The Fire Witness: A Novel Read online

  “I was just five years old. You were telling me that my hair would catch on fire and that I would burn right up if I didn’t say that I was lying. You were yelling at me that my face would melt and my blood would boil. And so I said I’d lied and then you sent me away.”

  176

  Flora peers at her brother, who is sitting in front of the window, his face in shadow. She can’t tell if he is looking at her or not.

  “Time for you to leave,” her father says, and he picks up his knife and fork.

  “Not without Daniel,” she says. She points at him with the rifle.

  “It wasn’t his fault,” her mother says weakly. “I was the one who—”

  “Daniel is a good son,” her father interrupts.

  “I’m not saying he isn’t,” her mother says. “But he … You don’t remember. We were watching television—theater—the night before it happened. We were watching Strindberg’s Miss Julie and she’s pining after the servant so badly, and I said … I said it would be better for her—”

  “What kind of stupidity is this?”

  “I keep thinking about it. Every day,” the old woman continues. “It was my fault. I said that it would be better for the girl to die than to be with child.”

  “Stop this nonsense!”

  “And just when I said this, I saw that little Daniel had come up behind me. He was staring at me…” She is trying to explain with tears in her eyes. “I was only talking about Strindberg’s play.”

  She brings her napkin up. Her hands are shaking.

  “After what happened to Ylva … a whole week after the accident. It was evening. I was praying with Daniel when he told me that Ylva was with child. He was just six years old. He didn’t understand a thing.”

  Flora is looking at her brother. He pushes his glasses up his nose and stares at his mother. It is impossible to tell what he is thinking.

  “You are coming with me and telling the truth to the police,” Flora says to Daniel. She aims right at his chest.

  “What would be the good of that?” asks her mother. “It was an accident.”

  “We were playing,” Flora says without looking at her. “But it was not an accident.”

  “He was just a child!” roars her father.

  “Yes, but now he’s killed other people. Two people at Birgittagården. One was a girl who was just fourteen and she had her hands over her face just like—”

  “Stop your lying!” her father shouts. He hits the table with his fist.

  “You are the ones who are lying,” Flora whispers.

  Daniel gets up. His expression starts to shift. Perhaps it is cruelty, perhaps it is disgust or fear. Flora can’t tell. Perhaps his feelings are mixed.

  A knife has two sides but only one edge.

  His mother is pleading with him and holding on to his arm. He takes her hands and says something Flora can’t hear. But it sounds as if he’s swearing.

  “We’re going now,” Flora says to Daniel.

  Her father and mother stare at her. They have nothing to say.

  She leaves the dining room with her brother.

  177

  Flora keeps the rifle pointed at Daniel’s back as they leave the manor house and walk down the wide stone staircase, over the courtyard, and onto the gravel road. They walk past an annex to the manor house and down a slope past some sheds. The weight of the rifle is making her arms ache, but she doesn’t notice.

  “Keep moving,” Flora mutters, when Daniel slows down.

  They are walking on the gravel road, heading toward the field.

  She is starting to remember even more fragments of her two years on this estate, but also a single vivid memory from before then, of standing at the door to the orphanage with Daniel.

  There must have been a time before that when she was with her real mother.

  “Are you going to shoot me?” Daniel asks.

  “I could,” she says. “But I’m taking you to the police.”

  Sunshine breaks through the heavy rain clouds and blinds her for a moment. She wants to wipe her damp hands, but she doesn’t dare risk taking them off the rifle.

  They keep walking along the gravel road, which makes a wide semicircle past the enormous, empty barn. They pass by stinging nettles and milkweed and sacks of LECA balls stacked on pallets beside the wall. A crow caws in the distance.

  It is a long way around to reach the field.

  The sun is hidden behind the barn until they reach its other side.

  “Flora,” Daniel mumbles to himself in amazement.

  Flora’s arms are beginning to shake from the weight of the rifle.

  On the other side of the large field is the road to Delsbo. It looks like a pencil streak between the yellow pastures.

