Room No. 10

by Ake Edwardson

  Birgersson laughed and took another drag and blew out the smoke. The window was open a few inches, and the smoke glided out and disappeared among all the other shades of gray.

  “I heard you had another chat with the husband of the girl who disappeared,” Birgersson said.

  “I’m working on writing out the interrogation right now,” Winter said.

  “No, right now you’re sitting here. But tell me.”

  “Well . . . I didn’t exactly get any farther. If it’s possible to get further with him. He says that they quarreled from time to time, but that it wasn’t anything serious.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “That she wanted kids but he wanted to wait.”

  “Do you think he’s hiding something?”

  “I don’t really know. Like what?”

  “That he’s guilty, of course.”

  Winter saw Christer Börge in front of him. Could he have murdered his wife and hid the body and pretended that nothing had happened? Played the role of the worried husband after his wife disappeared?

  “It’s not all that unusual, you know,” said Birgersson.

  “I know,” said Winter.

  “Have you pressed him a little?”

  “As well as I could.”

  “Do you want help?”

  “You believe he’s done something?” Winter asked. “You really believe that?”

  “I don’t believe anything, as you know. This is no church. I’m just asking if we should squeeze this Börge a little to see if anything else comes out.”

  “All right with me,” Winter said.

  “Bring him in,” said Birgersson.

  • • •

  It was now. The wind had come up when Winter stepped out of the police station. He had needed a scarf. In addition, his throat had become sore during the last hour. It didn’t seem tempting to bike home.

  He heard a car horn and turned his head. Halders waved from behind the wheel.

  Winter walked over.

  “Do you need a ride?”

  “Okay.”

  Winter climbed into the car and Halders roared off.

  He drove through Allén. The trees would be completely bare in just a few weeks. Red leaves floated through the air.

  Winter coughed.

  “Got a cold?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “There’s something going around. Aneta felt out of sorts this morning.”

  “We don’t have time to be sick, do we, Fredrik?”

  “No, boss.”

  “It’s been a long time since you called me boss.”

  “Have I ever?”

  “Would have been that first year, if you did.”

  Halders laughed.

  “Yes, that’s right. That’s when we became friends for life.”

  Winter smiled.

  “For a while I thought you spilled coffee on purpose,” Halders continued. “It always happened when I was sitting next to you.”

  “So that’s why you moved to the other end?”

  “Naturally.”

  “I was just clumsy,” said Winter. “And insecure.”

  “So what’s new?” Halders said.

  “We’re older,” Winter said, nodding toward the street. “You can stop here.”

  Halders pulled over.

  “I’m going to see the friend now,” he said. “Nina Lorrinder.”

  “Good luck.”

  “She has more stories to tell.”

  14

  Nina Lorrinder had a headband that gleamed in a shade of red Halders was unsure he’d ever seen before.

  He asked.

  “Crimson,” she said, giving him a long look.

  “Just curious,” he said.

  “Are you interested in colors?”

  “My dad wanted me to be a master painter.”

  Lorrinder looked over at the three-story building at the other end of the square. The bottom floor was of stone; the two upper floors were wood. It was called a landshövdingeshus, a type of building found only in this city. Two painters were standing on scaffolding, coating the facade in a shade of yellow that Halders had seen before.

  “Like them,” said Halders.

  She turned her gaze back to him again.

  “But it’s not good for you in the long run,” Halders continued. “At least it didn’t use to be. The paint settles in your lungs. And in your brain.”

  She threw a glance at the painters again.

  “You can become a bit stupid,” said Halders. “Not that I think those guys are, or will be, but it’s better not to take any risks.”

  She still hadn’t said anything. Halders wondered when she was going to interrupt him.

  “So I became a policeman instead,” he said.

  “Are you being sarcastic?” she said.

  “Just a little.”

  She looked around again, as though she would take Halders’s word about anything and wasn’t expecting anything other than to sit on the bench and listen to whatever was going to come. It wasn’t cold. Halders could even feel the weak sun on the back of his neck. He could see some elderly people on a bench on the other side of the fountain. The sun looked strong on their waxy faces. Their faces were approximately the same pale yellow shade that the painters were painting up and down on the wall of the building. Halders could hear music coming from there, rock music from a boom box that was balanced on the second story of the scaffolding, but he couldn’t tell what song it was. The distance was too great. The old people couldn’t tell either. They belonged to the generation before rock ’n’ roll, the generation before him.

  When he was sitting like that himself, with stiff joints and a yellow face, he would be able to move his skull carefully to rock ’n’ roll if there were some workmen nearby with their eternal boom box. But they wouldn’t be playing rock ’n’ roll then. God knows what they would be playing. Maybe there wouldn’t be anything left to play.

  “I thought you had some questions,” said Lorrinder.

  “How long have you known Paula?”

