The Fire Witness

The television news is starting to cover the murders at the Birgitta Home and the latest dramatic developments. They show pictures of the police cordon, the red buildings and the sign to the home. The perpetrator’s suspected escape route is shown on a map, and a reporter stands in the middle of Highway 86 talking about the abduction and the police’s unsuccessful roadblocks.

Joona gets to his feet and is walking towards the television as the voiceover reports that the mother of the missing boy has chosen to give the kidnapper a message in a live broadcast.

Pia Abrahamsson appears on the screen. Her face looks drawn as she sits at a kitchen table with a sheet of prompts in her hand.

‘If you’re hearing this,’ she begins, ‘I understand that you have been the victim of injustice, but Dante has nothing to do with that …’

Pia looks directly at the camera.

‘You have to give him back,’ she whispers, her chin trembling. ‘I’m sure you’re kind, but Dante is only four years old, and I know how frightened he is … he’s so …’

She looks at the sheet of paper as tears run down her cheeks.

‘You mustn’t be mean to him, you mustn’t hit my little …’

She bursts into racking sobs and turns her face away before they cut back to the studio in Stockholm.

A forensic psychiatrist from Säter Hospital is perched at a tall table, and explains just how serious the situation is to the newsreader: ‘I haven’t had access to the girl’s medical records, of course, and I don’t want to speculate as to whether she may have committed the two murders, but the fact that she’s been living in this particular care home means that it’s very possible that she’s seriously mentally unstable, and even if—’

‘What are the dangers?’ the newsreader asks.

‘It’s possible that she doesn’t care about the boy at all,’ the psychiatrist explains. ‘She might forget about him altogether at times … but he’s only four years old, and if he suddenly starts to cry or call for his mother she could get angry and dangerous …’

Susanne Öst comes into the breakfast room to fetch Joona. With a small smile she offers him a cup of coffee and some cake. He thanks her and follows her to the lift, and they head up to the top floor. They walk into an uninspiring bridal suite, with a locked minibar and a Jacuzzi perched on battered gold paws.

Tuula Lehti is lying on the wide bed watching the Disney Channel. The responsible adult from the Victim Support Service nods to them. Susanne closes the door, and Joona pulls out a chair with a pink velvet seat and sits down.

‘Why did you tell me that Vicky goes to see someone called Dennis?’ Joona asks.

Tuula sits up and clutches a heart-shaped cushion to her stomach.

‘I thought that’s what she does,’ she says simply.

‘What made you think that?’

Tuula shrugs her shoulders and looks back at the television.

‘Did she ever talk about someone called Dennis?’

‘No,’ she smiles.

‘Tuula, I really do need to find Vicky.’

She kicks the bedspread and pink satin duvet onto the floor, then turns back to the television.

‘Am I going to have to sit here all day?’ she asks.

‘No, you can go back to your room if you want,’ the support person says.

‘Sinä olet vain pieni lapsi,’ Joona says in Finnish. You’re only a small child.

‘Ei,’ she replies, and looks him in the eye.

‘You shouldn’t have to live in institutions.’

‘I like it there,’ she says blankly.

‘Nothing bad ever happens to you?’

Her neck flushes and she blinks her white eyelashes.

‘No,’ she says bluntly.

‘Miranda hit you yesterday.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ she mutters, and tries to squeeze the cushion.

‘Why was she angry?’

‘She thought I’d been poking about in her room.’

‘Had you?’

Tuula licks the heart-shaped cushion.

‘Yes, but I didn’t take anything.’

‘Why were you poking about in her room?’

‘I poke about in everyone’s rooms.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s fun,’ she replies.

‘But Miranda thought you’d taken something from her?’

‘Yeah, she was a bit cross …’

‘What did she think you’d taken?’

‘She didn’t say,’ Tuula smiles.

‘What do you think it was?’

‘I don’t know, but it’s usually pills … Lu Chu pushed me down the stairs once when she thought I’d taken her fucking benzos.’

‘And if it wasn’t drugs – what might she have thought you’d taken?’

‘Who cares?’ Tuula sighs. ‘Make-up, jewellery …’

She sits on the edge of the bed again, leans back, and whispers something about a studded necklace.

‘What about Vicky?’ Joona asks. ‘Does Vicky fight as well?’

‘No,’ Tuula smiles again.

‘What does she do, then?’

