The Night of the Fire

by Kjell Eriksson

  Ann did not think he was acquainted with the Mattssons. He was sober and a driver and nothing more. She shivered; the early morning hour was damp. Streaks of fog mixed with smoke from the smithy.

  Wendela Mattsson was supported by her husband. She gave a fragile impression. They went as close to the burned-down building as they could. By their side were the fire commander and a police officer from Östhammar, Ann thought his name was Åke Brundin. They had met briefly in connection with an investigation of the murder of a young Thai woman in the archipelago, but were not well acquainted. He nodded at her, no doubt a bit surprised at meeting her there. Wendela reached out a hand toward the burned-down building, a gesture of helplessness.

  The farmer’s sturdy figure made Ann think about what Astrid had said about Waldemar’s father, Albin, that he was too big for his wife, and she wondered whether it was the same a generation later. They were talking with the fireman. Whether his task was easy or not naturally depended on whether the couple had made contact with their son Daniel. Åke Brundin stood quite still, but observed Waldemar from the side with a strange expression on his face, as if he distrusted the farmer’s words, or in any event was very skeptical about what was said.

  “Shall we go?”

  Erik nodded. They said goodbye to Bertil. Brundin looked up when he saw that they were leaving. He gestured that he wanted to exchange a word. Ann went up to him.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked without further ado.

  “I actually live in the area. It was my son who called the fire department.”

  “So that’s how it is. What do you think?”

  Ann could not keep from smiling. Brundin was a policeman, not the bullshitting type that beats around the bush with small talk.

  “Wouldn’t you say it burns a bit too often in this village?” Brundin continued when she didn’t react immediately.

  “That it does” was all she had to say.

  Eleven

  It ended up being a strangely late night and early morning for Ann Lindell. Erik had collapsed in bed, incapable of commenting on what they’d experienced, but she found it impossible, if not immoral, to go to bed a second time.

  She stood by the kitchen window, her primary lookout. She was a little tired, but not at all drained like before, more like clearheaded, sober, sharp-minded as she herself thought. The morning light created a strange shimmer over the lot, the fields, and the edge of the forest. Or was it strange? It was divine, she caught herself saying out loud. “Divine” was a strong word for a nonbeliever, or did she believe in something higher? Who created all this? The answer came immediately: all the generations before, she herself, Gösta a little, and then Edvard, who arranged the potato patch with such finesse and precision. That was the creation story.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she continued her monologue out loud.

  Her next thought was poignant. It was Erik she was thinking of. This wise boy, soon a young man. Life tumbled toward her with all the force the years and experiences gave.

  “Blame it on the light.” Edvard would laugh at me, she thought, not without pain, but then the thought turned to its opposite: He would envy her. Be silent. He had his own baggage. Experiences both new and old. Once, a single time, he had talked about his grandfather, a key figure in his home district, a “man with stature,” as the minister had said at the funeral about the atheistic farmworker. What the minister didn’t know was that Edvard’s grandfather had killed a man. It had happened in Paris sometime in the forties. Edvard was the only one who knew about the incident. He had come across a kind of diary in his grandfather’s posthumous papers. It was a pimp or possibly a cuckold, it depended on how you wanted to interpret his grandfather’s somewhat contradictory notes, who had surprised his grandfather with a woman. “Black as soot,” it said in the notes, but it wasn’t clear whether that meant the woman or the murdered man. There was a notation that Edvard remembered in particular, about blood in a sink, dark red against the white porcelain.

  * * *

  An hour passed like that. She thought about the present, or what had happened the past few years; memories from her childhood and youth never tormented her. Of course she could call to mind what her parents had said or done, remember schoolmates or neighbors in sleepy Ödeshög, but it never made her anxious. She often thought that it was boring and monotonous when people talked about their early experiences. So what! she wanted to exclaim when her few girlfriends harped on perceived or alleged injustices. She would have fallen asleep on a Freudian couch. And probably dreamed about sex.

  She thought about where Daniel Mattsson might be, burned up in his simple cabin or sleeping it off at a good friend’s place, unable or unwilling to answer his phone.

  Perhaps the answer would come sometime that morning. She entered the same number she’d called during the night. Regina answered again.

  “You work long shifts,” said Ann, trying to sound friendly and relaxed.

  “Better paid on the weekends,” said Regina, whose voice still sounded perky.

  “Who’s on duty in Homicide?”

  “Bodin and Olsen” was the immediate reply.

  She had worked with Olsen for a few months before she quit, but the other officer was an unknown card. Then it struck her that perhaps Regina could help her.

  “Can you check on something?”

  “It depends.”

  Ann rattled off the license plate number that she had automatically memorized during the night. The answer came after just a few seconds.

  “It’s registered to one Albin Daniel Severin Mattsson, with two tees and two esses, registered at Hamra farm. A 2006 Toyota pickup. It hasn’t been inspected or taxed and has had a driving ban since early March.”

  “Driving ban,” repeated Ann, who thought she’d seen the pickup drive past her house as recently as the other day.

  “Is he a victim or a suspect?” Regina asked.

