Now the watch had gone on for ten days and the only thing that had happened to the man in question was a tart and two halfbottles of booze.
Gunvald Larsson looked at his watch. Nine minutes past eleven. Eight minutes left.
He yawned and raised his arms to start beating them round him.
At that precise moment the house exploded.
The fire began with an ear-splitting bang. The windows in the right-hand first-floor flat were blown out and most of the gable seemed to be torn off the house, as simultaneously long ice-blue flames shot through the broken panes. Gunvald Larsson was standing on the top of the hillock with his arms stretched out, like a statue of the Saviour, paralytically staring at what was happening on the other side of the road. But only for a moment. Then he rushed, slipping and swearing, down the stony slope, across the street and up towards the house. As he ran, the flames changed colour and character, became orange and licked greedily upward along the boards. He also got the impression that the roof had already begun to sag above the right-hand part of the house, as if part of the actual foundations had been jerked away. The flat on the first floor had been in flames for several seconds and before he reached the stone steps outside the front door, it was burning in the room above as well.
He flung open the door and at once saw that it was too late. The door to the right in the hall had been torn off its hinges and was blocking the stairs. It was blazing like a giant log and the fire had begun to spread up the wooden staircase. A wave of intense heat blew back against him and he staggered, scorched and blinded, backwards down the outer steps. From inside the house came desperate screams of human beings in pain and terror. So far as he knew, there were at least eleven people in the building, helplessly barricaded inside this veritable death-trap. Presumably some of them were already dead. Tongues of flame were shooting out of the first-floor windows as if from a blowtorch.
Gunvald Larsson glanced swiftly around to see if there were any ladders or other aids. There was nothing in sight.
A window was thrown open on the second floor and through the smoke and flames he thought he could make out a woman, or rather a girl, who was screaming shrilly and hysterically. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled:
‘Jump! Jump to the right!’
She was up on the windowsill now, but hesitating.
‘Jump! Now! As far out as you can! I’ll catch you.’
The girl jumped. She came hurtling through the air straight at him and he managed to catch the falling body with his right arm between her legs and his left arm round her shoulders. She was not all that heavy, perhaps seven or eight stone, and he caught her expertly, without her even touching the ground. The moment he caught her, he swung right around so that he was protecting her from the roaring fire, took three steps and put her down on the ground. The girl was hardly more than seventeen. She was naked and her whole body was shaking as she screamed and tossed her head from side to side. Otherwise, he could see nothing wrong with her.
When he turned around again, there was someone else at the window, a man wrapped in some sort of sheet. The fire was burning more fiercely than ever, smoke seeping out along the length of the ridge of the roof, and on the right-hand side the flames had begun to come through the tiles. If that blasted fire engine doesn’t come soon…, thought Gunvald Larsson, getting as close to the fire as he was able. There were cracks and creaks from the burning woodwork, and showers of mercilessly burning sparks fell on his face and over his sheepskin coat, where they slowly burned their way in and were extinguished in that expensive material. He shouted as loudly as he could to make himself heard above the roar of the fire.
‘Jump! As far out as you can! To the right!’ At the same moment as the man jumped, the fire caught the piece of cloth he was wrapped in. The man let out a penetrating scream as he fell, trying to tear off the burning sheet. This time the descent was not so successful. The man was considerably heavier than the girl, and he twisted around, hitting Gunvald Larsson’s shoulder with his left arm and then thudding on to the uneven cobblestones with his shoulder first. At the last moment, Gunvald Larsson managed to get his huge left hand under the man’s head, thus saving him from cracking his skull open. He laid the man down on the ground, tore away the burning sheet at the same time irreparably burning his own gloves. The man was naked too, except for a gold wedding ring. He was groaning horribly, chattering gutturally in between times like an imbecile chimpanzee. Gunvald Larsson rolled him a few yards away and let him lie in the snow more or less out of the way of the burning timbers that were falling. As he turned around, a third person, a woman in a black bra, jumped from the now blazing flat up on the right. Her red hair was alight and she fell much too near the wall.
Gunvald Larsson rushed in among the burning planks and woodwork and dragged her away from the immediate danger zone, extinguished the fire in her hair with snow and left her lying. He could see that she was badly burned and she was shrieking shrilly, twisting like a snake with the pain. She had obviously also fallen badly, for one leg lay stretched out at a highly unnatural angle to her body. She was slightly older than the other woman, perhaps about twenty-five, and was red-haired, between her legs too. The skin on her stomach was remarkably undamaged and looked pale and slack. Her face, legs and back were most damaged, as well as across her breasts, where the bra had burned into her skin.
When he raised his eyes to the second-floor flat for the last time, he saw a ghostly figure burning like a torch, and in a pathetic spiral it sank out of sight, its arms raised above its head. Gunvald Larsson presumed that he was the fourth member of the party and realized that he was already beyond human help.
The attic was now in flames too, as well as the roof beams beneath the tiles. Thick smoke was billowing up and he heard sharp cracks from the burning woodwork. The windows furthest to the left on the second floor were flung open and someone shouted for help. Gunvald Larsson rushed over and saw a woman in a white nightgown leaning over the windowsill, a bundle pressed to her chest. A child. Smoke was pouring out of the open window, but clearly it was not yet burning in the flat, at least not in the room the woman was in.
‘Help!’ she cried desperately.
As the fire was not yet so fierce in this part of the house, he was able to stand quite near the wall, almost immediately below the window.
‘Throw the child,’ he shouted.
The woman immediately flung down the child, so unhesitatingly that he was taken by surprise. He saw the bundle falling straight at him, and at the last moment flung out his arms and caught it directly in his hands, much like a goalkeeper catching a free kick. The child was very small. It whimpered a bit, but did not cry. Gunvald Larsson remained standing with it in his arms for a few seconds. He had no experience of children and could not even remember with any certainty ever having to hold one before. For a second he wondered whether he had been too rough and had crushed it. Then he moved away and put the bundle down on the ground. As he stood there bending over, he heard running steps and he looked up. It was Zachrisson, panting and scarlet in the face.
‘What?’ he said. ‘How…?’
Gunvald Larsson stared at him and said:
‘Where the hell’s the fire engine?’
‘It should be here…I mean…I saw the fire from Rosenlundsgatan…so I ran and telephoned…’
‘Run back then, for God’s sake, and get the fire engines and the ambulance here…’
Zachrisson turned about and ran.
‘And the police!’ yelled Gunvald Larsson after him.
Zachrisson’s cap fell off and he stopped to pick it up.
‘Idiot!’ yelled Gunvald Larsson.
Then he returned to the house. The whole of the right-hand side was now a roaring inferno and the