The Fire Witness

13

North of Sundsvall, Joona leaves the coast and turns onto Highway 86, which heads inland toward Indalsälven. After two hours, he’s close to where the home for troubled girls should be. He slows down and eventually turns onto a gravel road. Rays of sunshine stream past the dark trunks of the tall pines.

A dead girl, thinks Joona.

During the night while everyone slept, a girl was murdered and then set up, “arranged,” in her bed. According to the local police, the crime was brutal. They have no suspect and now it’s too late to close off the roads, but all officers in the area are on alert. Commissioner Olle Gunnarsson is leading the preliminary investigation but, Carlos tells Joona, the situation has been so chaotic, the girls have been so agitated, so uncontrollable, that the investigation has not yet begun.

It’s ten by the time Joona reaches the home. He parks outside the line of police tape and gets out. The only sound he can hear is the buzz of insects in the ditch beside the road. Here the forest has opened into an enormous glade. Tree trunks, still damp with dew, shimmer in the sunshine. A hill slopes down to Lake Himmelsjö, and a metal sign beside the road reads BRIGITTAGÅRDEN, HVB: A HOME FOR YOUTH WITH SPECIAL NEEDS.

Joona heads toward the group of red buildings, which form a square around a gravel yard. An ambulance, three police cars, a white Mercedes, and three other cars are parked near the buildings.

A dog is barking. His leash is attached to a line running between two trees.

An older man with a walrus mustache and a beer belly, wearing a wrinkled linen suit, is standing by the main building. He’s noticed Joona but does not acknowledge him. Instead, he taps a cigarette out of a full packet and starts to light it.

Joona swings his legs over a second ring of police tape while the man reconsiders and puts the cigarette behind his ear.

“Joona Linna from the National Police.”

“Gunnarsson,” the man replies. “Detective Gunnarsson.”

“I’m supposed to observe your work.”

“As long as you don’t get in the way,” Gunnarsson says coldly, looking Joona over.

Joona glances at the big house. The technicians are already busy. Floodlights are blazing in all the rooms, making the windows shine with an unnatural light.

A white-faced officer comes out of the house. He’s holding his hand over his mouth and wobbles down the steps, then, leaning on the wall for support, he bends forward and throws up into the nettles by the rain barrel.

“You’ll do the same once you’ve been inside,” Gunnarsson says, grinning at Joona.

“What do we know so far?”

“We don’t know a damn thing. The alarm came early this morning. The therapist in charge here called. His name’s Daniel Grim. It was four o’clock. He was at home on Bruksgatan in Sundsvall. He’d just got a phone call from the place. He didn’t know what was going on when he called us, but said the girls were screaming about a lot of blood.”

“So it was the girls themselves who called him?” Joona asks.

“That’s right.”

“They didn’t call emergency? They called the therapist in Sundsvall?”

“Exactly.”

“Shouldn’t there be staff on-site?”

“Apparently there’s not.”

“But some adult?”

“We don’t know. It’s impossible to talk to the girls,” Gunnarsson says. He sounds weary.

“Which one of them made the call?”

“One of the older ones”-Gunnarsson glances at his notebook-“by the name of Caroline Forsman. From what I understand, she was not the one who found the body, but the crime scene’s a mess, several of the girls have looked into the room. One of them got so hysterical they had to take her to the hospital. Let me tell you, it’s a gruesome sight.”

“Who were the first officers on the scene?” Joona asks.

“There were two, Rolf Wikner and Sonja Rask. And I got here around a quarter to six. I called the prosecutor. She must have shit her pants over it, since she called you guys in Stockholm. And now I have you hanging around my neck.”

Gunnarsson smiles again at Joona. It’s not a friendly smile.

“Any suspects yet?”

Gunnarsson sighs and then says, as if he’s giving a lecture, “I’ve been at this sort of thing for a long time and my experience tells me to let the investigation take its course. Start from the beginning, find witnesses, secure evidence-”

“May I go inside and take a look?” Joona asks, glancing at the front door.

“I wouldn’t recommend it. We’ll soon have photos for you.”

“I need to take a look at her body before it’s moved,” Joona says.

“It’s blunt trauma,” Gunnarsson says. “The perpetrator is tall. After she died, the victim was placed on her bed and no one noticed anything until one of the girls had to go to the bathroom and stepped into blood that had come out from under the door.”

“Was it still warm?”

“You know, these aren’t the easiest girls in the world to work with,” Gunnarsson says. “They’re frightened and angry all the time and they’ve been arguing about everything we say and not listening at all. They’ve been screaming at us. Earlier this morning they tried to cross the police tape to fetch things from their rooms, iPods and jackets and so on, and when we tried to move them out to the smaller building, two ran off into the woods.”

“Ran off?”

“Oh, we caught up with them, and we’re trying to get them to return on their own. Right now they’re lying on the ground and demanding that Rolf give them a piggyback ride.”