The Fire Witness: A Novel Page 23

  Joona hears her close the door after her. Then he gets up and puts on his pants. While he’s standing next to the bed, he realizes that he’d visited Flora Hansen because she happened to guess right about the rock. It’s called confirmation bias. Unconsciously, all people tend to heed results that confirm their theories rather than those that don’t. Flora called the police many times mentioning different murder weapons, but it was only when she mentioned a bloody rock that he paid any attention to her.

  Now that Flora is off his list, there are no other clues for him to follow.

  Joona walks to the window and opens the thin white drapes. The gray light of dawn still holds some of the previous evening’s gloom. Even the splashing he can hear from the fountain at Karlaplan Circle seems melancholy. Pigeons strut around the closed entrance to the shopping center. A few people are already on their way to work.

  There was something desperate in Flora Hansen’s voice and eyes as she told him how she collected bottles and newspapers in the subway.

  Absentmindedly, he puts on his shirt and stares at nothing as he buttons it. He had just made a logical connection, but he lost it immediately. He tries to go back in his thoughts and remember what it was, but it glides away again.

  It was about Vicky, her mother, and the key ring. Was it something he saw?

  He puts on his jacket and looks out the window at Karlaplan Circle again. A bus is driving around it. It stops and lets on passengers. Farther down the street, an elderly man with a walker is smiling at a dog sniffing around a garbage can.

  A woman in a leather jacket is running toward the subway. She scares a flock of pigeons on the square. They take off and fly in a semicircle before they land again.

  The subway.

  There’s something about the subway.

  Joona picks up his cell phone. He thinks he’s right about his intuition, but he wants to check some facts first. While he waits for the signal to go through, he walks into the hallway and puts on his shoes.

  “Holger here.”

  “Joona Linna here,” Joona says. He opens the front door.

  “And a very good morning to you! I have—”

  “There’s something I have to ask first,” Joona interrupts as he locks the door behind him. “You went through the purse we found at the dam, right?”

  Joona is starting to run down the stairs.

  “I had already taken pictures and listed the contents when the prosecutor told me they were shutting down the investigation.”

  “I am not allowed to read your report,” Joona says.

  “There wasn’t much to it,” Holger says. Joona can hear him shuffle papers. “I mentioned the knife—”

  “You mentioned some sort of bicycle tool. Did you find out what it was?”

  Joona is rushing down Lützengatan to his car.

  “Yes, I did,” Holger says. “It took a little time, since I’m from Västernorrland. It wasn’t a bike tool at all. It was a key to the driver’s cab in a subway car.”

  “Has this key been on a key ring recently?”

  “How the hell should I know!” Holger is quiet for a moment and Joona assumes he’s looking at the photograph in his report. “You’re right! It’s shiny around the eye.”

  Joona thanks him for his time and runs the last few yards to his car. Elin told him that Tuula steals pretty things from everyone around her: earrings, shiny pens, coins, and lipsticks. Tuula had taken the beautiful key ring with its light blue flower and left the ugly key in Vicky’s purse. He taps in Anja’s number as he opens the car door.

  “Hello, Ghostbusters,” Anja says.

  “Anja, can you help me? I need to talk to whoever is responsible for Stockholm’s subway system.” By now Joona is in his car and has started to drive.

  “Let me connect with the spirits instead.”

  “Anja, I’m in a hurry!”

  “Well, who got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?” Anja mutters.

  Joona is driving toward the stadium. “Did you know that all the subway cars in Stockholm have their own names as well as numbers?” he asks.

  “Of course. I rode in Rebecka this morning and what a fine car she is, too.”

  “I just figured out that Dennis isn’t a person. It’s the name of a subway car, and I need to find out where it is right now.”

  102

  All the cars in the subway system have numbers, of course, but for many years the cars have also been given personal names. Joona is fairly certain that the key from Vicky’s mother, Susie, fits a mechanical lock that’s on all the subway cars, but the name on the fob points at a specific car. Perhaps Susie kept her personal belongings in the driver’s cab—perhaps she slept there sometimes. He knows that she sometimes stayed in the subway tunnels or slept on benches in a subway station after it closed. Perhaps she even lived in an abandoned tunnel deep underground.

  Somehow she had got hold of a key, Joona thinks as he drives. It couldn’t have been easy. It must have been one of her more valuable possessions. Still, she gave it to her daughter. She’d also gotten a key ring with the name Dennis so that the girl would not forget which subway car was the important one.

  Maybe she knew Vicky was planning to run away.

  Vicky had already run away many times and managed to stay hidden for a long time at least twice. The first time she was only eight years old and she’d been missing for seven months when she was found in the middle of December, severely hypothermic, in a parking garage with her mother. The second time, she was thirteen. Vicky had been gone for eleven months when she was arrested for shoplifting near Globen.

  It’s easy enough to get into a driver’s cab. Any box-end wrench the right size would work.

  Even if Vicky is not in the subway car named Dennis, she might have left clues there from her time as a runaway, clues that could lead to her present hiding place.

  Joona has almost reached the police station when Anja calls and says she’s talked with someone at Stockholm Local Transport.

