The Fire Dance (28 page)

She started to cry and covered her face with her hands. Irene said nothing, but let her sit like that for a time. Finally, Angelika slid her hands away and gave Irene a tired look. “She was very little when it … started. I noticed she loved to play with matches. She liked the flame.”

“How old was she when you noticed this?”

“About five or six. But that she was a pyromaniac … no! I never noticed that!”

“A few fires broke out in the area the summer of nineteen eighty-nine. Did you ever suspect that Sophie might have been setting them?”

“Never,” Angelika said without emotion.

“Did you ever suspect that Sophie might have set fire to your home fifteen years ago?”

“No!”

Her exclamation seemed like a cry for help. Perhaps that’s just what it was. Her eyes were filled with fear … or terror. For a second, the women stared at each other. Then Irene noticed tears brimming again in Angelika’s eyes as sorrow replaced the fear. She looked away from Irene as she quietly said, “Yes, of course, the suspicion was there. But I never wanted to believe that Sophie …” She didn’t finish the sentence, just bowed her head.

“Sophie never said anything which might hint that she was behind the fire?”

“No. What she told me, I told you.”

According to what you said, Sophie was incapable of lying
, Irene thought.
But perhaps she could lie when important things were on the line
.

Angelika raised her head and straightened to regain some
balance and her poise. She looked Irene right in the eye and said, “Frej knew nothing. He only did what Sophie asked him to. That’s all he did, take pictures.”

“I understand,” Irene said, reassuringly.

She intended to take this up with Frej later that day.

F
REJ CAME JUST
before five thirty.

While she waited for him, Irene had used the time to reconnoiter the area. First she made a round through the yard with her flashlight to light her path. The strong wind rustled the tops of the old fruit trees and whirled the fallen leaves around her. At the back of the house, she saw Angelika’s panties still in the wet grass, but left them there. Instead, she opened the back door to the basement and went in. A brief look into the sauna showed that Hasse was not at home. He had left behind some paper bags; the smell from them indicated leftovers from the Halloween party. He also had a few wine boxes lined up, with maybe a drop or two left in each. Irene touched nothing and left the same way she’d come in.

It had started to pour while she was in the basement. She hurried back to her car as fast as she could without slipping on the wet grass. She sat and waited for another ten minutes before the red Mégan arrived.

They stepped out of their respective vehicles at the same time and greeted each other. Frej led the way. The entire house was dark. He unlocked the door and switched on the outside light as well as the one in the hallway. Irene paused before stepping inside.

No one had cleaned up after the party. There were paper cups strewn about the floor. Cigarette butts were everywhere. All sorts of garbage was pushed into piles. The stench of sour wine and cigarette smoke hung over the entire mess. Irene thought she could also smell the slightly sweeter odor
of marijuana, but perhaps that was just her imagination, since she’d seen people smoking it there. Frej stepped over a pile of garbage and headed directly to the stairs.

When they reached his attic apartment, he unlocked the door to his darkroom and said, “Wait here. I’m just going to put my bag in my apartment and use the bathroom.”

With an exaggerated gesture, he bowed Irene into the room. He turned on the ceiling light before he left.

The room hadn’t changed. Irene noticed yet again how neat and orderly everything was. Perhaps it was necessary so he could locate what he needed when he was working in the dark. The fire pictures were still up. The picture with Sophie’s blurry face was also there.

Irene heard the flush of the toilet. A minute later, Frej entered the room. He’d taken off his down jacket, and he had on the light blue sweater Ingrid Hagberg had given him for Christmas. She would certainly be happy to know he was so fond of it.

“I’m in a hurry. I have to be back at the House of Dance in an hour,” Frej said.

“This will be fast. There’s just one thing I need to check with you,” Irene replied calmly. She turned her head toward the photographs. “Why do you only take pictures of fires?”

“I don’t just take pictures of fires!”

“You don’t? I don’t see anything else here,” Irene stated.

“No, well, I haven’t taken down Sophie’s pictures yet.”

“These are all Sophie’s pictures?”

