The Fire Witness (34 page)

Blood pours from the stump of Micke’s leg and he reflexively fires the submachine gun. Six bullets slam into Roger’s chest and shoulders. Micke falls while still screaming and the rest of the shots go wild toward the ceiling, ricocheting among the pipes and the overhead cranes.

Roger falls to his knees and leans forward. His ponytail hangs over his cheek. He is holding himself up with his arms, but a steady stream of blood flows from his chest and drains through the grate for pigs’ blood.

The short man with the prosthesis and the Glock is running toward them. Joona leaps behind one of the machines, one for inflating pigs’ carcasses to make slicing easier. He can hear the man follow him and kick away a rattling cart. The man’s breathing is ragged.

Joona moves backward and opens the rifle. It has just one bullet.

Micke is still screaming and calling for help.

Ten more steps back and Joona spots a yellowed plastic strip curtain over an opening. He realizes that behind it is a refrigerated room. He can glimpse slaughtered pigs hanging there tightly side by side. He thinks that on the other side of the room there must be a door to the loading dock facing the road.

124

The door to the reddish-brown building is propped open by a rolled-up newspaper. A white metal sign above it says
LARSSON’S BOUTIQUE MEATS
.

Vicky walks up to the black metal door, stumbling over the shoe grate, and goes inside. Blood drips from the wound on her hand onto the newspaper. She has to find Dante. That’s all she can think about. It’s her only plan.

She heads through the employee dressing room, past wooden benches lined up in front of bent red metal lockers. A poster of the soccer player Zlatan Ibrahimovi
ć
is taped to one of the walls. In the niche by the windows, a few plastic coffee mugs are standing on a brochure from the Food Workers Union.

Vicky hears screaming on the other side of the wall. A man is calling for help.

She looks around the dressing room. She opens a cupboard and pulls out a few sand-colored plastic boxes. She opens the next cupboard and keeps going. She sees the garbage can and looks inside. Among the tobacco papers and candy wrappers, she spots an empty glass bottle.

The man is still screaming for help, but his voice is weaker.

“What the hell,” Vicky mutters, and she picks up the empty bottle. She holds it tightly in her good hand and rushes out the door at the far end of the room into a cool storage room with pallets and packing machines.

She runs as silently as she can toward a large garage door. As she passes a pallet of plastic-wrapped cardboard boxes, she sees movement from the corner of her eye and stops.

A shadow is moving behind a bright yellow forklift.

She sneaks forward to the forklift. She touches the vehicle and slowly moves around it and catches sight of a man leaning over a bundle on a blanket.

“I don’t feel good,” comes the voice of a small child.

“Can you stand up?” the man asks.

Vicky takes one step toward them. The man turns around. It’s Tobias.

“Hey, Vicky, what are you doing here?” Tobias smiles in surprise.

She comes closer, wondering what is going on.

“Dante? Is that you?” she asks.

The boy lifts his head from the blanket and peers at her as if he can’t make her out in the darkness.

“Vicky, can you help me out here? Can you take him to the van?” asks Tobias. “I’ll be right there.”

“But I am—”

“Just do what I say and everything will be fine,” he says.

“All right,” she replies tonelessly.

“Hurry up. Just get the kid to the van.”

The boy’s face is gray and he lies his head back down on the blanket and closes his eyes.

“You’re going to have to carry him.” Tobias sighs.

“Okay,” Vicky says as she walks up to Tobias and breaks the bottle on his head.

He looks surprised at first. He sways and lands on one knee. He touches his hairline and feels glass splinters and blood.

“What the fuck are you…”

She hits him as hard as she can with the rest of the bottle. It lands on the side of his neck and she twists it. His warm blood starts to run over her fingers. Her rage is so strong she feels drunk with it. Her anger burns like overheated insanity.

“You never should have touched this boy!” she screams.

She takes aim at his eyes. His hands are grabbing at air but he gets hold of her jacket and pulls her toward him. Then he hits her in the face with his fist. She falls back and it’s as if the light has gone out.

As she falls, she remembers the man who paid Tobias for her. Remembers waking up with pain in her vagina. Remembers the doctor saying that her ovaries were damaged.

