Free The Fire Dance by Helene Tursten Page A

lived with the girl.”
    It was obvious that Andersson meant that Hannu should question Marcelo because he thought Hannu was also of foreign extraction, but he was completely off the mark.Hannu was Swedish. He came from the Finnish-speaking area of Sweden called Tornedalen, so he did have a Finnish tinge to his Swedish when he spoke. That is, if he spoke at all. He was a man of few words. Why he would be the best person to talk to a Brazilian was anyone’s guess. Irene knew that Andersson didn’t make these kinds of gaffes on purpose, but she was starting to wonder. With a pang in her heart, she remembered that Andersson had mentioned retiring at the beginning of the year. In spite of everything, she was fond of her boss.
    I RENE SPENT ALL of Tuesday going through the material about the fire in 1989. Now that she had fifteen more years of experience, Irene could see all the holes in the earlier investigation clearly.
    Not a single detective had interviewed Sophie’s father, Ernst Malmborg. Now it was too late.
    There’d been a short interview with Magnus Eriksson’s sister, Ingrid Hagberg, on the day after the fire, as she’d been the one to raise the alarm. Since her boss had told her to set aside the investigation, Irene had not dared to write a report about her informal conversation with the sister, and now she could remember only fragments of their talk.
    There were no conversations recorded between Frej Eriksson and investigators. He’d been only eight years old when his father died, and he’d been at his aunt’s place when the fire broke out. According to Ingrid Hagberg, he’d fallen asleep after having a snack.
The boy must have had a long nap
, Irene thought. Ingrid had said that she couldn’t go to the scene of the fire while the boy was sleeping at her place. She had not wanted to awaken him. The fire alarm had come in at 4:56 P . M . Irene had seen Ingrid and Frej arrive at the scene at around 8:45. This meant that the boy had been napping for over three and a half hours. It wasn’tcompletely impossible, but it was strange for an eight-year-old to have an afternoon nap last so long into the evening.
Don’t people wake kids up if they nap too long? Just to make sure the kids sleep at night?
Well, Ingrid did not have children of her own, so perhaps she didn’t think about it.
    Not a single one of Sophie’s teachers had been interviewed.
    She would have to contact child services. They must have records on Sophie’s personality and mental states.
    Perhaps it would even be possible to track down Tessan, the girl in Sophie’s ballet class? Her mother, Maria Olsén, had driven the girls to their ballet class. Hans Borg had talked to her, but the questioning session had been brief. Why had Sophie been out of breath when she’d biked to the store? Usually she was already standing there waiting in good time.
    This was the detail that had made the police suspicious about Sophie in the first place. Did she set fire to the cottage, whether or not she knew Magnus Eriksson was sleeping there? Was this why she was burned to death fifteen years later? Or was this pure coincidence that both the girl and her stepfather died in the same manner?
    Irene had no idea.
    The only thing she could do was to go back to the beginning. But fifteen years had passed. Irene didn’t feel very optimistic that a renewed criminal investigation would yield results.
    A N IDEA CAME to Irene about how she could find more information about Ernst and Sophie Malmborg. Perhaps it was a long shot, but she’d try.
    When she arrived home, she spent a few minutes with her overeager dog, Sammie, who was always overjoyed when a family member returned home.
    Jenny was in the kitchen, stirring a pot. Katarina was out practicing jiujitsu and wouldn’t be home until after eight. Krister would turn up at any minute. It was a rare day when the entire family sat at the table for dinner.
    “Hi, sweetie, what are you making? It smells wonderful!” Irene