The Cruel Stars of the Night (33 page)

Forty-eight

Sammy Nilsson became increasingly impatient. The interpreter had still not arrived and Sammy set off on his own. He wanted to see the inscription with his own eyes. He drove south on Kungsgatan at a death-defying clip. At the traffic lights shortly before the Samaritan home he took a risk and drove against a red light. He almost crashed into a city bus that was coming out of Baverns Alley.

“Damn farmers!” he yelled for no reason.

The bus driver gestured, car drivers beeped, and Sammy sped up. He had his first doubts as he drove over the Fyris River bridge. Was he doing the right thing in hurrying out to Alsike?

At the crossing with Rosendal some fire trucks came trundling along. Sammy was forced to stop, tried to finesse his way past a truck, but the driver discovered his maneuvering and with a huge grin pulled up a few centimeters and blocked the gap.

The blaring of the fire trucks could be heard long after they had disappeared in toward the city.

The light turned green and Sammy turned left, but then realized he had taken the wrong road. He should have taken the old Stockholm Road, of course. Now he would have to drive through Sunnersta and over Flottsund.

“Shit, shit!” he yelled.

He drove off to the side, looked in the rearview mirror and in line with the Skogskyrkogaarden graveyard made a U-turn with screeching tires. It was ridiculous to waste time on Alsike. The barn with its Italian text would still be standing. He cursed his stupidity.

Instead he headed to Kåbo. If the missing professor had anything to do with the murders then that was where he would have to start looking for Ann.

Seven minutes after the alarm had sounded the first fire truck arrived. It was a pump truck with five firefighters. Thereafter came a ladder truck, and command car.

“There it is!” a man on the street cried out and pointed at the Dream House, as if there was any doubt where the fire was.

“Step aside,” the fireman who had been the driver said. “I’ll connect the hydrant!” he yelled.

Hoses were being rolled out at high speed. Within a minute the firemen were dousing the house with the water they had in the truck. Flames were coming out of all of the windows in the lower story. The windows one floor up were still intact. Smoke was rising from the seams in the metal roof, and a thick pillar of it was coming out of the chimney.

After a couple of minutes the approximately two cubic meters of water in the car were gone but by then the driver had connected the fire hydrant to the truck’s pump.

A patrol car was in place. One of the patrol officers, Hjalmar Niklas-son, was speaking to the neighbor. It was the professor.

“Who lives in this house?”

“The professor, but he’s missing and so is his daughter.”

“Are they at home?”

“The professor is missing,” the professor repeated.

“What do you mean?”

“He disappeared about a month ago.”

The officer knew who he was talking about. He had taken part in the search for Ulrik Hindersten.

“And the daughter?”

“She took off a little while ago.”

“Do you believe the house to be empty?”

“Yes, I guess so,” the professor said, “but . . .”

“Were you the one who called in the alarm? Two residents, are you certain?”

The professor nodded. He had his gaze fixed on the firemen.

“Will it spread?” he asked, but the officer had already left.

Niklasson’s colleague came running. This was somewhat difficult since Åke Wahlquist was twenty kilos overweight.

“Don’t we have a fourteen out on Lindell, from the crime squad?” he panted.

“Yes, why?”

“I think it’s her car that’s parked around the corner. I slowed down when I caught sight of it and . . .”

Niklasson pulled out his phone.

“Are you sure?” he asked Wahlquist, who nodded.

Ottosson received the news on his cell phone. He was discussing the Italian lead with Berglund; the interpreter was on her way. Berglund was going to give her a ride out to Alsike in order to have her decipher the inscription on the side of the barn.

“A patrol unit has located Lindell’s car,” Ottosson said.

“Where?” Berglund asked.

“Kåbo. They didn’t say which street but it intersects with Götgatan. There’s a residential fire there somewhere. ‘Tiny’ Wahlquist . . .”

Berglund ran. He had a feeling he knew what was burning.