She lands on her back but she’s tucked in her head to keep it from hitting the ground. She blinks and her sight is restored. She gets up unsteadily, but she keeps her balance. She feels blood running from her mouth.

Tobias has found a board with nails in it. He’s trying to get to his feet as he reaches for it.

Vicky’s left hand is throbbing from her broken thumb. She clutches the remnant of the broken bottle with her right hand and slams it into his outstretched hand. Her own blood sprays into her eyes. She hits wildly. She stabs his chest and his forehead and finally the remnant of the bottle breaks apart, slashing her hand. Still she keeps hitting him until he falls to the ground and doesn’t move.

125

Vicky can’t run any longer with Dante in her arms. She feels as if she’s going to vomit. She’s losing feeling in both her arms and she’s afraid she’s going to drop him. She stops so she can shift his position, but falls to her knees instead. Vicky sighs as she carefully lays the boy on the ground. He has gone back to sleep. His face is colorless and Vicky can hardly hear him breathe.

They have to either hide or get out of here.

She pulls herself together and drags him by his sweater to a garbage container, hoping they can squeeze behind it. Dante moans and she pats him and watches him open his eyes for a moment before closing them again.

Ten yards away is a glass door next to a large garage entrance, but Vicky can’t carry the boy any farther. Her legs are trembling from exertion. All she wants to do is lie down next to him and go to sleep. She knows she can’t. She’s in pain and her hands are bloody and her arms are numb.

She can see an empty street through the glass door.

She sinks to a sitting position, breathing hard. She tries to collect her thoughts as she looks at her hands and at the boy. She pushes hair out of Dante’s face and leans toward him.

“Wake up now,” she says.

He blinks and looks at her blood-covered face. He seems frightened.

“I’m all right,” she says. “It doesn’t hurt. Have you ever had a bloody nose?”

He nods.

“I can’t carry you any longer, Dante,” she says, fighting the urge to cry. “You have to walk the last bit.”

“I just want to sleep,” Dante says as he yawns.

“It’s all over now. You are going to go home.”

“What?”

“You are going home to your mother,” she says, and smiles. It lights up her exhausted face. “All you have to do is walk.”

He nods and sits up. He runs a hand through his hair.

Somewhere within the large storage area there’s a loud bang as something falls. It sounds like steel pipes are starting to roll.

“Try and stand up now,” Vicky says.

They both get up and start toward the glass door. Each step is unbearably hard. Vicky realizes that she might not make it. Then she sees the revolving blue light of a police car. More cars pull up beside it. Vicky thinks that they’re saved.

“Hello?” It’s a man’s harsh voice. “Hello?”

The man’s voice echoes between the walls and the ceiling. Vicky is dizzy and has to stop. Dante keeps going.

Vicky leans against the cold metal of the container.

“Go straight out the door,” she says. Her voice is weak.

Dante looks back and it seems as if he is going to turn around.

“No, no. Go straight out,” she pleads. “I’ll be right there.”

She sees three uniformed police officers running in the wrong direction. They’re heading to a building on the other side of the street. Dante keeps going toward the door. He pulls down the handle and pulls. Nothing happens.

“Hello?” the man’s voice is closer.

Vicky bites her lip and spits bloody saliva on the floor, then starts to walk again.

“Won’t open,” Dante says as he pulls hard on the door.

Her legs are shaking but somehow she manages the last few steps. Her hand burns with pain as she pulls on the door handle as hard as she can. The door does not budge. She pushes it, but it is locked. She tries banging on the glass, but there’s not much sound. She can see four police cars outside. Their blue lights flash over the façades and windows of the surrounding buildings. She waves to get their attention, but no one sees her.

Heavy footfalls are approaching swiftly behind them. Vicky turns and sees a heavyset man heading right for them. He is smiling.

126

Beneath the ceiling is an electric conveyor hung with tightly packed pig carcasses. The chill of the refrigerated room dampens the sweet smell of the meat.

