The Fire Witness Page 8

  “Flora!” Ewa calls.

  Flora opens the drawer and doesn’t see anything strange about it, so she tries to shut it again, but she’s shaking so hard that she can’t. She can hear footsteps head down the hall. She shoves the drawer, and it jerks in, although it is crooked now. She lifts the desk lid back into place, but doesn’t have time to lock it.

  The door is pushed open and water from the bucket sloshes out.

  “Flora?”

  Flora grabs the mop and moves the bucket as she starts cleaning up the spilled water.

  “I can’t find my hand cream,” Ewa says.

  Ewa’s eyes are tense, her lips pursed. She’s barefoot in sagging yellow sweatpants, and her white T-shirt strains over her stomach and voluminous breasts.

  “It’s next to the shampoo in the bathroom cabinet,” Flora says as she twists the mop.

  There’s a commercial break—the sound is louder and a shrill voice is talking about foot fungus. Ewa keeps standing inside the doorway, looking at Flora.

  “Hans-Gunnar did not like his coffee,” she says.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Flora squeezes out the excess water.

  “He says that you’re putting cheaper coffee into the expensive packet.”

  “Why would I—”

  “Don’t lie to me!”

  “Well, I don’t,” mutters Flora.

  “Go get his cup now, right now, and brew him a new one, a decent one.”

  Flora leans the mop against the wall. She asks forgiveness as she walks out and heads for the living room. She can feel the key and the bills in her pocket. Hans-Gunnar does not even look at her as she takes his coffee cup from the tray.

  “Ewa, get the hell back here!” he yells. “The show’s starting again!”

  Flora jumps at his voice and hurries away. She meets Ewa in the hallway and catches her eye.

  “Do you remember that I’ll be gone this evening for a job-search class?”

  “Like you would ever find a job.”

  “But I have to go, those are the rules. I’m making new coffee now and then I’ll finish the floors. Maybe I can do the curtains tomorrow instead.”

  34

  Flora hands over the cash to a man in a gray coat. His umbrella drips water on her face as he gives her the key and tells her that, as usual, she should drop it in the antique dealer’s mail slot when she’s finished. Flora thanks him and hurries down the sidewalk. The seams in her old coat are beginning to rip open. She is forty, but her face is childlike. It radiates loneliness.

  The first block on Upplandsgatan after Odenplan in Stockholm is filled with antique and curiosity shops. Crystal chandeliers and display cases, old toys made of painted tin, porcelain dolls, medals, and mantel clocks clutter the shop windows.

  Next to the barred windows of Carlén Antiques there’s a narrow door. Flora tapes a piece of white cardboard onto the door’s thick glass window. On it she’s written “Spiritualist Evening.”

  A steep staircase leads to the basement. There are two rooms here: a small pantry and a larger meeting room. The pipes in the walls roar whenever anyone in the upper floors flushes the toilet or turns on the faucets. Flora has hired the larger room for seven séances. Four to six people usually attend, which barely covers the rent. She’s written letters to a number of newspapers to inform them of her ability to contact the dead, but nobody has replied. She’s put an advertisement in the New Age magazine Fenomen for this evening’s séance.

  She only has a few minutes before the participants will arrive, but she knows what to do. She quickly pushes the excess furniture to one side and takes twelve chairs and puts them in a circle around a table. In the center of the table she places the porcelain figurines of a man and a woman wearing clothes from the nineteenth century. She believes that they will help evoke a feeling of the past. As soon as the séance is over, she’ll return them to their place in an oak cabinet because she’s not fond of them. She arranges twelve tea lights around the figurines after pressing a little strontium salt into one of the candles with the end of a match and covering the hole.

  Then she goes to the cabinet and sets an ancient alarm clock to ring. She first tried this trick four weeks ago. The bell is gone, so the only thing that can be heard is a chattering sound inside the cabinet. Before she can wind up the clock, however, she hears the door upstairs open. The first guests have arrived. She hears people shake their umbrellas and start walking down the stairs.

  Flora catches a glimpse of herself in the square mirror. She stops, takes a deep breath, and presses her hand along the front of the gray dress she bought at the Salvation Army store. She smiles at her reflection. She appears calm. She lights some incense and smiles kindly as Dina and Asker Sibelius enter the room. They hang up their coats, talking quietly to each other.

  The outer door opens again, and more people come down the stairs. This time, it’s an elderly couple that she hasn’t met before. The participants of Flora’s séances tend to be old people near the end of their lives. They can’t accept the fact that many of their loved ones are gone and that death is final.

  Flora greets the new couple in her usual, quiet manner and starts to turn away. Then she stops and studies the man as if she’s seen something particular about him, and she makes as if to shake off that feeling as she motions for them to take a seat. The door opens again. A few more guests have arrived.

  At ten past seven, Flora realizes that no one else is coming. There are nine people seated around the table. It’s the highest number yet, but not enough to pay back the money she’s taken from Ewa. Her legs are shaking as she pulls out a chair and sits down. The conversation stops and everyone looks at her.

  35

  Flora lights the candles on the tray and then lets her gaze wander over the participants. She’s met five of them before. The others are new. Directly across from her, there’s a man who looks barely thirty. His face is open and handsome in a boyish way.