‘I shouldn’t say, because I don’t know her. I don’t think she’s ever spoken to me, but …’

The girl falls silent and shrugs.

‘Why not?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘But you must have seen her when she’s angry?’

‘She cuts herself, so you don’t …’

Tuula stops and shakes her head.

‘What were you going to say?’

‘That you don’t have to worry about her … she’ll kill herself soon, then you’ll have one less problem,’ Tuula says without looking at Joona.

She stares at her fingers, mutters something to herself, then stands up abruptly and walks out of the room.

39

Caroline, the slightly older girl, comes into the room with the man from Victim Support. She’s wearing a long, baggy T-shirt with a kitten on it. She has a runic tattoo, and the scars of old injections glint white in the crook of her arm.

She smiles shyly when she says hello to Joona. Then she sits down carefully on the armchair by the brown desk.

‘Tuula says Vicky creeps out at nights to meet a boy,’ Joona says.

‘No,’ Caroline laughs.

‘What makes you say that?’

‘She doesn’t do that,’ Caroline smiles.

‘You sound very sure.’

‘Tuula thinks everyone’s a total whore,’ she explains.

‘So Vicky doesn’t creep out?’

‘Oh, she does that,’ Caroline says, looking serious.

‘What does she do when she gets out?’ Joona asks, trying to hide his eagerness.

Caroline looks him in the eye briefly, then turns to gaze at the window.

‘She sits behind the brew-house and phones her mother.’

Joona knows that Vicky’s mother died before Vicky arrived at the Birgitta Home, but instead of confronting Caroline with this he asks calmly: ‘What do they talk about?’

‘Well … Vicky just leaves little messages on her mother’s voicemail, but I think … if I’ve got this right, her mum never calls back.’

Joona nods, thinking that no one seems to have told Vicky that her mother is dead.

‘Have you ever heard of someone called Dennis?’ he asks.

‘No,’ Caroline says instantly.

‘Think carefully.’

She looks him calmly in the eye, then jumps when Susanne Öst’s phone buzzes as a text message arrives.

‘Who would Vicky turn to?’ Joona goes on, even though the energy has gone out of the conversation.

‘Her mum – that’s the only person I can think of.’

‘Friends, boys?’

‘No,’ Caroline replies. ‘But I don’t know her … look, we’re both doing ADL, so we see each other quite a bit, but she never talks about herself.’

‘ADL?’

‘Sounds like a condition, doesn’t it?’ Caroline laughs. ‘It stands for All Day Lifestyle. Only for people who are really good. You get to try going out, you tag along to Sundsvall to get the groceries, exciting stuff like that …’

‘You must have talked to each other when you were doing that?’ Joona prompts.

‘A bit, but not much.’

‘So who else would she talk to, then?’

‘No one,’ she replies. ‘Except Daniel, of course.’

‘The counsellor?’

40

Joona and Susanne leave the bridal suite and walk back along the corridor to the lift. She laughs as they both reach for the button at the same time.

‘When can we talk to Daniel Grim?’ Joona asks.

‘His doctor said it was too soon yesterday, which is understandable,’ she says, glancing at him. ‘This isn’t easy. But I’ll try prompting, and see what happens.’

They get out on the ground floor and head towards the front door, but stop at the reception desk when they see Gunnarsson standing there.

‘Oh yes, I got a text message to let me know that the post-mortem’s underway,’ Susanne tells Joona.

‘Good. When do you think we’ll get the first results?’ he asks.

‘Go home,’ Gunnarsson grunts. ‘You shouldn’t be here, you’re not going to see any damn results, you …’

‘OK, calm down,’ Susanne interrupts, surprised.

‘We’re so damn stupid up here that we’re happy to let some fucking observer take over the whole preliminary investigation just because he comes from Stockholm.’

‘I’m trying to help,’ Joona says. ‘Seeing as—’

‘Just shut up.’

‘This is my preliminary investigation,’ the prosecutor says, looking Gunnarsson hard in the eye.

‘Then maybe you’d like to know that Joona Linna has got Internal Investigations on his back, and that senior prosecutor at National—’

‘Are you under investigation?’ Susanne Öst asks, taken aback.

‘Yes,’ Joona replies. ‘But my role—’

‘And here I am going about trusting you,’ she says, her mouth contracting tightly. ‘I’ve let you in on the investigation, listened to you. And it turns out you’re just a liar.’

