Читать книгу The Fire Witness - Ларс Кеплер - Страница 17

Joona spent the previous afternoon in the archive in Östersund. The sweet antiquarian smell of discoloured old paper and heavy bindings filled the room. Sunlight wandered slowly across the tall walls, glinting off the glass of the motionless clock before moving on.

Just before the archive closed, Joona found a girl who was born eighty-four years ago and who was christened Rosa Maja in the parish of Sveg in Härjedalen, in the province of Jämtland. The girl’s parents were Kristina and Evert Bergman. Joona couldn’t find any information about their marriage, but the mother, Kristina Stefanson, was born nineteen years before in the same parish.

It took Joona three hours to locate an eighty-four-year-old woman named Maja Stefanson in a care home in Sveg. It was already seven o’clock in the evening, but Joona still got in his car and drove to Sveg. It was late by the time he arrived, and he wasn’t allowed into the home.

Joona booked into Lilla Hotellet and tried to get some sleep, but woke up at four o’clock, and has been standing at the window ever since, waiting for morning.

He’s almost certain that he’s found Rosa Bergman. She’s adopted her mother’s maiden name, and is using her middle name.

Joona looks at his watch and decides that it’s time to go. He buttons his jacket, leaves the room, goes down to reception, and out into the small town.

The Blue Wings care home is a cluster of yellow-plastered houses around a neat lawn with footpaths and benches to rest on.

Joona opens the door to the main building and goes inside. He forces himself to walk slowly through the neon-lit corridor lined with closed doors leading to offices and the kitchen.

She wasn’t supposed to be able to find me, he thinks once more. She wasn’t supposed to know about me. Something’s gone wrong.

Joona never talks about the reason why he’s ended up alone, but it’s with him every waking moment.

His life burned like magnesium, flared up and died away in an instant, from gleaming white to smouldering ash.

In the dayroom a thin man in his eighties is standing and staring at the bright screen of the television. A TV chef is heating sesame oil in a pan, and talking about various ways of updating traditional crayfish parties.

The old man turns to Joona and screws up his eyes.

‘Anders?’ the man says in an unsteady voice. ‘Is that you, Anders?’

‘My name is Joona,’ he replies in his soft Finnish accent. ‘I’m looking for Maja Stefanson.’

The man stares at him with moist, red-rimmed eyes.

‘Anders, listen, lad. You’ve got to help me get out of here. It’s full of old people.’

The man hits the arm of the sofa with a frail fist, but stops abruptly when a care assistant walks into the room.

‘Good morning,’ Joona says. ‘I’m here to visit Maja Stefanson.’

‘How lovely,’ she says. ‘But I should warn you, Maja’s dementia has got worse. She tries to get out whenever she has a chance.’

‘I understand,’ Joona says.

‘Back in the summer she managed to get all the way to Stockholm.’

The care assistant leads Joona through a freshly-mopped corridor with subdued lighting, and opens one of the doors.

‘Maja?’ she calls out warmly.