The Fire Witness

55

The agreement that Sundsvall township has made with the company that owns Birgittagården is costing it a lot of money, but at least it deals with the difficult situation. To cut back on expenses, the girls have been moved from the Hotel Ibis to the small fishing village of Hårte on the Jungfru coast.

The school in Hårte closed more than a hundred years ago when a nearby iron mine was abandoned, and the grocery store closed a few decades later when its owners got too old to run it. But the village hangs on and, during the summer, comes alive with visitors to its white sand beaches.

The six girls are staying in a large old country house with a huge glass-enclosed veranda. It stands at the point where the small road in the village forks like a snake’s tongue. They’ve finished dinner and a few are hanging out in the dining room next to the small kitchen. A guard is sitting where he can watch both the room and the front door as well as see out through the windows to the lawn facing the road.

Lu Chu and Nina are looking for potato chips in the pantry, but they can only find Frosted Flakes.

“So what are you going to do when the killer gets here?” asks Lu Chu.

The guard’s tattooed hand jerks and he smiles stiffly at her.

“You’re safe here,” he says.

He’s fifty years old, his head is shaved, and he has a stiff goatee. His large muscles bulge the arms of his dark blue security-company sweater. Lu Chu stares at him while she snacks on the breakfast cereal. Nina finds a packet of smoked ham and a jar of mustard in the fridge. At the other end of the house, sitting around a table on the veranda, Caroline, Indie, Tuula, and Almira are playing cards.

“I want all your jacks,” Indie says.

“Go fish.” Almira giggles.

Indie draws a card and looks at it happily.

“Ted Bundy was just a butcher,” Tuula says in a low voice.

“God, how you talk!” Caroline sighs.

“He went from room to room and clubbed the girls like they were seal pups. Lisa and Margaret and-”

“Shut up,” Almira says, laughing.

Tuula smiles too, but Caroline can’t help shivering.

“What the fuck is that old lady doing here?” Indie says as loud as she can.

The woman sitting in front of the fireplace looks up and then goes back to her knitting.

“Come on, aren’t we playing cards?” asks Tuula impatiently.

“Whose turn is it?”

“My turn,” says Indie.

“Cheater!” says Caroline, but she’s smiling.

“My phone is dead,” Almira says. “I was charging it in my room and now-”

“Let me look at it,” says Indie.

Indie opens the back, takes the battery out, and puts it back in again. Nothing happens.

“Weird,” she mutters.

“Fuck that,” says Almira.

Indie takes the battery out again and exclaims, “The fucking SIM card is missing!”

“Tuula!” Almira says severely. “Did you take my SIM card?”

“Don’t know,” Tuula says sullenly.

“I need that SIM card!”

The woman puts down her knitting. “What’s going on?”

“We can take care of ourselves,” Caroline replies calmly.

Tuula whines, “I haven’t taken anything!”

“My SIM card is missing!” Almira’s voice is loud.

“It doesn’t mean that Tuula has taken it,” says the woman.

“Almira says she’s going to hit me!” says Tuula.

“We don’t tolerate violence of any kind here,” the woman says. Then she picks up her knitting.

“Tuula,” Almira says in a low voice. “I really need to make phone calls.”

“Well, too bad for you!” says Tuula, smiling.

The forest across the bay and the sky above it are dark, but the water is still shimmering like molten lead in the last rays of the sun.

“The police think that Vicky beat Miranda to death,” Caroline says.

“They’re so fucking stupid,” Almira mutters.

“I don’t know Vicky. No one knows Vicky,” Indie says.

“Well, watch out, then!”

“What if she’s on the way over here to kill us all?”

“Shh!” Tuula says. She gets up and looks out into the darkness. She’s tense.

“Did you hear that?” She turns and looks at Caroline and Almira.

“No, I don’t hear a thing.” Indie sighs.

“We’re soon going to be dead, all of us!” whispers Tuula.

“You’re a sick little bitch, aren’t you?” Caroline says, but she can’t hide a smile. She catches Tuula’s hand and pulls her onto her lap and strokes her hair.

“Don’t be afraid. Nothing’s going to happen,” she says.