  “Welcome,” she begins. “Welcome to our séance. I believe we should get started right away.”

  “Yes, indeed,” old Asker says.

  “Take each other’s hands and close the circle,” Flora commands in a warm, friendly way.

  The young man is looking directly at her. He’s smiling and obviously curious. A feeling of excitement and expectation begins to flutter in Flora’s stomach. For several minutes, there is only silence. It feels powerful and dark. Ten people have made a circle and they can sense the dead arriving behind their backs.

  “Don’t break the circle,” Flora cautions the group. “No matter what happens, don’t break the circle. Our visitors might not find their way back to the other side.”

  Her guests are so old that most of their relatives and friends have already died. Death is a country with many well-known faces.

  “Never ask the date of your own death,” Flora continues. “And never ask about the Devil.”

  “Why not?” asks the young man, smiling.

  “Not every spirit is good, and the circle is just a gateway to the other side.”

  The young man’s black eyes shine.

  “Demons?” he asks.

  “I don’t believe in demons,” Dina Sibelius says. She sounds nervous.

  “I keep watch on the gate as best as I can,” Flora says. “But all the spirits feel our warmth, see our lights.”

  Everyone is silent again. There’s a noise in the pipes—an odd, busy buzzing as if a fly is caught in a spiderweb.

  “Are you ready?” Flora asks gently.

  The participants all nod, and Flora is pleased by how serious they seem. She thinks she can hear their hearts beating and their blood pulsing through the circle.

  “Now I’m going into a trance.”

  Flora holds her breath and presses Asker Sibelius’s hand as well as the hand of one of the new women. She keeps her eyes closed and waits as long as she can, fighting the impulse to breathe until she starts to shake. Then she takes a deep breath and fills her l
ungs.

  “We have many visitors from the other side tonight,” Flora says after a few moments.

  The participants who have been here before hum in agreement.

  Flora senses the young man is looking at her. She feels his watchful, interested gaze on her cheeks, her hair, her neck.

  She lowers her face and thinks she should begin with Violet so that the young man will be convinced. Flora knows Violet’s history but up to now has let her wait. Violet Larsen is a terribly lonely person. She lost her only son fifty years ago when he became ill with meningitis and no hospital would admit him for fear of infection. Violet’s husband had driven the boy from hospital to hospital the entire night. When dawn came, the boy died in his arms. Violet’s husband broke down in grief and died a few years later. One terrible night had eliminated the woman’s happiness for the rest of her life.

  Flora opens her eyes.

  “Violet,” she whispers.

  The old woman turns hungrily toward Flora.

  “Yes?”

  “I have a child here, a child who is holding the hand of a grown man.”

  “What are their names?” Violet asks. Her voice trembles.

  “Their names are … The boy says you used to call him Jusse.”

  Violet gasps. “It’s my little Jusse,” she whispers.

  “The man, he says that you know who he is. You are his beautiful flower.”

  Violet nods and smiles. “That’s my Albert.”

  “They have a message for you, Violet,” Flora continues. “They say that they follow you day and night so that you are never alone.”

  A large tear runs down Violet’s cheek.

  “The boy asks you not to be sad. Mamma, he is saying, Mamma, I am fine. Pappa is with me all the time.”

  “I miss you so much,” Violet says.

  “I can see the boy,” Flora whispers. “He is standing next to you. He is touching your cheek.”

  Violet is crying quietly and the room is silent. Flora is waiting for the tea light to ignite the strontium salts, but it’s taking its time.

  She mumbles to herself and wonders which person she should choose next. She closes her eyes and sways her upper body.

  “So many here. So many here,” she mutters. “They’re crowding at the small gate. I feel their presence. They are longing to talk to you.”

  She falls silent as the candle begins to sparkle.

  “Don’t crowd at the gate,” she says.

  The candle suddenly flashes a red flame and someone in the room screams.

  “You are not invited,” Flora says sternly. She waits until the flame dies down. “Now I would like to speak with the man wearing glasses. Yes, please come closer. What is your name?”

  She appears to listen inwardly. “You are telling me that you want things to be as they were.” Flora looks at her guests. “He says he wants things as they always were. Skinless sausage and boiled potatoes.”

  “It’s my Stig!” says the woman holding Flora’s hand.

  “It’s hard to hear what he is saying,” Flora continues. “There are so many people here. They keep interrupting him.”

  “Stig,” the woman whispers.

  “He says forgive me. He wants you to forgive him.”

  Flora feels the woman shaking.

  “I have already forgiven you,” she whispers.

  36

  After the séance, Flora sends her guests off with a brief farewell. She knows that people like to be alone with their fantasies and memories.

  She walks around the room slowly, blowing out the candles and returning the chairs to their original positions. She is pleased that everything has gone so well. Then she goes to the entryway, where she’s placed a box for contributions, and counts the money inside. Next week is her final spiritual evening and her last chance to recover the money she’s taken from Ewa. Too few people came in spite of her ad in Fenomen. She’s started to lie awake at night and stare into the darkness dry-eyed, wondering what she’s going to do. When Ewa pays her bills at the end of the month, she’s going to realize that the money is missing.

