B0031RSBSM EBOK

a dozen rings, sounding bleary with sleep. He came wide awake when he heard that one of his students was missing.
    “She’s been gone since Saturday night?” he said angrily.
    “Yes.” Eva regretted not calling Staffan earlier. “We went to the concert, and then a bunch of us sat out on the hotel porch afterward. Martina left to go to the bathroom, but she never came back. We thought she had gone to bed.”
    “What time was that?”
    “Maybe one or two in the morning. I didn’t notice the time.”
    “What did the rest of you do?”
    “We stayed where we were, talking.”
    “Didn’t anyone go looking for her when you noticed that she hadn’t come back?”
    “No.”
    “How long did you stay there after she left?”
    “An hour, maybe two.”
    “Has anyone seen her since then?”
    “No, at least nobody who was sitting on the porch that night.”
    “And Martina hasn’t been heard from since?”
    “No.”
    “Are you sure that she hasn’t slept in her bed these past two nights?”
    “Of course I’m sure,” Eva said in a voice that started to quaver. She couldn’t hold back her tears any longer. She was frightened by the fact that he sounded so serious. His reaction confirmed her own feelings, that her concern was justified.
    “We need to call the police. It’s the only thing to do.”
    “You think so?”
    “Absolutely. Something must have happened, otherwise she would have called. Have you talked to anyone at the front desk in the hotel?”
    “No.”
    “Do that. In the meantime, I’ll call the police.”
    Her legs trembling, Eva ran over to the front desk, which was in the main building. The clerk knew who Martina was but hadn’t seen her. She offered to ask the rest of the staff during the course of the morning. Eva sank onto a chair. She punched in the number of her friend’s cell phone but no longer got her voice mail. Now a monotone voice informed her: “The party you are trying to reach is temporarily unavailable.”
    Knutas and Jacobsson decided to drive out to Warfsholm, since Martina Flochten had been missing for more than twenty-four hours and no one seemed to know where she had gone. She hadn’t contacted either her family or her boyfriend back home in the Netherlands.
    Besides, they didn’t have anything better to do. The summertime drought had set in, and the investigation of the decapitated horse had come to a standstill. It was a mystery who the perpetrator could be and where the head might be found.
    They first checked at the front desk to see whether Martina’s valuables were still in the safe where they’d been kept. Everything was there: her passport, her Visa card, and her insurance documents. So she hadn’t left the country—at least not voluntarily.
    They met Martina’s roommate, Eva Svensson, on the stairs of the main building. She had shoulder-length ash blond hair, and she was wearing a white cotton camisole, a skirt, and sandals. As she led the way over to the youth hostel, they asked her about Martina.
    “Does she have a boyfriend?” asked Jacobsson.
    “She’s seeing this guy back in Holland, or at least she was when she left home. But I actually think she met someone else here on Gotland.”
    “Why do you think that?”
    “She’s been gone a lot, and sometimes she slips away without giving any explanation.”
    “So this isn’t unusual? For her to be missing?”
    “The difference is that she hasn’t called anyone. She always calls.”
    “How well do you know Martina?” Knutas carefully studied the young woman.
    “Not too well. We liked each other at once, and we had a lot of fun right from the start. The course began with two weeks of theory at the college in Visby, so we were in town all the time. Then Martina started going off on her own in the evenings. During the second week I hardly saw her at all.”
    “Did you share a room in Visby, too?”
    “No, we all had our own dorm rooms, so we didn’t keep tabs on each other the same way we do here. Since we’ve been here at Warfsholm, she’s often gone off on her own. Her excuse is that she has errands to run or that she wants to meditate, but I don’t believe it. She’s not the type.”
    “Has she ever been gone for a whole night before?”
    “One night last week she slept somewhere else. She claimed that she was going to meet some friends of her family in Visby. They usually come here on vacation.”
    “Do you know who they are? These friends?”
    “No. I never asked her, and she