The Fire Witness. Ларс Кеплер

be some misunderstanding. But he had been lying.

      Because he knows very well who Rosa Bergman is.

      He thinks about her every day. He thinks about her, but she shouldn’t know anything about him. Because if Rosa Bergman knows who he is, then something could have gone very badly wrong.

      Joona left the hospital a few hours later and immediately set about trying to find Rosa Bergman.

      He had no choice but to conduct the search alone, and requested a period of leave.

      According to official records there was no one called Rosa Bergman living in Sweden, but there are more than two thousand people with the surname Bergman in Scandinavia.

      Joona systematically checked through database after database. Two weeks ago the only option remaining to him was to start to search the physical archives of the Swedish Population Register. For centuries the maintenance of the register was the responsibility of the Church, but in 1991 the register was digitised and transferred to the Tax Office.

      Joona started to work his way through the registers, beginning in the south of the country. He sat down in the National Archive in Lund with a paper cup of coffee in front of him, searching in the card files for a Rosa Bergman born at the right time and place. Then he travelled to Visby, Vadstena, and Gothenburg.

      He went to Uppsala, and the vast archive in Härnösand. He searched through thousands of pages of births, locations, and family connections.

       10

      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.

       11

      An old woman is making the bed. When she looks up, Joona recognises her at once. It’s the woman who was following him outside Adolf Fredrik Church, the one who showed him the playing cards. The one who told him she had a message from Rosa Bergman.

      Joona’s heart is beating hard.

      She’s the only person who knows where his wife and daughter are, and she shouldn’t be aware of his existence.

      ‘Rosa Bergman?’ Joona asks.

      ‘Yes,’ she replies, raising one of her hands like a schoolgirl.

      ‘My name is Joona Linna.’

      ‘Yes,’ Rosa Bergman smiles, shuffling towards him.

      ‘You had a message for me,’ he says.

      ‘Oh my, I don’t remember that,’ Rosa replies, and sits down on the sofa.

      He swallows hard and takes a step towards her.

      ‘You asked me why I was pretending my daughter is dead.’

      ‘You shouldn’t do that,’ she says sternly. ‘That’s not nice at all.’

      ‘What do you know about my daughter?’ Joona asks, taking another step towards the woman. ‘Have you heard anything?’

      She merely smiles distractedly, and Joona lowers his gaze. He tries to think clearly, and notices that his hands are shaking as he goes over to the kitchenette in the corner and pours coffee into two cups.

      ‘Rosa, this is important to me,’ he says slowly, putting the cups on the table. ‘Very important.’

      She blinks a couple of times, then asks in a timid voice: ‘Who are you? Has something happened to Mother?’

      ‘Rosa, do you remember a little girl called Lumi? Her mother’s name was Summa, and you helped them to …’

      Joona falls silent when he sees the lost expression in the woman’s eyes, clouded with cataracts.

      ‘Why did you try to find me?’ he asks, even though he knows there’s no point.

      Rosa Bergman drops her coffee cup on the floor and starts to cry. The care assistant comes in, and soothes her in a practised way.

      ‘I’ll show you out,’ she says quietly to Joona.

      They walk through the corridor.

      ‘How long has she had dementia?’ Joona asks.

      ‘It happened quickly with Maja