“Yes. She wanted them up. She wanted to come here and look at them whenever she needed, for inspiration.” His voice was defiant with a noticeably aggressive undertone. He was obviously on the defensive.

“Was Sophie inspired only by fire?”

“Yes … well … as far as
The Fire Dance
was concerned.
She had to look at the pictures to see, like, how to describe the movement of the flames.”

It was the same explanation Angelika had given. It was more than likely that Angelika and Frej had compared notes after Irene’s visit to Angelika’s apartment.

Irene walked over to the picture showing Sophie’s halfprofile. She pointed at the figure. “Do you know who this is?”

“Sophie, of course,” he replied calmly.

He was, in fact, much too calm. He’d been ready for that question. Frej had definitely talked to his mother earlier that day.

“Why is she at this fire?”

“Why … she wanted to be there.”

“Why did she want to be there?” Irene insisted.

Frej looked at her in irritation. “Because she wanted to be there!”

“Answer my question, or you’ll have to go through all of this down at the police station. You’ll be talking to my other colleagues and not me.”

She let her words sink in. It was apparent that Frej was not taken with the idea of going to the police station to talk to other officers. Right now he had the upper hand in his own space.

“All right, then. Ask me the question again.”

“Why did Sophie want to be with you when you went to photograph this fire?”

“She wanted to see fires live. To get, like, the proper feeling.”

He shrugged and attempted nonchalance, but Irene could tell he was upset. All her police instincts told her there was much more to these pictures than Frej wanted to confess.

“Did she often go with you when you were taking pictures of fires?”

“Nah … just once.”

For the first time, Irene could hear a touch of fear in his voice. He walked over to the large table on the other side of the room and leaned against the edge, crossing his arms as if he were relaxed. His eyes betrayed him. He did not want to look at Irene.

“You said she wanted to see the fires live. That must have meant she went with you fairly often,” Irene said. She fixed him with her gaze.

“Yeah, all right, sure … she came more than once. It was important for her dance,” he confessed lamely.

“Isn’t it true that she was fascinated by fire? Perhaps unusually fascinated?”

Frej gave her a hasty glance but looked away again almost immediately. Irene let the silence take up space, and finally it became too much for him. He muttered, “Maybe. Maybe so.”

Irene chose her next words carefully. “Did you ever suspect that she set things on fire on purpose? That she might be a pyromaniac?”

He jumped as if she’d slapped him across the face. “Pyromaniac!” he exclaimed. Now he was looking at her directly with naked fear.

“Look at this picture. Our technicians cleaned it up in their lab. Look at Sophie’s expression,” Irene said, and handed him the photograph.

He looked at the picture of his sister for a long time, then gave a deep sigh and handed it back to Irene. “She really did like to watch things burn. She used to say things like ‘fire purifies.’ But a pyro … I doubt it.” He shook his head slightly.

The sharp sound of a telephone cut through the silence in the house. Frej stood up and headed to his living quarters. The ringing stopped. A minute or so later, he returned to his darkroom.

“I have to get going. That was Felipe. His car broke down and he needs a ride. It takes at least fifteen minutes to get to his place.”

He opened the door as wide as possible. Irene had no choice but to leave. Nevertheless, she felt she had confirmation of her suspicions. Sophie had been fascinated by fire, and perhaps she was a pyromaniac. The asexual young woman had an unusual turn-on—fire was her passion.

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY
, Irene and all her colleagues had to work on the latest knifing. Everything pointed to someone in Roberto’s gang wanting revenge for the attack on Victor Fernandez. The new victim had pulled through the worst of his medical crisis, but he was not up to being questioned yet.

The investigation was slow and made more difficult because no one wanted to testify or snitch on a gang member. The police were unable to provide witness protection, so the only safe thing to do was to keep as silent as a wall. Or perhaps give false testimony—as long as everyone cooperated, like Milan’s relatives.