  Flora pushes Daniel between the shoulder blades with the barrel of the rifle. They walk across the dried mud in front of the barn.

  Flora quickly wipes her hand on her pants and returns her finger to the trigger.

  Daniel stops and waits to feel the pressure of the gun before he starts moving again. They walk past a concrete foundation with rings of rusted iron. Weeds are growing along its broken edge.

  Daniel has started to limp and is walking more slowly.

  “Keep going,” Flora says.

  Daniel lets his hand run along the weeds. A butterfly takes off and glides into the air.

  “I think we can stop here,” he says, slowing down again. “This is the old slaughtering spot, when we used to have cattle. Do you remember the slaughterhouse and how they killed the animals?”

  “I’m going to shoot if you don’t get moving,” Flora says, adjusting her finger on the trigger.

  Daniel catches a marguerite daisy and pulls it from its stalk. He turns as if he wants to give it to Flora.

  She steps back and thinks she has to shoot now. She has no time. Daniel has grabbed the barrel and pulled the rifle toward himself.

  Flora is so surprised that she can’t dodge him. He slams the rifle butt into her chest. She falls on her back. She gasps for breath, coughs, and scrambles back up.

  Now they’re standing and staring at each other. Daniel is looking at her. His eyes are dreamy.

  “You shouldn’t have peeked,” he says.

  She doesn’t know what to say to him. She realizes that she might die on this spot.

  Daniel raises the rifle and meets her eyes. He places the muzzle directly on her right leg and pulls the trigger.

  The bullet goes straight through Flora’s muscle. She doesn’t feel any pain, just a kind of cramp.

  The recoil makes Daniel step back. He watches Flora drop to the ground, her leg no longer holding her weight.

  She tries to break her fall, but her hip and chin hit the ground hard. She lies there a moment. She can smell hay and gunpowder. Small insects are crawling over the weeds beside her.

  “Time to cover your face,” he says as he takes aim.

  Flora is lying on her side and blood is bubbling from her leg. She turns her head to look at the barn. Things go black before her eyes for a moment. She wants to throw up. The fields and the red barn are whirling around as if she’s riding a carousel.

  She’s having trouble breathing. She coughs so she can take a deep breath.

  Daniel is standing above her, the sun behind him. He pushes her shoulder with the rifle so she rolls onto her back. She’s starting to feel pain in her leg and lets out a moan. He is saying something she can’t understand.

  She tries to lift her head and her gaze slides over the ground, the weeds, and the concrete foundation with its rings of iron.

  Daniel aims the rifle at her forehead and then moves the muzzle along her nose to her mouth.

  She can feel the warm metal on her lips and chin. She is breathing too quickly. Blood pulses from her leg. She looks up into the sky and then down to the barn. She blinks and tries to make out what she’s seeing. A man is running inside the large barn, behind the sparse boards, right through the rays of light.

>   She wants to call out, but she has no voice.

  The rifle’s mouth is wandering toward her eye. She shuts it and feels the pressure against her eyeball and does not hear the shot.

  178

  It has taken Joona forty minutes to drive from Sundsvall to Hudiksvall. Now he has just turned west onto Highway 84 to Delsbo. All this time, he couldn’t let go of the thought of the photographs and mementos in Daniel Grim’s shoe box, so completely innocent at first glance. Perhaps the initial phase was always the same for him. A crush, with kisses, gazing, and words filled with longing.

  Once the girls moved on, Daniel showed his twisted mind. He went to visit them in secret and then he killed them to ensure their silence. Their deaths surprised no one. Those who took pills were killed with overdoses; those who cut themselves had their wrists slashed.

  The owners of the youth homes are profit-driven and probably didn’t want the deaths made public. They certainly wouldn’t have wanted the Ministry of Health to start any kind of investigation.

  No one has ever connected those deaths to Daniel Grim.

  But something went wrong with Miranda. It didn’t fit his pattern. Perhaps he panicked when Miranda told him she was pregnant. Perhaps she threatened to reveal his secret.

