The Fire Witness (28 page)

“I’m sorry that you feel you have to lie,” Joona says. He takes the key ring from the table.

“May I keep the money?” she asks. “I can’t manage. I collect bottles and newspapers from the subway and from all the garbage cans…”

Joona stuffs the key ring back into his pocket. Flora picks up a piece of paper and follows him into the hallway.

“I really did see a ghost,” she says. “I’ve drawn a picture of her.”

She shows Joona a childish drawing of a girl and a heart. She practically holds it in front of his face. Joona pushes her hand away. She drops the paper and it sails to the floor. Joona steps over it, opens the door, and leaves.

100

Joona is still feeling irritated when he parks his car outside Disa’s apartment building on Lützengatan near Karlaplan Circle. Vicky Bennet and Dante Abrahamsson are alive and hiding somewhere, and he’s lost an hour of valuable time speaking with a disturbed woman who lies for money.

Disa is sitting on her bed with her computer on her lap. She’s wearing a white robe and she’s pulled her brown hair back into a ponytail.

Joona takes a shower in the hottest water he can stand. Then he lies down beside her. As he leans his face next to her body, he can smell her perfume.

“Have you been to Sundsvall again today?” Disa asks distractedly as he runs his hand down her arm.

“Not today,” Joona answers. He remembers Flora’s pale, lean face.

“I was there last year on an archaeological dig,” Disa tells him. “I dug around the Högum Women’s House.”

“The Women’s House?”

“In Selånger, on the outskirts of Sundsvall.”

She looks up from her computer and smiles. “If you have a chance between murders, you should go there,” she says.

Joona smiles as he runs his hand over her hip. He follows her thigh to her knee. He doesn’t want Disa to stop talking so he asks, “Why do they call it the Women’s House?”

“It’s an Iron Age grave mound, but it was built over a burned-down house. We don’t know what happened there.”

“Were there any human bones inside?”

“Yes, the remains of two women,” she says as she puts away the computer. “I brushed the dirt away from their combs and jewelry.”

Joona rests his head on her knee and asks, “Where did the fire start?”

“We don’t know, but there was an arrowhead in the wall.”

“So they were attacked from outside?”

“Perhaps the villagers set fire to the house and let it burn,” she says. She runs her fingers through his thick, damp hair.

“Tell me more about the graves,” Joona says.

“We don’t know much,” she says, wrapping a strand of his hair around her finger. “The women were inside weaving. Bits of their looms were scattered throughout the site. Isn’t it strange that it’s the small things, like nails and combs, that survive the ages?”

Joona resolves to visit the Sami bridal crown of braided birch root and then go to Kronoberg Park and its old Jewish cemetery, where his colleague Samuel Mendel lies all alone in his family grave.

101

A soft kiss on his mouth awakens Joona. Disa is already dressed. She’s brought him a cup of coffee on a breakfast tray.

“I fell asleep,” he said.

“You slept like a rock.” She smiles as she heads toward the hall.

Joona hears her close the door after her. Then he gets up and puts on his pants. While he’s standing next to the bed, he realizes that he’d visited Flora Hansen because she happened to guess right about the rock. It’s called confirmation bias. Unconsciously, all people tend to heed results that confirm their theories rather than those that don’t. Flora called the police many times mentioning different murder weapons, but it was only when she mentioned a bloody rock that he paid any attention to her.

Now that Flora is off his list, there are no other clues for him to follow.

Joona walks to the window and opens the thin white drapes. The gray light of dawn still holds some of the previous evening’s gloom. Even the splashing he can hear from the fountain at Karlaplan Circle seems melancholy. Pigeons strut around the closed entrance to the shopping center. A few people are already on their way to work.

There was something desperate in Flora Hansen’s voice and eyes as she told him how she collected bottles and newspapers in the subway.

Absentmindedly, he puts on his shirt and stares at nothing as he buttons it. He had just made a logical connection, but he lost it immediately. He tries to go back in his thoughts and remember what it was, but it glides away again.

It was about Vicky, her mother, and the key ring. Was it something he saw?

