The Fire Witness - Ларс Кеплер

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      ‘No.’

      ‘Shouldn’t there have been?’

      ‘Presumably,’ Gunnarsson says in a tired voice.

      ‘Which one of the girls called the counsellor?’ Joona asks.

      ‘One of the older residents,’ Gunnarsson says, looking in his notebook. ‘A Caroline Forsgren … But as I understand it, she wasn’t the one who found the body. That was … it’s a hell of a mess, several of the girls have looked in the room. It’s bloody nasty, I don’t mind saying. We’ve taken one of them off to hospital. She was hysterical, and the paramedics thought that was the safest thing to do.’

      ‘Who was first on the scene?’ Joona asks.

      ‘Two colleagues, Rolf Wikner and Sonja Rask,’ Gunnarsson replies. ‘I got here at around a quarter to six and called the prosecutor … and then she evidently wet herself and contacted Stockholm … so now we’re lumbered with you.’

      He smiles at Joona without any warmth.

      ‘Do you have a suspect?’ Joona asks.

      Gunnarsson takes a deep breath and says in a didactic tone: ‘Years of experience have taught me to let an investigation unfold at its own pace … we need to get people out here, start to interview the witnesses, secure the evidence …’

      ‘Is it OK to go in and take a look?’ Joona asks, looking up at the door.

      ‘I wouldn’t recommend it … we’ll soon have pictures.’

      ‘I need to look at the girl before she’s moved,’ Joona says.

      ‘We’re dealing with an attack with a blunt instrument, very brutal, very aggressive,’ he says. ‘The perpetrator’s a strong guy. After her death the victim was laid out on her bed. No one noticed anything until one of the girls was going to the toilet and trod in the blood that was seeping under the door.’

      ‘Was it still warm?’

      ‘Look … these girls are pretty tricky to deal with,’ Gunnarsson explains. ‘They’re frightened, and they’re very angry, they object to everything we say, they don’t listen, they scream at us, and … Earlier on they were determined to get through the cordon to fetch things from their rooms – iPods, Lypsyl, coats, and so on – and when we were going to move them to the other building, two of them escaped into the forest.’

      ‘Escaped?’

      ‘We’ve just managed to catch up with them … now we just need to get them to return voluntarily. They’re lying on the ground demanding to be allowed to ride on Rolf’s shoulders.’

       14

      Joona puts on protective clothing, goes up the steps to the main building and in through the door. Inside the porch the fans of the arc lights are working hard and the air is already warm. Every detail is visible in their strong glare. Dust is moving slowly through the air.

      Joona walks carefully along the protective mats that have been laid out across the floor tiles. One picture has fallen to the floor, and the broken glass glints in the strong light. Bloody shoe prints lead off in different directions in the corridor, towards the front door, and back again.

      The house has retained its original character from when it was a grand farmhouse. The painted panels have faded over the years, but are still colourful, and the traditional patterns made by itinerant painters curl across the walls and woodwork.

      Further along the corridor a forensics officer named Jimi Sjöberg is shining a green lamp at a black chair, having already applied Hungarian red to it.

      ‘Blood?’ Joona asks.

      ‘Not on this one,’ Jimi mutters, and moves on with the green lamp.

      ‘Have you found anything unexpected?’

      ‘Erixon called from Stockholm and told us not to touch a thing until Joona Linna had given the go-ahead,’ he replies with a smile.

      ‘I’m grateful.’

      ‘So we haven’t really got going yet,’ Jimi goes on. ‘We’ve laid out all these damn mats, and photographed and filmed everything, and … well, I took the liberty to get samples of the blood in the corridor so we could send something off to the lab.’

      ‘Good.’

      ‘And Siri lifted the prints in the hall before they got contaminated …’

      The other forensics expert, Siri Karlsson, has just dismantled the brass handle from the door to the isolation room. She puts it carefully in a paper bag, then comes over to Joona and Jimi.

      ‘He’s here to take a look at the crime scene,’ Jimi explains.

      ‘It’s pretty unpleasant,’ Siri says through her mask. Her eyes look tired and troubled.

      ‘So I understand,’ Joona says.

      ‘You can look at pictures instead if you’d rather,’ she says.

      ‘This is Joona Linna,’ Jimi tells her.

      ‘Sorry, I didn’t realise.’

      ‘I’m just an observer,’ Joona says.

      She looks down, and when she raises her eyes again there’s a trace of a blush on her cheeks.

      ‘Everyone’s talking about you,’ she says. ‘I mean … I … I don’t care about the internal investigation. I think it’ll be interesting to work with you.’

      ‘Same here,’ Joona says.

      He stands still and listens to the whirr of the lamps, and tries to focus, so that he’ll be able to absorb the impressions of what he sees without giving in to the instinct to look away.

       15

      Joona goes over to the alcove and the door that no longer has a handle.

      The lock and key are still in place.

      He closes his eyes for a moment, then walks into the small room.

      Everything is still, and brightly lit.

      The warm air is heavy with the smell of blood and urine. He forces himself to inhale it to detect the other smells: damp wood, sweaty sheets, deodorant.

      The hot metal of the lamps ticks. He can hear the muffled sound of barking through the walls.

      Joona stands perfectly still and forces himself to look at the body on the bed. His eyes linger on every detail, even though he’d like nothing more than to hurry out, leave the building, and walk into the fresh air and shade of the forest.

      Blood has run across the floor, and is spattered over the immoveable furniture and the pale biblical motifs on the walls. It’s sprayed across the ceiling and over to the toilet. A thin girl in the early stages of puberty is lying on the bed. She has been laid out on her back, with her hands covering her face. She’s wearing nothing but a pair of cotton pants. Her breasts are covered by her elbows, and her feet are crossed at the ankles.

      Joona feels his heart beating, feels his own blood coursing through his veins to his brain, as his pulse roars in his temples.

      He forces himself to look, register, and think.

      The girl’s face is hidden.

      As if she’s frightened, as if she doesn’t want to see the perpetrator.

      Before the girl was positioned on the bed she was subjected to extreme violence.

      Repeated blows with a blunt

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