The Fire Witness: A Novel Read online

  120

  Gun in hand, Joona sneaks inside, bending low behind the large machinery. He can smell the sweet odor from the rinsed floor and the rubber mats. He realizes that he didn’t stop to give the county communications center an address. They have probably reached the slaughterhouse area by now, but it might take them some time to find Vicky.

  A memory flashes through his mind, a merciless memory of seconds during which lives change and time compresses. Joona is eleven years old and the school principal has come to his classroom, taken him out into the hall, and told him what happened. The principal’s cheeks are wet with tears.

  Joona’s father was a policeman and was on patrol. He’d gone into an apartment and had been shot in the back. His father had been on his own. Against regulations.

  Joona has no time to wait for reinforcements.

  In front of him, pneumatic knives and casing pullers covered in dirty membranes are hanging from a rack above a stainless-steel roller conveyor. He keeps moving forward. He can hear the voices more clearly.

  “No, he has to wake up first.” A deep, wheezing male voice.

  “Give him a minute.”

  Joona recognizes Tobias’s voice with its innocent, boyish tone.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” Another voice, also male.

  “I wanted to keep him quiet,” Tobias replies.

  “He’s practically dead,” says the wheezing voice. “I won’t pay until I know he’s all right.”

  “We can only stay two more minutes,” says a third male voice. He is serious.

  Joona creeps toward the voices. As he reaches the end of one conveyor, he can see the boy lying on a gray blanket spread on the floor. He’s dressed in a stretched-out blue sweater, corduroy pants, and tiny sports shoes. His face has been washed, but he is filthy and unconscious.

  A large, heavyset man is standing beside the boy. His beer belly protrudes from a leather vest, and he’s sweating so heavily that it’s running down his face. He stamps his foot with irritation and tugs at his white beard.

  Joona feels a drop hit him. A hose clip is loose and drops of water are falling from it. They run over the tiled floor to the drain.

  The large man starts to pace, while constantly looking at his watch. Then he squats beside the boy.

  “Let’s take a few pictures,” comes another voice, a new one.

  Joona does not know what to do. Besides Tobias, there are at least four men and he can’t tell whether they are armed or not.

  He really would like a SWAT team to appear right now.

  The large man’s face shines as he pulls the shoes from Dante’s feet.

  The small, striped socks come off with the shoes. The boy’s heels hit the blanket.

  As the man’s huge hands start to unbuckle the boy’s pants, Joona can’t stand to watch any longer.

  He doesn’t bother to hide as he heads for the cutting counter with its freshly sharpened knives of various lengths, thicknesses, and blade edges.

  He keeps his gun pointed to the floor.

  Joona knows he isn’t following regulations. He just can’t wait any longer. He heads directly for the men.

  “What the hell!” yells the heavyset man.

  He lets go of the boy but remains squatting.

  “You are under arrest for kidnapping,” Joona says as he kicks the huge man in the chest.

  The man falls backward from the blow. He can’t stop his fall and crashes into buckets of trimmings, rolls over the floor grate, and knocks a box of ear protectors down before he lands in the heavy skinning machine.

  Joona hears the click of a safety being released and feels a muzzle being pushed against his spine between his shoulder blades. He stands absolutely still as he knows the bullet would go right through his heart if it left the weapon that instant.

  A man of about fifty comes up to Joona from the side. He has a blond ponytail and is wearing a brown leather jacket. He moves as softly as a bodyguard and he’s pointing a sawed-off shotgun at Joona.

  “Shoot him!” someone shouts.

  The fat man is on his back, panting heavily. He rolls over and tries to get up but stumbles. He rights himself against the machine and gets to his unsteady feet. Then he disappears from Joona’s line of sight.

  “We can’t stay here,” Tobias is whispering.

  Joona tries to see what’s in the reflections on the gleaming metal of the cutting board and the hanging knives, but it’s impossible to make out how many men are behind him.

  “Hand over your gun,” a calm voice says behind him.

