The Fire Witness. Ларс Кеплер

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       8

      The narrow turning off Highway 86 leads straight into the dark forest, toward Himmelsjön and the Birgitta Home.

      The grit crunches beneath the tyres of the police car. The headlights play across the tall trunks of the pines.

      ‘You said you’d been out here before?’ Rolf Wikner asks, changing up to fourth gear.

      ‘Yes … a couple of years ago one of the girls tried to set light to one of the buildings,’ Sonja Rask replies.

      ‘Why the hell can’t they get hold of the staff?’ Rolf mutters.

      ‘Probably got their hands full – regardless of what’s happened,’ Sonja says.

      ‘It would be useful to know a bit more.’

      ‘Yes,’ she agrees calmly.

      The two colleagues sit in silence next to each other, listening to the communications over the police radio. An ambulance is on its way, and another police car has set out from the station.

      The road, like so many logging roads, is perfectly straight. The tyres thunder over potholes and dips. Tree trunks flit past as the flashing blue lights make their way far into the forest.

      Sonja reports back to the station as they pull up into the yard in front of the dark red buildings of the Birgitta Home.

      A girl in a nightdress is standing on the steps of the main building. Her eyes are wide open, but her face is pale and distant.

      Rolf and Sonja get out of the car and hurry over to her in the flickering blue light, but the girl doesn’t seem to notice them.

      A dog starts to bark anxiously.

      ‘Is anyone hurt?’ Rolf says in a loud voice. ‘Does anyone need help?’

      The girl waves vaguely towards the edge of the forest, wobbles, and tries to take a step, but her legs buckle beneath her. She falls backwards and hits her head.

      ‘Are you OK?’ Sonja asks, rushing over to her.

      The girl lies there on the steps staring up at the sky, breathing fast and shallow. Sonja notes that she’s drawn blood from scratching her arms and neck.

      ‘I’m going in,’ Rolf says firmly.

      Sonja stays with the shocked girl and waits for the ambulance while Rolf goes inside. He sees bloody marks left by boots and bare feet on the wooden floor, heading off in different directions, including long strides through the passageway towards the hall, then back again. Rolf feels adrenaline course through his body. He does his best not to stand on the footprints, but knows that his primary objective is to save lives.

      He looks into a common room where all the lights are on, and sees four girls sitting on the two sofas.

      ‘Is anyone hurt?’ he calls.

      ‘Maybe a bit,’ a small, red-haired girl in a pink tracksuit smiles.

      ‘Where is she?’ he asks anxiously.

      ‘Miranda’s on her bed,’ an older girl with straight dark hair says.

      ‘In here?’ he says, pointing towards the corridor with the bedrooms.

      The older girl just nods in reply, and Rolf follows the bloody footprints past a dining room containing a large wooden table and tiled stove, and into a dark corridor lined with doors leading to the girls’ private rooms. Shoes and bare feet have trodden through the blood. The old floor creaks beneath him. Rolf stops, pulls his torch from his belt, and shines it along the corridor. He quickly looks along the hand-painted maxims and ornate biblical quotations, then aims the beam at the floor.

      The blood has seeped out across the floor from under the door in a dark alcove. The key is in the lock. He walks towards it, carefully moves the torch to his other hand, and reaches out towards the handle and touches it as gently as he can.

      There’s a click, the door slips open, and the handle pings back up.

      ‘Hello? Miranda? My name is Rolf, I’m a police officer,’ he says into the darkness as he steps closer. ‘I’m coming in now …’

      The only sound is his own breathing.

      He carefully pushes the door open and sweeps the beam of the torch around the room. The sight that greets him is so brutal that he stumbles and has to reach out for the doorframe.

      Instinctively he looks away, but his eyes have already seen what he didn’t want to see. His ears register the rushing of his pulse as well as the drips hitting the puddle on the floor.

      A young woman is lying on the bed, but large parts of her head seem to be missing. Blood is spattered up the walls, and is still dripping from the dark lampshade.

      The door suddenly closes behind Rolf, and СКАЧАТЬ