The Fire Witness: A Novel Page 37

  He stops.

  A girl with a pale face and dry, cracked lips looks up at him. Through her messy hair, her eyes look almost black. She’s on her knees beside a woman who appears lifeless. A pool of blood has surrounded them both. The girl is holding the woman’s hand in hers. She’s moving her mouth, but the police officer can’t hear what she’s saying until he comes closer.

  “She’s still warm,” Vicky is whispering. “She’s still warm.”

  The officer lowers his weapon and picks up his radio to call the paramedics.

  Vicky can’t stop weeping. She keeps a tight hold on Elin’s hand.

  The paramedics roll two stretchers to the wounded people. They determine immediately that the woman is still alive. She has a skull fracture and possible damage to her spine. They secure her breathing, then brace her head and neck and lift her onto a backboard before lifting it carefully onto the stretcher. The girl does not once let go of the woman’s hand.

  The girl is also seriously wounded. She’s bleeding from kneeling on the glass. Her neck is swollen and badly bruised, and her neck vertebrae might be injured. She refuses to lie down on a stretcher. She won’t leave the woman’s side.

  The paramedics are in a hurry now, so they don’t argue with the girl. They let her sit beside Elin Frank and hold her hand while they drive to Östersund, where they’ll both be examined. An ambulance helicopter can take Elin on to Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm.

  172

  Joona is bumping over rusty train tracks when the coordinator for the operation at Duved answers the phone. His voice is jumpy and he’s speaking to Joona at the same time that someone else in the operation bus is talking.

  “Things are a bit jumbled right now—but we’re on the scene,” he says, coughing.

  “I have to know if—”

  “Damn it, no! Before Trångsviken and Strömsund!” the coordinator shouts.

  “Are they alive?” Joona asks.

  “Sorry, I’m trying to get some roadblocks set up.”

  “I’ll wait,” Joona says. He starts to pass a long-haul truck.

  He hears the coordinator put down the phone and talk to the operational leader, confirming the positions of the roadblocks and telling Alarm Communication Central to use patrol cars to block the roads.

  “I’m back,” he says, when he picks up his phone again.

  “Are they alive?” Joona asks again.

  “The girl is fine. She’s not in danger. The woman is in critical condition. They’re going to do emergency surgery in Östersund and then fly her by helicopter to Karolinska in Stockholm.”

  “What about Daniel Grim?”

  “There were no other people in the house. We’re putting up the roadblocks right now. Still, if he knows the side roads … We don’t have the resources to cover everything.”

  “What about helicopters?”

  “We’re talking to a hunt club in Kiruna to see if we can borrow theirs, but it will take some time,” the coordinator answers in a voice harsh from strain.

  Joona is now on the outskirts of Sundsvall. He can’t imagine what Elin has been through, but she obviously was able to reach the house in time to save the girl.

  Elin is seriously injured, but Vicky is still alive.

  Daniel Grim might get caught in one of the roadblocks, especially if he doesn’t think that the police are after him. If he gets through the roadblocks, the earliest he can reach his house is in two hours. The police will have to set a trap for him.

  We have to finish the technical search for evidence before he gets there, Joona thinks.

  He stops on Bruksgatan behind a patrol car. The front door to Daniel Grim’s house is wide open and two uniformed officers are waiting for him in the hall.

  “The house is empty,” one of them says. “Nothing unusual.”

  “Is the technician on the way?”

  “He’ll be here in ten minutes.”

  “Let me look around,” Joona says.

  Joona walks through the house without knowing what he’s looking for. He opens closets, pulls open drawers, looks inside a wine cellar, goes to the kitchen, looks through the cupboards, the refrigerator, the freezer. He runs up to the second floor and pulls off the tiger-striped bed covering, turns over the mattress, opens the closet, throws Elisabet’s clothes to the side and knocks on the wall. He kicks away old shoes and pulls out a box of Christmas decorations. Then he goes into the bathroom and looks in the medicine cabinet. Shaving cream, medicine bottles, makeup. Then he runs down to the basement and looks over the tools hanging on the wall. He tries the door to the furnace room, looks under the lawn mower, and lifts the lid to the floor drain. He looks behind bags of potting soil.

  Joona closes his eyes and thinks. First, the trapdoor in the ceiling, which leads to the attic. That was in the bedroom. Second, the locked door to the furnace room. Finally, the wine cellar. He thinks that it should be much larger considering where it is.

  He opens the door to the wine cellar again. It’s situated beneath the stairway and has a sign on it: ALLWAR OCH SKÄMT.

  About a hundred bottles are stacked on their sides in small boxes on a tall wooden shelving unit. The shelving appears to be freestanding, and when he checks he sees that there is at least a twelve-inch gap between the back of the wine storage unit and the wall. He pulls at the shelving, but it doesn’t budge. He moves a few bottles from both ends and finds a bolt far down on the left. He carefully lets the unit swing open on its hinge.

  The space behind it is empty, except for a shoe box on the floor. A heart has been painted on the lid.

  Joona gets out his cell phone to take a picture of the shoe box and then he puts on latex gloves.

