An attractive suit with a straight skirt and fitted jacket, deep red with green and mustard-coloured borders. Black, low-heeled shoes. A simple, straight hair style. Lipstick that matched the red in her outfit. Bronze arrowhead earrings, partially hidden by her dark hair. Some years younger than Sejer, with the first hint of fine lines at her eyes and mouth. She was clearly much older than her former husband. Her son Eskil must have been born at the very end of her youth.
"I'm not looking for anything in particular," he said. So Annie came to your house to baby-sit Eskil?"
"Several times a week," she said. "No one else wanted to baby-sit for him; he wasn't easy to deal with. But you've probably heard this already."
"Yes, it was mentioned," he lied.
"He was so full of energy, almost bordering on the abnormal. Hyperactive, I guess it's called. You know, up and down, always restless."
She gave a rather helpless laugh. "I hope you understand that this isn't an easy thing to admit. But to be quite frank, he was a difficult child. Annie was one of the few who could handle him."
She paused and thought for a moment. "She came over a lot. Henning and I were always so worn out, and it was a blessing whenever she appeared in the doorway, smiling and offering to baby-sit. He would sit in the pushchair, and we usually gave them some money so they could go downtown and buy something. Sweets or ice cream or something like that. It would take them an hour or two; I think she deliberately took her time. Now and then they'd take the bus into the city and be gone the whole day. They would ride around in the little train at the marketplace. I was working the night shift at the hospital and often needed to sleep during the day, so it was a welcome break for me. We have another son, Magne. But he was too old to go out pushing a pram. At any rate, he didn't want to. So he wriggled out of it, as most boys do."
She smiled again and shifted her position on the chair. Every time she moved he noticed the scent of vanilla. She kept an eye on the shop door as she spoke, but no one came in. Talking about her son seemed to make her uneasy. Her eyes were on everything except Sejer's face, flitting around like a bird trapped in much too small a space, moving from the shelves of wool to the table to the front of the shop.
"How old was Eskil when he died?" Sejer asked.
"Only 27 months," she whispered, and seemed to flinch.
"Did it happen while Annie was baby-sitting him?"
She glanced up. "No, thank God. I kept on saying how lucky that was; it would have been unbearable. It was bad enough for poor Annie; she didn't need to have that on her conscience too."
Another pause. He breathed as quietly as he could and took a new approach.
"But... what kind of accident was it?"
"I thought you talked to Henning," she said.
"I did," he lied. "But he didn't go into detail."
"Eskil got some food caught in his throat," she said. "I was upstairs in bed. Henning was in the bathroom shaving and didn't hear a thing. But Eskil couldn't scream anyway, with the food caught in his throat. He was strapped to his chair with a harness, the kind children have at that age. They are meant for their protection. He was sitting there eating his breakfast."
"I know them. I have a daughter and a grandchild," he said.
She swallowed and then went on. "Henning found him hanging in the harness, blue in the face. It took the ambulance more than 20 minutes to arrive, and by then there was no hope."
"They came from the central hospital?"
"Yes."
Sejer looked at the front room of the shop and saw a woman at the window. She was admiring a jumper that Mrs Johnas had on display.
"So it happened in the morning?"
"Early in the morning," she said.
"And you were asleep the whole time, is that right?"
Suddenly she looked him straight in the eye. "I thought you wanted to talk about Annie."
"You're welcome to tell me something about Annie," he said, and he felt a twinge in his chest.
But she didn't say anything. She sat up and crossed her arms.
"I take it you've talked to everybody who lives in Krystallen?"