  “You talk like she’s still alive. Like I still know her.”

  Halders didn’t say anything. Lorrinder looked over toward the painters. They were on their way down from the scaffolding now. The music had been turned off.

  “But I guess I do,” she continued, without looking at Halders. “You could look at it that way. It sometimes feels that way.” She looked at Halders. “Do you understand what I mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “How can you understand?”

  “My wife was killed by a drunk driver. We have two children.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I was, too. Goddamn sorry, and goddamn angry. So I can understand.”

  “I’ve been angry, too,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because it was so . . . awful. So awful. And so pointless.”

  Halders nodded.

  “Who could do something like that?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

  “And why?”

  “We’re trying to figure that out, too.”

  “But how can you?”

  “By doing what I’m doing now, among other things.”

  “But it goes so slowly,” she said. “Asking questions. And then you have to go through the answers. Doesn’t it make you crazy that it goes so slowly?”

  “Not like a painter,” said Halders.

  The painters had left for the day. Half the wall was a shade of yellow, but the sun was shining on the unpainted part of the house, and the wall there looked even more cheerful.

  The old people on the bench across from them had also left for the day.

  “But it goes so slowly,” Lorrinder repeated.

  “It’s the only way,” said Halders.

  “I want to know now,” Lorrinder said. “Who. And why.”

  “So how long have you known Paula?” Halders asked.

  • • •

  His
cell phone rang as he crossed Kungstorget. He saw his mother’s number on the display. Or the displaya if you wanted to be witty. Siv had said that. Winter had been surprised. Elsa had added the new word to her vocabulary.

  “Papa!”

  “Hi, honey!”

  “What are you doing, Papa?”

  “I’m going to go buy some food at Saluhallen.”

  “What are you going to buy?”

  “Some kind of fish, I think.”

  “We ate fish yesterday.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “I fried it!”

  “Good job, Elsa.”

  “Lilly had a little piece. She spit it out.”

  “What a shame.”

  “That’s what I told her!”

  “Then what did she say?”

  “Blehhowehhh!”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That she wants milk from Mama instead.”

  “Ha-ha!”

  “But Mama says that she can’t have any.”

  “I know, honey.”

  “I think that’s mean of Mama.”

  “Lilly has to start eating a little fish now. She’s starting to get big now.”

  “She’s not big at all!”

  “No, not like you, Elsa.”

  “Will you be there when we get home, Papa?”

  “Of course I will.”

  “We’re coming tomorrow!”

  “I think it’s the day after tomorrow, actually.”

  “Oh.”

  “I bought a present for you. And one for Lilly.”

  “I bought a present for you, Papa!”

  “That will be exciting.”

  “Here comes Mama. Hugs and kisses!”

  “Hugs and kisses, honey.”

  He heard a clatter in the background, and the scream of a small child. He heard his mother’s voice. Siv had her hands full.

  “Well, there we go,” Angela said. “Dinner’s out of the way.”

  “Not mine.”

  “From what I understood, you were standing outside Saluhallen.”

  “That got through?”

  “The art of reasoning. Does that sound familiar?”

  “No.”

  Lilly bawled in the background again.

  “Everything is set now down here,” Angela said. “It’s going to be expensive if we don’t come back this fall.”

  “It’s all set,” he said.

  “Has it been cleared with everyone involved?”

  “Yes,” he lied.

  “You’re lying.”

  “No.”

  “Yes, you are. What does Uncle Birgersson think of all this?”

  “I don’t know what he thinks, to be honest, but he’s recommended my leave of absence. And he has his own retirement crisis to think of.”

  “But you’re not retiring, are you, Erik?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I don’t want this to be the end of your career. That’s not my intent . . .”

  “Whiting,” Winter interrupted. He was reading the board outside the fish shop at the west end of the hall. “It’s going to be whiting fillets.”

  “You interrupted me.”

  “Lightly dipped in flour, flash-fried in olive oil with garlic and lemon and a bit of parsley. Creamed potatoes. The Riesling from Hunawihr.”

  “Sounds like you’re doing fine without us.”

  “I’ll be fine until the day after tomorrow and not a day longer.”

  “Good.”

  “I miss you all.”

  “Don’t drink up all the bottles to feel better.”

  “Only the 2002 is gone. Or will be gone tonight.”

  “We should probably end it here. Lilly is getting a little sick on Grandma.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “It’s always nothing for doctors,” Winter said. “One might start to wonder if we really need the medical profession.”

  “Are you going to do away with me just like you’re doing away with yourself?”

  “Take care of Lilly now,” he said, and they said good-bye and hung up.

  He went into the shop and bought the fish and then walked home through Kungsparken. The tops of the trees were turning red and yellow, like dyed hair that was starting to go back to its original color. And soon that hair would fall to the ground. And then it would grow out again. It was a strange world.