The gang killings were beginning to feel like one long, nightmarish investigation with the certainty that these were not the first incidents, and were definitely not going to be the last. Gang criminal activity was on the rise. It cost time and real money to conduct these difficult investigations, during which neither side was going to help the police. Instead, the gangs carried out their own justice. Now there was the risk that more young men would be injured or killed.

One light in the darkness was the new 24-hour hotline that the social services had set up with the local police in the districts of Bergsjön, Gunnared and Biskopgården. The aim was to break the gangs’ recruiting cycle. At-risk young people would be counseled to try to keep them from starting
down a path of crime. The boys and girls were between the ages of twelve and eighteen; they’d been caught with drugs or were suspected of theft and breaking and entering. Each one caught was brought into the group with a plan that would help them return to society. The head of the local police had already expressed his surprise that so many young people had been brought in—many of them quite young indeed.

O
N
T
HURSDAY, EVERYTHING
began to happen at once.

Irene’s phone rang at a quarter past eight. She almost knocked over her cup of coffee as she reached for the receiver. Before she could speak, a sharp female voice trumpeted over the line: “Nurse Ulla at Happy River Assisted Living here. Are you the policewoman who visited Ingrid Hagberg last week? Who brought the sweets?”

“Yes … I’m Detective Inspector Irene—”

“Were you here again?”

Irene was confused. “What do you mean? You think I’ve come and visited Ingrid Hagberg again?”

“That’s exactly what I mean. Did you?”

“No, I didn’t. I’ve been much too busy here. I—”

“She’s back in the hospital. Same reason. Someone has given her sweets. This time it was a box of Viennese nougat candy.”

“Wha …” was the most intelligent thing Irene could manage to say.

“Viennese nougat. Someone gave her a big box of candy. We found the box, and it was completely empty.”

Before Irene could say anything else, the nurse continued, “Ingrid was released last Saturday despite the fact that her blood sugar levels were still high. They are always high, but this time catastrophically so. Her diabetes is in its last stages. One reason is that, especially after her head injury, she can’t
manage her diet. I found her this morning in a diabetic coma again when I came to check her blood sugar levels.”

“Is the box the candy came in still there?” asked Irene when the nurse paused to take a breath.

“Yes, it’s still on her kitchen table.”

“Please don’t touch it. And please don’t let a cleaning person into the room.”

“I’ll tell them to wait if her room is scheduled to be cleaned today.”

“Good. I’ll be there in about an hour. Could you let me and a police technician into her apartment?”

“Sure. You have my cell phone number. Call me when you get here.”

Irene called down to the lab and reached Svante Malm. He promised to come with her to Torslanda.

Tommy walked into the room and Irene was just about to give him the whole spiel about the Sophie case, from the Halloween party to the box of candy, when the phone rang again.

“Detective Inspector Irene Huss.”

“Hi, Erik Johansson here!” a young male voice trumpeted.

“I see,” Irene said uncertainly. She couldn’t place the voice right away.

“From Berzén Real Estate Agency. We met last Friday at the farm.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” The coin dropped. “Sorry I didn’t recognize your voice.”

“Not to worry. I’ve just sold the farm. And when the new owner and I were going through the place really thoroughly, I happened to remember what you told me. Like, if a room stood out in any way. If it was messier or something. I didn’t think of anything when you were here. Mostly I was thinking about the house itself. It was just messy all over. But the owner and I went through the barn, too. You know there was
a riding school there, right?”

“Yes, I know about that.”

“The riding club rented the place from the old lady for years. But then they didn’t renew the lease.”

“Yes, I heard they built their own place.”

“Exactly. They moved on two years ago, according to the papers I have in front of me. The riding club had a changing room and an office built in the barn. It has been abandoned since they left. When the new owner and I went in, it hit me that the office was sparkling clean. In fact, unnaturally clean.”

“Unnaturally clean?” Irene echoed.

“Yes. You can eat off the floor. Not even a dead fly, so to speak. And the toilet is squeaky clean, and the water has not evaporated out of the bowl and …”

“Erik, could you let me and a police technician into the barn today?” Irene could hear the tension in her own voice. All signals were go. This was definitely something.