The man became confused. Maybe he was trying to figure out whether the police officers were there as friends or enemies.
“Sebbe? Sebbe. . missing?” Sabine asked.
She spoke in a strained voice now as if it took an immense amount of energy to utter each word.
“Yes. He hasn’t been at work for a while and he isn’t in his apartment. Do you know where he might be?”
Sabine shook off Irene’s hand and started walking unsteadily toward the kitchen door. She steadied herself against the door frame and took a few deep wheezing breaths before she started coughing. After a while, she set her course for the bathroom on the other side of the hall. She stumbled over the snoring man and fell headfirst, but luckily landed somewhat softly on his body. He coughed and continued snoring in another key.
“Did you hurt yourself?” Irene asked. She had rushed to Sabine’s rescue as the woman toppled over. Now Irene helped her to her feet, noting how light the tall woman was. Sabine mumbled something and released herself from Irene’s grip. Staggering, she took the last few steps into the bathroom and pulled the door shut with a bang. A short while later, the sound of gagging came through the thin door.
“Is she forcing herself to throw up?” Irene whispered to Hannu.
“Think so. She wants to clear her head.”
When Sabine opened the door again they could smell the sour odor of vomit. She jerked her head without looking at the officers, and said, “Come. The living room.”
She walked unsteadily ahead of them. The only furniture in the room was a dirty couch that, at the beginning of time, had been light blue and a broken rattan recliner. An empty easel stood in one corner. A small but brand- new color TV was enthroned in the middle of the floor. But the furniture was not what one paid attention to when entering the room.
Not one square centimeter of the wallpaper was visible. Sabine’s paintings lined the walls. They were large and painted in roughly the same color scheme. The dominating tones were light purple, pink, and white. Here and there a light blue tone remained in a few of the pictures. Not a single warm tone was visible.
The paintings were portraits, but they were grotesque faces from terrible nightmares. Twisted, malignant demons stared down from the walls. For a while, Irene thought that a fat, Buddha-like man with a wide smile was the only figure who looked sympathetic. But then she saw that the Buddha’s eyes were completely black and empty. Sabine had captured a cold, scornful person with her brushes. The icy colors strengthened the uncomfortable feelings the pictures inspired. Irene would never want to have any of them on her walls, even though they were skillfully painted.
Sabine sank down onto the sofa with a thud. Her chest heaved and she wheezed and coughed so that Irene became concerned. Did Sabine have pneumonia? But she had just been released from the hospital. As if she had read Irene’s thoughts, Sabine puffed out, “Smo. . smoker’s cough. Shouldn’t smoke.”
Irene sat on the creaking, protesting wicker chair. She sent up a silent prayer that it wouldn’t collapse. Hannu preferred to stand.
“What do you want with Sebbe?” Sabine wheezed.
Irene leaned forward intimately and said, “Sebastian’s fellow workers are wondering where he’s gone. He hasn’t been at work for several days. Do you know where he is?”
Sabine shook her head. “No. . he has nice friends. . at work at the office.”
“Office?” Irene repeated, surprised.
“Nice office. The best one in Got. . heborg. Cyhren’s.” She grew quiet and stared listlessly at a purple-colored spirit from the abyss with a gaping mouth frozen in an eternal anguished scream.
“What do you mean when you say that he works at an office?” Irene asked again.
Sabine gave her an irritated look. “It’s a funeral home. A good job. Needs money. . expensive studies in Copenhagen.”
Irene quickly jumped at the opportunity. “How long has he studied in Copenhagen?” she asked.
Sabine wrinkled her thin forehead. After a while her look brightened and she informed them triumphantly, “Several years!”
“What’s he studying in Copenhagen?” Irene took pains to maintain a soft tone of voice.
Sabine straightened up on the filthy sofa and jerked her thin neck. “Painting. Art. I’m an art. . hist, of course.”
With the last word she threw herself forward and vomited a spot of yellow bile on the floor. Hannu pulled out a package of Kleenex from his pocket. He placed several on top of each other and wiped up the stain, then disappeared into the hall. Irene heard the toilet flush.
The thin woman on the sofa sat with her hands pressed tightly over her stomach. Beads of sweat glistened on her forehead.
Irene became really worried. “Do you need to go back to the hospital? We can drive you.”
Sabine said, terrified, “No! There’s no point! They’ll just send me home. My liver and pancreas are gone. My fault. . they say.”
Irene could see how much it cost Sabine to answer their questions. Desperately, the woman struggled against the haze of alcohol and pain. She must care about her son.
“When was the last time you saw Basta?” Irene asked.
At first she couldn’t understand what had gone wrong but when she saw Sabine’s eyes glowing with hate she realized that she had blundered. “Don’t say Basta!” Sabine hissed with rage. “How can you know …? Not Basta! Sebbe! Sebbe!”
Hannu slid through the doorway. He gave Irene a wondering look but she could only shake her head in response. Carefully, she asked, “Do you not like it when people call him Basta?”
“No! No!” she said firmly.
“I’m sorry but that’s the nickname he has given to other people. And his friends at work call him Basta. Sebastian himself can’t have anything against it,” Irene continued.
Sabine looked at Irene mistrustfully.
“Does he call himself. . that?”
“Yes. Basta.”
“His. . shit heap of a father always called him. . that,” Sabine whispered.
So Sebastian Martinsson had used the nickname his father had given him when he was alive. But he had died when Sebastian was thirteen. The psychologists could probably figure out what this meant when they examined him. Too bad that he hadn’t called himself Sebbe; then it would have been much easier to guess his full name.
Irene tried again. “When was the last time you spoke with Sebastian?”
Sabine leaned back, her hands still pressed hard against her stomach.
“I don’t know. Maybe at Christmas,” she mumbled.
Apparently mother and son were not in close contact, Irene concluded. She remembered something she had to ask. “Had Sebastian injured the tip of his left index finger?”
Sabine tried to focus her suspicious look on Irene. “Why. . are you asking?”
“One of his friends at work said something about an injured fingertip. It may be good to mention it if we need to conduct a search for him,” Irene said innocently.
Sabine nodded and sighed. “He crushed it. . in the main school door when he was living here. . with me.”
Her chest heaved after the long sentence as she fought for breath.
“Do you know where he lives in Copenhagen?” Irene asked.
“No. He’s moved. . different places.”
She closed her eyes. Irene worried that she would fall asleep. Quickly, Irene asked, “Do you know the name of the school he’s attending?”
Sabine opened her eyelids slightly. With difficulty she straightened up. Hesitantly, she said, “Not a school. . Kreuger. . Academy or something.”
Kreuger? Wasn’t he a Swede, the match king? Maybe he had founded an art school in Copenhagen? She would have to call her colleagues there as soon as possible.
For the first time Hannu broke into the questioning. He asked, “Sabine, is there a place out near Save that Sebastian might have access to?”
