Room No. 10

by Ake Edwardson

  “There is a big split between Paula and her parents,” Halders said. “Was.”

  Winter nodded.

  “No one’s saying anything, or has said anything, and that always makes me suspicious.”

  Winter nodded again.

  “I think she left home that night planning not to return,” Halders said.

  “Without a suitcase?” Ringmar leaned over the table. “Her purse was of the minimalist type.”

  “She had an apartment, didn’t she?” Halders looked around the room, around the table. Bergenhem nodded encouragingly. “She had a key, didn’t she? It was evening; the painters had gone home for the day. She could have gone home to her apartment and packed a suitcase and met that friend whateverhernameis and gone on from there.”

  “To Hotel Revy?” Ringmar said.

  “I don’t know if she really planned to go there in particular.”

  “The friend’s name is Nina Lorrinder,” Winter said. “She didn’t mention any suitcase.”

  “Did we ask about one, then?” Halders said.

  “No,” said Bergenhem. “I didn’t ask her about it.”

  “That’s what happens when you don’t do the classics option,” Halders said.

  “So that was the first thing you would have asked her about?” Bergenhem said. He began to look angry. That was the expression Halders was waiting for.

  “Quit it,” Winter said. “She’s alive. We can ask her now.”

  “I’ll call right away,” Bergenhem said, getting up.

  “Good idea!” Halders said.

  “Stop it, Fredrik,” Djanali said.

  “There was something awfully strange about her parents,” Halders said, unmoved, without turning his head toward Djanali.

  “They just lost their only child,” Ringmar said.

  “It was the silence at their place,” said Halders, as though he hadn’t heard Ringmar. “In ten cases out of nine, everyone wants to talk after such a hellish trauma. People can’t talk enough. Cry enough. But there were no tears at the Neys’.”

  “They’re still in shock,” said Ringmar.

  “No,” Halders said, and his face was transformed. “Believe me, Bertil, I have . . . experience. There is no shock in the first few days. Only hate.”

  The room became quiet. Everyone could hear the coffee machine take one of its last sighs. Ringmar wiped his forehead again. Winter could hear the traffic outside. Djanali could hear the air conditioner, like sad whispers all along the low ceiling.

  Bergenhem came back.

  “No suitcase,” he said.

  “She could have put it in the coat check. Movie theaters have those sometimes,” said Halders.

  “They met outside. She only had her purse.”

  “She could have been inside and left her suitcase.”

  “They left there together, went to the pub. The bar. No suitcase.”

  “And you asked about all of that?” Halders said.

  Bergenhem nodded.

  “She could have gone ahead to the pub and checked the suitcase there,” Halders said.

  “No.”

  “You asked about that, too?”

  “She, Nina, said that she was the one who suggested they go there. Paula had suggested another place.”

  “Then we’ll have to look there,” said Halders.

  “They open at four o’clock,” said Bergenhem.

  “You checked already?”

  Bergenhem nodded again.

  “Well done, kid. You do have an imagination.”

  “But all we have is an imaginary suitcase,” said Winter.

  “Can someone translate?” Halders said, and looked around the room.

  “She also could have gone to Central Station,” said Djanali. “If she had a suitcase and if she had planned to leave for good and if she didn’t want to carry the suitcase around.”

  “There was no key in her purse,” Bergenhem said. “I mean, to one of those storage boxes. Storage lockers.”

  “The murderer might have taken the key,” said Ringmar. “It might have been a temptation too great to resist.”

  “Or else it’s lying someplace else,” said Djanali.

  “Maybe the locker is still locked,” said Bergenhem, “with the suitcase still inside.”

  “That’s what I wanted to get at,” said Djanali.

  “So we have two things to do,” Halders said, “check again in Paula’s apartment and determine whether she packed a bag. And find out where it is.”

  “And if we manage to find it?” said Djanali. “Then that means that she was planning to leave. That maybe her parents didn’t know. But that might be all it means.”

  “It could also mean that she was planning to go away with someone else,” said Halders. “There might have been tickets in her purse.”

  “Soon there will be lots of imaginary things we’re missing in that purse,” said Ringmar. “Why not steal the whole purse? That’s nothing for a murderer. Probably a precautionary measure.”

  “It might mean that there was nothing in her purse that he wanted to have,” said Winter.

  “So my talk about an imaginary suitcase is just . . .” Halders began.

  “Imaginary,” Bergenhem filled in.

  “It’s worth a follow-up,” Winter said. “Do a check in her apartment, Fredrik.”

  Meanwhile, Djanali was reading Paula Ney’s last letter. They assumed it was her last letter. She read aloud: “ ‘If I’ve made you angry at me I want to ask for your forgiveness.’ ” She looked up. “Is that something a person wants to write as a final message?”

  “Maybe she didn’t think it was a final message,” Ringmar said.

  “But if she did think so. If she thought she was going to die. Is that the moment when someone who is condemned to death asks for forgiveness?”

