The Hypnotist

Chapter 73

Joona moves on to the next name on the list: Jarl Hammar, on the floor below Erik and Simone. A pensioner who wasn’t at home when the police called.

Jarl Hammar is a thin man who is clearly suffering from Parkinson’s disease. He is neatly dressed in a cardigan, with a handkerchief knotted around his neck.

“Police?” he repeats in a hoarse, almost inaudible voice as his eyes, cloudy with cataracts, look Joona up and down. “What do the police want with me?”

“I just want to ask a question,” says Joona. “Did you by any chance see or hear anything unusual in this building or on the street in the early morning of December the twelfth?”

Jarl Hammar tilts his head to one side and closes his eyes. After a brief moment he opens them again and shakes his head. “I’m on medication,” he says. “It makes me sleep very heavily.”

Joona catches sight of a woman farther inside the apartment.

“And your wife?” he asks. “Could I have a word with her?”

Jarl Hammar gives a wry smile. “My wife was a wonderful woman. But unfortunately she is no longer with us; she died almost thirty years ago.” He turns and waves a shaky arm at the dark figure behind him. “This is Anabella. She helps me out with the cleaning and so on. Unfortunately she doesn’t speak Swedish, but apart from that she’s beyond reproach.”

The shadowy figure moves into the light when she hears her name. Anabella looks as if she’s from South America; she is in her twenties, with noticeable pockmarks on her face. Her hair is caught up in a loose black braid, and she is very short.

“Anabella,” Joona says softly. “Soy comisario de policía, Joona Linna.”

“Buenos días,” she replies in a lisping voice, looking at him with black eyes.

“¿Tu limpias más departamentos aquí, en este edificio?”

She nods, yes, she does clean other apartments in this building.

“¿Qué otros?” asks Joona.

“Espera un momento,” says Anabella, thinking for a moment before beginning to count on her fingertips: “Los pisos de Lagerberg, Franzén, Gerdman, y Rosenlund, y el piso de Johansson también.”

“Rosenlund,” says Joona. “¿Rosenlund es la familia con un gato, no es verdad?”

Anabella 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, Ana-bella. 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 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 me up 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.”

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