  She’s almost too quick, Ann thought, and avoided the question.

  “Is he in the crime register?”

  “Should I answer that?”

  “If you can produce the information and if you want to. It was his house that burned.”

  It took a moment before Regina answered. “He has a minor assault in 2016 and was questioned for informational purposes in connection with the school fire in Tilltorp. That’s all.”

  “What was the assault about?”

  “Now the questioning period is over,” said Regina, but without sounding abrasive or cross. Ann understood that there was no point in nagging. She could bring it up with Sammy.

  “You’re quick, Regina,” she said. “Thanks a lot.”

  “A person needs a little variety and excitement in life.”

  “That’s so true,” said Ann.

  “Did you recognize the voice? The man who was looking for you.”

  “Maybe,” said Ann, who felt the need to be a little accommodating. “But I’m not sure.”

  “I thought he sounded nasty.”

  “He was probably a little drunk.”

  “No, it wasn’t that. ‘Someone may die,’ he said.”

  “Yes, he said that, but I thought it sounded like he wanted to prevent that.”

  “Maybe he got cold feet,” said Regina.

  They ended the call. Ann left the kitchen and went out in the yard. She peered toward Hamra, but everything was quiet, besides a bird of prey that came sailing over the edge of the forest to the south. She suspected that the technicians had started their work, if the scene of the fire had cooled enough. If someone had been trapped inside, the body would have been found at this point. Don’t go there, she had to persuade herself.

  Instead she carried the bags of perennials to the water faucet on the wall and gave the plants a much-needed soaking. Today they would go down in the earth! She walked around in the yard, inspecting how the beds were sprouting, finally decided where the greenhouse should be placed, walked along the fence toward the road and counted how ma
ny stakes had rotted and for that reason had to be replaced. All of this was to scatter her thoughts and keep herself from getting in the car.

  Two contrary characteristics were demanded of a police officer, her colleague Berglund had thought. First and foremost empathy for crime victims and their families, and sometimes actually for the criminal too. But a full measure of superficiality was also required, the capacity to overlook the human, the deeply tragic, and be carried along and away by the tension in the crime, the mystery. It’s the same feeling as with a fire, he’d maintained. The terror, and the fascination.

  That Berglund showed up in her thoughts once again was not that strange. It was the sound they had heard outside the smithy that created the association to her colleague, the howling that could come from a human being, or a dog, or simply some kind of draft that appeared when air was sucked away.

  As a young policeman Berglund and a colleague named Styhr had responded to a fire on Lindgatan in Petterslund, a multifamily building that was in flames. He did not remember much, basically only two things: One was how a collie, trapped by the flames, howled, then whined, and finally fell silent. The dog’s owner collapsed screaming on the street, but it was the dying dog’s howl that had moved him the most. The other was how a little baby, a babe in arms, as Berglund put it, was thrown from the fourth floor and capably caught by a man on the street, and whose life was saved that way. “We were slightly acquainted,” Berglund had said. “He was a painter. I remember his hands, stained with paint, holding the child.”

  * * *

  Erik had not appeared. Ann was accustomed to the solitude and the silence, especially on Sunday mornings. But this morning was different. She could not really appreciate the stillness, and she thought she understood why. She needed the excitement, the unexpected, what she got a taste of during the night. It was a macabre thought, she knew all too well, but that was nothing to lie about. She wanted to go up to the edge, lean over the abyss, peer down into the darkness, even throw herself over. “I’m no better than a pyromaniac,” she muttered to herself. But she was not at all ashamed, more like the contrary, she had a tingling contentment as if she was about to seduce someone. Give me a violent crime or two and I’ll perk up, she thought. That was probably what Erik had seen as they stood before the old smithy, when he admonished her not to get involved.

  * * *

  The sun stood high when Gösta Friberg came walking over. Erik had not woken up yet. Ann was sitting in the hammock with a third cup of joe. Gösta said hello and turned down coffee. He was stepping in place, perhaps because he was a little ashamed about his behavior the last time they met, but more likely because he did not want to openly demonstrate his curiosity. Ann was amused by his irresolution and at the same time felt a little contempt for him. She went on about the greenhouse, and when he did not show any great interest, she changed to questioning him about what type of paint was best for fence posts.

  At last he could no longer contain himself, but instead blurted out what he’d come for, if she’d heard anything about the fire at Hamra.

  “Well, I thought about going there, but I didn’t want to disturb my old colleagues. There are probably more than enough curiosity seekers to shoo away.”

  “And Daniel?”

  “I really don’t know. How is he?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean as a person, I don’t know anyone in the Mattsson clan.”

  Gösta did not answer immediately, as if he wanted to get back for her unwillingness to communicate. He stepped a short distance away, pretended to observe the patch of ground where Ann had said she wanted to put the greenhouse, took off his cap and scratched the top of his head, as if the placement were a tricky problem.

  “Maybe it will be fine,” he said. He returned and stood by the side of the hammock. “He is the way he is.”

  “And how is that?”

  “Hot-tempered, you might say.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “One moment this, the next moment that.”

