The Fire Witness

83

Elin is crying with her face turned away. Joona gives her time. He walks to the window and looks out. A misty rain is falling and the trees are swaying in the afternoon wind.

“Do you have any idea where they could be hiding?” Joona asks after a few minutes have passed.

“Her mother used to sleep in various garages. I did meet Susie once when she was going to try to take care of Vicky one weekend. She’d gotten a place to live in Hallonbergen, but it didn’t work out. Vicky was found in the subway tunnel all by herself between the Slussen and Mariatorget stations.”

“It could be hard to find her,” Joona says.

“I haven’t seen Vicky in nine years, but the staff at Birgittagården, they must have talked to her. They have to know something,” Elin says.

“I agree,” Joona says.

“So what’s wrong?”

Joona looks her in the eye. “The only people Vicky talked to were the nurse who was murdered and her husband, who was the therapist. He should know a great deal-or at least something-but mentally he’s not well at all and his doctors think that a police interrogation will worsen his condition. We can’t do anything.”

“But I am not a police officer,” Elin says. “I could speak to him.”

She keeps looking him in the eye and realizes that this is exactly what he’s been hoping she’d say.

Going down in the elevator, Elin feels the heavy exhaustion that comes after prolonged crying. She remembers the detective’s voice and his soft Finnish accent. He had unusual eyes, gray and oddly sharp.

His colleague in the red sweater had called the provincial hospital in Sundsvall and found out that Daniel Grim had been moved to the psychiatric ward and that his doctor was still forbidding the police to interview him.

Elin crosses the street and gets into her BMW. She calls the number for the hospital that she’s been given and finds out that Daniel Grim is in Ward 52A but that he’s not allowed to receive phone calls in his room. However, he can receive visitors daily until six p.m.

She puts the address into her car’s GPS, which calculates that it is 407 kilometers from here to Sundsvall. If she starts driving right now, she’ll get there at a quarter to seven. She turns around at Polhemsgatan, her tires mounting the sidewalk, and drives down Fleminggatan.

When she reaches the first traffic light, Robert calls her to remind her that she has a meeting with Kinnevik and Sven Warg in thirty minutes at the Waterfront Expo.

“I won’t be able to make it.”

“Shall I tell them to start without you?”

“Robert, I don’t know when I will be back, but it won’t be today,” Elin says.

When she reaches the E4, she sets the cruise control to precisely twenty-nine kilometers over the speed limit. She doesn’t mind paying a fine, but it would be ridiculous to lose her driver’s license.