The Fire Witness. Ларс Кеплер
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Название: The Fire Witness
Автор: Ларс Кеплер
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Зарубежные детективы
isbn: 9780007467761
isbn:
A thick figure covered in dirt, blood, and mud.
Pia holds her breath.
It isn’t an animal, it’s as if part of the forest has broken free and come to life.
Like a small girl made of twigs.
The apparition stumbles, but keeps walking towards the barrier.
Pia gets up and follows it.
She tries to speak, but her voice has vanished.
A branch snaps beneath her foot.
Gentle rain has started to fall on the forest.
She moves slowly, as if in a nightmare: she doesn’t seem to be able to run.
Between the trees she sees that the being has already reached the car. Dirty scraps of cloth are wrapped around the wrists of the bizarre girl.
Pia stumbles out onto the logging track and sees the creature sweep her handbag from the seat, get in, and close the door.
‘Dante,’ she gasps.
The car roars into life, drives over her mobile phone and keyring, pulls out into the road, hits the railing between the carriageways, straightens up, and vanishes into the distance.
Whimpering to herself, Pia runs to the barrier, feeling how her whole body is shaking.
It’s incomprehensible. The mud creature came out of nowhere, suddenly it was just there, and now the car and her son are gone.
She ducks under the barrier and walks out into the big, empty road. She doesn’t scream, she doesn’t seem to be able to. The only sound is her ragged breathing.
The forest flickers past, and raindrops patter against the large windscreen. Danish lorry driver Mads Jensen can see a woman standing in the middle of the road two hundred metres away. He swears to himself and blows the horn. He sees her flinch at the noise, but she makes no attempt to get off the road. The driver sounds the horn again, and the woman takes a slow step forward, raises her chin, and looks up at the approaching lorry.
Mads Jensen brakes, and feels the heavy articulated trailer pushing against the old Fliegel cab. He presses the brake pedal harder, the drive-shaft creaks, and the whole vehicle shudders before finally coming to a stop.
The engine winds down, and the rumble from the pistons becomes more audible.
The woman just stands there, three metres from the front of the lorry. Only now does the driver see that she is dressed as a priest under her denim jacket. A small rectangle of her white collar stands out against her black shirt.
The woman’s face is open and remarkably pale. When their eyes meet through the windscreen, tears start to run down her cheeks.
Mads Jensen puts the hazard lights on and gets out of the cab. The engine is radiating heat and a strong smell of diesel. When he walks around to the front of the vehicle the woman is leaning against one of the headlamps, gasping for breath.
‘What’s happened?’ Mads asks.
She looks up at him, wide-eyed. The amber glare of the hazard lights pulses over her.
‘Do you need help?’ he asks.
She nods, and he tries to lead her around the cab. The rain is getting harder, and it’s quickly getting dark.
‘Has someone hurt you?’
She resists, then goes with him and climbs into the passenger seat. He closes the door behind her and hurries around to get in the driver’s seat.
‘I can’t stay here, I’m blocking the whole road,’ he explains. ‘I have to move, is that OK?’
She doesn’t answer, but he sets the truck moving and switches on the windscreen wipers.
‘Are you hurt?’ he asks.
She shakes her head and claps one hand over her mouth.
‘My son,’ she whispers. ‘My …’
‘What are you saying?’ he asks. ‘What’s happened?’
‘She took my son …’
‘I’ll call the police. Is it OK if I call the police?’
‘Oh, God,’ she moans.
The rain is beating hard against the windscreen, the wiper blades are moving fast, and the road ahead of them looks as if it’s boiling.
Pia is sitting in the warm cab high above the ground, shaking. She can’t calm down. She realises that she’s not making any sense, but now she can hear the lorry driver talk to the emergency call centre. He is advised to carry on along Highway 86, then the 330, where he’ll meet an emergency vehicle at Timrå that will take her to Sundsvall Hospital.
‘What? What are you talking about?’ Pia asks. ‘This isn’t about me. They have to stop my car, that’s the only thing that matters.’
The Danish driver gives her a confused look, and she realises that she needs to concentrate to make herself understood. She has to act calmly even though the ground has disappeared beneath her, even though she’s in free-fall.
‘My son has been kidnapped,’ she says.
‘She says her son’s been kidnapped,’ the driver repeats into his phone.
‘The police have to stop the car,’ she goes on. ‘A Toyota … a red Toyota Auris. I can’t remember the licence number, but …’
The driver asks the emergency operator to wait.
‘It’s ahead of us on this road … you have to stop it … my son’s only four, he was sitting in the back when I …’
He repeats her words to the operator, explains that he’s driving east along Highway 86, about forty kilometres from Timrå.
‘They have to hurry …’
The truck slows down and passes a bent-over traffic light, and drives across a roundabout. The trailer judders as the wheels roll over the kerb, then the truck accelerates past a white brick building, driving parallel to the river.
The emergency call centre puts the Danish driver through to a female police officer in a patrol car. She introduces herself as Mirja Zlatnek, and says she’s thirty kilometres away, on Highway 330 in Djupängen.
Pia Abrahamsson takes the phone, СКАЧАТЬ