The Fire Witness

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.