Lars Kepler: The Fire Witness

“This is you, isn’t it?” she’d asked. “And here is the crown, the bridal crown.”

“What do you want?”

“I don’t want anything,” the old woman had said. “But I have a message for you from Rosa Bergman.”

Joona’s heart had begun to pound, but he’d forced himself to shrug and say nonchalantly that there had to be some kind of mistake “because I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“She wants to know why you pretend your daughter is dead.”

“I’m very sorry, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Joona had forced himself to smile as he answered. His voice had sounded odd in his own ears, foreign and cold, as if it came from underneath a large stone, and he’d been tempted to grab her skinny arms and demand to know what was going on. But he didn’t. He managed to stay calm.

“I have to go,” he had said, and was about to turn away when a migraine had shot through his brain like a knife stabbing his left eye. His vision disintegrated into a shimmering, pulsating halo.

When he was able to see again, a circle of people had gathered around him, a circle that broke only for the paramedics. And the old woman had disappeared.

He’d lied when he’d told her he didn’t know Rosa Bergman.

Of course he knows who Rosa Bergman is. She’s in his thoughts every day. Rosa Bergman is the only person who knows where his wife and daughter are. But she should not know about him. If she knows who he is, then something has gone terribly wrong.

Joona left the hospital a few hours after the migraine attack, and immediately began his search for Rosa Bergman. He requested and was granted a leave of absence. He soon learned that no such person was listed in any of Sweden’s public registers, but there are at least two thousand people with the last name Bergman in Scandinavia.

He began to systematically work his way through register after register. Two weeks ago, he began digging through archived church records. For hundreds of years, the Church of Sweden was responsible for keeping population registers, until 1991, when the responsibility was shifted to the Tax Office, where these records are now kept in digital form.

He started in the south of Sweden at the archives in Lund, where he pored through drawers of index cards, searching for any Rosa Bergman whose birth date might be right. He then traveled to Visby on the island of Gotland, and then to Vadstena, and after that to Gothenburg. Then he headed north to Uppsala and on to the massive archive in Härnösand. He searched through hundreds of thousands of files that recorded birth dates, places of birth, and parentages.

It was late in the afternoon yesterday, sitting in the Östersund archive, surrounded by the sweet scent of aged, stained paper and loose-leaf binders, that Joona found the record of a girl born eighty-four years ago. She was baptized Rosa Maja in the parish of Sveg, municipality of Härjedalen, Jämtland Province. Her parents were Kristina and Evert Bergman. He was unable to find any record of their marriage, but the mother had been born nineteen years earlier in the same parish. Her maiden name was Stefansson.

It took Joona three more hours to locate the name of Maja Stefansson, born the same year as Rosa Bergman, whose address was listed as a home for assisted living in Sveg. It was already seven in the evening by then, but Joona decided to drive there immediately. When he arrived, the residents were already in bed so he was denied entry.

Joona checked into the Lilla Hotellet. He went to bed early and woke at four. Since then, he’s been standing at the window, waiting for dawn to break.

Sunlight slowly marches around the high walls of the room, dancing briefly in the glass panel of a grandfather clock. Joona’s fairly sure he’s found the right Rosa Bergman. She’s changed her last name to her mother’s maiden name and used her original middle name as her first name. Joona glances at his watch and decides it’s time to go. Buttoning his jacket, he leaves the room, walks through the lobby, and heads out the door into the tiny town of Sveg.

The nursing home is called Blåvingen. It occupies a group of buildings, all of them faced in yellow stucco, surrounding a well-groomed lawn. There are paths and benches for resting.

Joona opens the door to the main entrance and steps inside. Now that he’s this close to meeting her, he’s suddenly apprehensive and has to force himself to walk down the hall, past the closed office doors, under the harsh fluorescent lights.

She was not supposed to find me , he thinks. She wasn’t even supposed to know of my existence. Something has gone very wrong.

Joona never talks about what led him to be such a loner. Still, the reasons are with him every waking moment. His life had burned like magnesium, flaring and then out. From bright white to smoking ruin in an instant.

A thin, bent old man watches television in the activity room, staring intently as a chef heats up oil in a sauté pan while describing a new recipe for the traditional crayfish festival. He peers at Joona.

“Anders? Is that you?” he asks.

Gently, Joona replies, “My name is Joona,” his soft Finnish accent coming through. “I’m looking for Maja Stefansson.”

The old man stares at him, with eyes that are damp and red.

“Anders, my boy, please listen to me. You have to get me out of here. There are only old people in this place.” The man slams his bony fist onto the armrest of the sofa but freezes the moment he sees a nurse enter the room.

“Good morning,” Joona says to the nurse. “I’m here to visit Maja Stefansson.”

“How nice,” she replies. “But I must warn you Maja has started to suffer from dementia. She tries to run away at every opportunity.”

“I understand.”

“Last summer she managed to get all the way to Stockholm.”

The nurse leads Joona through a freshly scrubbed but dimly lit hallway and opens a door.

“Maja?” she says. “There’s someone here to see you.”

An old woman is making her bed. She looks up and Joona recognizes her at once. It is the woman who approached him outside Adolf Fredrik Church and who showed him the tarot cards.

“Are you Rosa Bergman?” Joona asks.

“Yes,” she says, shyly holding out her hand.

“You had a message for me,” he says softly.

“Oh my goodness... I don’t remember,” she says, and sits down on her sofa.

Joona swallows hard and steps closer.

“You asked me why I’m pretending my daughter is dead.”

“Well, you shouldn’t do that,” she reprimands him. “It’s not a nice thing to do at all.”

“What do you know about my daughter?” Joona asks gently, taking another step. “Have you heard anything at all?”

She smiles absently and Joona has to look away. He tries to think clearly. His hands are shaking. He goes to her tiny kitchenette to steady them and makes two cups of coffee.

“Rosa, this is very important,” he says slowly as he sets the cups down on her coffee table. “It’s extremely important to me.”

Rosa blinks a few times. It is clear she’s grown suddenly frightened. “Who are you? Has something happened to Mother?”

“Rosa, do you remember a little girl named Lumi? Her mother’s name is Summa and you helped them to...”

Joona falls silent as he sees her wandering, lost gaze.

“Why did you come to Stockholm to find me?” he asks, although he knows his question won’t be answered.

Rosa Bergman begins to cry. A nurse comes in and comforts her in a practiced manner.

She says quietly to Joona, “Come with me. I’ll show you out.”

They walk along the wide hall, designed for wheelchairs.