Sabine Martinsson slowly got up, using the tabletop as support. Sebastian had also inherited his height from his mother; she was almost as tall as Irene. She wasn’t slender anymore; rather, she seemed hollowed out and undernourished. Only her stomach appeared to be round and full. Sabine Martinsson looked very sick. Her yellow T-shirt hung loosely over her bony shoulders. Under the thin fabric, the large nipples of her flat, hanging breasts were outlined. The torn black tights she wore should have been taut, but they hung limply around her skinny legs.
“Göteborg’s. . pig,” she slurred.
She was missing a top front tooth as well as several on the bottom. “We would like to speak with you. It’s about Sebastian.”
When Irene mentioned her son’s name, it was as if a light flickered behind Sabine’s deadened eyes. She straightened and said surprisingly clearly, “Has something happened to Sebbe?”
Irene took a step closer to the swaying figure and gently put her hand on Sabine’s skinny arm. No muscles, just bone could be felt under the skin.
“We don’t know. He’s disappeared from his job. Do you know where he is?”
Now the older man came to life. He had been sitting and staring at the officers with narrowed eyes while his toothless jaws ground together. He started yelling, “Don’t tell the damn pigs anything! Those damn p-”
Clumsily, he tried to get up but was quickly pulled down into his chair again by the Finn.
“It’s cool. We’re just trying to find her missing son,” Irene said with a smile.
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 Göt. . heborg. Cyhrén’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.