  She shouldn’t have done that, because Daniel doesn’t like witnesses.

  Joona is still feeling deeply troubled when he calls Torkel Ekholm to tell him that he’ll be there in ten minutes. He wonders if Flora is ready to go home.

  “Oh my, I fell asleep,” the old policeman says. “Give me a moment.”

  Joona hears Torkel put the phone down and shuffle across the floor. He’s already over the bridge at Badhusholmen when the old man picks the phone back up.

  “Flora’s gone,” he says. “She’s taken my rifle.”

  “Do you know where she might have gone?”

  There’s a moment of silence on the other end. Joona pictures the little house, its kitchen table and embroideries.

  “I think she went to the Rånnes’ manor house,” Torkel says.

  Joona takes a sharp right onto Highway 743 instead of continuing to Torkel’s house. He hits the gas pedal. He radios the national communications center and requests backup and an ambulance to the Rånnes’ manor house. He’s reaching 110 kilometers an hour when he has to brake to swing between the gates and onto the lane leading to the manor house.

  From a distance, the house looks like a great white ice sculpture. It seems darker the closer he gets. Joona stops in front and leaps from the car. He’s headed up the steps into the house when he catches sight of two figures walking around a wall and disappearing behind a huge red barn.

  Joona understands what he’s glimpsed: Flora holding a rifle to Daniel’s back. Joona starts to run along the gravel road past the annex and down the slope on the western side of the shed. Flora is walking too close to Daniel, he thinks. Her brother could take the rifle away from her with no trouble at all. He knows she’s not ready to shoot him, that she doesn’t want to shoot him. She just wants the truth to come out.

  Joona leaps over the remains of an old fence and slides down the slope. His hand rips through the weeds, but he keeps his balance.

  He thinks they are somewhere behind the barn. Its black doors are wide open and shafts of sunlight are falling between its wide boards.

  He runs past a rusty gasoline tank and is right at the huge barn when he hears the shot. The sound resonates among the buildings then dies away over the fields.

  It’s too far to get around the barn and the wall. There’s not enough time. Perhaps it’s already too late.

  179

  Joona pulls out his pistol as he runs into the empty barn. Sunbeams thrust in all directions through the gaps between the boards, making a cage of light. Joona races over the dry gravel floor of the barn. He stops when he catches sight of both figures on the other side.

  Flora is lying on the ground and Daniel is standing over her with a rifle aimed point-blank at her face.

  Joona stands and aims with his arm straight out. The distance is much too far. Through a gap, Joona watches Daniel put his head to the side and press the rifle against Flora’s eye.

  It all happens fast.

  The pistol’s front sight shakes before Joona’s gaze. He aims at Daniel’s stomach, follows Daniel’s movements, and pulls the trigger. There’s a loud crack and the recoil runs up Joona’s arm. The flash burns over his hand.

  The bullet goes straight between the gap in the boards. Dust motes whirl in the light.

  Joona doesn’t stop to see if he’s hit his mark. He keeps running through the barn. The sunbeams flash over him. He kicks open a narrow back door and runs out into the waist-high weeds. Daniel has dropped the rifle into the grass. Joona hopes he did not have time to pull the trigger again.

  Daniel is walking out into the field, clutching his stomach, blood running between his fingers. He can hear Joona behind him and he turns, swaying, and gestures to Flora, who is lying on her back in the grass and breathing hard.

  Joona keeps heading for Daniel with his pistol aimed at his chest.

  Daniel sinks to the ground and groans as he looks up. Sunlight reflects from his glasses.

  Without saying a word, Joona kicks the rifle away from him. He grabs one of his arms, drags him over to one of the iron rings on the concrete foundation, and handcuffs him to it.

  Flora has not fainted, but she looks at Joona with a stiff, unnatural gaze. She’s bleeding heavily from her leg. Her face is gray and she’s breathing fast. So fast that Joona can tell she is about to go into shock.