  Joona lets Tobias take his pistol. His colleagues must be near by now. He must not take any risks.

  121

  Vicky Bennet is still in the front seat of Joona Linna’s car. She’s biting her dry lips and staring at the reddish-brown building. She’s holding on to the steering wheel so that her handcuffed wrist won’t chafe.

  After every time she gets angry or afraid, she has trouble remembering what happened. Her memory bounces around and glances off one detail or another then disappears for good.

  Vicky shakes her head and closes her eyes. Then she looks back at the building. She doesn’t know how long ago the detective with the pleasant voice went into the building, his coat fluttering behind him in the wind.

  Perhaps Dante is already lost for good. He’s gone down the black hole, which sucks in children of all ages.

  She tries to keep calm, but she’s frantic to get out of the car.

  She sees a rat scurry along the edge of a damp concrete foundation and run down a drainpipe.

  The man who had been driving the forklift has stopped working. He’s shutting the high doors to the hangar and locking them. Then he leaves.

  Vicky stares at her hand and the shiny metal keeping her prisoner.

  Tobias had promised to take Dante to his mother.

  Vicky wails. How could she have believed Tobias again? If Dante disappears, it’s her own fault.

  She twists as far as she can to look out the back window. All the doors to the building are closed and there’s no one in sight. The yellow cloth of a ripped awning flaps in the wind.

  She pulls against the steering wheel with both hands in an attempt to break it off. It’s no use.

  “Damn it!”

  She’s breathing hard as she slams her head against the neck support.

  She glimpses a poster advertising fresh meat and Swedish goods. Someone has drawn a pair of eyes and a downturned mouth in the dust.

  The detective should have been back by now.

  She hears a sudden bang as loud as an explosion. The echo reverberates and then dies away.

  She tries to see anything at all and cranes her head in all directions. The area is deserted.

  What are they doing?

  Her heart beats against her chest. Who knows what can happen in this place?

  She breathes harder as she pictures a lonely child, crying from fear in a room with strange men. The image just came to her mind—she doesn’t know what it’s about.

  Vicky feels panic rising and tries to wrench her wrist out of the handcuff. She can’t. She pulls harder and the pain makes her catch her breath. The metal glides up the back of her hand but sticks. Vicky is breathing through her nose as she leans back, braces herself with one foot on the steering wheel and the other on the handcuff, and then she pushes her legs with all her strength.

  Vicky screams as flesh rips away from the back of her hand and her thumb breaks. Her hand has slipped free from the cuff.

  122

  The muzzle is removed from Joona’s back. He can hear footsteps moving away and he slowly turns around.

  A short man in glasses and wearing a gray suit is backing away from him. He holds a black Glock, which he is aiming at Joona. His left hand is hanging at his hip. Joona wonders if the man has hurt it, but then realizes it’s a prosthetic.

  Tobias is standing behind a dirty counter. He’s holding Joona’s Smith & Wesson but doesn’t seem to know
what to do with it.

  To Joona’s right, the man with the blond ponytail is aiming a sawed-off shotgun at him.

  “Roger,” the short man with the Glock says, “I want you and Micke to take care of this cop once I’ve left.”

  Tobias’s eyes are dark with anxiety.

  A young man with cropped hair and wearing camouflage pants is walking straight toward Joona, pointing a homemade gun at him. It’s a small souped-up submachine gun with ancillary parts. Joona is not wearing a bulletproof vest, but he’d rather take his chances with this gun than with the others. A homemade weapon can have the same firepower as an average automatic weapon, but usually it’s been badly built.

  A red dot appears on Joona’s chest. It’s from the laser sight on the gun, the kind the police used a few years ago.

  Joona says, “Lie down on the floor and put your hands behind your neck.”

  The man with cropped hair smiles. The red dot slides to Joona’s solar plexus and back up to his collarbone.

  “Micke, shoot him,” Roger says. He’s still aiming at Joona with the sawed-off shotgun.