  Vasaplatsen was deserted. It was almost always deserted around the obelisk. Sometimes someone was sitting on one of the benches at the south end, but not always. Vasaplatsen wasn’t a place of rest; it wasn’t even a park, even though it was green. But this neighborhood was a place of rest for Winter. This was where he always returned, to the center of the city. It was calm at the core. In the eye of the storm.

  He unlocked the front door and took the old elevator up to the apartment. The elevator was a hundred years old and decorated as though it were going to an evening at the House of Nobles. As long as Winter had lived here it had climbed reluctantly up with him to the third floor. It had never broken, as far as he knew, but it always sounded as though it might happen at any time.

  In the kitchen he placed the package with the small fillets on the counter and took olive oil, garlic, and a potato out of the pantry. He peeled the potato and cut it into small pieces. He opened the Alsace wine and drank a first glass. It was cool and calming, as though someone he trusted had placed a hand on his forehead. As though everything would work out in the end.

  It smelled good in the kitchen as he grilled the fish with sliced garlic in the olive oil. He tossed in a small handful of chopped parsley and squeezed in half a lemon. He ate the fish with the creamed potato, which tasted of butter and coarse salt, and a few fresh string beans. He drank two glasses of wine with his meal and brought the bottle into the living room when he’d cleared the table.

  There still wasn’t anyone down on the lawn of Vasaplatsen. He smoked on the balcony, but didn’t see anyone doing the same on the balcony across the park. Dusk was falling fast. Many people were waiting for streetcars down there under his window. The tracks ran together under him. The whole city had its intersecting point down there, its breaking point. Everyone in the city passed under his window at some point in their lives. If they looked up they would see him.

  He went in and sat down in the easy chair. He poured a glass of wine and clicked his laptop on. He searched his way through the files. The light from the screen was the only light in there.

  The phone rang.

  • • •

  “I think it was two years,” Lorrinder said.

  “You’ve known each other for two years?” Halders asked.

  She nodded.

  “But I told the other officer that.”

  “I know.”

  “And you’re still asking?”

  “Where did you usually hang out? Aside from at church?”

  “Oh . . . at some café. The movies, sometimes. The bar, once in a while.”

  Halders nodded.

  “Sometimes at the Friskis & Svettis gym.”

  “Which one?”

  “The one on Västra Hamngatan.”

  “Is there really time to hang out there?” Halders asked.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Well, there’s so much huffing and puffing.”

  Lorrinder almost laughed.

  “There’s a small café there, too,” she said.

  “And you met up there?”

  She nodded.

  “How did it happen?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Were you alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Every time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was she in shape?”

  “Does that really matter?”

  Halders didn’t know. Did it? No one else knew, either.

  “I’m just trying to learn as much as I can about Paula,” he said.

  “I don’
t know if I . . . did,” she said. “Know her very well, I mean.”

  “Why not?”

  “She . . . didn’t seem to want to let anyone get very close, I guess.”

  “Why not, do you think?”

  “She . . . was just that kind of person, I guess.”

  “What kind of person?”

  “Oh . . . withdrawn, maybe. Or a bit reserved.” Lorrinder looked straight across the table at Halders. “Not everyone is the same.”

  “No, certainly not.”

  “I guess she mostly wanted to be by herself.”

  “But she went to Friskis & Svettis,” Halders said.

  “You can be by yourself there, too, for the most part, like you said yourself just now.”

  “The huffing and puffing.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Everyone fighting for himself.”

  Lorrinder didn’t seem to hear that last part. All of a sudden she looked like someone deep in thought.

  “How often did the two of you work out?” Halders asked.

  “Uh . . . what did you say?”

  Halders repeated the question. Lorrinder seemed lost in her thoughts. Her gaze was far away.

  “Are you okay?” Halders asked.

  “I thought of something . . .”

  Halders waited.

  “When you asked if we sat in the café alone.”

  “Yes?”

  “I think she met someone at the gym.”

  Halders didn’t say anything. He just nodded.

  “A . . . man.”

  Lorrinder seemed to be staring into the past so hard that it would help her remember. She closed her eyes, as though to make herself see more clearly. She opened her eyes. They were clearer now.

  “I might be wrong.”

  “Just keep going.”

  “She talked to someone a few times.”

  “Where.”

  “When we . . . at the gym. In the fitness studio.”

  “Is that so unusual?”

  “For Paula it was.”

  “In what way?”

  “She just didn’t talk to people. Not like that.”

  “Maybe she wasn’t the one who started it. Maybe he stepped on her foot and apologized. Maybe it happened several times.”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  “Maybe that’s one of the ways to pick someone up at Friskis & Svettis.”

  “Is it?”

  “Isn’t that one of the city’s biggest pickup locations?”

  “I don’t actually know. I haven’t thought about it.”

  “But you noticed that Paula was talking to someone.”