The Fire Witness (7 page)

Pia Abrahamsson takes over the telephone. She swallows hard to force away her nausea. Her voice is calm even though it is shaking.

“Listen to me,” she says. “My son has been kidnapped. The car is on—” She turns to the truck driver. “What highway is this?”

“Highway 86,” he says.

“How far ahead are they?” asks the policewoman.

“Perhaps five minutes ahead of us,” Pia says.

“Have you already driven past Indal?”

“Indal,” Pia says loudly.

“Nineteen kilometers ahead of us,” the truck driver says.

“Then we’ll get them,” the policewoman says. “We’ll catch them.”

As Pia Abrahamsson hears those words, tears begin to flow. She wipes them from her cheeks and listens to the policewoman talk to a colleague. They’re going to erect a blockade on Highway 330 where there is a bridge over the river. The officer says that he’s just five minutes away and will be able to get there in time.

“Good,” the policewoman says quickly.

The truck driver keeps driving along the highway, which follows the river through the empty spaces of Medelpad Province. They know that the car with Pia’s son has to be ahead of them, although they can’t see it. There are no alternatives. The highway runs past small collections of houses, but there are no other roads and no turnoffs except for lumber roads leading to the occasional clearing.

“I can’t take this,” Pia says to herself.

The road forks a few kilometers ahead, past the village of Indal. One branch leads south to a bridge over the river, and the other continues east along the river toward the coast.

Pia is sitting with her hands clasped as she prays.

The police are setting up blockades on both forks of the road. One is on the other side of the bridge and the other is eight kilometers to the east.

The tractor-trailer with its driver from Denmark and the Lutheran pastor Pia Abrahamsson is now passing through Indal. Through the downpour, they can see the empty bridge over the river and the blue light of a squad car rotating on the other side.

25

Police officer Mirja Zlatnek has parked her squad car diagonally across the road and pulled up the emergency brake. To get past her, a car would have to leave the road and then at least two wheels would go into the ditch.

There’s a long stretch of road before her, and the rain beats against the roof of her car. Mirja peers through the windshield, but it’s hard to see in the increasingly heavy rain.

She’d thought she’d have a quiet day, since all the other police officers in the region were sent to Birgittagården after the dead girl was found there. She started at her desk, reading recipes on a food website. Baked fillet of moose, potato wedges, and Karl Johan mushroom sauce. Full-bodied puree of Jerusalem artichoke. Then she had to get in the squad car and check out a stolen trailer in Djupängen, which was where she was when the call came in about the kidnapped boy.

Although she’s never been involved in a case involving violence, Mirja has started to fear the operative side of police work. She can trace this back many years to when she tried to mediate a family conflict, which ended badly. Over the years since, her fear has crept up on her to the point that she prefers administrative work and preventive tactics. But she tells herself that she can handle the situation. There’s no other place where the car with the four-year-old boy could go. This road is like a single long tunnel—a fish trap. Either the car will drive over the bridge after Indal, where her colleague Lasse Bengtsson is waiting for it, or it will come here—and here’s where I’m waiting, Mirja thinks.

The tractor-trailer should be about ten or eleven kilometers behind the car. Much depends on how fast the car is going. In twenty minutes, no less, it will be here. Mirja tells herself that this is probably not a random kidnapping. It could be a custody battle. The woman on the phone was too upset to give much concrete information, but her car should be somewhere on this highway, this side of Nilsböle.

It’ll soon be over, she thinks. In a little while, she’ll be able to return to the office, have a cup of coffee, eat her ham sandwich.

But there is something that bothers her. The woman kept talking about a girl with twigs for arms. Mirja didn’t ask the woman for her name. There wasn’t time. She assumed that the emergency center had taken it down. The woman’s agitation was frightening. She had described what happened as if it were some incomprehensible or supernatural event.

The rain keeps beating down. Mirja picks up the radio and calls her colleague Lasse Bengtsson.

“What’s going on?” she asks.

“Raining like hell, but otherwise not much. Not a single car,” he says. “Wait, now I see a truck, a huge tractor-trailer. On Highway 330.”

“He’s the driver who placed the call,” she says.