  “We can’t have a witness,” stammers Tobias. He runs his hand nervously over his mouth.

  The man with the prosthetic hand looks at Tobias and says, “Get the boy to my car.” Then he leaves the hall.

  Tobias doesn’t look away from Joona for a second as he walks over to Dante. He grabs his sweater to pull him away over the tiled floor. He is not gentle.

  “I’ll be after you in a minute!” Joona yells at him.

  There’s about six yards between Joona and the man called Micke with the homemade gun.

  Joona moves slowly toward him.

  The young man yells, “Stand still!”

  “Micke,” Joona says softly, “if you lie down on the floor and put your hands behind your neck, you’ll be fine.”

  “Shoot the cop!” yells the man named Roger.

  “You do it!” Micke says.

  “What? What did you just say?” Roger says, and lowers his rifle.

  123

  Micke is breathing hard. The laser dot jumps around Joona’s chest. It disappears and reappears.

  “I can tell that you’re scared,” Joona says. He comes closer.

  “Shut your mouth and keep it shut!” Micke says, backing away.

  “You’re shaking.”

  “Shoot him! What the hell are you waiting for?” yells Roger.

  “Put down the weapon,” Joona says.

  “Shoot him!”

  “He’s too afraid,” Joona says.

  “I’m not afraid! I’ll do it!” Roger raises the rifle.

  “I don’t believe you,” Joona says. He can see a Thor’s hammer on a chain around Roger’s neck.

  “You want me to prove it? You want me to shoot you?” Roger is screaming as he edges closer.

  Roger puts his finger on the trigger and aims it at Joona.

  “I’ll shoot off your head!” he hisses.

  Joona looks at the floor and waits until the man is close enough. Then he whips his arm around and catches the barrel of the rifle, pulls it toward himself, and jerks it around. Its butt bashes Roger’s cheek. His head jerks to the side and he stumbles into the line of fire of the submachine gun. Joona is now behind him and aims the rifle between Roger’s legs. He fires. The sound is deafening and the weapon jumps. The cluster of bullets passes between Roger’s legs and slams right through Micke’s left ankle. His foot is torn off and rolls beneath the cutting table.

  Blood pours from the stump of Micke’s leg and he reflexively fires the submachine gun. Six bullets slam into Roger’s chest and shoulders. Micke falls while still screaming and the rest of the shots go wild toward the ceiling, ricocheting among the pipes and the overhead cranes.

  Roger falls to his knees and leans forward. His ponytail hangs over his cheek. He is holding himself up with his arms, but a steady stream of blood flows from his chest and drains through the grate for pigs’ blood.

  The short man with the prosthesis and the Glock is running toward them. Joona leaps behind one of the machines, one for inflating pigs’ carcasses to make slicing easier. He can hear the man follow him and kick away a rattling cart. The man’s breathing is ragged.

  Joona moves backward and opens the rifle. It has just one bullet.

  Micke is still screaming and calling for help.

  Ten more steps back and Joona spots a yellowed plastic strip curtain over an opening. He realizes that behind it is a refrigerated room. He can glimpse slaughtered pigs hanging there tightly side by side. He thinks that on the other side of the room there must be a door to the loading dock facing the road.

  124

  The door to the reddish-brown building is propped open by a rolled-up newspaper. A white metal sign above it says LARSSON’S BOUTIQUE MEATS.

  Vicky walks up to the black metal door, stumbling over the shoe grate, and goes inside. Blood drips from the wound on her hand onto the newspaper. She has to find Dante. That’s all she can think about. It’s her only plan.

  She heads through the employee dressing room, past wooden benches lined up in front of bent red metal lockers. A poster of the soccer player Zlatan Ibrahimović is taped to one of the walls. In the niche by the windows, a few plastic coffee mugs are standing on a brochure from the Food Workers Union.

  Vicky hears screaming on the other side of the wall. A man is calling for help.

