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Authors: Lars Kepler

The Fire Witness

BOOK: The Fire Witness
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.

 

All liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone …

—REVELATION 21:8

 

A medium is someone who claims to have paranormal talent: the ability to interpret circumstances that lie beyond the limits of science.

Some mediums act as intermediaries to the dead at séances, while others offer guidance based on, for example, the reading of tarot cards.

Humans have tried to contact the dead through mediums since the beginning of history. One thousand years before the birth of Christ, King Saul of Israel sought advice from the spirit of the recently deceased prophet Samuel.

All over the world, the police accept the help of psychics and mediums when they are baffled by a case. This happens several times a year, even though there is not a single documented instance where a medium has actually solved a crime.

 

Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Epigraph

Note about Mediums

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Chapter 88

Chapter 89

Chapter 90

Chapter 91

Chapter 92

Chapter 93

Chapter 94

Chapter 95

Chapter 96

Chapter 97

Chapter 98

Chapter 99

Chapter 100

Chapter 101

Chapter 102

Chapter 103

Chapter 104

Chapter 105

Chapter 106

Chapter 107

Chapter 108

Chapter 109

Chapter 110

Chapter 111

Chapter 112

Chapter 113

Chapter 114

Chapter 115

Chapter 116

Chapter 117

Chapter 118

Chapter 119

Chapter 120

Chapter 121

Chapter 122

Chapter 123

Chapter 124

Chapter 125

Chapter 126

Chapter 127

Chapter 128

Chapter 129

Chapter 130

Chapter 131

Chapter 132

Chapter 133

Chapter 134

Chapter 135

Chapter 136

Chapter 137

Chapter 138

Chapter 139

Chapter 140

Chapter 141

Chapter 142

Chapter 143

Chapter 144

Chapter 145

Chapter 146

Chapter 147

Chapter 148

Chapter 149

Chapter 150

Chapter 151

Chapter 152

Chapter 153

Chapter 154

Chapter 155

Chapter 156

Chapter 157

Chapter 158

Chapter 159

Chapter 160

Chapter 161

Chapter 162

Chapter 163

Chapter 164

Chapter 165

Chapter 166

Chapter 167

Chapter 168

Chapter 169

Chapter 170

Chapter 171

Chapter 172

Chapter 173

Chapter 174

Chapter 175

Chapter 176

Chapter 177

Chapter 178

Chapter 179

Chapter 180

Chapter 181

Chapter 182

Chapter 183

Chapter 184

Chapter 185

Chapter 186

Chapter 187

Chapter 188

Chapter 189

Chapter 190

Chapter 191

Chapter 192

Chapter 193

Chapter 194

Chapter 195

Also by Lars Kepler

A Note About the Author

Copyright

 

1

Elisabet Grim is fifty-three years old. Her hair is streaked with gray, but her eyes are bright and happy, and when she smiles, one of her front teeth juts out impishly.

She is a nurse at Birgittagården, a state-approved home for especially troubled girls north of Sundsvall. It’s a small, privately owned residence. Rarely are there more than eight girls there at a time. They range from twelve to seventeen in age. Many are drug addicts when they arrive. Almost all have a history of self-injury—eating disorders, for instance. Some can be violent. For these girls, there is no alternative to Birgittagården, with its alarms and double-locked doors. The next step would be prison or forced confinement in a psychiatric unit. This home, by comparison, is a hopeful place, with the expectation that the girls can make it back someday to open care.

As Elisabet often says, “It’s the nice girls who end up here.”

Right now, Elisabet is savoring the last bite of a bittersweet bar of chocolate. She can feel her shoulders begin to relax.

The day started well but the evening was hard. There were classes in the morning, and in the afternoon, the girls spent time at the lake. After the evening meal, the housemother went home, leaving Elisabet in charge on her own. The night staff was recently let go when the company changed hands. Elisabet had sat in the nurse’s office, catching up with reports, while the girls watched television, which they were allowed to do until ten.

And then she’d heard the yelling. It was loud, very loud. She’d hurried to the television room, where Miranda was beating up tiny Tuula. Miranda was screaming that Tuula was a slut and a whore. She’d yanked the little girl off the sofa and was kicking her in the back.