  173

  The first thing Joona sees when he lifts the lid of the shoe box is a photograph of a girl with reddish-blond hair. It’s not Miranda. This girl appears to be twelve years old.

  She is holding her hands in front of her face.

  It seems to be just a game—she’s smiling and her glittering eyes show through her spread fingers.

  Joona lifts out the photograph and finds a dried rose and another photograph. This one shows a girl curled up on a brown sofa and eating some chips. She’s looking at the photographer with curiosity.

  Next there’s a paper bookmark in the shape of an angel. Joona turns it over and sees someone has written “Linda S” in gold ink.

  There’s a lock of light brown hair, a hair band with a rosette, and a cheap plastic ring sitting on a pile of photographs held together by a rubber band.

  Joona flips through the photographs. None of them is pornographic, but they are all of young girls. They all resemble Miranda in some way, but most of the girls are much younger. In some of the pictures, they’re covering their faces with their hands or they have their eyes shut.

  There’s a very little girl in a pink tutu and pink leg warmers. She’s standing with her hands over her face.

  Joona turns over the photograph and reads “Dearest Sandy.” A mass of hearts has been drawn around the words in red and blue ink.

  A girl with short hair is grimacing at the camera. Someone has drawn a heart and written the name “Euterpe” next to her.

  At the bottom of the box, there is a polished amethyst, a few dried petals from what looks like a tulip, some old candy, and a piece of paper on which a child has written: Daniel + Emilia.

  Joona picks up his cell phone, holds it in his hand for a while, looks at the box of photographs again, and finally calls Anja.

  “I don’t have anything,” Anja tells him. “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be looking for.”

  “Deaths,” Joona says. He’s looking at a photograph of a girl with her hands in front of her face.

  “Well, sorry, but Daniel Grim has worked at seven different institutions for troubled girls throughout Västernorrland, Gävleborg, and Jämtland. He has no record and he has never been a suspect in any crime. There are no internal investigations against him. There’s not even a
reprimand.”

  “I understand,” Joona says.

  “Are you sure you have the right person? I’ve been comparing, and during the time he was at each institution, there was a lower than average death rate.”

  Joona is still looking at the photographs and all the flowers and hearts. It would seem sweet if it had been a young boy who’d hidden the box.

  “Anything unusual or unexpected?”

  “At least two hundred and fifty girls passed through those institutions while he was working there.”

  Joona takes a deep breath.

  “I have seven first names,” he says. “The most unusual name is Euterpe. Was one of the girls Euterpe?”

  “Euterpe Papadias,” Anja says after searching the database for the name. “She committed suicide while in emergency care in Norrköping. Daniel Grim wasn’t at that institution.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “She arrived at Fyrbylund emergency care with a history of bipolar depression, self-injury, and two serious suicide attempts.”

  “Was she moved there from Birgittagården?” Joona asks.

  “Yes, she was moved in June 2009. On July second, that is, two weeks later, she was found in the shower with her wrists slit.”

  “But Daniel wasn’t working there.”

  “No,” Anja replies.

  “Were any of the girls named Sandy?”

  “Yes, two. One of them is dead. She overdosed on pills at a home in Uppsala.”

  “I found the name Linda S on a bookmark.”

  “Linda Svensson. Reported missing seven years ago after she returned to a comprehensive school in Sollefteå.”

  “So they all die somewhere else,” Joona says.

  “Oh my dear Lord.”

  “Is there a girl named Emilia?”

  “Yes, Emilia Larsson left Birgittagården. There’s supposed to be a photo of her body in her file. Wait one sec … Yes, here it is. Good Lord. Her arms are cut open from the wrist to the elbow. He must have cut them himself and prevented her from calling for help. He probably just watched as she bled to death.”

  Joona leaves the house and sits in his car, shaken by what Anja has told him. Sorrow for those girls blows through him like an icy wind. He looks through the windshield without seeing the glory of the trees around him and takes a deep breath. The police will hunt down Daniel Grim until he is found. He’s sure of that. He starts the car.

  As soon as he’s on the E4, he calls the coordinator in Duved, who tells him that the operational leader no longer expects that they’ll catch Daniel Grim at any of the roadblocks.

  Joona can’t stop thinking about the shoe box with the photographs of the girls Daniel chose. All the hearts, flowers, and small notes show that his love for them was clearly childish. The whole collection was pink and lighthearted—a candy coating over a vile reality.

  The girls had all been locked up in institutions and youth homes. They may even have been tied down or heavily medicated when he forced himself on them.

  He was the only person they could talk to. No one else listened to them. No one would miss them. He’d chosen girls who were self-destructive and had a history of suicide attempts. Their relatives may have given up on them long ago. Miranda was an exception. She was killed while still at the home where he was working. Had he killed her because she’d told him she was pregnant?

  The box is evidence of the connections between Daniel Grim and all these girls. It’s enough for the police to arrest him for a number of murders. They can look into these other deaths and give these girls some justice at last.

  174

  Torkel Ekholm’s late wife’s embroidery still adorns the well-worn kitchen tablecloth, but her crocheted curtains have turned yellow with age and Torkel’s trousers are worn at the knees.

  The old policeman has taken his pills from his dose box and then shuffled to the kitchen bench, using his walker.

