena. She steps onto the dance platform with her head high.
Anja concentrates on her steps at first, a furrow on her brow, but soon she relaxes and her face is calm and happy. She had fashioned an elaborate arrangement of her hair on the back of her neck, even sprayed it heavily to keep it in place, but now it looks just right. She follows Joona’s lead, and her steps become lighter and lighter.
As the sentimental song nears its end, Joona feels a nip on his shoulder, which doesn’t hurt.
Anja gives him another nip, a bit harder, and he feels forced to ask, “What are you doing?”
Her eyes are shining brightly like glass.
“I just felt like it,” she says honestly. “I wanted to see what would happen. You never know unless you try …”
At that moment, the music ends. Joona releases her and thanks her for the dance. Before he can escort her away, Carlos hurries over and asks Anja for the next dance.
Joona steps to one side and watches his colleagues dance, and others, dressed in summer white, gather on picnic blankets, eating and drinking happily. He decides to head to his car.
Reaching the parking lot, Joona Linna opens the door to his Volvo. In the backseat, there’s a huge bouquet waiting, wrapped in gift paper. Joona climbs into the car and phones Disa. The call goes to voice mail.
disa helenius
Disa sits in front of her computer. She’s in her apartment on Karlaplan. She’s wearing her reading glasses and has a throw draped over her shoulders. Her cell phone is on her desk next to a cup of cold coffee and a partially eaten cinnamon bun.
The photo of a worn cairn of stones in the middle of a green meadow is on her screen. The stones mark a mass grave of cholera victims near Skanstull in Stockholm.
She’s tapping notes into a document on her computer. She stretches her back and lifts her coffee mug halfway to her lips and then thinks better of it. She gets up to brew a new pot of coffee when the telephone on the desk buzzes.
Without reading the name of the caller, she shuts it off. She stands by the window, looking out. She sees dust dancing in the sunlight. Disa feels a tightness in her throat. She sits back down at her computer. She intends never to speak to Joona Linna again.
joona linna
There’s a festive feeling in the air as Midsummer draws near. The traffic is light on Tegnérgatan as Joona slowly walks along. He’s stopped trying to reach Disa. She’s turned off her phone and it’s obvious she wants to be left alone. Joona passes the Blue Tower and then turns down Drottninggatan, which is lined with antique stores and small shops. At the new occult bookstore Aquarius, an old woman pretends to admire the display. As Joona passes by, she gestures toward the glass and then begins to follow him.
It takes a few moments for him to realize that he’s being followed.
He stops at the black fence by Adolf Fredrik Church and turns around. The woman is ten meters behind him. She’s about eighty years old. She peers at him and holds out a card.
“This is you, isn’t it?” she says as she shows it. “And here is the crown, the bridal crown.” She holds out another.
Joona walks over to her and takes the cards from her hand. They’re playing cards from one of the oldest card games in all of Europe, tarot.
“What do you want from me?” Joona asks calmly.
“Nothing at all,” says the old woman. “But I have a message for you from Rosa Bergman.”
“You must be mistaken. I don’t know anyone by—”
“She’s wondering why you pretend that your daughter is dead.”
epilogue
It’s early autumn in Copenhagen. The air is clear and cool when a group of men, discreetly transported in four separate limousines, arrives at the Glyptotek Museum. The men walk up the stairs and enter. They walk past the fruitful winter garden beneath its high glass ceiling. Their footsteps echo on the stone hallway floor as they pass antique sculptures and enter the magnificent concert hall.
The audience is already seated. The Tokyo String Quartet is in its place on the low stage. The musicians hold their legendary Stradivarius instruments, the ones once played by Niccolò Paganini himself.
The four late-arriving guests find their seats around a table in the colonnades to one side of the hall. The youngest is still almost a boy, a fine-limbed blond man whose name is Peter Guidi. The other men wear expressions that are determined but also one step from fear; they are prepared to enslave themselves. They are all soon going to kiss his hand.
The musicians nod to one another and start to perform the Schubert String Quartet no. 14. It begins with great pathos, a deep emotion held in check, a power restrained. A violin calls, painfully and beautifully. The music takes a breath one last time and then it all pours out. The melody seems happy, but the instruments have, at the same time, an underlying tone of sorrow as if it were breath left behind from many lost souls.
Every single day, thirty-nine million bullets are made. Worldwide military spending, at the lowest estimate, is $1,226 trillion a year. In spite of the fact that enormous amounts of armaments are manufactured, the demand never lessens and it is impossible to estimate the volume. The nine largest exporters of weapons in the world are the United States, Russia, Germany, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, and China.
Copyright © 2011 by Lars Kepler
Translation copyright © 2013 by Laura A. Wideburg
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Kepler, Lars
The fire witness / Lars Kepler ; translated from the Swedish by Laura A. Wideburg.
Translation of: Eldvittnet.
eISBN: 978-0-7710-9591-7
I. Wideburg, Laura A. II. Title.
PT9877.21.E65E4413 2013 839.73’8 C2012-908293-7
Originally published in 2011 by Albert Bonniers Förlag, Sweden, as Eldivittnet.
Published in the English language with Bonnier Group Agency, Stockholm, Sweden.
