Lars Kepler: The Fire Witness

Roland looks extremely tired as if he hasn’t slept in weeks. He looks at his new colleague for a while and sighs heavily before he starts to explain.

“Jurek Walter will talk to you, very calmly, very pleasantly,” he says. His tone is serious. “Later this evening, when you’re driving home, you’ll find yourself driving into the lane of oncoming traffic and crash into a truck, or you’ll go past a hardware store and buy an ax before you pick up your children from day care.”

“Are you trying to scare me?” asks Anders with a smile.

“Not really, but I want you to be careful,” Roland says. “I’ve had to enter his room once before, sometime last year, because he had a pair of scissors in there.”

“He’s an old man, right?”

“Don’t worry. We’re going to make it through this all right.”

Roland’s voice dies away and his expression is vague and hard to read. Then he says, “Before you walk through these doors, make sure you look as bored as possible. Your days are boring, boring, boring. You act like you’re doing nothing that you haven’t done a thousand times before.”

“I’ll try.”

Roland’s face is tense. His gaze is hard and nervous.

“We’re going to act as if we’re giving him his usual dose of Risperdal.”

“But?”

“But instead we’re giving him an overdose of Eutrexa,” the chief physician says.

“Intentionally give an overdose?”

“I did it the last time, so, yes, all right. At first he was extremely aggressive. It lasted a short time. Then the muscle relaxant worked. First the face and tongue — he wasn’t able to speak properly. Then he fell on the floor and lay on his side. He was breathing. Then there were a number of cramps, like epilepsy. It took a while. After that, he was tired and dazed, almost out of it, unable to move. When that happens this time, we’ll run in and grab the knife.”

“Why not just use a barbiturate?”

“That would be better,” Roland nods. “But it’s best to keep to the kinds of drugs he’s already getting.”

They walk through the final grid gate into the ward devoted to Jurek Walter. Ahead is a metal door painted white, with a small bulletproof glass window, a boom, and a slot.

Roland Brolin gestures to Anders to wait. He is moving cautiously.

Perhaps he is afraid of being surprised.

He keeps his distance from the glass and moves sideways. Then his face relaxes and he waves to Anders to join him. They stand in front of the window and look into a large room without windows.

A man in blue jeans and a denim shirt is sitting on a plastic chair. He’s leaning forward, his elbows on his knees. Then his blue eyes look up at the door and Roland Brolin takes a step back.

Jurek Walter is clean-shaven and his gray hair has been combed with a straight part. His face is unnaturally white and deeply furrowed with wrinkles. It’s a net of pain.

Roland walks back to the grid gate and unlocks a cupboard. He takes out three small glass vials with wide necks and aluminum caps. He adds two milliliters of water to each bottle, turns them upside down, and then swirls them carefully so that the powder dissolves in the liquid. Then he draws the liquid into a needle.

They walk up to the bulletproof glass on the door. Jurek Walter is now sitting on his bed. Roland puts his earplugs into his ears and then opens the slot in the door.

“Jurek Walter,” he says in a relaxed voice. “It’s time...”

Anders watches the man get up from the bed and walk to the door while unbuttoning his shirt.

“Stop and take off your shirt,” Roland says, although the man is already doing so.

Jurek Walter walks slowly toward them.

Roland shuts the slot and fastens it with movements that are just a bit too fast, too nervous. Jurek stops and slips out of his shirt. He has three round scars on his chest. His skin hangs limply from his arms.

Roland opens the slot again and Jurek walks the last few steps.

“Hold out your arm,” Roland says. A slight hiccup betrays his fear.

Jurek puts his arm through the slot but does not look at Roland at all. He’s staring intently at Anders.

Roland jabs the needle into an upper-arm muscle and injects the liquid quickly. Jurek’s hand jerks in surprise, but he does not withdraw his arm until he has received permission.

Roland shuts the slot and locks it as swiftly as he can. Jurek Walter stumbles back toward his bed. He sits down. His movements are jerky. Roland drops the needle and they watch it roll across the concrete floor.

When they look back through the glass, it’s misty. Jurek Walter has breathed on it. He’s written a single word backward in the haze: JOONA.

“What’s that say?” asks Anders, his voice weak.

“He’s written ‘Joona.’”

“Joona? What the hell does that mean?”

Before the haze dissipates, they look in. Jurek Walter is sitting on his bed as if he’d never moved.