The Fire Witness

142

The bells in Gustav Vasa Church are tolling when Joona meets Flora outside Carlén Antiques on Upplandsgatan. She looks terrible. She’s tired and washed out. A fading bruise is visible on her right cheek. Her eyes are heavy. On a narrow door next to the store, there’s a small sign declaring that a séance will be held there that evening.

“Do you have the drawing with you?” Joona asks.

“Yes,” she says as she unlocks the door.

They walk down the stairs to the basement. Flora turns on the ceiling lamps and goes into the room on the right, which has a small window near the ceiling facing the street.

“I’m sorry I lied to you,” Flora says as she rummages in her purse. “I didn’t really feel anything with that key ring, but I-”

“May I just see the drawing?”

“I did see Miranda,” she says as she gives him the sheet of paper. “I don’t believe in ghosts and yet… there she was.”

Joona unfolds the paper and looks at the childish drawing. A girl is lying on her back, holding her hands over her face and her hair is undone. There’s no furniture or bed. He’d remembered correctly. Next to the girl’s head is a heart, shaded in, right where Miranda’s blood had run from her head and had soaked into the pillow.

“Why did you draw a heart next to her?”

Flora looks down at the ground and blushes.

“I don’t know. I don’t even remember that I did it… I was scared and shaking all over.”

“Have you seen the ghost since?”

She nods and her blush deepens.

Joona is trying to understand how this fits. Could Flora have guessed her way to the truth? Could she have guessed the rock as well? If she had, she somehow knew she’d guessed right. Because if the rock was right, it would be logical for her to assume that it had been used to hit Miranda in the head and that there’d be blood on the bed.

But she drew a heart, not blood, he thinks. That wouldn’t be right if she were trying to deceive.

It doesn’t fit.

She must have seen something.

She somehow saw Miranda in the bed, but she didn’t see her clearly, or she saw her for a brief moment, and then she drew what she remembered without thinking too much about it.

He has a vivid mental image of the photograph of Miranda with the bloodstain next to her head.

She sat down and drew what she’d seen. She remembered a body lying down with hands over her face and that there was something dark beside her head. A dark shape.

When she drew the picture, she interpreted the shape as a heart. She didn’t think about any connection or even logic.

Joona knows that Flora was far away from Birgittagården when the murders took place. He knows she has no connection to any of the people involved or to what has happened.

He looks at the drawing again and is struck by another thought.

Perhaps Flora learned about the crime from someone who was actually there. Perhaps a witness to the crime described it to her and told her what to draw.

A child witness who saw the shape of a heart.

Perhaps all this talk about a ghost is Flora’s way of protecting the witness.

“I would like you to contact the ghost,” Joona says.

“No, I can’t-”

“How does it usually work?”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t do it here.”

“You must ask the ghost if she saw what happened.”

“I don’t want to,” Flora says. “I can’t take much more of this.”

“I can pay you,” Joona offers.

“I don’t want to be paid. I just want you to listen to what I’ve seen.”

“I’ll listen,” Joona says.

“I’m beginning to think that I’m really going crazy,” she says.

She looks at him while wiping tears from her cheeks. Then she stares into space and swallows hard.

“I’ll try,” she says. “But I don’t really believe-”

“Go ahead and make an attempt.”

“You’ll have to wait there,” she says, and points to the pantry. “Miranda only comes when I’m completely alone.”

“I understand,” Joona says. He gets up and leaves the room.