The Deathwatch Beetle--A Mystery by Kjell Eriksson

Author:Kjell Eriksson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Twenty-Six

The alarm came at 6:21 A.M. and reached two fire stations, Öregrund and Östhammar, as well as the fire department in Söderboda on Gräsö.

Oskar Lidh, who was chief at the Öregrund fire station, reacted routinely and quickly, doing everything by the book. He found satisfaction in that.

A few minutes later he and two colleagues were departing in a fire engine. They were followed not long afterward by a Ford Ranger, so now they could form a complete smoke-diver group. The ferry was on the Gräsö side but had left the island at once and the fire engine and the Ford could almost immediately drive on board. A passenger car took the opportunity to slip on too. There was rumbling from the ramp and before the booms had closed behind them the ferry had set out. There was a strong west wind and the crossing would take six minutes.

Vidar Persson, who was out on his daily walk with the dog, observed it all from a distance. He took out his cell phone and called his daughter, who was a police officer. “Inform your colleagues,” he said. She was not terribly happy to be wakened on a Sunday morning. “I’m sure they know about it,” she said. “Now I want to sleep.” She ended the call. Her conclusion was correct. Her colleague Brundin at the agency in Östhammar was already in the car, just passing Norrskedika at sixty kilometers an hour over the speed limit. He enjoyed passing the community at high speed. He’d never liked the village, on the contrary, it was too spread out, giving a Norrland impression. When he left Highway 76 and turned right toward Öregrund he had five, at most six minutes to the ferry landing. A couple of minutes behind him a command car from Östhammar fire station rushed at equally good speed.

“I’ll be damned how the wind is picking up,” said Oskar Lidh, who was the driver of the fire engine.

“No personal injuries,” said his coworker Åke Nilsson, who had telephone contact with the informant, who was also the property owner. “The garage is about twenty meters west of the residence, a wooden house from the 1920s.” They all knew what that meant. The wind was coming from the west.

“We have maybe eight, ten minutes to go,” he said into the phone. “Don’t do anything about what’s burning. Do you have a water hose outside? Pull it out and spray the wall of the house that faces toward the garage, do you get that? Keep an eye out. If you have valuables in the house carry them out, that’s all you can do. We’re coming soon, try to stay calm. Whatever you do, don’t go into the garage!”

He ended the call and told the other firemen that the property owner maintained that there were valuables in the garage. “What’s his name?” asked Oskar Lidh, who had decent personal knowledge where the permanent Gräsö residents were concerned.

“Adrian Palm.”

“Oh, shit,” said Lidh. “Maybe it’s a Rolls-Royce or something? That guy has money.

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