Room No. 10

by Ake Edwardson

  “Yes.”

  “Enough for you to think about it,” Halders said. “Remember it.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t mean anything.”

  “What else do you remember? About Paula’s encounter.”

  Lorrinder closed her eyes again. She was really trying. Halders could almost see the thoughts moving inside her forehead. A nerve began to twitch. She tucked her hair back over one ear. Her temple continued to twitch.

  She opened her eyes again.

  “It was like she knew him.”

  • • •

  Winter lifted the receiver of the phone, simultaneously looking at the clock.

  It was Torsten Öberg.

  “It might be late,” he said, “but I thought you’d want to know. A girl at SKL was working overtime and she thought I’d want to know, too.”

  “What have we learned, then?”

  “It’s blood, and it’s hers,” Öberg said.

  “What?”

  “Something of a disappointment, isn’t it?”

  “But wasn’t the fleck old?”

  “Yes. They can’t say exactly how old, but more than a month.”

  “So she brought the rope herself,” Winter said.

  “That I don’t know,” Öberg said. “That’s your job.”

  “And no other traces? On the rope?”

  “No other traces.”

  “We don’t know if she tied the noose herself,” Winter said.

  “No. The fleck could have ended up there at any time.”

  “Damn it. I’d had high hopes for this.”

  “You’re not the only one.”

  Winter heard the streetcar outside. It was no later than that. It was a lumbering sound, homey, calming. When the streetcars stopped running for the night, the city became a more troubled place.

  “Could we have missed anything in that room?”

  “Is that an insult, Erik?”

  “I was talking to myself.”

  “Not quietly enough.”

  “Come on, Torsten. Talk to yourself a little, yourself.”

  “Could we have missed anything in that room?” Öberg said.

  “Could we?”

  “Missed what, Erik? Clues? Marks? Flecks? Don’t think so. I would like to say that in all probability, I don’t think we did. But there’s no way I can know.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “It was a neat room. A clean room. That makes it harder.”

  15

  So that bastard might have leapfrogged next to her!”

  “Leapfrogged?” Ringmar asked.

  “Or whatever the hell kind of exercises they have at Friskis & Svettis,” Halders continued.

  He had called Winter right after he spoke to Lorrinder.

  “It’s probably time for you to see for yourself,” Winter said.

  “That’ll be interesting.”

  “How specific is the description?” Bergenhem asked.

  “Vague,” Halders answered.

  “She can’t have been mistaken?” Ringmar said.

  “Mistaken, mistaken, everyone can be mistaken.” Halders stretched his arms backward, as though he were already at the gym. “But she saw Paula talking to someone, apparently several times. She got the idea that they’d met before, somewhere else. And Nina Lorrinder doesn’t seem to be an airhead.” Halders brought his arms down. “I had to pry all of this out of her with pliers.”

  “We like that kind of witness,” Ringmar said.

  “Once they start talking, sure,” said Halders.

  Ringmar changed position in his chair, and changed position again. Halders’s arm motions were contagious. Soon they would all start doing aerobics in the conference room.

  “Could be anyone at all,” Ringmar said.

  “That’s what we’re going to rule out, isn’t it?” Halders stretched his arms out behind him again. His joints cracked like dry wood being snapped. “Or vice versa.”

  “You really need the gym,” Bergenhem said.

  “Phys ed with team sports and games,” Halders said. “I was always best.”

  “At which one?”

  “You’re too young to understand, kid.”

  “I’m confused.”

  The door opened. Djanali came into the room and closed the door behind her.

  “Back already?” Halders said.

  She sat down beside him without answering and took out her notebook and looked up.

  “I showed the pictures to the staff at Leonardsen and at Talassi, and everyone agrees that it’s Ecco.”

  “You’ve only been to two stores?” Halders asked.

  “No, but I wanted to give you an idea of what things look like.”

  “What do things look like, then?”

  “How many have they sold?” Winter filled in.

