The Fire Witness. Ларс Кеплер

has time to wind the mechanism, the door opens from the street. The first participants are here. She hears umbrellas being shaken, then footsteps on the stairs.

      Flora happens to see her own reflection in the rectangular mirror on the wall. She stops, takes a deep breath, and runs her hand across the grey dress she bought from the Salvation Army.

      When she smiles, she instantly looks much calmer.

      She lights some incense, then says hello quietly to Dina and Asker Sibelius. They hang up their coats and talk in subdued voices.

      The participants are almost all old people who know they’re approaching death. They’re people who can’t bear what they’ve lost, who can’t accept the idea that death might be absolute.

      The front door opens again and someone comes down the steps. It’s an elderly couple she hasn’t seen before.

      ‘Welcome,’ she says in a low voice.

      Just as she’s about to turn away, she stops and looks at the man as if she’s seen something unusual, then pretends to shake off the feeling, and asks them to take a seat.

      The door opens again and more participants arrive.

      At ten past seven she has to accept that no one else is coming. Nine is still the most so far, but still too few for her to be able to replace the money she’s borrowed from Ewa.

      Flora tries to breathe calmly, but can feel her legs trembling as she returns to the large, windowless room. The participants are already sitting in a circle. They stop talking, and all eyes turn to look at her.

       35

      Flora Hansen lights the candles on the tray, and only when she’s taken her seat does she allow herself to look around at the participants. She’s seen five of them before, but the others are all new. Opposite her is a man who looks only thirty years old or so. His face is open and handsome in a boyish way.

      ‘Welcome, all of you,’ she says, and swallows hard. ‘I think we should start at once …’

      ‘Yes,’ old Asker says in his creaking, friendly voice.

      ‘Take hold of each other’s hands to form the circle,’ Flora says warmly.

      The young man is looking straight at her. The look in his eyes is smiling and curious. A sense of excitement and expectation begins to flutter in Flora’s stomach.

      The silence that settles is black and imposing, ten people forming a circle and simultaneously feeling the dead gathering behind their backs.

      ‘Don’t break the circle,’ she tells the group sternly. ‘Don’t break the circle, no matter what happens. That could mean that our visitors are unable to find their way back to the other side.’

      Her guests are usually so old that they have lost far more people to death than they still have alive. For them death is a place full of familiar faces.

      ‘You must never ask about the time of your own death,’ Flora says. ‘And you must never ask about the devil.’

      ‘Why not?’ the young man asks with a smile.

      ‘Not all spirits are good, and the circle is only a portal to the other side …’

      The young man’s dark eyes glint.

      ‘Demons?’ he asks.

      ‘I don’t believe that,’ Dina Sibelius smiles anxiously.

      ‘I try to guard the portal,’ Flora says seriously. ‘But they … they can feel our warmth, they can see the candles burning.’

      The room falls silent again. There’s an odd, agitated buzzing sound, like a fly caught in a spider’s web.

      ‘Are you ready?’ she asks slowly.

      The participants mumble affirmatively, and Flora feels a shiver of pleasure when she realises that there’s a whole new level of concentration in the room. She imagines she can hear their hearts beating, feel their pulses throbbing in the circle.

      ‘I’m going to go into a trance now.’

      Flora holds her breath and squeezes Asker Sibelius’s and the new woman’s hands. She shuts her eyes tightly, waits as long as she can, fights the instinct to breathe until she starts to shake, and then she inhales.

      ‘We have so many visitors from the other side,’ Flora says, after a pause.

      Those who have been here before murmur supportively.

      Flora can feel the young man looking at her, she can sense his alert, interested gaze on her cheeks, her hair, her neck.

      She lowers her face and decides to start with Violet, to help convince the young man. Flora knows her background, but has made her wait. Violet Larsen is a terribly lonely person. She lost her only son fifty years ago. One evening the boy fell ill with meningitis, and no hospital would take him for fear of spreading the infection. Violet’s husband drove the sick boy from hospital to hospital all night. When morning came his son died in his arms. The father was overcome by grief and died just a year later. One fateful night all her happiness died. Since then, Violet has been a childless widow. She has lived like that for half a century.

      ‘Violet,’ Flora whispers.

      The old woman turns her moist eyes towards her.

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘There’s a child here, a child who’s holding a man by the hand.’

      ‘What are their names?’ Violet asks in a tremulous voice.

      ‘Their names … the boy says you used to call him Jusse.’

      Violet lets out a gasp.

      ‘It’s my little Jusse,’ she whispers.

      ‘And the man, he says you know who he is, you’re his little flower.’

      Violet nods and smiles.

      ‘That’s my Albert.’

      ‘They have a message for you, Violet,’ Flora goes on seriously. ‘They say they’re with you every day, every night, and that you’re never alone.’

      A large tear trickles down Violet’s wrinkled cheek.

      ‘The boy is telling you not to be sad. Mummy, he says, I’m fine. Daddy’s with me all the time.’

      ‘I miss you so much,’ Violet sniffs.

      ‘I can see the boy, he’s standing right next to you, touching your cheek,’ Flora whispers.

      Violet is sobbing gently, and the room falls silent again. Flora waits for the heat of the candle to ignite the strontium chloride, but it takes a while.

      She murmurs to herself and thinks about who to pick next. She closes her eyes and rocks back and forth slightly.

      ‘There are so many here …’ she mutters. ‘There are so many … They’re crowded at the narrow portal, I can feel their presence, they miss you, they’re longing to talk to you …’

      She falls silent as one of the candles on the tray starts to crackle.

      ‘Don’t squabble at the portal,’ she mumbles.

      The crackling candle suddenly flares bright red, and one member of the circle lets out a little scream.

      ‘You haven’t been invited, wait outside,’ Flora says sternly, and waits until the red flame has gone. ‘I want to speak to the man in the glasses,’ she murmurs. ‘Yes, come closer. What’s your name?’

      She listens.

      ‘You want it the way you usually have it,’ Flora says, looking up at the group. ‘He says he wants it the way he usually