  On the kitchen table in front of Flora are all the notes concerning the accident, the newspaper clippings, and the tiny death announcement.

  The old man has told Flora everything he knows about the lumber baron Rånne and his wife: the family manor house, their forests and fields, their childlessness, and their adoption of Flora and her older brother, Daniel. He’s told her about the field foreman’s daughter, Ylva, who was found dead beneath the bell tower and how the people of Delsbo kept quiet about it afterward.

  “I was so little,” Flora says. “I didn’t realize they were actual memories. I thought the children were fantasies.”

  She remembers how she thought she was starting to go crazy after she’d heard about the murders at Birgittagården. She’s been thinking about what happened there all the time, especially the girl with her hands over her face. She’s dreamed about her and has seen her everywhere.

  “You were there,” Torkel says.

  “I tried to tell people about what Daniel had done, but everyone just got angry with me. When I told him what had happened at the bell tower, my father took me into a big office and told me that all liars will burn up in a lake of fire.”

  “So I have my witness at last,” the old man says quietly.

  Flora remembers that as a child she’d been terrified about burning up. Just the thought of her hair and clothes catching fire tormented her. She believed she would turn as black as coal if she ever talked about what Daniel had done.

  “What happened to the little girl?” Torkel asks.

  “I knew Daniel liked Ylva. He was always holding her hand. He gave her raspberries…”

  She sees the golden-tinged memories in her mind. They shimmer as if they are about to catch fire.

  “We were playing that game where you cover your eyes and the other person does something to you. When Ylva covered her eyes, he kissed her on the mouth. She opened her eyes and laughed and said that he’d just given her a baby. I laughed too, but Daniel … he said that we weren’t supposed to look. His voice sounded strange. I peeked through my fingers as I always did. Ylva looked happy as she covered her face again. I saw Daniel pick up a rock and hit her and hit her…”

  Torkel sighs and then lies down on the large kitchen bench.

  “I see Daniel sometimes. He often comes back to visit the Rånnes.”

  The old policeman is soon asleep.

  Flora quietly stands up and takes the moose rifle down off the wall. She checks that it’s loaded, then leaves Torkel Ekholm’s house.

  175

  Flora is walking up the narrow tree-lined driveway to the Rånnes’ manor house. She’s carrying the heavy moose rifle in both arms. Blackbirds observe her from their perches in the yellowing trees.

  She feels as if Ylva is walking beside her. She is remembering playing here with her and Daniel.

  Flora thought it had all been a dream: the fine house they’d come to, her own bedroom with its floral wallpaper. Images she’d buried and forgotten keep swelling up from the depths of her memory.

  The old cobbled courtyard hasn’t changed a bit. A few shiny cars are standing at the entrance to the garage. She walks up the wide, shallow steps to the house, opens the door, and goes inside. She remembers this hall, with its dark paneling and huge oil paintings.

  She feels odd being inside a familiar place while carrying a loaded weapon.

  Massive chandeliers light her way as she walks silently across dark Persian rugs.

  She hears voices coming from the dining room, but no one has seen her yet.

  She walks through the four salons one by one until she can see into the dining room. There are fresh-cut flowers in the vases standing in the window niches. Her former family is seated at the table, eating and conversing. None of them is looking in her direction.

  She shifts the moose rifle so that it is resting in the crook of her arm, holds it under the barrel, and puts her finger on the trigger.

  She sees a movement from the corner of her eye and whirls around with her weapon raised. It’s just her own reflection in a mirror that goes from floo
r to ceiling. She’s aiming at herself. Her face is gray and her expression wild.

  Still aiming the moose rifle, she walks into the dining room.

  The table is decorated with tokens of the harvest: small sheaves of wheat, bunches of grapes, and clusters of plums and apples.

  Flora remembers it is the day of thanksgiving.

  The woman who was once her mother looks thin, fragile. She’s eating slowly with trembling hands. A napkin is spread over her lap.

  A man is sitting between her parents. He’s just a bit older than she is. She does not recognize him, but she knows who he is.

  Flora stops and the floor creaks beneath her feet.

  Her father sees her first.

  When the old man looks at her, he lowers his knife and fork and straightens his back. He says nothing. He just stares at her.

  Her mother follows her father’s gaze and blinks several times as she sees the middle-aged woman with the rifle.

  “Flora?” the old woman says, dropping her knife. “Flora, is that you?”

  Flora stands in front of their well-set table. She can’t speak. She swallows and gives her mother a quick glance. Then she turns to her father.

  “Why are you carrying a gun into this house?” he asks.

  “You made me out to be a liar,” she says, finding her voice.

  Her father smiles shortly, but without joy. The wrinkles on his face show him to be a bitter and lonely man.

  He says tiredly, “The liars are cast into the lake of fire.”

  She nods and has a moment of doubt before she asks her question.

  “You knew that Daniel killed Ylva, didn’t you?”

  Her father dries his mouth on a white linen napkin.

  “We had to send you away because of all your terrible lies,” he says. “And here you are, coming back and telling those lies again.”

  “I was not lying.”

  “You told me you were, Flora. You confessed that you’d made it all up,” he says.