“Then where the hell is the Toyota?” asks Lasse. “I’ve been here for fifteen minutes and I haven’t seen it. Unless the car is a UFO, it should reach you in less than five minutes.”

“Just a minute,” Mirja says quickly, and cuts off communication. She can see headlights in the distance.

26

Mirja Zlatnek leaves the squad car and peers through the curtain of rain at the approaching car. She places one hand on her holstered gun as she walks toward it and motions for it to stop. Water runs over the road and puddles in the grass at the bottom of the ditch. Her own shadow cast by the rotating blue light behind her leaps around on the asphalt.

Mirja sees that the car is slowing down just as she hears a call come through on her radio. She stays on the road. It sounds as if the voices on the radio are coming from inside a can. There’s hiss and crackle, but she can tell what’s being said.

“There’s blood everywhere,” a voice says. Another body has been found at Birgittagården. A woman in her fifties.

The vehicle swings to the shoulder as it comes to a stop. Mirja Zlatnek walks over to the driver’s side. The vehicle is a Mazda pickup truck. The driver’s door opens and a huge man in a green hunting vest gets out. He has shoulder-length hair, a powerful nose, and narrow eyes. He’s smiling broadly.

“Are you the only person in the vehicle?” asks Mirja, wiping water from her face.

He nods and looks away toward the forest.

“Move aside,” she says as she reaches the vehicle.

The man takes a small step back and Mirja leans forward to look inside the truck’s cab. Her hair is soaked and water runs down her back. It’s hard to see anything through the windshield. A newspaper is spread out on the driver’s seat. She can tell he was sitting on it. She walks around and peers into the tiny backseat compartment. Nothing but a thermos and an old blanket.

There’s another call on her radio, but she can’t make out the words.

The huge man’s hunting vest is already turning dark green from the rain. She hears a scratching sound, something scraping against the metal. She turns to look at the man. He’s come closer, or perhaps she’s just imagining it, she’s no longer sure. He’s taking a good look at her, neck to knee, and his fleshy forehead wrinkles.

“Do you live around here?” she asks.

She rubs the mud off the license plate with her foot and writes down the number. Then she walks around the front of the vehicle.

“No,” he says slowly.

There’s a pink sports bag on the passenger seat. Mirja keeps going around the truck. There’s a tarp held down by bungee cords over the flatbed and something’s underneath it.

“Where are you headed?” asks Mirja.

The man doesn’t move but he follows her with his eyes. Suddenly she spots a trickle of blood running out from beneath the tarp in one of the grooves otherwise filled with mud and pine needles.

“What’s this?” she asks.

When he doesn’t answer, Mirja reaches over the side of the flatbed. It’s not easy to reach—she has to press against the wet truck. The man moves to the side. She can just reach the tarp with her fingertips, but she doesn’t take her eyes off the man. He’s licking his lips as she begins to pull the tarp away. She unsnaps the holster of her gun and then turns quickly to look at the flatbed, where she sees the slender hoof of a young deer, a fawn.

The man stops moving, but Mirja still puts her hand on her gun as she walks away from the pickup truck.

“Where’d you shoot the deer?”

“It was roadkill.”

“Did you mark the spot?”

He spits on the ground between his own feet.

“Please show me your driver’s license,” she says.

He doesn’t reply and shows no indication that he is going to comply.

“Your driver’s license,” she says again, and she can hear the insecurity in her voice.

“I’m through with you,” the man says and gets into his truck.

“It’s the law to report any animals which have been hit—”

The man is in the driver’s seat and slams the door. He starts the truck and drives around the squad car, even though two wheels dip into the ditch. As he swings back up onto the road, Mirja thinks that she should have inspected the vehicle more carefully. She should have removed the entire tarp and checked to see if anything else was underneath it.

She can hear a crow cawing from a perch in the treetops. Then she hears the noise of a vehicle coming up behind her. She whirls around with her pistol out, but she can’t see anything in the downpour.

27

Mads Jensen is on his radio, being told off by his manager. He’s doing his best to explain the situation while his boss is yelling about missed times and ruined logistics.