‘I haven’t got time for this,’ Joona says seriously. ‘I need to talk to Daniel Grim.’

‘I’ll do that,’ Gunnarsson says with a snort.

‘You do realise how serious this is,’ Joona goes on. ‘Daniel Grim could be the only person who—’

‘I’m not prepared to work with you,’ the prosecutor interrupts.

‘You’re suspended,’ Gunnarsson says.

‘I’ve lost all faith in you,’ Susanne sighs, and starts to walk towards the door.

‘Goodbye,’ Gunnarsson says, and follows her.

‘If you get a chance to talk to Daniel, you have to ask him about Dennis,’ Joona calls after them. ‘Ask Daniel if he knows who Dennis is, but above all ask him where Vicky might have gone. We need a name or a location. Daniel’s the only person Vicky talked to, and—’

‘Go home,’ Gunnarsson laughs, then waves at him over his shoulder and walks out.

41

Counsellor Daniel Grim has worked part-time with the girls at the Birgitta Home for eleven years. He practises Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Aggression Replacement Training, and talks to the residents individually at least once a week.

Daniel’s wife Elisabet was a nurse, and had been working the night-shift when he thought she had gone with the badly shocked Nina Molander in the ambulance to the district hospital.

When Daniel realised that Elisabet was lying dead in the brew-house, he collapsed on the ground. He was talking confusedly about Elisabet’s heart disease, but when he heard that she had been killed he fell completely silent. He had goosebumps on his arms, and sweat was running down his cheeks. He was breathing fast, and didn’t say a word when he was lifted into the ambulance on a stretcher.

Superintendent Gunnarsson has already pulled out another cigarette when he gets out of the lift at Ward 52A in the psychiatric clinic at the West Norrland district hospital.

A young man in a white coat comes to meet him, they shake hands, then Gunnarsson follows him down a corridor with pale grey walls.

‘Like I said on the phone, I don’t think there’s much point trying to interview him this soon …’

‘No, but I can just have a little chat with him.’

The doctor stops and looks at Gunnarsson for a moment before he begins to explain: ‘Daniel Grim is in a state of traumatised shock, which is commonly known as arousal. It’s triggered by the hypothalamus and the limbic system, and—’

‘I don’t give a damn about that,’ Gunnarsson interrupts. ‘I just need to know if he’s been stuffed with a load of drugs and is totally fucking out of it.’

‘No, he’s not out of it, but I wouldn’t let you see him unless—’

‘We’ve got a double murder—’

‘You know full well whose decision is final here,’ the doctor interrupts calmly. ‘If I believe the patient’s recovery might be adversely affected by talking to the police, then you’ll just have to wait.’

‘I understand,’ Gunnarsson says, forcing himself to speak calmly.

‘But seeing as the patient himself has repeatedly stated that he wants to help the police, I’m prepared to allow you to ask him a few questions in my presence.’

‘I’m very grateful,’ Gunnarsson smiles.

They set off down the corridor again, turn a corner, walk past a row of windows looking onto an internal courtyard full of skylights and ventilation units, before the doctor opens the door to one of the patients’ rooms.

There are sheets and blankets lying on a small sofa, but Daniel Grim is sitting on the floor below the window with his back to the radiator. His face looks oddly relaxed, and he doesn’t look up when they walk in.

Gunnarsson pulls up a chair and sits down in front of Daniel. After a while he swears, and crouches down next to the grieving man.

‘I need to talk to you,’ he says. ‘We have to find Vicky Bennet … she’s suspected of committing the murders at the Birgitta Home, and—’

‘But I …’

Gunnarsson stops talking abruptly as Daniel whispers something, and waits for him to go on.

‘I didn’t hear what you said,’ he says.

The doctor stands and watches them in silence.

‘I don’t think it was her,’ Daniel whispers. ‘She’s a sweet girl, and …’

He raises his glasses and wipes the tears from his cheeks.

‘I know you’re governed by an oath of confidentiality,’ Gunnarsson says. ‘But is there any way you could help us find Vicky Bennet?’

‘I’ll try,’ Daniel mumbles, then purses his lips together tightly.

‘Does she know anyone who lives near the Birgitta Home?’

‘Maybe … I’m having trouble sorting my thoughts out …’

Gunnarsson groans and shifts his position.