  She looks around the dressing room. She opens a cupboard and pulls out a few sand-colored plastic boxes. She opens the next cupboard and keeps going. She sees the garbage can and looks inside. Among the tobacco papers and candy wrappers, she spots an empty glass bottle.

  The man is still screaming for help, but his voice is weaker.

  “What the hell,” Vicky mutters, and she picks up the empty bottle. She holds it tightly in her good hand and rushes out the door at the far end of the room into a cool storage room with pallets and packing machines.

  She runs as silently as she can toward a large garage door. As she passes a pallet of plastic-wrapped cardboard boxes, she sees movement from the corner of her eye and stops.

  A shadow is moving behind a bright yellow forklift.

  She sneaks forward to the forklift. She touches the vehicle and slowly moves around it and catches sight of a man leaning over a bundle on a blanket.

  “I don’t feel good,” comes the voice of a small child.

  “Can you stand up?” the man asks.

  Vicky takes one step toward them. The man turns around. It’s Tobias.

  “Hey, Vicky, what are you doing here?” Tobias smiles in surprise.

  She comes closer, wondering what is going on.

  “Dante? Is that you?” she asks.

  The boy lifts his head from the blanket and peers at her as if he can’t make her out in the darkness.

  “Vicky, can you help me out here? Can you take him to the van?” asks Tobias. “I’ll be right there.”

  “But I am—”

  “Just do what I say and everything will be fine,” he says.

  “All right,” she replies tonelessly.

  “Hurry up. Just get the kid to the van.”

  The boy’s face is gray and he lies his head back down on the blanket and closes his eyes.

  “You’re going to have to carry him.” Tobias sighs.

  “Okay,” Vicky says as she walks up to Tobias and breaks the bottle on his head.

  He looks surprised at first. He sways and lands on one knee. He touches his hairline and feels glass splinters and blood.

  “What the fuck are you…”

  She hits him as hard as she can with the rest of the bottle. It lands on the side of his neck and she twists it. His warm blood starts to run over her fingers. Her rage is so strong she feels drunk with it. Her anger burns like overheated insanity.

  “You never should have touched this boy!” she screams.

  She takes aim at his eyes. His hands are grabbing at air but he gets hold of her jacket an
d pulls her toward him. Then he hits her in the face with his fist. She falls back and it’s as if the light has gone out.

  As she falls, she remembers the man who paid Tobias for her. Remembers waking up with pain in her vagina. Remembers the doctor saying that her ovaries were damaged.

  She lands on her back but she’s tucked in her head to keep it from hitting the ground. She blinks and her sight is restored. She gets up unsteadily, but she keeps her balance. She feels blood running from her mouth.

  Tobias has found a board with nails in it. He’s trying to get to his feet as he reaches for it.

  Vicky’s left hand is throbbing from her broken thumb. She clutches the remnant of the broken bottle with her right hand and slams it into his outstretched hand. Her own blood sprays into her eyes. She hits wildly. She stabs his chest and his forehead and finally the remnant of the bottle breaks apart, slashing her hand. Still she keeps hitting him until he falls to the ground and doesn’t move.

  125

  Vicky can’t run any longer with Dante in her arms. She feels as if she’s going to vomit. She’s losing feeling in both her arms and she’s afraid she’s going to drop him. She stops so she can shift his position, but falls to her knees instead. Vicky sighs as she carefully lays the boy on the ground. He has gone back to sleep. His face is colorless and Vicky can hardly hear him breathe.

  They have to either hide or get out of here.

  She pulls herself together and drags him by his sweater to a garbage container, hoping they can squeeze behind it. Dante moans and she pats him and watches him open his eyes for a moment before closing them again.

  Ten yards away is a glass door next to a large garage entrance, but Vicky can’t carry the boy any farther. Her legs are trembling from exertion. All she wants to do is lie down next to him and go to sleep. She knows she can’t. She’s in pain and her hands are bloody and her arms are numb.

  She can see an empty street through the glass door.