Ottosson watched the back of his colleague as he ran from the room and Ottosson was filled with a mixture of pride and a great anxiety. Pride for what he for a second had observed in Berglund’s face before he ran off. Ottosson knew Berglund would go through hell and high water for his coworkers. It was not only because of collegial loyalty, it was something more. Not love in the regular sense, comradeship sounded too army-like, and friendship too trivial. Trust was the word Ottosson thought was closest to describe the ties that knit the good officers together.

But above all he was worried about Ann. Berglund’s expression had illustrated what could be thought to have happened. The unthinkable was thinkable and now perhaps even likely.

He snapped up his jacket and left the room.

When Sammy Nilsson reached the flaming house he spotted “Tiny” Wahlquist, who was waving for him to come over. Next to “Tiny” there was a man of about sixty.

“This guy has a little info,” Tiny said. “He’s a neighbor and he saw a woman, about forty, who was with Laura Hindersten—the woman who lives in this residence.” He pointed to it.

“She said she was a police officer but she sure didn’t look like one and she behaved more like a thug,” the neighbor said.

“Is this the one?” Sammy held up a picture of Lindell. He had been carrying it around in his pocket ever since the report on her disappearance was disseminated.

The man nodded.

“Is she wanted?”

“Shut up,” Sammy Nilsson snarled. “Ann is the best officer we have. When did you see them?”

“This afternoon,” the neighbor said meekly. “She went into the house with Laura Hindersten.”

“Have you seen her leave the house?”

The neighbor shook his head. Now he was pale, suddenly aware of the seriousness of the situation.

“Jesus Christ,” Tiny said.

Sammy drew a deep breath and looked around. A fire commander was stationed a little ways up the street and Sammy ran up to him. They vaguely knew each other from before. Sammy thought his name was Eddie Wallin.

“Hi there,” Sammy said. “It turns out we may have a fellow officer in the building.”

He was near tears but did everything to sound collected.

“What the hell are you saying? You see what this looks like. We don’t have a chance of going in yet,” the fire commander said and gestured with his arm to some smoke divers who were standing at the ready.

Forty-nine

Ann Lindell leaned forward with her healthy hand on one knee and rested for a few seconds. The fire thundered overhead. It occurred to her there might be water in the basement. She had seen an old washing machine and stainless steel rinsing tubs in one of the areas but realized it was too late to make her way there. And what could a thin stream of water do against a raging inferno?

She took out another bottle of wine and did the same thing as before. This time it was red wine. It helped for the moment but the heat was starting to get so unbearable that soon no wine in the world would help her. She would be poached in wine.

She drew farther back into the wine cellar. The floor, walls, and ceiling were lined with brick. She guessed that Ulrik Hindersten had had the area reinforced in order to maintain the right temperature for the wine. This played to her advantage in the short term but she knew it was only a matter of time before the bricks started to rain down.

She turned the bathtub upside down and put some bottles of wine on the floor. She wet a rag with wine and draped it around her face, lifted the side of the tub, and crawled in under it. Now it was dark again. If she had felt the basement was bad the tub was a veritable prison cell by comparison. She lay on her left side with her legs pulled up. There was hardly enough room for her. Her arm ached and the effort of moving the tub had brought her close to fainting. Even so Ann experienced a measure of calm. When they found her they would know she had done what she could. She had not given up. Ottosson, Sammy, or perhaps Bea would tell this to Erik one day when he was old enough to understand.

She sucked a little on the rag. The taste of wine reminded her of all the evenings she had spent at home on the couch. Would she have been able to live differently? The thoughts hooked one into the other, memories from her childhood in Ödeshög mingled with love nights with Edvard in Gräsö.

“Water,” she mumbled and thought about the late nights they had rowed out into the bay. Edvard loved to fish and became childishly happy every time he caught something. What was he doing now? Her sadness about how her life had developed and her longing for the only man she had ever loved made her tremble with sobs. She could still clearly recall the image of his face although it was said that an absent loved one’s features became more blurred with time. That wasn’t the case. The pictures of Edvard and Erik were there, every wrinkle, expression, and glint in their eyes were clearer than ever. The same went for their voices, laughter, and variations in pitch.

