The Fire Witness

114

There are balloons hanging from a door with a scratched window in the Wollmar Yxkullsgatan building. The high voices of children singing comes from the inner courtyard. Joona opens the door and looks in: It’s a small garden with a lawn and an apple tree. In the last light of the evening sun, he can see a table set with colorful paper napkins and cups, as well as streamers and balloons. A pregnant woman is sitting on a white plastic chair. She is made up to look like a cat. She’s calling something to the children. Joona is hit with a pang of longing.

One of the girls leaves the group and runs up to him.

“Hi,” she says, and pushes past him through the door festooned with balloons.

Her bare feet leave dirty footprints on the foyer’s white marble floor. She opens the apartment door and yells that she has to pee. One of the balloons is loosened from the door and falls to meet its pink shadow. Joona sees that the entire foyer is filled with traces of bare feet: back and forth from the entrance, up and down the stairs, past the storage door and the garbage chute.

For the second time, Joona walks up to the loft apartment and rings the bell. He stares at the brass plaque with the name Horáčková and the piece of tape with the name Lundhagen. He is starting to get a headache.

He can still hear the voices of the children coming from the inner courtyard. He presses the doorbell again and is about to take out his break-in tools when a man of about thirty opens the door. His hair is styled so it sticks up. The security chain is not attached, and it clatters against the doorframe. Old mail and advertisements still cover the floor in the narrow entry hall. A tiled staircase painted white leads up into the apartment.

“Are you Tobias?”

“Depends on who’s asking,” the man replies.

He’s wearing a short-sleeved shirt and black jeans. His hair is stiff with gel and his face has a yellow tinge.

“The National Police,” Joona says.

“No shit,” the man says in English with an amazed smile.

“May I come in?”

“No, I’m just going out, but if-”

“You know Vicky Bennet,” Joona says.

“Maybe you should come in for a short while,” Tobias says seriously.

Joona is aware of the heaviness of his new pistol in its shoulder holster as he walks up the short staircase and into an attic apartment with a sloped ceiling and rounded windows. A framed poster showing a Goth girl with large breasts and angel wings is hanging on one of the walls.

Tobias sits down on the sofa and tries to zip up a large dirty suitcase on the floor close to his legs, but gives up. He leans back into the sofa.

“So you want to talk about Vicky?” Tobias says, reaching forward to take a handful of candy from a ceramic bowl.

“When did you last hear from her?” Joona asks as he flips through some of the unopened mail on the sideboard.

“Well, that’s a good question.” Tobias sighs. “I don’t know. It must have been a year or so ago. She called from… Damn.” He has dropped some candy on the floor.

“What were you going to say?”

“She called me from Uddevalla, I think. She talked a lot, but I really don’t know what she wanted.”

“No calls the past few months?”

“Nope.”

Joona opens a small wooden door, which leads to a closet. Four hockey video games are unopened in their packages. There’s an old computer on the shelf.

“I’ve really gotta get going,” Tobias says.

“When did she live here?”

Tobias tries to close the suitcase again. One of the windows on the side facing the inner courtyard is slightly open. The children are now singing the birthday song.

“Almost three years ago.”

“How long did she stay?”

“She didn’t stay here the whole time. About seven months in all,” Tobias answers.

“Where did she stay when she wasn’t here?”

“Who knows.”

“You don’t know?”

“I had to get her to leave here a few times. See, you don’t get it. She was a kid but she could be really difficult.”

“In what way?”

“The usual-drugs, theft, suicide attempts,” he says as he scratches his scalp. “I never thought she’d kill anybody, though. I saw it in the tabloids. I mean, it was all over.”

Tobias glances at the clock and then meets the detective’s eye.

“Why?” asks Joona after a few moments of silence.

“Why what?” Tobias replies.

“Why’d you let her stay here?”

“I had a rough childhood myself,” he says, and again tries to close the zipper on the suitcase. Joona can see it is filled with tablet computers in their original packaging.

“Can I help you?” Joona holds the zipper together while Tobias zips it shut.

“Sorry about this stuff,” he says, patting the suitcase. “I promise, it’s not mine. I’m just watching it for a friend.”

“I see,” Joona says.

Tobias laughs and a bit of candy flies out of his mouth. He gets up and pulls the suitcase behind him as he goes down the stairs and into the hallway.

“Do you know where Vicky would be hiding?” asks Joona.

“No idea-wherever she finds a spot.”

“Who does she trust?”

“No one,” he replies. He opens the front door and heads toward the stairwell.

“Does she trust you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“There’s no chance that she’d come here?”

Joona dawdles in the narrow hall a few seconds and opens the key cupboard by the front door.

“No, maybe she’d go to… Nah, forget it,” Tobias says, his back turned to Joona. He presses the button to call the elevator.

“What were you about to say?” Joona asks.

“I need to get going.”

Joona carefully removes the spare set of keys to the apartment from the hook before he leaves. He closes the door behind him and rides the elevator down with Tobias.