The Fire Witness

193

Anders hangs his keys in the cupboard before the woman opens the first door in the gate. He walks inside and waits as the door is shut behind him. Then he goes to the second door. The woman is listening for a signal, and when she hears it, she opens the second door. Anders turns and waves before he heads down the corridor to the staff lunch room.

A powerful man of about fifty is waiting for him there. His shoulders are slumped and he’s smoking beneath the ventilator grille in the pantry. He nips off the end and throws it into the drain. He stuffs the half cigarette back into the pack, which he puts in the pocket of his lab coat.

“Hi, Roland Brolin, chief physician,” he says, introducing himself.

“Anders Rönn.”

“Why did you end up here, out of all the possible jobs out there?” the chief physician asks.

“I have young children and wanted to work near home,” Anders Rönn replies.

“Well, you picked a hell of a day to start.” Roland Brolin smiles.

He leads the way down the soundproof corridor to the security door, where he takes out his card and swipes it through a lock. He waits for the click from the steel door and then pushes it open with a deep sigh. He lets go of it before Anders has fully cleared it. The door hits him in the shoulder.

“Is there anything I need to know about the patient?” asks Anders, blinking away the pain.

Brolin waves his hand and rattles off a list: “He must never be alone with any employee. He is never to leave the premises under any circumstances. He may never meet another patient. He may never receive guests. He may never go to the recreation yard. Not even-”

“Never?” Anders repeats, doubtfully. “It’s against regulations to keep a patient-”

“So it is,” Roland says.

The atmosphere chills between them. Finally Anders asks, “What has he done?”

“Only nice things,” Roland says.

“Such as?”

They pass through a second security door. A woman with pierced cheeks waves at them.

“Come back alive!” she says.

“Don’t worry,” Roland says. “Jurek Walter is a quiet older man. He doesn’t fight or even raise his voice. He keeps to himself and we never enter his room. However, today we’ll have to go in, because the night shift observed him hiding a knife underneath his mattress.”

“How the hell would he have gotten a knife?”

Roland’s forehead is now sweaty. He wipes his hand over his face and dries it on his coat.

“Jurek Walter can be extremely manipulative and… well, we’ll be doing an internal investigation. But who knows?”