Joona runs bent over beside the bodies of the animals deeper into the room, looking for something to use as a weapon. He can hear dull screams from the machine room, followed by a few quick thuds. He tries to spot his pursuer through the plastic slats that cover the opening. An indistinct figure is moving between the cutting counters. He appears as wide as four people and then as thin as a stick.

He is running Joona’s way and he is carrying a pistol in his right hand.

Joona backs up and bends over. He looks underneath the pig carcasses and sees a white bucket against the wall. Next to it are a pipe and a few dirty rags. He could use the pipe.

He inches toward the bucket but stops when the short man moves aside the heavy plastic slats with his prosthetic hand.

Joona stands still and glimpses his pursuer in the narrow reflections on the chrome edge of the doorway.

He watches the man enter, holding his pistol with his arm straight out. His eyes search the room.

Without making a sound, Joona takes a few more steps toward the wall. He’s hidden behind a pig and can no longer see his pursuer, but he can still hear him walking and breathing.

Fifty feet farther on is an exit, which probably leads toward the loading dock. Joona could run down the aisle between the hanging carcasses, but right before he reaches the entrance, his pursuer would have a clean line of fire for a few seconds.

A few seconds too many
, Joona thinks.

He can still hear quick footsteps and then a thud. One of the pigs starts to swing and the connection to the conveyor gibbet creaks.

Joona reaches the wall and sinks down next to the cooling unit. His pursuer’s shadow appears not more than thirty feet away.

Time is beginning to run out. The man with the prosthetic hand will find him soon.

Joona slides to the side and picks up the pipe. It’s made of plastic. It’s absolutely useless as a weapon. He’s starting to move away when he notices that there are tools in the white bucket. Three screwdrivers, a pair of pliers, and a knife with a powerful short blade.

Joona draws the knife from the bucket slowly. Metal scrapes against metal. The blade slides against the jaws of the pliers.

He figures out where his pursuer is from the sound of his footsteps and realizes he has to move now.

A shot is fired and the bullet slams into a carcass eighteen inches from Joona’s head. The one-handed man is running at him. Joona rolls away under the row of meat.

127

The cop has no weapon. He must be afraid, the man thinks as he pushes his hair out of his face with his prosthetic hand.

He stops so he can aim his gun. He tries to peer through the row of slaughtered pigs.

He has to be afraid
, he repeats to himself. He’s hiding right now, but he is going to make a run for the door facing the street.

He’s panting and the air is dry and cold in his lungs. He coughs weakly and turns completely around. He looks at his pistol and then raises his eyes. He has to blink hard. Perhaps there was just something there by the cooling unit. He starts to run alongside the row of pigs.

He has to end this. All he has to do is catch up to the cop and shoot him point-blank: first through the trunk and then a shot through the temple.

He stops. The space along the concrete wall is empty. There are a few dirty rags and a white bucket on the floor—nothing else.

He spins on his heel and begins to walk back to where he’d come from.

All he can hear is his own breathing.

He pushes a pig with his left hand. It’s heavier than he thought. He has to really heave it to get it to swing, and it hurts him where the stump of his arm presses against the prosthesis.

The gibbet’s fastener squeaks.

The pig swings to the right and he gets a glimpse into the next row.

He can’t go anywhere
, the man thinks.
He’s in a tiny cage.
All he has to do is keep a line of fire open toward the exit in case the cop tries to get out, while also monitoring the plastic-sheeted opening.

His shoulder is getting tired and he lowers his pistol slightly. He knows he’s risking valuable seconds, but the weapon will start to shake if his arm gets too tired.

He sneaks forward and thinks he sees a human back. He aims and fires. The recoil bumps against him and the spray from the fuse burns his knuckles. Adrenaline pumps through his body and chills his face. It was only a pig hanging crookedly.

This is going to hell
, he thinks. He has to shoot the cop. He can’t let him get away, not now.
But where the hell is he? Where has he gone?

The ceiling creaks and he looks up at steel girders and overhead cranes. He can’t see anything. He backs up and stumbles. He grabs a pig for balance and feels the moisture of the cold meat through his shirt. The rind glitters with small drops of condensation. He feels nauseated. Something is not right. Anxiety is starting to overwhelm him. He can’t stay here much longer.