He puts on his jacket and looks out the window at Karlaplan Circle again. A bus is driving around it. It stops and lets on passengers. Farther down the street, an elderly man with a walker is smiling at a dog sniffing around a garbage can.

A woman in a leather jacket is running toward the subway. She scares a flock of pigeons on the square. They take off and fly in a semicircle before they land again.

The subway
.

There’s something about the subway
.

Joona picks up his cell phone. He thinks he’s right about his intuition, but he wants to check some facts first. While he waits for the signal to go through, he walks into the hallway and puts on his shoes.

“Holger here.”

“Joona Linna here,” Joona says. He opens the front door.

“And a very good morning to you! I have—”

“There’s something I have to ask first,” Joona interrupts as he locks the door behind him. “You went through the purse we found at the dam, right?”

Joona is starting to run down the stairs.

“I had already taken pictures and listed the contents when the prosecutor told me they were shutting down the investigation.”

“I am not allowed to read your report,” Joona says.

“There wasn’t much to it,” Holger says. Joona can hear him shuffle papers. “I mentioned the knife—”

“You mentioned some sort of bicycle tool. Did you find out what it was?”

Joona is rushing down Lützengatan to his car.

“Yes, I did,” Holger says. “It took a little time, since I’m from Västernorrland. It wasn’t a bike tool at all. It was a key to the driver’s cab in a subway car.”

“Has this key been on a key ring recently?”

“How the hell should I know!” Holger is quiet for a moment and Joona assumes he’s looking at the photograph in his report. “You’re right! It’s shiny around the eye.”

Joona thanks him for his time and runs the last few yards to his car. Elin told him that Tuula steals pretty things from everyone around her: earrings, shiny pens, coins, and lipsticks. Tuula had taken the beautiful key ring with its light blue flower and left the ugly key in Vicky’s purse. He taps in Anja’s number as he opens the car door.

“Hello, Ghostbusters,” Anja says.

“Anja, can you help me? I need to talk to whoever is responsible for Stockholm’s subway system.” By now Joona is in his car and has started to drive.

“Let me connect with the spirits instead.”

“Anja, I’m in a hurry!”

“Well, who got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?” Anja mutters.

Joona is driving toward the stadium. “Did you know that all the subway cars in Stockholm have their own names as well as numbers?” he asks.

“Of course. I rode in Rebecka this morning and what a fine car she is, too.”

“I just figured out that Dennis isn’t a person. It’s the name of a subway car, and I need to find out where it is right now.”

102

All the cars in the subway system have numbers, of course, but for many years the cars have also been given personal names. Joona is fairly certain that the key from Vicky’s mother, Susie, fits a mechanical lock that’s on all the subway cars, but the name on the fob points at a specific car. Perhaps Susie kept her personal belongings in the driver’s cab—perhaps she slept there sometimes. He knows that she sometimes stayed in the subway tunnels or slept on benches in a subway station after it closed. Perhaps she even lived in an abandoned tunnel deep underground.

Somehow she had got hold of a key, Joona thinks as he drives. It couldn’t have been easy. It must have been one of her more valuable possessions. Still, she gave it to her daughter. She’d also gotten a key ring with the name Dennis so that the girl would not forget which subway car was the important one.

Maybe she knew Vicky was planning to run away.

Vicky had already run away many times and managed to stay hidden for a long time at least twice. The first time she was only eight years old and she’d been missing for seven months when she was found in the middle of December, severely hypothermic, in a parking garage with her mother. The second time, she was thirteen. Vicky had been gone for eleven months when she was arrested for shoplifting near Globen.

It’s easy enough to get into a driver’s cab. Any box-end wrench the right size would work.

Even if Vicky is not in the subway car named Dennis, she might have left clues there from her time as a runaway, clues that could lead to her present hiding place.

Joona has almost reached the police station when Anja calls and says she’s talked with someone at Stockholm Local Transport.

“There was a subway car named Dennis that was taken out of service some time ago due to serious maintenance issues.”

“Where is this car now?”

