The Fire Witness

24

The wipers sweep the rain away as fast as they can. The road ahead appears to be boiling under the downpour.

Pia is shivering and she can’t calm down. She realizes she can’t speak coherently, but she’s able to listen as the truck driver talks with the emergency center. He’s being advised to continue along Highway 86 and then take Highway 330 to Timrå, where an ambulance can take Pia to Sundsvall Hospital.

“What are you talking about?” asks Pia, suddenly finding her voice. “I don’t need an ambulance! You have to stop the car! That’s all that matters!”

The truck driver gives her a look and Pia realizes that she has to pull herself together and make herself clear. Even though she feels as if she’s falling through space, she must sound rational.

“My son has been kidnapped,” she says.

“She is saying that her son has been kidnapped,” reports the truck driver.

“The police must stop the car. It’s a Toyota… a red Toyota Auris. I can’t remember the license plate number.”

The truck driver asks the operator to hold on for a minute.

“It should be ahead of us on the road. You have to stop it. My son is only four years old. He was still in his car seat when I had to…”

The truck driver repeats her words and then explains that he is on Highway 86 just thirty-eight kilometers from Timrå.

“We have to hurry!”

The truck driver slows down as they approach a broken traffic light before a roundabout. The truck thunders as it rolls over the speed bumps. They pass a white brick building as they pick up speed and keep heading down Highway 86.

The emergency center has connected the truck driver to the police. A female officer in a roaming squad car picks it up. She explains that her name is Mirja Zlatnek and she is only twenty-nine kilometers away from them on Highway 330 in Djupängen.

Pia Abrahamsson takes over the telephone. She swallows hard to force away her nausea. Her voice is calm even though it is shaking.

“Listen to me,” she says. “My son has been kidnapped. The car is on-” She turns to the truck driver. “What highway is this?”

“Highway 86,” he says.

“How far ahead are they?” asks the policewoman.

“Perhaps five minutes ahead of us,” Pia says.

“Have you already driven past Indal?”

“Indal,” Pia says loudly.

“Nineteen kilometers ahead of us,” the truck driver says.

“Then we’ll get them,” the policewoman says. “We’ll catch them.”

As Pia Abrahamsson hears those words, tears begin to flow. She wipes them from her cheeks and listens to the policewoman talk to a colleague. They’re going to erect a blockade on Highway 330 where there is a bridge over the river. The officer says that he’s just five minutes away and will be able to get there in time.

“Good,” the policewoman says quickly.

The truck driver keeps driving along the highway, which follows the river through the empty spaces of Medelpad Province. They know that the car with Pia’s son has to be ahead of them, although they can’t see it. There are no alternatives. The highway runs past small collections of houses, but there are no other roads and no turnoffs except for lumber roads leading to the occasional clearing.

“I can’t take this,” Pia says to herself.

The road forks a few kilometers ahead, past the village of Indal. One branch leads south to a bridge over the river, and the other continues east along the river toward the coast.

Pia is sitting with her hands clasped as she prays.

The police are setting up blockades on both forks of the road. One is on the other side of the bridge and the other is eight kilometers to the east.

The tractor-trailer with its driver from Denmark and the Lutheran pastor Pia Abrahamsson is now passing through Indal. Through the downpour, they can see the empty bridge over the river and the blue light of a squad car rotating on the other side.