The Fire Witness

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.