The Fire Witness. Ларс Кеплер

      Her heart is already beating hard as she dunks the mop in the bucket, squeezes out the excess water, and looks at the wedding photograph on the bedside table.

      Ewa hides the key to the bureau in the back of the frame.

      Flora takes care of all the housework in return for being allowed to live in the box room. She had to move back in with Ewa and Hans-Gunnar when her unemployment benefit ran out after she lost her job as an auxiliary nurse at Sankt Göran’s Hospital.

      When she was a child, Flora always thought her real parents were going to come and get her, but they were probably junkies, seeing as Ewa and Hans-Gunnar say they don’t know anything about them. Flora arrived here when she was five years old, and has no memories from before then. Hans-Gunnar has always described her as a burden, and she’s been desperate to get away ever since she was a teenager. When she was nineteen she got a job at the hospital and moved into her own flat in Kallhäll the same month.

      The mop drips as Flora goes over to the window and starts mopping the floor. The linoleum is black under the radiator, from water damage. The old blinds are broken and hang crookedly between the inner and outer panes of glass. There is a wooden Dala horse from Rättvik on the windowsill between the pelargoniums.

      Flora moves slowly towards the bedside table, stops and listens.

      She can hear the television.

      Ewa and Hans-Gunnar look young on the wedding photograph. She’s wearing a white dress, him a suit with a silver-coloured tie. The sky is white. A black, onion-domed bell tower stands on a mound beside the church. The tower is sticking up behind Hans-Gunnar like a peculiar hat. Flora has never been able to put her finger on why she’s always found the picture unsettling.

      She tries to breathe calmly.

      She gently leans the handle of the mop against the wall, but waits until she hears her aunt laugh at something on television, before picking up the photograph.

      The ornate brass key is hanging from the back of the frame. Flora removes it from its hook, but her hands are shaking so much she drops it.

      It hits the floor with a tinkle and bounces under the bed.

      Flora has to reach out for support as she bends down.

      She hears footsteps in the passageway, and lies still and waits. Her pulse is throbbing in her temples.

      The floor outside the door creaks, then everything is quiet again.

      The key is nestled among the dusty cables by the wall. She reaches in and picks it up, then gets to her feet and waits a few seconds before walking over to the bureau. She unlocks it, folds the heavy lid down, and pulls out one of the small drawers. Beneath the postcards from Paris and Mallorca is the envelope where Ewa keeps the money for the regular expenses. Flora opens the envelope containing the money for next month’s bills, and takes half of it, puts the notes in her pocket, quickly puts the envelope back, and tries to slide the little drawer back in, but there’s something stopping it.

      ‘Flora,’ Ewa calls.

      She pulls out the drawer again, but can’t see anything odd, and tries again, but her hands are shaking too much now.

      She hears footsteps in the passageway again.

      Flora pushes the drawer. It’s slightly crooked, but it goes in, reluctantly. She closes the bureau but doesn’t have time to lock it.

      The door to her aunt’s bedroom opens, hitting the bucket so hard that water sloshes out.

      ‘Flora?’

      She grabs the mop, mumbles something, and moves the bucket. She mops the spilled water, then carries on with the floor.

      ‘I can’t find my hand cream,’ Ewa says.

      There’s a suspicious look in her eyes, and the wrinkles around her unhappy mouth are deeper than usual. She walks barefoot across the newly cleaned floor. Her yellow sweatpants are sagging and her white T-shirt is stretched tightly across her stomach and large bust.

      ‘It … Maybe it’s in the bathroom cabinet, I think that’s where it is, next to the hair lotion,’ Flora says, rinsing the mop again.

      There’s an advertising break on television, the volume is louder, and shrill voices are talking about athlete’s foot. Ewa stops in the doorway and looks at her.

      ‘Hans-Gunnar doesn’t like the coffee,’ she says.

      ‘I’m sorry about that.’

      Flora squeezes out the excess water.

      ‘He says you’re refilling the packet with cheaper stuff.’

      ‘Why would I—’

      ‘Don’t lie,’ Ewa snaps.

      ‘I’m not,’ Flora mumbles, and carries on mopping the floor.

      ‘Well, you know you’re going to have to go and get his cup, wash it up, and make some fresh coffee.’

      Flora stops mopping the floor, leans the handle against the door, apologises, and goes into the living room. She can feel the key and money in her pocket. Hans-Gunnar doesn’t even look at her when she picks up his cup next to the plate of biscuits.

      ‘For fuck’s sake, Ewa,’ he cries. ‘It’s starting again!’

      His voice makes Flora jump, and she hurries out. She passes Ewa in the hall, and catches her eye.

      ‘Do you remember that I have to go on that jobseekers’ course this evening?’ Flora says.

      ‘You still won’t get a job.’

      ‘No, but I have to go, it’s the rules … I’ll make some fresh coffee and try to finish the floor … then maybe I can get the curtains done tomorrow.’

       34

      Flora pays the man in the grey coat. Water drips onto her face from his umbrella. He gives her the door key and tells her to leave it in the antique shop’s letterbox as usual when she’s finished.

      Flora thanks him and hurries on along the pavement. The seams in her old coat have started to come loose. She’s forty years old, but her girlish face radiates loneliness.

      The first block of Upplandsgatan closest to Odenplan is full of antique and curiosity shops. Their windows are full of chandeliers and glass-fronted cabinets, old tin toys, porcelain dolls, medals, and clocks.

      Beside the mesh-covered door to Carlén Antiques is a narrower door leading to a small basement. Flora tapes a sheet of white paper to the dimpled glass.

      SPIRITUALIST EVENING

      A steep flight of steps leads down to the basement, where the pipes roar whenever someone above flushes a toilet or runs the taps. Flora has rented the room seven times to hold seances. She’s had between four and six participants each time, which only just covers the cost of hiring the room. She’s contacted a number of newspapers to see if they’d like to write about her ability to talk to the dead, but hasn’t had any response. In advance of this evening’s seance, she placed a larger advert in the new-age journal Phenomena.

      Flora only has a few minutes before the participants arrive, but she knows what she has to do. She quickly moves the furniture and arranges twelve chairs in a circle.

      On the table in the middle, she places the doll’s house figures in nineteenth-century costume. A man and a woman with tiny, shiny porcelain faces. The idea is that they should help conjure up a sense of the past. Immediately after the seances, she hides them away again in the fuse-box, because she doesn’t really like them.

      She places twelve tea-lights in a circle around the dolls. She pushes some strontium chloride into the wax in one of the candles with a matchstick, then conceals the hole.