“But—” Mads keeps trying to break in. “Don’t you have to help other peo—”

“The only help you’ll get from me is a cut in your pay!”

“Well, thank you very much, then,” Mads says, and breaks off communication.

The rain thunders on the roof of the cab. Pia is staring into the side-view mirror, looking at the trailer and watching the trees fade into the distance. Mads takes out a piece of nicotine gum. He’s staring straight ahead at the road. The rumbling from the motor and the hiss of heavy tires on wet asphalt fills the cab.

Pia glances at the calendar, which is swinging with the movement of the truck. A curvy woman in a swimming pool holding a plastic swan. Beneath the picture is the date, August 1968. The road is sloping downhill and the weight of the load of bar iron is making the tractor-trailer speed up.

In the distance, a blue light flickers through the gray sheet of rain. A squad car is blocking the road.

Pia’s heart begins to pound. She stares at the police car and the woman in her dark blue sweater waving for them to pull over. Even before the tractor-trailer has come to a complete stop, Pia is opening the door. The sound of the engine is overwhelming.

She feels dizzy as she climbs down and runs over to the waiting policewoman.

“Where’s the car?” asks the policewoman.

“What are you saying?”

Pia reads the woman’s wet face and is frightened by the look. She feels as if her legs are about to give way beneath her.

“Did you see the car as you passed it?” the policewoman asks.

“Passed it?” says Pia in confusion.

Mads joins them.

“We haven’t seen anything on the road,” he says. “You must have put up the roadblock too late.”

“Too late? I drove up here on this road from the other direction!”

“So where the hell is the car, then?” asks the trucker.

Mirja Zlatnek runs back to the patrol car and radios her colleague.

“Lasse?” she asks, out of breath.

“I’ve been trying to get you,” said Lasse. “You weren’t answering—”

“I was—”

“Did you get him?”

“Where the hell is the car?” She is practically screaming. “The truck is here, but no car has come past!”

“There aren’t any other roads,” he says.

“We have to put out a bulletin and close Highway 86 in the other direction.”

“I’m on it,” he says and breaks off.

Pia leans into the squad car. The rain has soaked through her clothes. Mirja Zlatnek is sitting in the driver’s seat with the door open.

“You told me you’d get him,” Pia says.

“Yes, I—”

“I believed you.”

“I know. I don’t understand it, either. It’s impossible to drive at high speed on this road, and there’s no chance the car could have reached the bridge before Lasse did.”

“But it has to be somewhere,” Pia says. She pulls off her pastor’s collar.

“Wait a minute,” Mirja says.

She contacts the central station.

“This is car 321. We need a roadblock immediately, before Aspen. There’s a small road there. If you know where the road is you can drive from Kävsta up to Myckelsjö. That’s right. Who’s going there? Good, I imagine it’ll take him eight to ten minutes.”

Mirja gets back out of the car and stares down the road as if she still expects the Toyota to appear.

“Where’s my boy?” Pia asks her.

“There’s no other place for them to go,” Mirja says, trying to be patient. “I understand your worry, but we will get them. They must have turned off the road somewhere, but there’s nowhere for them to go.”

She wipes the rain from her eyes. “We’re closing the last road and then we’ll get the helicopter from the rescue station.”

Pia unbuttons the top button of her shirt and then leans on the front of the squad car. She’s breathing much too heavily and it feels as if her chest has burst open. She thinks she should be making demands, but she can’t think clearly. She is desperate and afraid.

28

A large white command bus is parked in the middle of the yard between the buildings at Birgittagården. Command Central is inside. A group of men and women sit around a table covered in maps and laptops, analyzing the investigation, until a bulletin comes in about a kidnapped boy and they stop.

Roadblocks have been thrown up on Highway 330 and Highway 86 going north, as well as at the bridge south of Indal. It should be doable, their colleagues say, to stop the kidnapper—but they hear nothing more for the next ten minutes at least. Then the radio breaks in again.

“It’s gone!” a policewoman reports breathlessly. “The car should have been here, but it hasn’t shown up. We’ve closed each and every damned road. It’s just gone. I don’t know what to do.” Mirja sounds exhausted. “The mother is sitting in my car. I’m going to try to talk to her.”