McClelland & Stewart,
a division of Random House of Canada Limited
One Toronto Street
Suite 300
Toronto, Ontario
M5C 2V6
www.randomhouse.ca
v3.1
Contents
Master - Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Chapter 119
Chapter 120
Chapter 121
Chapter 122
Chapter 123
Chapter 124
Chapter 125
Chapter 126
Chapter 127
Chapter 128
Chapter 129
Chapter 130
Chapter 131
Chapter 132
Chapter 133
Chapter 134
Chapter 135
Chapter 136
Chapter 137
Chapter 138
Chapter 139
Chapter 140
Chapter 141
Chapter 142
Chapter 143
Chapter 144
Chapter 145
Chapter 146
Chapter 147
Chapter 148
Chapter 149
Chapter 150
Chapter 151
Chapter 152
Chapter 153
Chapter 154
Chapter 155
Chapter 156
Chapter 157
Chapter 158
Chapter 159
Chapter 160
Chapter 161
Chapter 162
Chapter 163
Chapter 164
Chapter 165
Chapter 166
Chapter 167
Chapter 168
Chapter 169
Chapter 170
Chapter 171
Chapter 172
Chapter 173
Chapter 174
Chapter 175
Chapter 176
Chapter 177
Chapter 178
Chapter 179
Chapter 180
Chapter 181
Chapter 182
Chapter 183
Chapter 184
Chapter 185
Chapter 186
Chapter 187
Chapter 188
Chapter 189
Chapter 190
Chapter 191
Chapter 192
Chapter 193
Chapter 194
Chapter 195
All liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone …
—REVELATION 21:8
A medium is someone who claims to have paranormal talent: the ability to interpret circumstances that lie beyond the limits of science.
Some mediums act as intermediaries to the dead at séances, while others offer guidance based on, for example, the reading of tarot cards.
Humans have tried to contact the dead through mediums since the beginning of history. One thousand years before the birth of Christ, King Saul of Israel sought advice from the spirit of the recently deceased prophet Samuel.
All over the world, the police accept the help of psychics and mediums when they are baffled by a case. This happens several times a year, even though there is not a single documented instance where a medium has actually solved a crime.
1
Elisabet Grim is fifty-three years old. Her hair is streaked with gray, but her eyes are bright and happy, and when she smiles, one of her front teeth juts out impishly.
She is a nurse at Birgittagården, a state-approved home for especially troubled girls north of Sundsvall. It’s a small, privately owned residence. Rarely are there more than eight girls there at a time. They range from twelve to seventeen in age. Many are drug addicts when they arrive. Almost all have a history of self-injury—eating disorders, for instance. Some can be violent. For these girls, there is no alternative to Birgittagården, with its alarms and double-locked doors. The next step would be prison or forced confinement in a psychiatric unit. This home, by comparison, is a hopeful place, with the expectation that the girls can make it back someday to open care.
As Elisabet often says, “It’s the nice girls who end up here.”
Right now, Elisabet is savoring the last bite of a bittersweet bar of chocolate. She can feel her shoulders begin to relax.
The day started well but the evening was hard. There were classes in the morning, and in the afternoon, the girls spent time at the lake. After the evening meal, the housemother went home, leaving Elisabet in charge on her own. The night staff was recently let go when the company changed hands. Elisabet had sat in the nurse’s office, catching up with reports, while the girls watched television, which they were allowed to do until ten.
And then she’d heard the yelling. It was loud, very loud. She’d hurried to the television room, where Miranda was beating up tiny Tuula. Miranda was screaming that Tuula was a slut and a whore. She’d yanked the little girl off the sofa and was kicking her in the back.
It was not unusual for Miranda to explode violently. Elisabet was used to her outbursts. She pulled her away from Tuula, and Miranda slapped Elisabet in the face. Elisabet was used to that, too. Without further discussion she led Miranda down the hall to the isolation room. Elisabet wished Miranda a good night, but Miranda didn’t answer. She just sat on the bed and studied the floor with a secretive smile as the nurse shut and locked the door behind her.
Elisabet was scheduled to have a private talk with the new girl, Vicky Bennet, but after the conflict, she found she was exhausted and
couldn’t face it. When Vicky came by and timidly mentioned that it was her turn for a chat, Elisabet put her off. This made Vicky so unhappy, she broke a teacup and slashed her stomach and wrists with the sharpest piece.
When Elisabet checked on her a while later, Vicky was sitting in her room with her hands in front of her face and blood running down her arms.
The wounds were superficial. Elisabet washed the blood off, wrapped gauze around the girl’s wrists, and put a Band-Aid on her stomach. And Elisabet comforted her, soothing her with sweet names, telling her not to worry, coaxing her until a tiny smile crossed the troubled girl’s face. For the third night in a row, Elisabet gave the girl ten milligrams of Sonata so she could sleep.
2
All the girls are finally asleep and Birgittagården is quiet. Outside the office window, the September darkness has settled on the forest, but Himmelsjö Lake’s smooth surface shines like mother-of-pearl. Elisabet sits in front of her computer entering the evening’s events into the log.
It’s almost midnight and she realizes she hasn’t taken her sleeping pill yet. My own little drug, she calls it. Difficult days followed by nights on call are interfering with her sleep. She needs a few hours of rest; ten milligrams of Stilnoct by ten and she’s asleep by eleven. She pulls her shawl tight and thinks that a glass of red wine would hit the spot right now. She longs for her own bed, where she can curl up with a book, or with her husband, Daniel. But not tonight; she’s on call and has to stay here.
In the yard outside, Buster begins to bark. Insistently, stridently.
It’s very late. She’s usually asleep by now. She takes her pill, shuts down her computer. She grows aware of the sounds she’s making: the hiss of her chair’s hydraulic lift as she stands; the creak of the tiles beneath her feet as she moves to the window. She tries to look out, but all she can see is the reflection of her face. And of the door gliding open behind her.
Must be the draft, she thinks. The tile stove in the dining room draws such a great deal of air.
She shakes off the disquiet she feels and switches off the lamp before she turns around.
Now the door is wide open. She shudders faintly, and steps through it. The lights are on in the hallway between the dining room and the girls’ bedrooms. I should check the tile stove, she thinks; make sure the lids are shut. But there is whispering coming from one of the bedrooms.