  “Thirsty,” she whispers.

  One leg of her pants is soaked with blood and new blood keeps bubbling out. There’s no time to make a tourniquet. He grabs her leg with both hands and presses his thumb into the wound right against the artery. The flow of warm blood diminishes immediately. He presses even harder as he looks at Flora’s face. Her eyes have shut and he can feel her pulse racing.

  “The ambulance will be here soon, Flora,” he tells her. “It’s going to be all right.”

  Behind his back, Joona hears Daniel try to say something.

  He turns toward Daniel and sees an elderly man wearing a black coat over a black suit walking toward Daniel. The man’s strict face is colorless and his eyes are sorrowful. He looks over at Joona.

  “Let me just embrace my son once more,” the old man says. His voice is gruff.

  Joona can’t let go of Flora’s leg. He must not move or Flora might die.

  The man walks slowly past him as if in a spell. Joona can smell gasoline.

  The old man has soaked his coat in gasoline. He’s drenched himself in gasoline and he’s holding a matchbox.

  “Don’t do it!” Joona yells.

  Daniel stares at his father and tries to crawl away. He yanks at the handcuff holding him back.

  The old man stops and gazes down at Daniel. He says nothing, but his fingers are trembling as he opens the matchbox and pulls out a match. He closes the box and runs the match along the side.

  “She’s lying! She’s lying!” Daniel howls.

  There’s a puff of air as his father’s coat catches on fire. A band of light blue fire embraces him. The heat reaches Joona’s face.

  The burning old man sways, then he kneels beside his son and embraces him with fire. The grass around them begins to burn. Daniel fights, but the old man holds on tightly. Daniel stops struggling as the flames burn around them both. It sounds like a flag whipping in the wind as the fire swirls upward. A tower of black smoke rises, and pieces of soot, glowing, rise to heaven.

  180

  When the fire behind the large barn has been put out, only two blackened bodies are left, entwined in a pile of ashes.

  The ambulance drives away with Flora.

  Just as it is leaving, the old woman walks out. The lady of the manor stands completely still as if she froze the moment the wall of pain hit her.

  Joona starts to drive back to Stockholm.
He is listening to the Radio Book Club, but he’s thinking about the weapons Daniel used at Birgittagården.

  The hammer and the rock had confused him.

  Now it’s clear. Elisabet was not killed because the killer needed her keys. Daniel had his own key to the isolation room. Elisabet must have seen him, and he must have known she had. He followed her and killed her solely because she had witnessed him murder Miranda.

  Rain, hard as glass, spatters the windshield. A ray of the setting sun pierces the clouds and steam rises from the asphalt.

  Daniel probably went in to Miranda after he thought Elisabet had taken her sleeping pills and gone to bed. Miranda did as he asked because she did not have a choice.

  She took off her clothes and sat with the blanket around her to keep her warm.

  Something went wrong that night.

  Perhaps Miranda told him she was pregnant. Perhaps he found the pregnancy test in her room. Perhaps he felt suffocated. Perhaps he panicked. Joona may never know. But he does know that something made Daniel decide that he had to get rid of a problem, that Miranda was a problem.

  Joona can picture him putting on the boots that always stood in the hallway, going outside, and searching the garden for a sharp rock. Then he returns, tells her to shut her eyes and place her hands over her face, and hits her again and again.

  She was not supposed to see him. She was supposed to have her hands over her face, just as Ylva had all those years ago.

  Nathan Pollock had interpreted the covered face as a sign that the killer wanted to make the girl into an object before he killed her. The reality, Joona thinks, was that Daniel was in love with Miranda and he wanted her to put her hands over her eyes so that she wouldn’t be frightened.

  He’d had plenty of time to prepare the deaths of the other girls, but not Miranda’s. He beat her to death without thinking of what would happen next.

  At some point in the middle of this—as he hit her with the rock, lifted her onto the bed, and covered her face again—Elisabet burst in on him. Perhaps the sound of his car woke her.