  No one around the worn table commented on Djanali’s words. A thin ray of sunlight suddenly shot through the window and split the table in two: Bergenhem and Halders on one side, Winter and Ringmar and Djanali on the other. It was like a boundary, but there were no boundaries between them. We have been together for a long time, Winter thought, keeping his eyes on the sun boundary. Even Bergenhem is starting to get wrinkles.

  “She was Catholic, wasn’t she?” Halders said. “Maybe she was asking for forgiveness for her sins.”

  “No,” Winter said, “Paula wasn’t Catholic.”

  “What sins?” Bergenhem asked, leaning forward, toward Halders.

  “I mean figuratively. Like a routine thing, or whatever. A confession.”

  “Paula was confessing, you mean?” Djanali asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe that’s the wrong word.”

  “Maybe someone was prepared to forgive her for her sins,” Ringmar said.

  “Like who?” Halders said.

  “The murderer.”

  “The murderer became her confessor?” Bergenhem said.

  “He let her write the letter.”

  “Or forced her to,” said Halders.

  “Dictated,” Bergenhem said.

  “No,” Winter said, “I don’t think so.”

  “But it might indicate that there’s some big, and old, clash between Paula and her parents,” Halders said.

  “When isn’t there?” Djanali said. “Between children and parents?”

  “I said big clash,” Halders said.

  “We’ll have to check it out,” said Ringmar.

  “It won’t be easy,” Halders said. “It’s not like we can hear both sides.”

  “There are more than two sides,” said Bergenhem.

  “Look at that,” Halders said, turning to Bergenhem, “first Latin and then philosophy. Have you been taking night classes this summer, Lars?”

  “I don’t need to do that to understand that we can talk to people other than her parents about her relationship with her parents,” Bergenhem said.

  “Did you make a note of that, Erik?” Halders said, turning to Winter.

 
“Let’s get to work,” Winter said, and got up.

  • • •

  Winter was working at the telephone. He called the desk clerk at Revy; it was the same man. No, he hadn’t seen any suitcase. He hadn’t found any suitcase. Why would he have? Winter thought as he hung up. He didn’t see anything else, didn’t hear anything or say anything.

  The phone rang.

  “Looks like someone rummaged around a little through her clothes and shoes,” Halders said.

  He sounded far away.

  “Oh?”

  “Might be her, might be someone else, might have been a hundred years ago. But I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?” Winter asked.

  “There’s no suitcase here. No backpack either, or anything you could carry your clothes in.”

  “Have you checked in the attic? In the basement?”

  “Of course,” Halders answered. “I’ve taken my night classes.”

  “At her parents’ house, then?”

  “I just called.”

  “She must have had something to carry things in when she moved home,” Winter said, “during the renovation.”

  “I thought that far, too,” said Halders. “And guess what: the parents can’t find it either. They say that she had a Samsonite that was pretty new, black, but it’s not at the Neys’ house now.”

  “Good, Fredrik.”

  “God knows. I’ve been thinking here in this haunted apartment. It looks like one big fucking shrouded corpse in here. White, plastic, some kind of antiseptic smell from the paint and the thinner. It’s not fun to be here, Erik. It’s too white here.”

  “I understand what you mean, Fredrik.”

  Halders didn’t say anything. Winter could hear a rushing sound through the telephone. Perhaps Halders had opened the window in Paula’s white apartment; maybe it was the wind out there in the gray heights of Guldheden.

  “You said that you’d been thinking?” Winter said after a moment.

  “What? Well, I don’t know about thinking . . . but maybe all this is just a dead end. The suitcase, I mean. Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with the murder. That someone took it. The murderer. She just had a bad fucking stroke of luck on her way to Central Station. Met someone. And then it went to hell.”

  “You think she was on her way to Central Station? In the evening, after having a glass of wine with her friend?”

  They had tried to establish Paula’s final hours. Final hours of freedom, as Winter had thought of it. But so far they hadn’t spoken to anyone who had seen her, noticed her, recognized her. As usual, the big city was the place for the anonymous; it always gave shelter, for the worse, sometimes for the better, offered insecurity, security. There was a great and strangely obvious paradox built into the big city: the more people, the greater the loneliness. Out in the boonies, no one could keep to himself; everyone within a hundred kilometers of primeval forest heard everything, saw everything, noticed everything, recognized everything.

  “Enough thinking,” Halders answered. “Now it’s time to find out.”

  • • •

  Halders hung up. He looked around, at the protective plastic, at the half-finished painting of the walls, as though everything was final and at the same time a continuation that had been stopped only temporarily. The apartment was a condo, nothing exclusive, not junk, even if none of that mattered anymore because all apartments were wildly expensive; this two-roomer up on the top of Guldheden would go for about half a million kronor, maybe more, not to mention the monthly fee. When had she bought it? Had anyone asked yet? In any case, Halders hadn’t found out yet. How many years had she lived here? Did the parents buy it? Someone else? I’ll have to keep reading, Halders thought. Keep asking.