  The rain has stopped by the time she gets outside. The sky is black, and the reflections of streetlights and neon signs glitter on the wet pavement. Flora locks the door and slips the key into the mailbox for Carlén Antiques. She takes down her cardboard sign and stuffs it into her bag, then notices that someone is standing in the doorway one building down. It’s the young man who attended the séance. He takes a step toward her and smiles apologetically.

  “Hi, I was wondering … Could I ask you out for a glass of wine or something?”

  “Not possible,” she says, feeling her usual shyness.

  “You were really great,” he says.

  Flora has no idea what she should say. Her face colors more and more the longer he looks at her.

  “It’s just that I’m going to Paris,” she lies.

  “Would I be able to ask you a few questions?”

  She realizes that he must be a journalist from one of the newspapers she’s tried to contact.

  “I’m leaving really early tomorrow,” she says.

  “Just half an hour, no more,” he says.

  As they cross the street to the nearest bistro, he tells her that his name is Julian Borg and he writes for the magazine Nära.

  A few minutes later, Flora is sitting across from him at a table with a white paper cover. A waiter delivers red wine and she cautiously takes a sip. It tastes both sweet and bitter and soon she feels warmth spreading through her body. Julian Borg is eating a Caesar salad and he’s looking at her with curiosity.

  “So how did this start?” he asks. “Were you always able to see spirits?”

  “When I was little, I thought everyone could see them. I didn’t find it strange,” she said, and blushed again because the lie came so easily.

  “What did you see?”

  “People I didn’t know were in our house. I only thought they were lonely. Once in a while a child came into my room and I’d try and play.”

  “Did you tell this to your parents?”

  “I learned quickly not to say anything,” Flora says, and takes another sip of wine. “It’s only recently I realized that many people need the spirits, even if they can’t see them, and the spirits need people. I’ve finally found my calling. I’m between them and help them meet each other.”

  She finds herself resting in Julian Borg’s warm gaze.

  In reality, the whole thing started when she lost her job as an assistant nurse. She saw less and less of her former colleagues, and within a year, she had no friends left. The unemployment office paid for a course in nail aesthetics, and she got to know another person in the class, Jadranka from Slovakia. Jadranka had periods of depression, but during the months she felt well, she earned a bit of extra money by handling calls for a website called Tarot Help.

  Flora and Jadranka started to hang out together. Jadranka took Flora to a séance held by the Sanningsökarna. Afterward they chatted about how much better they could do it themselves. A few months later, they found the basement space on Upplandsgatan. Two séances later, Jadranka’s depression worsened and she was admitted to a clinic south of Stockholm. Flora decided to continue the séances on her own.

  She took out books from the library on healing, previous lives, angels, auras, and astral bodies. She read about the Fox sisters, the mirrored cabinet, and Uri Geller, but she learned the most from the skeptic James Randi’s efforts to expose the bluffs and tricks mediums use.

  Flora has never seen ghosts or spirits, but she realized she was good at saying the things that people longed to hear.

  “You use the word ‘spirits’ and not ghosts,” Julian says.

  “They’re the same thing really. But ‘ghosts’ is such a negative word.”

  Julian smiles and his eyes are sympathetically honest as he says, “I have to confess … I have difficulty believing in spirits.”

  “You have to have an open mind,” Flora expl
ains. “Arthur Conan Doyle was a spiritualist, for example—you know, the man who wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories.”

  “Have you ever been called in to help the police?”

  “No, no.”

  Flora turns beet red and doesn’t know what to say. She looks at her watch.

  “I’m sorry, I know you have to get going,” Julian says, and he takes her hands. “I just want to say that I know you really do want to help people and I think that’s wonderful.”

  Flora’s heart pounds from his touch. She doesn’t dare meet his eyes as they say goodbye and go their own ways.

  37

  The red buildings of Birgittagården look idyllic in the light of day. Joona is standing by a birch tree, talking with Susanne Öst. Raindrops loosen from the branches and fall sparkling through the air.

  “The police are still knocking on doors in Indal,” the prosecutor is saying. “Someone crashed into a traffic light and there’s a bunch of glass on the road. After that, nothing.”

  “I’ll have to talk to the students again,” Joona says.

  “I really hoped this lead on Dennis would give us something,” Susanne says.

  Joona is picturing the scene he observed in the isolation room. His intuition is on alert. He tries to imagine the sequence of violence, but he only sees shadows moving between the furniture. The human beings are fuzzy, as if he were seeing them through frosted glass, shimmering and impossible to differentiate.

  He takes a deep breath and his picture of the room where Miranda is lying with her hands over her face shifts into focus. He sees the velocity shown by the blood spatter and the heavy blows. He can follow each and every blow and see how the angle changes after the third one. The lamp starts swaying. Miranda’s body is covered in blood.

  “But there was no blood on her body,” he mutters.

  “What did you just say?” asks the prosecutor.

  “There’s something I have to check,” Joona says, just as the door to the main building opens and a small man in a tight, protective jumpsuit comes out.