The Fire Witness

76

After breakfast, Disa is propped up in bed, drinking coffee and reading The Times on her iPad. Joona is taking a shower.

Yesterday, he decided he would skip going to the Nordic Museum to look at the Sami bridal crown made from braided roots. Sometimes he just had to be near the crown in order to remember his former, entirely different, life. Instead, he is with Disa. He didn’t plan what had happened. Perhaps this was because Rosa Bergman’s dementia has cut his last remaining tie to Summa and Lumi.

It has been more than twelve years.

He has to understand that he has nothing to be afraid of now.

Still, he knows he should have warned Disa earlier. He should have told her what frightens him so that she could decide for herself. He stands in the bedroom doorway and watches her, unnoticed, for a long time, then slips into the kitchen to call Holger Jalmert.

“I heard that Gunnarsson was being difficult,” Holger says, amused. “I’ve had to promise him not to send you any copies of my reports.”

“Are you allowed to talk to me?” asks Joona.

He moves his sandwich and coffee cup from the counter to the table and waves at Disa, who’s reading her iPad with a wrinkled brow.

“Probably not,” Holger says with a laugh.

“Were you able to look at the purse we found at the dam?” Joona asks.

“Yes, I’ve finished my examination. At the moment, I’m in my car on my way back to Umeå.”

“Were there any notes or papers in the purse?”

“Only a receipt from Pressbyrån.”

“A cell phone?”

“No, unfortunately.”

“So what do we have?” Joona says as he lets his eyes rest on the gray sky above the rooftops.

Holger takes a deep breath and starts speaking as if he’s reading aloud from a list: “There are traces of what is most probably blood on the purse. I cut out a sample and sent it to the National Forensic Laboratory. Some makeup-two different lipsticks and a stump of a kohl stick-a pink plastic barrette, a wallet with a skull on it, some cash, a photograph of Vicky herself, some kind of bike tool, a prescription bottle without its label, which I also sent to the National Lab. A few pills of diazepam. Two pens. And hidden in one of the purse pockets I found a table knife as sharp as a sushi knife.”

“Nothing written at all? No names? No addresses?”

“No, that was everything.”

Joona hears Disa’s footsteps on the wooden floor behind him. He stays where he is. He shivers and a few seconds later he feels her soft lips on the back of his neck and her arms slip around his body.

She releases him and wanders off to take a shower. Joona sits at the kitchen table and dials the number for Solveig Sundström, the nurse responsible for the girls from Birgittagården. Maybe she knows what kind of medications Vicky took.

The phone rings eight times before it’s picked up.

“Caroline here, answering an ugly telephone that was left on a chair.”

“Is Solveig there?”

“I don’t know where she is right now. Can I tell her who’s calling?”

Caroline is the older girl. She’s a head taller than Tuula. He remembers she had old injection scars on the insides of her elbows, but she seemed to have things together. She appeared intelligent.

“Is everything going all right for you girls?” he asks.

“You’re the detective, right?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Is it true that Vicky is dead?”

“Unfortunately it seems so,” Joona replies.

“It feels strange,” Caroline says.

“Do you know what kinds of medications she was prescribed?” Joona asks.

“You mean Vicky?”

“Right.”

“I dunno, probably Eutrexa, but it’s hard to believe-she was so thin.”

“That’s an antidepressant, right?”

“Yeah, I used to take it. Now I just take Imovane,” Caroline says. “It’s fucking nice not to have to take Eutrexa.”

“What are its side effects?”

“Different for different people. I put on twenty-two pounds.”

“Does it make you tired?” Joona asks. In his mind’s eye, he sees the bloody sheets where Vicky slept.

“At first it’s the opposite. All I had to do was start sucking on the pill and it took off like gangbusters. It creeps through your entire body and you get angry and yell. I threw my phone against the wall once and another time I ripped down the curtains in my room. After a while, it stops making you angry and does the opposite. It’s like you have a warm blanket wrapped around you. You get tired and all you want to do is sleep.”

“Do you know if Vicky was taking any other medications?”

“I imagine she was like the rest of us and held on to anything that worked-diazepam, Lyrica, Stesolid, Ketogan.”

There’s a voice in the background and Joona realizes the nurse has come into the room and seen Caroline talking on the phone.

“I’m going to report you for theft,” the woman is saying.

“It rang and I answered,” Caroline says. “It’s for you, anyway. It’s the detective on the line. You’re a suspect in the murder of Miranda Eriksdotter.”

“Don’t be stupid,” the nurse says. She takes the phone and clears her throat before saying, “Solveig Sundström.”

“I’m Detective Inspector Joona Linna with the National Police and I’m investigating-”

The woman hangs up without a word and Joona doesn’t bother to call back since he’s already gotten the answer he wanted.