Joona walks into strong sunshine. The air has grown heavier and even more humid.
“Can you give me Bjorn’s address?”
He hears Anja’s fingers fly over the keyboard. Small clicking sounds.
“Almskog, Pontonjargatan 47, third floor.”
“I’ll go there before I-”
“Wait a second!” Anja said. “Not possible. Listen to this… I’ve just cross-checked this address… there was a fire in the building on Friday.”
“Bjorn’s apartment?”
Anja replies, “Everything on that floor is gone.”
19
Detective Inspector Joona Linna walks up the stairs, then stops and stands still, looking into a completely black room. The acrid stench is sharp. Not much of the inner, non-weight-bearing wall is left. Black stalactites hang from the ceiling. Charcoaled stumps of shelves stick up among a wavy landscape of ashes. In several places there are holes straight through the double floors to the room beneath. It’s no longer possible to determine which part of this apartment floor had been Bjorn Almskog’s.
Plastic sheets in the windows keep out the sun and present a strange green face to the street.
Nobody had been injured in the fire at Pontonjargatan 47 because most people had been at work. The first call had come into Emergency Central at 11:05 a.m. Even though the Kungsholm fire station was relatively close-by, the fire had been so fierce that four apartments were completely destroyed.
Joona mulls over his conversation with Fire Inspector Hassan Sukur. Sukur had said it was “strongly indicated” that the fire had started in Lisbet Wiren’s apartment. She was Bjorn Almskog’s eighty-eight-year-old neighbor. She’d gone out to convert a small winning on a lottery ticket into two new tickets, and couldn’t remember if she’d left her iron on. The fire had spread rapidly, and all signs pointed back to her apartment and the iron on her ironing board.
Joona surveys all the blackened apartments on this level. Nothing is left of any of the furniture in the rooms except individual twisted metal fragments, parts of a refrigerator, a bed frame, a sooty bathtub.
Joona turns and walks back down. The walls and ceiling of the stairwell are smoke damaged. He stops at the police tape, turns, and looks back up at all the blackness.
As he bends to go under the plastic tape, he notices that the fire inspectors have dropped a few DUO bags, used for preserving volatile liquids, on the floor. He continues past the green-marble entrance hall and out the main door onto the street. As he heads toward the police station, he calls Hassan Sukur again. Hassan answers at once and turns down the background sound from his radio.
“Have you found traces of flammable liquids?” Joona asks. “You’d dropped some DUO bags on the floor and I was wondering-”
“Let me give you some facts. If you pour flammable liquid on something, that’s the first thing to burn-”
“I know, but it was-”
“I, on the other hand, I am one who always finds whatever there is to find,” Hassan continues. “It often runs into gaps between the floorboards or into the double floor, or the fiberglass, or the underside of the double floor, which might have survived the fire.”
“But not at this site,” Joona says as he continues walking down the hill on Handverkargatan.
“Nothing at all,” Hassan replies.
“But if you knew where traces of flammable liquid might collect, you might be able to avoid detection.”
“Of course… if I were a pyromaniac, I would never make a mistake like that,” Hassan says cheerfully.
“But in this case you’re sure the iron brought on this blaze?”
“Yes, it was an accident.”
“So,” Joona states, “case closed.”
20
The darkness of night is giving way to morning, even in the forest. Penelope and Bjorn move back toward the beach together but angle farther south, away from the house where the party had been. Away from their pursuer.
As far from their pursuer as they possibly can go.
Spotting another house between the trees, they start to run again. It’s about half a kilometer away, maybe even a little less. They hear the roar of a helicopter overhead somewhere but the sound fades as it moves on.
Bjorn looks dizzy; Penelope fears he won’t be able to keep running much longer. His bare feet are raw.
A branch breaks behind them. Perhaps underneath a human boot.
Penelope begins to run as fast as she can through the forest.
As the trees thin out more, she can see the house again. It’s just one hundred meters away. Lights in the window reflect on the red paint of a parked Ford.
A hare leaps up and jumps away over moss and twigs.
Panting and terrified, Penelope and Bjorn run up the gravel driveway and clamber up the stairs to the house. They spring inside.
“Hello? We need help!” Penelope screams.
The house is warm from yesterday’s sunshine. Bjorn, bare-chested and white with cold, is limping and leaves tracks of blood on the floor as he limps in. Penelope hurries from room to room, but the house is empty. The people who live here probably attended last night’s party and are sleeping it off at the neighbors’, Penelope realizes. She goes to the window and, hiding behind the curtains, peers outside. There’s no movement in the forest or over the lawn. Perhaps the man has lost their trail. Perhaps he’s still waiting at the other house. She returns to the hallway where Bjorn sits on the floor examining the open wounds on his feet.
“We have to find you a pair of shoes.”
He looks up at her as if he no longer understands human speech.
“It’s not over. You have to find something to put on your feet.”
Bjorn slowly begins to rummage in the closet and pulls out beach shoes, rubber boots, and old bags.
Penelope creeps past the windows in search of a phone. She looks on the hall table, in the briefcase by the sofa, in the bowl on the coffee table, and among the keys and papers on the kitchen counter.
She hears something outside. She freezes to listen.
Maybe it was nothing.
The first rays of the morning sun shine through the windows.
Crouching low, she hurries into the large bedroom, pulls open dresser drawers. Tucked among the underwear, she finds a framed photograph, a studio portrait of a man, a wife, and two teenage daughters. All the other drawers are empty. Penelope yanks opens the closet and pulls out a black hoodie for herself and an oversized sweater for Bjorn.
She hears the faucet run in the kitchen and hurries there. Bjorn is leaning over the sink, cupping handfuls of water. He’s found a pair of worn-out sneakers a few sizes too large.
This is crazy, Penelope thinks. There must be people all around here; we have to find someone who can help us.
Penelope hands Bjorn the sweater when someone knocks on the door. Bjorn smiles, surprised, and pulls it on while mumbling something about their luck turning. Penelope wipes her hair back from her face, and is almost at