It was not unusual for Miranda to explode violently. Elisabet was used to her outbursts. She pulled her away from Tuula, and Miranda slapped Elisabet in the face. Elisabet was used to that, too. Without further discussion she led Miranda down the hall to the isolation room. Elisabet wished Miranda a good night, but Miranda didn’t answer. She just sat on the bed and studied the floor with a secretive smile as the nurse shut and locked the door behind her.

Elisabet was scheduled to have a private talk with the new girl, Vicky Bennet, but after the conflict, she found she was exhausted and couldn’t face it. When Vicky came by and timidly mentioned that it was her turn for a chat, Elisabet put her off. This made Vicky so unhappy, she broke a teacup and slashed her stomach and wrists with the sharpest piece.

When Elisabet checked on her a while later, Vicky was sitting in her room with her hands in front of her face and blood running down her arms.

The wounds were superficial. Elisabet washed the blood off, wrapped gauze around the girl’s wrists, and put a Band-Aid on her stomach. And Elisabet comforted her, soothing her with sweet names, telling her not to worry, coaxing her until a tiny smile crossed the troubled girl’s face. For the third night in a row, Elisabet gave the girl ten milligrams of Sonata so she could sleep.

 

2

All the girls are finally asleep and Birgittagården is quiet. Outside the office window, the September darkness has settled on the forest, but Himmelsjö Lake’s smooth surface shines like mother-of-pearl. Elisabet sits in front of her computer entering the evening’s events into the log.

It’s almost midnight and she realizes she hasn’t taken her sleeping pill yet.
My own little drug
, she calls it. Difficult days followed by nights on call are interfering with her sleep. She needs a few hours of rest; ten milligrams of Stilnoct by ten and she’s asleep by eleven. She pulls her shawl tight and thinks that a glass of red wine would hit the spot right now. She longs for her own bed, where she can curl up with a book, or with her husband, Daniel. But not tonight; she’s on call and has to stay here.

In the yard outside, Buster begins to bark. Insistently, stridently.

It’s very late. She’s usually asleep by now. She takes her pill, shuts down her computer. She grows aware of the sounds she’s making: the hiss of her chair’s hydraulic lift as she stands; the creak of the tiles beneath her feet as she moves to the window. She tries to look out, but all she can see is the reflection of her face. And of the door gliding open behind her.

Must be the draft
, she thinks.
The tile stove in the dining room draws such a great deal of air.

She shakes off the disquiet she feels and switches off the lamp before she turns around.

Now the door is wide open. She shudders faintly, and steps through it. The lights are on in the hallway between the dining room and the girls’ bedrooms.
I should check the tile stove
, she thinks;
make sure the lids are shut
. But there is whispering coming from one of the bedrooms.

 

3

At first all Elisabet hears is a delicate hiss. The whisper is hardly perceptible. Then she hears words.

“It’s your turn to close your eyes,” someone murmurs.

Elisabet keeps still, staring so hard down the hall her eyes are frozen open.
It must be one of the girls talking in her sleep
, she thinks. Then there’s a noise, like an overripe peach dropping on the floor. Then another, heavy and wet. A table leg scrapes the floor and there’s the sound of two more peaches falling.

Out of the corner of her eye, Elisabet catches a movement, a shadow gliding past. She turns around and sees the door to the dining room slowly close.

“Wait!” she calls out, even while trying to convince herself it’s nothing; it must be the draft.

She grabs the doorknob to the dining room, but something stops the door from opening and she has to yank it before it finally gives way. Stepping inside, she can see herself in the dull reflection from the scratched dining-room table, and again in the brass fire doors of the tile stove. She checks it: the lids are all shut. The stove suddenly knocks, and Elisabet takes a quick step back, tilting over a chair. It’s nothing. Just the slipping of a log.

She heads to her room, pausing outside the girls’ bedrooms. She detects a sour, slightly metallic aroma. She searches for movement in the hallway, but all is still. To the right are the bathrooms and the alcove leading to the isolation room. Miranda should be fast asleep in there. The peephole in the door glimmers weakly.

BOOK: The Fire Witness
7.85Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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