  “There was a subway car named Dennis that was taken out of service some time ago due to serious maintenance issues.”

  “Where is this car now?”

  “He didn’t know,” she said. “It could be at the depot in Rissne, but more likely it’s parked at the service depot in Johanneshov.”

  “Connect me,” Joona says. He turns his car around and the tires thud over the speed bumps. He runs a red light as he turns onto Fleminggatan.

  103

  Joona drives toward Johanneshov, south of Stockholm. A man answers his phone call. It sounds as if he’s in the middle of eating.

  “Subway Traffic Technical Division, Kjelle here.”

  “Joona Linna from the National Police. Can you confirm that a subway car named Dennis is parked with you at Johanneshov?”

  “Dennis,” the man says, smacking his lips. “Do you have the car number?”

  “No, sorry, I don’t.”

  “Hold on, let me check.”

  Joona can hear the man talking to himself and then the man picks up the phone again.

  “There’s a Denniz with a z at the end—”

  “That could be the one.”

  “Okay.”

  Joona hears the man swallow his food before he speaks again.

  “It’s not in the current register. It’s a really old car. As far as I can tell from this database, it hasn’t been used in traffic for the past few years.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “Probably here, but let me connect you to Dick. He knows everything the computer doesn’t.”

  Kjelle’s voice disappears and is replaced by the sound of electric buzzing. Then an older man picks up the phone. His voice echoes as if he’s in a cathedral or a room made entirely of metal.

  “Swinging Dick here,” he says.

  “I just talked to Kjelle,” Joona says. “He thinks that a car named Denniz is parked out by you.”

  “If Kjelle says it’s here, it probably is. But I can
go and take a look, especially if it’s a vital matter of life and death and the honor of my country.”

  “It is, actually,” Joona replies.

  “Are you in a car?”

  “Yes.”

  “Heading here?”

  Joona hears Dick climbing down a metal staircase. A large, heavy door creaks. He sounds slightly out of breath when he next speaks.

  “I’m down in the tunnel now. Are you still there?”

  “Still here.”

  “It looks like we have Mikaela and Maria. Denniz should be in one of these corners.”

  Joona can hear Dick’s echoing footsteps even as he’s driving as fast as he can over the Central Bridge. He thinks about the times Vicky was on the lam. She must have slept somewhere. She must have felt safe and secure somewhere.

  “Do you see the car yet?” asks Joona.

  “Not yet. We have Ellinor. There’s Silvia. Even the lighting down here doesn’t work like it should.”

  Joona can hear footsteps as Dick keeps going down a tunnel beneath the industrial center of Johanneshov.

  “Let’s see. I haven’t been back this far in a long time. Let me turn on my flashlight. It’s the deepest in, of course. Here it is. Denniz, totally rusty and looks like—”

  “You’re sure it’s the right car?”

  “I can take a picture if you want. What the hell! There’s people inside! I can see people.”

  “Shh,” Joona says.

  Dick whispers, “There are some people inside the car.”

  “Keep away from them,” Joona says.

  “They’ve put a damned gas cylinder in front of the door!”

  There’s a rustling sound as Dick moves away swiftly. He’s breathing hard.

  “It was … I saw people in there,” he whispers into the phone.

  Joona thinks it can’t be Vicky because she doesn’t have the key and the key ring.

  Joona hears sudden high-pitched screaming. It’s distant but clear.

  “There’s a woman screaming in there! She seems out of her mind.”

  “Get away from there as best you can,” Joona says.

  He hears more steps and hard breathing. He can still hear the screaming, but it sounds fainter.

  “What did you see?” Joona asks.

  “A large cylinder for welding was blocking the door.”

  “What about the people?”

  “There was graffiti on the door, but I could tell there was a tall person and a shorter person, and maybe more than that, but I’m not sure.”

  “How did they get in?”

  “We keep the tunnels locked, but if you’re determined, you could break in pretty easily.”

  “Listen to me carefully,” Joona says. “I’m a detective inspector and I want you to leave the tunnel now and wait outside for the police to arrive.”

  104

  A black van is being driven at top speed through the gates of the transit depot in Johanneshov. Dry gravel is churned up in a cloud of dust as the van swings around and stops in front of a green metal building.

  After he talked to Dick, Joona called the provincial chief of police and told him that this could be a possible hostage situation. A SWAT team was immediately dispatched.

  Five police officers climb out of the van, all of them heavily clothed in boots, dark blue overalls, bulletproof vests, helmets, protective glasses, and gloves. They are all armed and keyed up.

  Joona walks over to meet the group. Three of them are carrying jade-green automatic rifles with non-magnifying reflector sights from Heckler & Koch. These weapons aren’t anything special but they are lightweight and can empty a magazine in less than three seconds. The other two men in the group are carrying sniper rifles.

  Joona shakes hands with the SWAT team leader, the doctor in the group, and the other three men, and then explains that the situation could be urgent. “I’d like us to go in at once,” he says, “but since I don’t know what your run-through has been, let me emphasize that we don’t have a positive ID of either Vicky Bennet or Dante Abrahamsson.”