“He didn’t know,” she said. “It could be at the depot in Rissne, but more likely it’s parked at the service depot in Johanneshov.”

“Connect me,” Joona says. He turns his car around and the tires thud over the speed bumps. He runs a red light as he turns onto Fleminggatan.

103

Joona drives toward Johanneshov, south of Stockholm. A man answers his phone call. It sounds as if he’s in the middle of eating.

“Subway Traffic Technical Division, Kjelle here.”

“Joona Linna from the National Police. Can you confirm that a subway car named Dennis is parked with you at Johanneshov?”

“Dennis,” the man says, smacking his lips. “Do you have the car number?”

“No, sorry, I don’t.”

“Hold on, let me check.”

Joona can hear the man talking to himself and then the man picks up the phone again.

“There’s a Denniz with a
z
at the end—”

“That could be the one.”

“Okay.”

Joona hears the man swallow his food before he speaks again.

“It’s not in the current register. It’s a really old car. As far as I can tell from this database, it hasn’t been used in traffic for the past few years.”

“Where is it now?”

“Probably here, but let me connect you to Dick. He knows everything the computer doesn’t.”

Kjelle’s voice disappears and is replaced by the sound of electric buzzing. Then an older man picks up the phone. His voice echoes as if he’s in a cathedral or a room made entirely of metal.

“Swinging Dick here,” he says.

“I just talked to Kjelle,” Joona says. “He thinks that a car named Denniz is parked out by you.”

“If Kjelle says it’s here, it probably is. But I can go and take a look, especially if it’s a vital matter of life and death and the honor of my country.”

“It is, actually,” Joona replies.

“Are you in a car?”

“Yes.”

“Heading here?”

Joona hears Dick climbing down a metal staircase. A large, heavy door creaks. He sounds slightly out of breath when he next speaks.

“I’m down in the tunnel now. Are you still there?”

“Still here.”

“It looks like we have Mikaela and Maria. Denniz should be in one of these corners.”

Joona can hear Dick’s echoing footsteps even as he’s driving as fast as he can over the Central Bridge. He thinks about the times Vicky was on the lam. She must have slept somewhere. She must have felt safe and secure somewhere.

“Do you see the car yet?” asks Joona.

“Not yet. We have Ellinor. There’s Silvia. Even the lighting down here doesn’t work like it should.”

Joona can hear footsteps as Dick keeps going down a tunnel beneath the industrial center of Johanneshov.

“Let’s see. I haven’t been back this far in a long time. Let me turn on my flashlight. It’s the deepest in, of course. Here it is. Denniz, totally rusty and looks like—”

“You’re sure it’s the right car?”

“I can take a picture if you want. What the hell! There’s people inside! I can see people.”

“Shh,” Joona says.

Dick whispers, “There are some people inside the car.”

“Keep away from them,” Joona says.

“They’ve put a damned gas cylinder in front of the door!”

There’s a rustling sound as Dick moves away swiftly. He’s breathing hard.

“It was … I saw people in there,” he whispers into the phone.

Joona thinks it can’t be Vicky because she doesn’t have the key and the key ring.

Joona hears sudden high-pitched screaming. It’s distant but clear.

“There’s a woman screaming in there! She seems out of her mind.”

“Get away from there as best you can,” Joona says.

He hears more steps and hard breathing. He can still hear the screaming, but it sounds fainter.

“What did you see?” Joona asks.

“A large cylinder for welding was blocking the door.”

“What about the people?”

“There was graffiti on the door, but I could tell there was a tall person and a shorter person, and maybe more than that, but I’m not sure.”

“How did they get in?”

“We keep the tunnels locked, but if you’re determined, you could break in pretty easily.”

“Listen to me carefully,” Joona says. “I’m a detective inspector and I want you to leave the tunnel now and wait outside for the police to arrive.”

104

A black van is being driven at top speed through the gates of the transit depot in Johanneshov. Dry gravel is churned up in a cloud of dust as the van swings around and stops in front of a green metal building.

After he talked to Dick, Joona called the provincial chief of police and told him that this could be a possible hostage situation. A SWAT team was immediately dispatched.