Read Online Before the Frost by Henning Mankell - Free Book Online Page B

they broke up. She shook away those thoughts and started making her way through the massive trees. She stopped at the sound of an unusual noise, a furious hammering. Then she saw a woodpecker up on the right. Maybe he has a part in her music, she thought. Anna has said her mother doesn’t shy away from using any kind of noise. His input might very well be crucial to the percussion section.
    She left the woodpecker and walked past an old run-down vegetable garden that had clearly not been tended for many years. What do I know about her? Linda thought. And what am I doing here? She stopped and listened. At that particular moment, in the shade of the high trees, she was no longer worried about Anna. There was surely a reasonable explanation for why she was staying away. Linda turned and started walking back to the car.
    The woodpecker had flown away. Everything changes, she thought. People and woodpeckers, my dreams and all that time I thought I had but that keeps slipping out of my fingers despite my best attempts to keep it dammed up. She pulled her invisible reins and came to a halt. Why was she walking away? Now that she had come this far in Anna’s car, the least she could do was say hello to Henrietta. Without betraying her anxieties, without making pressing inquiries about Anna’s whereabouts. She might just be in Lund, and I don’t have her number there. I’ll ask Henrietta for it.

    She followed the path through the trees again and finally came to a half-timbered, whitewashed house covered in wild roses. A cat lay on the stone steps and studied her movements warily as Linda approached. A window was open and just as she bent down to stroke the cat, she heard noises from inside. Henrietta’s music, she thought.
    Then she stood up and caught her breath.
    What she had heard wasn’t music. It was the sound of a woman sobbing.

9
    Somewhere inside the house a dog started to bark. Linda felt as though she had been caught in the act and quickly rang the doorbell. It took a while for Henrietta to open the door. When she did she was restraining an angry gray dog by the collar.
    â€œShe won’t bite,” Henrietta said. “Come in.”
    Linda never felt completely at ease in the presence of strange dogs and so she hesitated slightly before crossing the threshold. As soon as she did so the dog relaxed, as if Linda had crossed over into a no-barking zone. Henrietta let go of the dog. Linda hadn’t remembered Henrietta so thin and frail. What was it Anna had said about her? That she wasn’t even fifty years old. It was true that her face looked young, but her body looked much older even than fifty. The dog, Pathos, sniffed Linda’s legs, then retreated to her basket and lay down.
    Linda thought about the sobbing that she had heard through the window. There were no traces of tears on Henrietta’s face. Linda looked past her into the rest of the house, but there was no sign of anyone else. Henrietta caught her gaze.
    â€œAre you looking for Anna?”
    â€œNo.”
    Henrietta burst out laughing.
    â€œWell, I’m stumped. First you call and then you drop by for a visit. What’s happened? Is Anna still missing?”
    Linda was taken aback by Henrietta’s directness, but welcomed it.
    â€œYes.”
    Henrietta shrugged, then directed Linda into the big room—the result of many walls being removed—that served as both living room and studio.

    â€œMy guess is that Anna must be in Lund. She holes up there from time to time. The theoretical component of her studies is apparently very demanding, and Anna is no theoretician. I don’t know who she takes after. Not me, not her father. Herself.”
    â€œDo you have a phone number for her in Lund?”
    â€œNo, I’m not even sure she has a phone there. She rents a room in a house and doesn’t like to give out the address.”
    â€œIsn’t that a bit odd?”
    â€œWhy? Anna is