Erik gives a start, and the hand holding the coffee cup jerks and spills the liquid all over his jacket and shirt cuffs.
Joona turns to him in surprise and without a word pulls a tissue from a box of Kleenex on the dashboard.
Erik looks out at the big yellow wooden house, the garden, the lawn, and the enormous Winnie-the-Pooh with the fangs drawn on it.
“Is she violent?” asks Joona.
“Who?”
“Eva Blau.”
“Maybe. I mean, she’s certainly capable of it.”
Joona switches off the engine and they get out of the car. “Just don’t expect too much,” he says in a melancholy tone. “Liselott Blau might have nothing to do with Eva.”
“No,” Erik replies absently.
They walk up a path made of flat, dark-grey slate. A heavy white veil of little snowflakes whirls in the air.
“We have to be careful,” says Joona. “Because this could actually be the haunted house.” His face lights up in a faint smile.
Erik stops in the middle of the path. The wet fabric around his wrist has grown cold. He smells of stale coffee. “I should explain. The haunted house is a house in the former Yugoslavia,” he says. “It’s also an apartment in Jakobsberg, a gym in Stocksund, a pale green house up in Dorotea, and so on.”
He can’t help smiling as he meets Joona’s questioning gaze.
“The haunted house isn’t a specific place, it’s a term my hypnosis group adopted,” he explains. “One member called the place where he had been traumatised the haunted house, and it became what we called anywhere that their abuse had taken place.”
“I think I understand,” says Joona. “Where was Eva Blau’s haunted house?”
“That’s the problem. She was the only one who didn’t find her way there. Unlike the rest of the group, she never described a central place.”
“Well, maybe this is it,” says Joona.
They stride up the path. Erik fumbles in his pocket for the box with the parrot and the native on it. He feels sick, as if his emotional responses to the events he’s recalled have been suspended in his nerve centre, as powerful and confusing as ever. He wants to take one of his pills, yearns for a pill, but he knows he must remain absolutely clear-headed. He has to find Benjamin, he has to stop taking the pills, he can’t go on like this, he can’t keep hiding.
He pushes the doorbell, hearing the deep chime through thick wood. He waits, although he wants to pull the door open, rush inside, and shout Benjamin’s name. Joona’s hand is tucked inside his jacket. After a little while the door is opened by a young woman with glasses, red hair, and a patch of tiny scars on each cheek. Erik studies her carefully.
“We’re looking for Liselott Blau,” says Joona.
“That’s me,” she replies warily.
Joona looks at Erik, who shakes his head slightly. This is not Eva.
“We’re actually looking for Eva,” Joona says.
“Eva? I don’t know any Eva. What’s this about?” asks the woman.
Joona shows her his police ID and asks if they can come in for a while. She hesitates, looking back nervously into the house. “Or talk to us out here, if you prefer. You should put on a jacket, though, it’s chilly,” he says.
A few minutes later they are standing on the lawn, crunchy underfoot with frost, their breath forming white condensation in the air as they speak.
“I live alone,” she says, hugging herself.
“Big house,” Joona says, nodding at the large structure.
The woman smiles thinly. “I’m in a fortunate position.”
“Is Eva Blau a relative?”
“I told you, I don’t know anyone called Eva Blau.”
Joona shows her three pictures of Eva that he has taken from the video recording, but the red-haired woman simply shakes her head.
“Look closely,” says Joona firmly.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she snaps.
“I’m asking, for now.”
“I pay your salary,” she says. “My taxes pay your salary.”
“Please look at the pictures.”
“I’ve never seen her.”
“This is important,” Erik says.
“To you, maybe, but not to me.”
“She calls herself Eva Blau,” Joona goes on. “Blau is quite an unusual name in Sweden.”
Erik sees a curtain suddenly sway in an upstairs window. He bolts for the house as the others call after him.