The Fire Witness

29

Joona stops his car at the roadblock on Highway 330. He greets one of the policemen on duty, shows his ID, and then keeps driving along the road, paralleling the Indal River. He’s been told that the students from Birgittagården are being housed at the Hotel Ibis in Sundsvall; Daniel Grim has been checked into the psychiatric ward of the provincial hospital; the housemother, Margot Lundin, is now at her home in Timrå; and Faduumo Axmed, who works part-time as an assistant, is with his parents in Vänersborg.

When they heard Mirja Zlatnek tell them that Pia Abrahamsson insisted she’d seen a small girl with rags on her hands, everyone understood that Vicky Bennet had taken the car with the little boy in the backseat.

“It’s a mystery how she didn’t get caught in the roadblocks,” Bosse Norling said.

They’d put a helicopter up, but the pilot could not see the car anywhere. Not in Indal and not on any of the logging roads.

It’s not much of a mystery, Joona thought. The logical explanation is that she managed to find a hiding place before she reached any of the roadblocks. But where? She must know someone who lives in the village, someone who owns a garage.

Joona asked to speak with the girls at the hotel and agreed that there should be a child psychologist and a support person from the Office of Victim Services in the room with him.

He’s been thinking over the girls’ behavior when they were in the small house. Gunnarsson had returned with the two who’d run into the forest. The little red-haired girl had been watching television while banging the back of her head against the wall. The girl named Indie had said putting hands over her face was a game Vicky played. Then everyone realized Vicky had disappeared and had started screaming and carrying on. A couple of the girls had been sure she was still sleeping off a heavy dose of Stesolid. The girl called Almira had spat on the floor and Indie had rubbed her eyes so hard that she’d smeared blue eye shadow over her hands.

Joona thinks that the red-haired girl, Tuula, was onto something. Tuula was so pale even her eyelashes were white. She wore shiny pink sport shorts. She’d said something while the others were all jabbering away.

She’d said that Vicky must have run off to meet the guy she likes to fuck.