Her head sank down to the brick floor that still felt cool. The smell of wine took on an increasingly smoky note.

She muttered words of love and was slowly rocked into unconsciousness.

Fifty

The smoke divers prepared themselves. They struggled into their suits and pulled out hoses of a slightly smaller dimension than the ones used from the outside.

The fire was no longer burning as intensely. All of the cubic meters of water that had been dropped over and into the house had had an effect.

Firemen on the ladder had punched two holes in the roof and sprayed in water. In the basket of a crane two men were systematically working on the west wing where the fire was most intense.

Ottosson and Berglund had arrived. They stood as close to the house as they were allowed but were not able to be of any assistance at the moment. Berglund had broken a window in Lindell’s car and searched it but had not found anything remarkable.

“Could she be in there?” Ottosson asked for the third time. He stared at the remains of a curtain fluttering in the window.

“Why haven’t they gone in yet?” he asked himself although he knew the answer.

Eskil Ryde from forensics came zooming along in his old Mazda. He got out, appraised the situation, and then turned to Ottosson.

“May the dear Lord have seen to the fact that Ann is not in there,” he said and returned to the car as quickly as he had come.

Ottosson took a few steps closer to the house. Wallin, the fire commander, came forward.

“You should watch it, Otto,” he said. “Objects can come flying.”

As if in illustration to what he had just said, a gutter pulled loose from its moorings, swung out from the wall like pendulum, and hovered there for a few moments before it crashed to the ground.

“Could someone survive in there?” Berglund asked.

“To be honest, I think it would be tough,” Wallin said.

“Have you put the word out on that Hindersten?” Ottosson asked.

Berglund nodded.

“She has a brand new red Ford, bought only a few weeks ago,” he said.

“The neighbor thinks she had a packed suitcase in the car with her,” Ottosson said.

“There’s a national alert on her,” Berglund said.

“Good,” Ottosson said.

Three smoke divers went in, Sven-OlofAndersson, David Näss, and Ludde Nilsson, who was the team leader. He placed himself by the door and was the one who maintained contact with the commander outside.

The smoke divers communicated by radio. Näss first checked the kitchen, which was relatively unharmed but covered in soot. The floor timber had burned as well as the linoleum floor.

He looked over his shoulder and saw his colleague peek into a bedroom. They stayed close. Näss quickly checked the area behind the kitchen table and then joined Andersson in the bedroom, which was burned out. An iron rod that he assumed had once been a floor lamp had bent from the heat. Of the bed only four bed knobs remained.

The next room was also a bedroom with damages similar to the first. They could not see any remains of a person in here either. With their experience, they could often form an understanding of what had happened from a cursory glance around a room. That which looked like one big burned-out hole to others could tell the smoke divers a great deal.

They kept searching. The next room had apparently been a living room, that bordered the dining room.

“There’s so damned little in here,” Andersson said over the radio.

Näss nodded. In all its sootiness and with water running down the walls, the room looked naked. They checked every nook and cranny but found nothing of interest.

They walked back into the hall. Andersson pointed to the basement door and Näss nodded.

The door was locked. The color had peeled off and curled up and revealed that it was made of steel.

“The crowbar and axes,” Näss said clipped. “We’re going to force the basement door.”

Ludde Nilsson forwarded this message to the commander. After half a minute both of the smoke divers could let loose on the door hinges. It was over in ten seconds and then they directed their flashlights into the basement. The stairs were made of wood and were still burning. Andersson sprayed water down and the flames on the steps died with a hissing sound.

“Ladder,” Näss said, “four meters.”

When they had received the ladder they went down, Näss in the lead. Adrenaline was pumping through his body. He let the beam of light play along the walls. It was smoking and burning, above all in the west part of the basement. Andersson came down after him and sprayed water in that direction.

Näss examined the ceiling. He reported to Ludde Nilsson and told him about the damage, that there was a great deal of smoke and that the risk of collapse was great.