  Outside, the trees swayed in the wind; elms, lindens, maples, twenty-five-meter-high crowns, hundred-year-old giants that would still be standing here when he was gone, too, along with all the others who had sat around the coffee table this morning; the whole gang would be gone from this earthly paradise, some earlier, some later, and all that green halfway up in the sky would keep on swaying in the sweet summertime. He had started thinking about existence during the last few years, had become an existentialist because it was only a matter of time in this line of work. He worked in the middle of the end of existence, the premature end. It was hard work, delicate work, and he sometimes wondered why God and the minister of justice had given it to the police in particular.

  He shook off his thoughts, or whatever they were, and went into the bedroom for the second time.

  There was something he hadn’t seen when he was in there the first time. Something he had expected to find but without knowing what it was. It often happened that way—he knew that he was missing something, but not what. It might be in a room, on a person, at a discovery site, at a crime scene. What wasn’t there could be more interesting than what he could see or hold. The picture wasn’t complete if he didn’t figure out what was missing.

  What had he missed in this room a little bit ago, before he spoke to Winter? It was something you usually see in a room, especially in a bedroom. A bed? No, the bed was still there, still with its plastic canopy. A bureau? No.

  Halders had stood in hundreds of bedrooms during his career as an investigator. He had investigated. He had registered. He had studied details; tried to think of the problem in a different situation, a different life.

  What was it that was always in a room like this one? Something personal, even intimate. Something that the person who inhabited the room saw at night, in the morning; as the last thing, the first. It was usually hanging on a wall. Or it was on a nightstand. Nothing was hanging on the wall here. Right now, that was because the walls were daubed with primer. There was nothing on the little table next to the bed. There could have been; the plastic canopy protected everything in there.

  There were no photographs in the room, not of Paula, not of anyone else. There were no photographs in frames anywhere in the apartment. It was as though loneliness was amplified in there and became emptier, more blank.

  They had found some photo envelopes with regular prints, everyday pictures, but things like that always gave an impersonal impression; they were momentary scenes from momentary instants, things you could take or leave.

  It was different with ones that were put in frames. That was somehow more for posterity. It was . . . intimate.

  He hadn’t found any photographs like that in any of the boxes or on any of the shelves where things had temporarily been placed during the renovation.

  He would have to ask her parents about that; Halders picked up his notebook and wrote. They would have to help identify all the faces in the prints anyway. Maybe nothing was framed. Maybe that wasn’t Paula Ney’s style.

  What was her style?

  Halders left the bedroom and stood in what he called the living room, which was a damn strange name; it was probably left over from the time when there was a parlor in people’s houses, cold and closed up, that was used only when people came to call—which might have been never—and wasn’t for living in. The room just stood there, like some sort of permanent lodger. At least, that’s how it had been in Halders’s childhood home; no one came to call and the door to the parlor was never opened; the table silver was never taken out of its chest. As a boy, Halders would sometimes stand outside its door and try to see the things in there through the milky glass. Everything was blurry, there were mostly fluid contours, as though he were nearsighted and wasn’t wearing his glasses, but still he wanted to know what was in there, what it might look like when it was sharp and clear. As though he could somehow find out why no one lived in there.

  Suddenly he couldn’t remember if he had ever been in the parlor of his childhood. He ought to remember that. And later, while he was still a child, his parents got divorced and everyone went in different directions and the parlor became a memory, blurry from the start, but never blurrier with time. The opposite happened, as though the image became clearer with
time for the very reason that it had been so hard to see back then.

  Her style; Halders had been thinking of Paula’s style. Her style was not being murdered. The murder proved that no one could escape. Soon, as they learned more about her life, her previous life, maybe that image would also change, become clear, or become dark as it became more and more obvious.

  • • •

  “How did we get on the topic of storage lockers?” Ringmar said.

  They had decided to take a walk in the park, to the Shell station and back. It wasn’t much of a park. The station was bigger than the park.

  “Aneta pointed us toward Central Station,” said Winter. “And of course there could be a suitcase down there.” He looked up, as though he was determining the time with the help of the sun. His black glasses suddenly shimmered with gold. “I called and asked for the guy who’s responsible for the lockers.”

  “And?”

  “They were going to find him.”

  Ringmar nodded.

  Winter followed the path of the sun again. He looked at his own watch.

  Suddenly he realized that they were about to make a mistake.

  “They have security cameras down there now, don’t they, Bertil? I mean, twenty-four hours a day?”

  “I think so.”

  “When do they erase those pictures from the hard disk?”

  • • •

  “After seventy-two hours,” said Rolf Bengtsson, branch manager of Speed Services AB, which had taken over the storage lockers from Swedish Railways. “Sometimes sooner.”

  Winter had driven down to Central Station. It took five minutes, including parking illegally in the taxi zone. He walked into the building quickly. The locker area in there had recently been rebuilt, just like everything else. He had to ask the way. The lockers were now in the underworld of Central Station. The stairs down were steep. Winter heard the elevator swish behind him. He made note of the security cameras on the ceiling. They were convincing decoys.