  “If we’re talking about size ten or eleven . . .” Djanali read from her notebook, “seven pairs at Leonardsen and ten at Talassi. That’s this year.”

  “Last year, then?” Bergenhem asked.

  “The shoe wasn’t for sale there last year.”

  “Why not?”

  “No doubt they thought that no one wanted them anymore. That they could offer other brands.”

  “That the Ecco Free era was over,” Halders said.

  “How many used charge cards?” Winter asked.

  “All but two.”

  “Those are the two we’re after,” Halders said.

  “I’m not so sure of that,” Ringmar said.

  “Should we bet on it?” Halders said.

  “The shoes we saw in the video might not have anything to do with the case,” Ringmar said.

  “Should we bet on that, too?” Halders said.

  “Let’s go with what we have right now,” Winter said. “Get going.”

  • • •

  Christer Börge didn’t look scared as he sat in the interrogation room. He looks like he’s been here before, Winter thought. But he hasn’t.

  The interrogation room had a small window that let in the September light. There was a microphone on the felt tabletop. It was like a microphone in a studio. And the room functioned as a studio.

  “Why are we sitting here?” Börge asked. He hadn’t asked that before. He hadn’t said much when Winter called and asked him to come in.

  “It’s calm and quiet,” Winter said.

  At first he hadn’t wanted to conduct the interrogation. He was no interrogator yet. It took experience. But Börge wasn’t a suspect. And Winter had talked to him more than anyone else had. That could be an advantage. At least, that’s what Birgersson had told him before he’d walked into the interrogation room.

  Börge turned toward the light from the window. Suddenly it looked like he was starting to feel cold. He rolled down the sleeves of his shirt and then placed his hands on the table. His hands were very white against the green felt surface in the faint light inside the room. Winter thought they looked like they’d never been exposed to sunlight. They looked like white plastic, or plaster.

  After the formalities, he prepared himself for the questions. Börge looked at the window. There was only sky outside. No trees reached up this high. Winter cleared his throat one time.

  “Do you believe Ellen will come back?”

  Börge turned his face toward him.

  “What kind of question is that?”

  “Try to answer it.”

  “Does it make any difference what I believe?”

  Faith can move mountains, Winter thought. But a policeman can’t think like that. A pastor can think like that.

  “Sometimes it makes a difference in how you handle the shock.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “What was the last thing she said when she left home that afternoon?” Winter asked.

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Try.”

  “Would you remember what your wife said when she went to buy a magazine?”

  “Think about it.”

  “
About what?”

  “About what I just asked. What Ellen said when she left.”

  “She probably didn’t say anything.”

  “Was that how it usually was?”

  “I don’t understand what you’re trying to get at.”

  Winter didn’t answer.

  “Are you trying to get at that she said some kind of good-bye or something?”

  “I’m just trying to help you,” Winter said.

  “Help me?”

  “To remember.”

  “But what if there’s nothing to remember?”

  There’s always something, Winter thought. If you want to remember. You don’t want to. And I want to know why.

  “Earlier, you said that you had an argument before she left.”

  Börge didn’t say anything.

  “That that’s why she went out.”

  “Surely that’s not what I said.”

  “That it wasn’t the first time.”

  “Wait a minute now,” said Börge. “Take it easy now.”

  Winter took it easy. Börge had taken it easy, until now. His answers might have seemed aggressive when one read the transcribed interrogation, but his attitude wasn’t aggressive. In that sense, a transcription of an interrogation was inadequate. The words were only one component. Sometimes, the words were the least significant part. Everything ought to be on film, Winter thought. In the nineties, we’ll film everything.

  “Did Ellen ever threaten to leave you?”

  Börge gave a start. His eyes had sought the window again but had only gotten halfway.

  Now they were back on Winter.

  “No. Why would she do that?”

  “She wanted to have children. You didn’t want to have children. Isn’t that a reason?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t think that’s a reason for divorce?”

