LITMIR.BIZ

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smiles and nods. She cleans the apartment where the cat lives. “Y muchas flores,” she adds.

      “Lots of flowers,” says Joona, and she nods.

      Joona asks in a serious tone whether she noticed anything unusual four nights earlier, when Benjamin disappeared. “¿Notabas alguna cosa especial hace cuatros días? Por la mañana temprano.”

      Anabella’s face stiffens. “No,” she says quickly, trying to retreat into Jarl Hammar’s apartment.

      “De verdad,” Joona says quickly. “Espero que digas la verdad, Anabella. I expect you to tell me the truth.” He repeats that this is very important, it’s about a child who has disappeared.

      Jarl Hammar, who has been listening the whole time, holds up his violently trembling hands and says, in his hoarse, shaky voice, “Be nice to Anabella, she’s a very good girl.”

      “She has to tell me what she saw,” Joona explains firmly, turning back to Anabella. “La verdad, por favor.”

      Jarl Hammar looks helpless as fat tears begin to fall from Anabella’s dark, shining eyes.

      “Perdón,” she whispers. “Perdón, señor.”

      “Don’t get upset, Anabella,” says Jarl Hammar. He waves at Joona. “Come in. I can’t have her standing here on the doorstep crying.”

      They go inside and sit down at a spotless dining room table; Hammar gets out a tin of Christmas biscuits as Anabella quietly explains that she has nowhere to live, she has been homeless for three months but has managed to hide in storage rooms belonging to the people she cleans for. When the Rosenlunds gave her a key to their apartment so she could look after the plants and feed the cat, she was finally able to sleep safely and take care of her personal hygiene. She repeats over and over again that she isn’t a thief, she hasn’t taken any food, she hasn’t touched anything, she doesn’t sleep in the beds, she sleeps on a rug in the kitchen.

      Then Anabella looks at Joona, her expression serious, and tells him that she’s been a very light sleeper ever since she was a little girl responsible for her younger siblings. Early on Saturday morning she woke up when she heard a noise from the landing. It was strange enough to frighten her, so she gathered her things together, crept to the front door, and looked out through the peephole.

      The lift door was open, she says, but she didn’t see anything. Suddenly she heard noises and slow footsteps; it was as if an old, heavy person were moving along.

      “But no voices?”

      She shakes her head. “Sombras.”

      When Anabella tries to describe the shadows she saw moving across the floor, Joona nods and asks, “What did you see in the mirror? ¿Qué viste en el espejo?”

      “In the mirror?”

      “You could see into the lift, Anabella.”

      She thinks, then says slowly that she saw a yellow hand. “And then,” she adds, “after a little while I saw her face.”

      “Her face? It was a woman?”

      “Sí, una mujer.” Anabella explains that the woman was wearing a hood that obscured much of her face, but for a brief moment she saw the cheek and the mouth. “Sin duda era una mujer,” she repeats. It was definitely a woman.

      “How old?”

      She shakes her head. She doesn’t know.

      “As young as you?”

      “Tal vez.” Perhaps.

      “A little bit older?”

      She nods, but then says she doesn’t know; she saw the woman only for a second, and most of her face was hidden.

      “¿Y la boca de la señora?” Joona demonstrates. What did the woman’s mouth look like?

      “Happy.”

      “She looked happy?”

      “Sí. Contenta.”

      When Joona can’t get any other description out of her, he asks about details, turns his questions around, and makes suggestions, but it’s obvious that Anabella has told him everything she saw. He thanks her and Jarl Hammar for their help.

      On his way back upstairs, Joona calls Anja. She answers immediately. “Anja, have you found out anything about Eva Blau yet?”

      “I might have, but you keep calling and disturbing me.”

      “Sorry, but it is urgent.”

      “I know, I know. But I haven’t got anything yet.”

      “Fine, call me when you do.”

      “Stop nagging,” she says, and hangs up.

       74

       wednesday, december 16: morning

      Erik is sitting in the car next to Joona, blowing on a paper cup of coffee. They drive past the university, past the Natural History Museum. On the other side of the road, down towards Brunnsviken, the greenhouse shines out in the falling darkness.

      “You’re sure of the name, Eva Blau?” asks Joona.

      “Yes.”

      “There’s nothing in any telephone directory, nothing in the criminal records database, nothing in the database of suspects, or in the register of those licensed to carry a weapon, nothing in the tax office records, the electoral register, or with the vehicle licensing authority. I’ve had every local record checked: the county councils, the church records, the National Insurance Office, the immigration authorities. There is no Eva Blau in Sweden, and there never has been.”

      “She was my patient,” Erik persists.

      “Then she must have another name.”

      “Look, I damn well know what my—”

      He stops as something flutters by, the faintest awareness that she might indeed have had another name, but then it simply disappears.

      “What were you going to say?”

      “I’ll go through my papers. Perhaps she just called herself Eva Blau.”

      The white winter sky is dense and low; it looks as if it might start snowing at any moment.

      Erik takes a sip of his coffee, sweetness followed by a lingering bitterness. Joona turns off into a residential area. They drive slowly past houses, past gardens dusted with snow, with bare fruit trees and small ponds covered for the winter, conservatories equipped with cane furniture, snow-covered trampolines, strands of coloured lights looping through cypress trees, red sledges, and parked cars.

      “Where are we actually going?” asks Erik.

      Small round snowflakes whirl through the air, gathering on the hood and along the windscreen wipers.

      “We’re almost there.”

      “Almost where?”

      “I found some other people with the surname Blau,” says Joona.

      He pulls up in front of a detached garage but leaves the engine idling. In the middle of the lawn stands a plastic Winnie-the-Pooh, six feet high, with the colour flaking off its red sweater. Other toys are scattered throughout the garden. A path made up of irregular pieces of slate leads up to a large yellow wooden house.

      “This is where Liselott Blau lives,” says Joona.

      “Who’s she?”

      “I’ve no idea, but she might know something about Eva.” Joona notices Erik’s dubious expression. “It’s all we have to go on at the moment.”

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