  It was ridiculous. Grumpy old man, thought Ann, striking herself on the knees as if she’d made a decision, and quickly stood up. “If you don’t have time, an acquaintance offered to help out.” Gösta looked completely bewildered.

  “He’s coming this week,” which was wishful thinking on her part, but a lie. “He said it wouldn’t take long to put up a little greenhouse,” something Edvard had not said a word about. “Was the herring good?”

  Just then the door to the guesthouse opened and Erik came sleepily out, as if it were choreographed.

  “Time for lunch,” said Ann. “Then he shows up.”

  Gösta said a curt “Bye,” with an expression that could be interpreted several ways. She watched him. Gösta hates fire, Bertil had said, and maybe that was true. Fires were not good for his peace of mind, that was evident in any case.

  “What was up with him?” Erik asked.

  “Male menopause,” Ann said in an attempt at a joke that even she didn’t think was amusing. Instead for the first time the bile of the village came up and burned in her mouth. It was a small village, she was aware of that, but now it stood out as more limited than ever. If you only have a handful of neighbors, you become cut off by your surroundings in a way that she never had been before, not in any event since childhood. She could not conjure Gösta Friberg away. Not the Mattssons, Astrid, or Bertil either. By moving to the village she had chosen them, and that could not be undone. The villagers on the other hand had the possibility to exclude her.

  “Don’t be so crabby to people,” said Erik.

  Twelve

  The body was a woman’s. It was severely burned, except for a triangular section from the left hip down to the right knee. An area of the throat and neck had also been preserved; some patches of skin stood out like a light, flaky collar against a sooty background. She was lying on her side, with her legs pulled up as if in anxious protest, in what had once been a kitchen. None of the furniture remained, all possessions were burned up or severely damaged, almost carbonized. Water that had collected in small pools still glistened. The CSIs thought that some charred bones in the vicinity of the woman were from a small dog.

  “How old is she, do you think?” Sammy Nilsson asked. Bodin had called him in already at six o’clock in the morning, with the justification that he’d been part of the investigation of the school fire and knew the circumstances in the village. Olsen was feeling a little under the weather besides, as he often did, Bodin suspected. Recently relocated from somewhere in Västmanland, he himself had never been northeast of Uppsala. Without complaints or protests Sammy got in his car, stopped by Bodin’s house in Gamla Uppsala, and picked up his colleague. They left the city in silence, and it was not until they reached Rasbo that Bodin told him that it was a son of a former colleague who had called in the alarm. Sammy realized that it must be Erik. It pleased him that the kid visited Ann. That was how she had expressed it with a crooked smile: Erik visits me sometimes.

  * * *

  The medical examiner sighed. “Young,” he said. “She probably hasn’t given birth.”

  Sammy did not ask what he based this on, but instead took it for granted that it was true. Too much talk could cloud their view. Instead he looked around. The old chimney still stood straight. The forge was also preserved, even if part of the brickwork had cracked from the heat. It had experienced heat, but never anywhere close to the past night. From what he could understand the old smithy had been sparsely furnished. A bachelor pad, Bodin said with a sardonic smile. The impression was dominated by the remains of roof tiles that had fallen down and were now spread out across the floor.

  What had happened? How had the fire started? In the same village and with the same explosive development as five months ago, a nighttime fire that harvested human lives. Was it set? What could the motive be? These were the same questions they had asked last winter. Would they be any wiser this time?

  “My bet is smoking in bed,” t
he doctor said, as if he had read Sammy’s thoughts. He pointed at a scorched, cracked saucer on the floor in the middle of the room, where two bedposts testified that a bed had stood there. Sammy recognized the plate’s blue-flowered pattern from his grandmother’s kitchen.

  “Ashtray,” he said.

  “Or nighttime snack,” the doctor said.

  “There’s not much I can do. You and the technician should get to work in peace.” With long strides Sammy left the remains of the house, squeezed through the drapery that had been set up as a screen. The whole area was cordoned off, with a radius of perhaps fifty meters from the smithy. There was nothing to see, but even so a dozen curiosity seekers were hanging around outside the blue-and-white tape.

  While he pulled off the shoe protectors he glimpsed a movement in the thicket behind the house. It was Bodin, leaning forward and sniffing like a tracking dog. Sammy had the idea that he had a hard time with the sight of the burned, killed, and maimed. A new Ola Haver, he thought, scared of the dead, but really good at context and surroundings.

  * * *

  Sammy walked in the exact opposite direction, came up to the barricade, and took a look at the farm. He knew that his Östhammar colleague had spoken with the Mattsson couple during the night. Sammy had run into them earlier and was not overly pleased. The husband, Waldemar, had an assertive style, like the local pope he was. His wife, Wendela he thought her name was, was not completely healthy, he recalled. Neither of them had then had anything to say about the school fire.

  They had been informed earlier by the fire commander that the body of a woman had been found. “Thank the good Lord,” Wendela had exclaimed.

  Now it was time to talk in a bit more organized and precise way. Halfway to their house Sammy Nilsson stopped, went back, and searched for his colleague in the thicket.