‘You were Vicky’s counsellor,’ he says sternly. ‘Where do you think she’s gone? Let’s ignore any question of guilt, because we really don’t know. But we’re fairly certain that she’s kidnapped a child.’

‘No,’ he whispers.

‘Who would she go to? Who would she get to help her?’

‘She’s frightened,’ Daniel replies in a shaky voice. ‘She curls up under a tree and hides, that’s … that … What was the question?’

‘Do you know of any particular hiding place?’

Daniel starts to mutter about Elisabet’s heart, saying he was sure it was because of the problems with her heart.

‘Daniel, you don’t have to do this if it’s too difficult,’ the doctor says. ‘I can ask the police to come back later if you need to rest.’

Daniel shakes his head quickly and tries to breathe calmly.

‘Give me a few places,’ Gunnarsson says,

‘Stockholm.’

‘Where?’

‘I … I don’t know about—’

‘For fuck’s sake!’ Gunnarsson exclaims.

‘Sorry, I’m sorry …’

Daniel’s chin trembles, and the corners of his mouth droop as tears well up in his eyes, and he turns away and starts to sob loudly, his whole body shaking.

‘She murdered your wife with a hammer and …’

Daniel hits the back of his head against the radiator so hard that his glasses fall into his lap.

‘Get out of here,’ the doctor says sharply. ‘Not another word. This was a mistake, there won’t be any further conversations.’

42

The car park outside the district hospital in Sundsvall is almost empty. The long building makes a desolate impression in the gloomy light. Dark brown bricks interspersed with white windows that look blind to the world. Joona walks straight through some low bushes towards the main entrance.

The reception counter in the foyer is unstaffed. He waits for a while at the darkened desk until a cleaner stops.

‘Where’s the pathology department?’ Joona asks.

‘Two hundred and fifty kilometres north of here,’ the cleaner says good-naturedly. ‘But if you want the pathologist, I can show you the way.’

They walk together through deserted corridors, then take a large lift down into the bowels of the hospital. It’s cold, and the floor has cracked in several places.

The cleaner pulls open a pair of heavy metal doors, and at the far end of the corridor is a sign: Department of Clinical Pathology and Cytology.

‘Good luck,’ the man says, and gestures towards the door.

Joona thanks him and carries on along the corridor alone, following the tracks left on the linoleum floor by trolley wheels. He passes the laboratory, opens the door to the post-mortem room, and walks straight into the white-tiled space with a stainless-steel table at its centre. The light from the fluorescent lamps is overwhelming. A door hisses, and two people wheel a trolley in from the cold store.

‘Excuse me,’ Joona says.

A thin man in a white coat turns around. A pair of white-framed pilot’s glasses glint in the light. Senior pathologist Nils ‘the Needle’ Åhlén from Stockholm, and a very old friend of Joona’s. The man next to him is his young apprentice, his dyed dark hair hanging in clumps over the shoulders of his coat.

‘What are you doing here?’ Joona asks cheerfully.

‘A woman from National Crime called and threatened me,’ the Needle replies.

‘Anja,’ Joona says.

‘I got really scared … she snapped at me and said that Joona Linna couldn’t be expected to go all the way up to Umeå to talk to a pathologist.’

‘But we’re taking the opportunity to go to Nordfest seeing as we’re here,’ Frippe explains.

‘The Haunted are playing at Club Destroyer,’ Nils smiles.

‘I can see why that would sway the balance,’ Joona says.

Frippe laughs, and Joona notices the worn leather trousers beneath his coat, and the cowboy boots with bright blue shoe covers over them.

‘We’re done with the woman … Elisabet Grim,’ Nils says. ‘The only thing of any real note is probably the wounds to her hands.’

‘Defence wounds?’ Joona asks.

‘Yes, but on the wrong side,’ Frippe says.

‘We can take a look in a while,’ Nils says. ‘But first it’s time to give Miranda Ericsdotter a bit of attention.’

‘When did they die – can you say?’ Joona asks.

‘As you know, body temperature sinks …’

‘Algor mortis,’ Joona says.

‘Exactly, and that reduction follows a curve that levels out when it reaches room temperature …’

‘He knows that,’ Frippe says.

‘So, taking that, together with the hypostasis and rigor mortis, we can say that the girl and the woman died at roughly the same time, late on Friday.’

Joona watches them roll the trolley over to the examination table, count to three, and then lift the light body in its sealed bag. When Frippe opens the bag, a rancid smell of wet bread and old blood spreads through the room.

