The Fire Witness

163

The memory comes to Flora as she’s standing in the old policeman’s kitchen with her hand on the sink. She feels her legs start to buckle as she remembers what she’d seen.

The sun was shining. They were playing on the lawn by the church. She was holding her hands in front of her face. The light was shining right through her spread fingers. The other two children had golden halos around them.

“Oh God!” she moans. “Oh God!”

She remembers seeing her brother hit the little girl with a rock.

The memory is so strong it feels as if the children are there with her in the kitchen.

She hears the thud and sees Ylva’s head jerk.

Flora remembers seeing the girl falling down on the grass. Her mouth opened and closed. Her eyes shook and she mumbled something. He hit her again.

He was hitting as hard as he could, yelling that they should keep their eyes shut. Ylva stopped moving. He placed her hands over her face.

“But I didn’t-”

“Are you Flora?” the old policeman asks again.

She’s still looking between her fingers when her brother gets up. He’s still holding the rock. He tells Flora she should close her eyes. She has to close her eyes to play the game. He is coming closer to her from the side. He lifts the blood-covered rock. She jumps backward as his blow came. The rock cut her chin and hit her shoulder, and she fell to her knees. She picked herself up and ran as fast as she could.

“Are you little Flora who lived at the Rånne mansion?”

“I don’t remember much at all,” she answers.

“Who is her brother?” asks Joona.

“The forestry magnate Rånne, we called them fine folk,” Torkel said. “They were like nobility. They adopted two children. It was even in the newspapers. Their good deed. A noble deed and a caring deed. After the accident, the girl was sent away. They kept the boy.”

“Daniel,” Flora says. “His name is Daniel.”

Joona’s chair scrapes the floor as he gets up from the table. He leaves the house without saying a word. He runs through the garden with the cell phone to his ear and leaves a message as he gets into his car.

“Anja, you have to help me, it’s urgent. See if Daniel Grim has any connection to a family named Rånne in Delsbo.”

Joona has just turned on the car’s radio to alert police at the national communications center when Anja calls him back.

“Yes, those are his parents.”

“Find out everything you can about him,” Joona says.

“What’s this about?”

“Girls,” Joona replies.

He ends the call and before he radios the police, he calls Elin Frank.