  While waiting for the SWAT team to arrive, Joona talked with Dick Jansson, who gave him a map of the tunnel on which he drew the locations of the various subway cars.

  A young officer, holding a sniper rifle, raises his hand. “Are we assuming that she’s armed?” he asks.

  “Probably not with any kind of gun,” Joona replies.

  “So we can expect to meet two unarmed children,” the man says, and shakes his head with a grin.

  “We don’t know what we’ll meet. You never know what you’ll run into during a situation like this,” Joona says.

  He shows them a picture of a subway car similar to Denniz.

  “Where are we going in?” asks the SWAT team leader.

  “The front door is open but blocked with one or two gas cylinders,” Joona explains.

  “Are you all getting this?” The SWAT team leader turns toward the others.

  Joona puts the map over the drawing. He points out the various sidetracks and the location of the subway cars.

  “I think we can get this far without being discovered,” Joona says, pointing to a curve in the tunnel. “It’s hard to say for sure.”

  The SWAT team leader nods.

  “It’s not all that far, but I would like a sniper on the roof of the closest car.”

  “I’ll do that,” one of the men says.

  “And I can go here,” says the younger sniper.

  They follow Joona to the steel door. One of the men checks his reserve magazine while Joona puts on his bulletproof vest.

  “Our primary goal is to get the boy out of the car and our secondary goal is to get the suspect,” Joona says as he opens the door. “If you must fire, aim for the girl’s legs first and foremost. Otherwise aim for the shoulders or arms.”

  A long metal staircase leads down to the tunnel where the subway cars wait for repairs. The only sound is the dull tramp of heavy boots.

  105

  As soon as the team reaches the tunnel, they start to move more slowly and carefully, the sound of their footsteps mere whispers against the metal-clad tunnel walls.

  They approach a buckled train that gives off a strange smell, its cars looking like dark ruins from an abandoned civilization. The beams from their flashlights flicker over the rough walls. They’re moving single file, quickly and almost soundlessly. The tracks branch out near a manual switch. A red light with a broken shade gives off a weak light, and a work glove lies forgotten in the black gravel. Dim light from induction lamps set at intervals down the tunnel allows them to see the way forward.

  Joona signals to the men to turn off their flashlights and they pass through the narrow gap between two cars with broken windows. A box of oil-covered nuts and bolts leans against the wall. Loose cables, outlets, and dusty wires surround it.

  They’re almost there now, so they move cautiously. Joona points out a car for the first sniper who climbs onto its roof, unfolds a tripod, and begins to adjust his Hensoldt sight. The others mount their weapon lights then approach the next car in the tunnel. Their quick, short breaths are the only indication of the stress they’re under, though one of the men keeps compulsively checking the clasp on his helmet. The SWAT team leader exchanges glances with the younger sniper and indicates a line of fire.

  Someone slips in the gravel and a loose stone clatters off the rail. A shiny rat jumps toward the wall and disappears.

  Joona keeps walking forward at the side of the tunnel, ahead of the others. He sees the car named Denniz on the track closest to the wall. Cables or ropes are hanging from the ceiling of the tunnel. He moves slightly sideways and notices a weak light coming through one of the car’s dirty windows. The beam of light moves like a butterfly, making the surrounding shadows grow and shrink.

  The SWAT team leader loosens a shock grenade from his belt.

  Joona stands still and listens before he resumes walking. He knows he’s now in the line of fire and that the sniper’
s rifle is aimed at his back. He can see the large green gas cylinder lodged in the open door.

  When he finally reaches the car, he squats and places his ear against its metal wall. Immediately he can hear someone walking around inside.

  The SWAT team leader signals to two men. Like shadows, they run through the darkness. They are big men, but they move soundlessly. All that can be heard is the quiet scrunch of holsters, bulletproof vests, and heavy overalls in motion. Then they’re right next to Joona.

  Joona has not even drawn his pistol, but sees that the men from the SWAT team already have their fingers on the triggers of their automatic rifles.

  It’s hard to make out anything through the car’s filthy windows, but a small flashlight lying on the floor reveals boxes, empty bottles, and plastic bags. Between two seats, there’s a large bundle tied with a rope.

  The flashlight beam begins to shake as the whole car vibrates. Somewhere, a subway car is moving on another set of rails.

  Thunder rolls along the tunnel.

  They can hear weak moaning.

  Joona draws his pistol.

  A shadow moves deep inside the subway car. It appears to be a large man in jeans and sneakers crawling away.

  Joona stuffs the first bullet into the cartridge position and turns toward the SWAT team leader. He points at the man inside the subway car and gestures for the team to move on in.

  106

  The central door bursts open with a bang and the SWAT team storms the subway car. Windows are broken and shards shower down on the ripped-up seats and the floor. The gas cylinder falls with a thud and rolls through the car, the argon hissing as it escapes. All the inside doors are forced open.

  Joona steps over moldy blankets, egg cartons, and old newspapers.

  “Lie still!” someone bellows.

  They search the car section by section using the light from their weapons. They go between the seats and look through the dirty Plexiglas dividers between sections.

  “Don’t hit me!” screams a man inside the second section.