The girl is lying on the table in the position she was found in, with her hands over her face and her ankles crossed.

Rigor mortis is caused by an increase in calcium in the motionless muscles, resulting in two different types of protein starting to combine. It almost always starts in the heart and diaphragm. After half an hour it can be detected in the jaw, and in the neck after two hours.

Joona knows it’s going to take a lot of force to move Miranda’s hands from her face.

Odd ideas suddenly start to float through his head. The possibility that it might not be Miranda behind those hands, that her face might have been altered, that her eyes might have been damaged or removed.

‘We haven’t received a formal request to examine her,’ Nils Åhlén says. ‘Why has she got her hands over her face?’

‘I don’t know,’ Joona replies quietly.

Frippe is carefully photographing the body.

‘I assume we’re talking about a comprehensive post-mortem examination, and that you’ll want a forensic statement?’ Nils says.

‘Yes,’ Joona replies.

‘We should really have a secretary when we’re dealing with a homicide,’ the pathologist mutters as he walks around the body.

‘You’re moaning again,’ Frippe smiles.

‘Yes, sorry,’ Nils says, and stops for a moment behind Miranda’s head before moving on.

Joona thinks of how the German-language poet Rilke wrote that the living were obsessed with drawing distinctions between the living and the dead. He claimed that there were other beings, angels, which didn’t notice any difference.

‘The hypostasis indicates that the victim has been left lying still,’ Nils mutters.

‘I believe Miranda was moved directly after the murder,’ Joona says. ‘The way I read the blood-spatter pattern, her body would have been limp when it was placed on the bed.’

Frippe nods.

‘If it happened as soon as that, there wouldn’t be any marks.’

Joona forces himself to look on while the two doctors conduct a thorough external examination of the body. He can’t help thinking of his own daughter, who isn’t much younger than this girl, lying still and inscrutable in front of him.

A network of yellow veins has started to show through the white skin. Around her neck and down her thighs the veins look like a pale river system. Her previously flat stomach has become rounder and darker.

Joona watches them work, registers the two doctors’ actions, sees Nils Åhlén cut calmly through her white underpants and pack them for analysis, listens to their conversation and conclusions, but is at the same time back at the crime scene in his mind.

Nils states that there is a total absence of defensive injuries, and Joona hears him discuss the lack of soft tissue damage with Frippe.

There are no signs of a fight or other abuse.

Miranda waited for the blows to her head, she didn’t try to run, didn’t put up any resistance.

Joona thinks back to the bare room where she spent her last hours as he watches the two men pulling out strands of hair by the root for comparative tests, and filling EDTA tubes with blood.

Nils scrapes beneath her fingernails, then turns towards Joona and clears his throat sharply: ‘No traces of skin … she didn’t defend herself.’

‘I know,’ Joona says.

When they start to examine the injuries to her skull, Joona moves closer and stands where he can see everything.

‘Repeated blows to the head with a blunt object is the probable cause of death,’ Nils says when he sees how closely Joona is watching.

‘From the front?’ Joona asks.

‘Yes, from the front, slightly off to one side,’ Nils replies, pointing at the bloody hair. ‘Compression fracture of the temporal bone … We’ll do a digital tomography scan, but I assume that the large blood vessels on the inside of the skull have been detached and that we’ll find fragments of bone in the brain.’

‘Just like with Elisabet Grim, we’re bound to find trauma to the cerebral cortex,’ Frippe says.

‘Myelin in the hair,’ Nils says, pointing.

‘Elisabet had broken blood vessels in her skull, and blood and cerebrospinal fluid had run into her nasal cavity,’ Frippe says.

‘So you think they were killed at roughly the same time?’ Joona says.

‘Close together,’ Frippe nods.

‘They were both attacked from the front, both have the same cause of death,’ Joona says. ‘The same murder weapon, and …’

‘No,’ Nils interrupts. ‘They were killed with different implements.’

‘But the hammer …’ Joona says, almost inaudibly.

‘Yes, Elisabet’s skull was crushed with the hammer,’ Nils says. ‘But Miranda was killed with a rock.’

Joona stares at him.

‘She was killed with a rock?’

43

Joona stayed in the pathology lab until he had seen Miranda’s face behind her hands. The notion that she hadn’t wanted to be seen after death is still lingering. He had felt a peculiar unease when they forced her hands away.