“We’re going in,” he said and sensed in a spooky way that something terrible had happened in the basement. Every time he had this feeling at the scene of a fire the load of compressed air on his back felt heavier. The twelve, thirteen kilos felt twice as heavy.

“We have something here,” Andersson whispered, and confirmed Näss’s feeling. They walked together, first to the right and discovered the remains of a rat on the floor. It was half burned up. A little farther forward there were two more.

The water they sprayed created clouds of steam and together with the smoke this made it hard for them to pick out details.

They started to search through the basement systematically.

“Ludde, we have a body,” Nässsaid.

“Any resuscitation required?” the team leader inquired, although he could tell from his colleague’s voice that there wouldn’t be.

“Most likely negative,” Näss said.

The fire commander, Eddie Wallin, received the information. He looked over at the two police veterans. They were stamping their feet, silent, waiting for news. They had probably seen and heard everything, the commander thought, but hesitated in going over to them. Ottosson met his gaze and understood him at once. Tears, that seemed to have been lying in wait, started to run down his cheeks.

Berglund turned around and looked at the commander who was shaking his head. Berglund put his arm around Ottosson’s back. He knew what Ann meant to the old fox. Ottosson held a hand to his chest and Berglund feared he was having a heart attack.

“How are you doing?”

“Think of the boy,” he wept, and stared with tear-filled eyes at the ruins of the house.

“Let’s go to the car,” Berglund said. He had never seen his colleague cry before.

This was the worst. This wasn’t something that got better with practice. He hated it. He could take all the physical exertion in the world, strange passageways, collapses, and everything a smoke diver had to withstand, but the sight of a dead person in connection with a fire always made him weak in the knees.

Sven-Olof Andersson bent over and started to tear off the plastic bag. He knew about Näss’s weakness and urged him to check the boiler room.

The plastic had been gnawed away in many places and Sven-Olof quickly perceived that it was a male body. The rats had eaten through the fabric of what he took to be a pair of pyjamas and had gnawed the man’s shoulder.

He tore away more of the plastic and discovered that one ear had been eaten clean away.

“Ludde! What we’ve found is a man,” he said.

“Repeat!” the radio crackled.

“This is an older man who has been lying here a good while,” he said in a louder voice. “The rats have had a party.”

Näss came back and stood behind Sven-Olof Andersson’s back. “This isn’t the female cop?” he asked. “This is no female,” Andersson said.

What they’ve found is an older male,” the fire commander screamed at Ottosson and Berglund.

It was admittedly unprofessional to scream out such news at the scene of a fire but it was a spontaneous reaction. Afterwards he received numerous reprimands.

Ottosson hurried over.

“What the hell are you saying, Eddie?”

“It’s an older man, probably dead for a long time.”

There was nothing they could do to help him so they left the body and continued their task of searching the basement.

“Look at this,” Näss said, who was happy to leave the dead man behind.

Andersson looked at all the wine bottles. At the same time there was a loud boom behind them and part of the ceiling fell in. Näss immediately straightened his helmet and looked up at the ceiling of the wine cellar. There was an upside-down bathtub on the floor. The smoke divers exchanged looks. Andersson bent over and lifted the tub. A lifeless hand fell out onto the floor.

He wrenched the tub aside. Näss’s flashlight illuminated Ann Lindell’s twisted body. Andersson leaned over her.

“She’s alive,” he said.

“Start rescusitation of middle-aged female,” he said, as he checked her for possible external injuries.

Satisfied with what he observed he slid his hands under her neck and knees.

“I’ll take her up right now,” Andersson said and lifted Lindell.

With Lindell hanging over his shoulder he balanced up the ladder.Näss climbed behind him and helped him balance the load. The policewoman’s hair billowed out over his helmet.

The ambulance personnel were poised and started breathing resuscitation as soon as Andersson laid her on the stretcher.

Ottosson pushed his way forward and fell down on his knees next to Lindell.

The smoke divers returned to the house.

“And we’re lifting,” one of the emergency technicians said.

“Will she make it?” Ottosson asked.

Eddie Wallin shot him a look as the ambulance drove off with sirens blaring.