The Fire Witness

108

Joona pins the woman down among the thistles and browning cow parsley alongside the tracks. He grabs her hand as she reaches for a stone and tries to calm her. The dog cringes beyond arm’s reach.

“I only want to talk to you.”

“Fuck you!” she yells as she tries to wriggle out of his grasp.

She kicks, but he blocks it and keeps her down. Her small breasts are heaving. She’s extremely thin and her face is wrinkled and her lips badly cracked. She’s perhaps forty years old, maybe only in her thirties. When she can’t get free, she starts to whisper soothing phrases to placate him.

“Calm down, now,” Joona says again, and lets her go.

She looks at him shyly as she stands up. She picks her shoulder bag up from the ground. Her filthy black T-shirt declares “Kafka Didn’t Have Much Fun Either” and her thin arms are mottled with injection scars. On the inside of her forearm there’s a tattoo, which has been cut to pieces. She runs her hand over her mouth and glances down the tracks. She shuffles sideways, testing him.

“Don’t be afraid. I really have to talk to you.”

“I’m busy,” she replies quickly.

“Did you see anyone inside the subway car when you were there?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You were staying in a subway car.”

She doesn’t reply. She shuts her mouth tightly and scratches her throat.

Joona picks up her jacket and turns it right-side out. He hands it to her and she takes it without thanking him.

“I’m looking for a girl who-”

“Fuck you. I haven’t done anything.”

“I’m not saying you have,” Joona says.

“Well, what the fuck do you want from me, then?”

“I’m looking for a girl named Vicky.”

“So how does that make it my business?”

Joona pulls out the photo of Vicky that was used for the bulletin.

“No one I know,” she says automatically.

“Take another look.”

“You wanna give me some money?”

“No.”

“Come on, can’t you help me out here?”

A subway train passes by them, small sparks flying from its wheels.

“I know that you’ve been hanging out in the driver’s cab,” Joona says.

“Susie started it,” she says, not wanting to be blamed.

Joona shows her the photograph of Vicky again.

“It’s Susie’s daughter,” Joona explains.

“I didn’t know she had kids,” the homeless woman says, and rubs her nose.

The buzz of electricity in the lines overhead gets louder.

“How did you know Susie?”

“We kept to ourselves in the garden plots as long as we could. I felt really bad when I ran into her. I had hepatitis and this guy, Vadim, was after me. He used to beat me up and Susie helped me out. She was a tough bitch all right, but I wouldn’t have made it through the winter without her, I wouldn’t have had a chance, but when Susie died, I took her stuff, because…”

The woman mutters something to herself and starts rummaging through her shoulder bag. She takes out a key identical to the one Vicky had in her purse.

“Why did you take it?”

“Anyone would. Anyone. That’s the way it is. I took it from her before she died, even,” the woman confesses.

“What else was in the subway car?”

She scratches the cracked corner of her mouth and mutters “Fuck this” to herself. She takes a step to the side, farther away from Joona.

Two subway trains are heading closer in the same direction on separate tracks. One is coming from Blåsut and the other from Skärmarbrink station.

“I need to know,” Joona says.

“All right, what the fuck,” the woman says, rolling her eyes. “There was some stuff to eat and a cell phone.”

“Do you still have the cell phone?”

The sound of metal scraping and the thunder of the subway trains keep getting louder.

“You can’t prove it’s not mine.”

The first subway train passes them, shaking the ground beneath their feet. Loose stones jump from the embankment and the weeds twist in the draft. An empty McDonald’s cup rolls between the other set of rails.

“Just let me look at it!” Joona yells.

“Yeah, right!” she laughs.

The second train speeds by and their clothes flap in its wake. The dog next to the woman begins to bark. The woman moves backward along the embankment and says something Joona can’t hear, then she turns and starts running across the tracks. Joona has no time to react.

The woman doesn’t see the third train coming in the opposite direction at top speed. Its thunder is drowned out by the two other trains, but now it is deafening. Yet when its front hits the homeless woman, the impact is silent. She disappears beneath the first car.

The train screams as the brakes are slammed on, and its cars smack one another as they slow to a stop.

Now the only sound is the buzz of insects and the far-off hum of traffic.

The driver is sitting in his seat as if he’s turned to stone.

A long trail of blood runs over the rails. There’s a dark clump of cloth and flesh under one of the cars. The stench of the brakes starts to spread.

The dog starts to trot back and forth along the tracks with its tail between its legs. It doesn’t seem to know where to go or where to stop.

Joona picks up the woman’s shoulder bag, which has landed in the ditch.

The dog comes up to him and sticks its nose in the bag as Joona empties out its contents. Candy wrappers flutter away in the wind, followed by a few banknotes. Joona takes the black cell phone and leaves the rest.

He walks over to a concrete piling next to the embankment and sits down.

The westerly wind smells of garbage and city.

He clicks until he reaches the cell phone’s voice mail. He calls it and finds out there are two messages.

“Hi, Mamma,” says a girl’s voice. It can only be Vicky. “Why aren’t you picking up your phone? If you’re in detox, let me know. I like this new place. Maybe I told you already the last time I called-”

The automatic voice says, “Message: August first, eleven ten p.m.”

“Hi, Mamma,” Vicky says. Her voice is tense and breathless. “Stuff has happened here and I need to find you. I can’t talk long. I’ve just borrowed this phone. Mamma, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go.”

“Maybe I need to ask Tobias for help?”

The automatic voice says, “Message: Yesterday. Two p.m.”

The sun breaks through the clouds all of a sudden. The tops of the subway rails shine in the light.