The Fire Witness

Jasmin puts her coffee cup down and takes an incoming call.

‘SOS 112 … What’s the nature of the emergency?’

‘My name is Daniel Grim, I’m a counsellor at the Birgitta Home. One of the residents has just called me. It sounded extremely serious, you have to get out there.’

‘Can you tell me what’s happened?’ Jasmin asks as she searches for the Birgitta Home on the computer.

‘I don’t know, one of the girls called. I didn’t really understand what she was saying, there was a lot of shouting in the background, and she was crying and saying there was blood all over the room.’

Jasmin gestures to her colleague Ingrid Sandén that they need more operators.

‘And are you at the scene yourself?’ Jasmin says through the headset.

‘No, I’m at home, I was asleep, but one of the girls called …’

‘You’re talking about the Birgitta Home, north of Sunnås?’ Jasmin asks calmly.

‘Please, hurry up,’ he says in a shaky voice.

‘We’re sending police and an ambulance to the Birgitta Home, north of Sunnås,’ Jasmin repeats, just to be sure.

She transfers the call to Ingrid, who goes on talking to Daniel while Jasmin alerts the police and paramedics.

‘The Birgitta Home is a children’s home, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, a secure children’s home,’ he replies.

‘Shouldn’t there be some staff there?’

‘Yes, my wife Elisabet is on duty, I’m about to call her … I don’t know what’s happened, I don’t know anything.’

‘The police are on their way,’ Ingrid says calmly, and from the corner of her eye sees the flashing blue lights of the first emergency vehicle sweep across the deserted street.

8 (#ulink_ed8f32f9-95cc-5a2d-a129-3e111a5bc241)

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.