  “You don’t understand,” Börge said. “Have you been divorced yourself?”

  “No,” Winter answered. He had made up his mind not to answer any questions, because he was the one who was supposed to ask them. When the person being interrogated started asking the questions, the interrogation had gone in the wrong direction. An interrogation was one-way communication disguised as a conversation. An interrogator must never give anything. Never let anything go. Never say anything that revealed himself. It was always take, never give. Listening. And at the same time, it was about forming trust. Listen to the story, Birgersson had said: Everyone has a story they want to tell; it wants out of them and in the end they can’t stop it.

  “Are you married?” Börge asked.

  “How often did Ellen say that she wanted to have children?” Winter asked.

  “So you’re not married,” Börge said. “Make sure to get married. Maybe you’ll learn something.”

  “What will I learn?” Winter asked.

  “Well . . . how women are, for example.” Börge’s gaze moved away and reached the window. “You learn stuff like that.”

  “How are they, then?”

  “You’ll have to figure that out for yourself.” It seemed to Winter that Börge was smiling. “You have to figure something out for yourself.”

  “Do you mean that all women are the same?” Winter asked.

  Börge didn’t answer. He seemed to be studying what was outside the window, but there was nothing there.

  Winter repeated the question.

  “I don’t know,” Börge said.

  He didn’t seem to notice the contradiction in his words.

  “What was Ellen like, compared to other women?” Winter asked.

  “She loved me,” Börge said, looking straight at Winter again. “That’s the only thing that matters here, isn’t it?”

  • • •

  Now the lobby was deserted, as though the hotel had already closed down. The young clerk who had found Paula Ney was standing behind the reception desk. Bergström, his name was Bergström. It sounded like a name from Norrland, and he had a Norrland accent. Everyone up there was named something with “ström”—stream—combined with something else from nature. It was wild up there; it was beautiful. Sometime Winter would head north. Past Stockholm. He wanted to show his children what snow was for real. Elsa had seen snow during a total of two weeks in her five-year-old life. Lilly had never seen snow. It wouldn’t happen this winter, either. But there would be other winters.

  “We’re closing in two weeks,” Bergström said.

  “That was fast.”

  Bergström shrugged.

  “The hotel already looks closed,” Winter said.

  Bergström shrugged again. Once more and it would be some kind of spasm.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Not great,” he answered, “I shouldn’t actually be here.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m off sick. But don’t tell the insurance office. Salko has the flu and there’s no one else left.”

  “Are there any guests, then?”

  “A couple of salesman types. But they’re out doing sales.”

  Winter saw the man smile faintly. It disappeared as quickly as it had come.

  “You can keep the cordon up until the place closes up,” Bergström said.

  “That’s kind of you,” Winter said.

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “I’m going up,” Winter said, and he left the lobby and walked up the stairs.

  He climbed over the cordon and opened the door.

  He stood in the middle of the floor and listened to the sounds from outside. They were faint but distinct through the double-glazed windows.

  Had she brought the rope along herself?

  Had the murderer brought the rope?

  Did they know each other?

  He looked around. Room number ten. Everything was familiar in there, like in a cell. A place a person knows well but doesn’t want to spend a second of his life in. He looked up, toward the beam that the rope had been wrapped around. She hadn’t done it herself.

  Winter hadn’t seen her hanging; Bergström had seen to it that he didn’t have to see. But he had wanted to. What a fucking wish. I wish I had been standing here then, to see her swinging from the rope.

  Would I have learned anything? Understood anything?

  He felt the familiar tingling on his neck and across his scalp. He closed his eyes and saw the image he wanted to see and didn’t want to see. At the same time, he felt a draft from the window, as though someone had opened it while he stood there. As though someone were observing him.

  He opened his eyes. The window was closed. The room was closed. But he knew that he would come back here.

  He remembered her words, all of them: I love you both and I will always love you no matter what happens to me and you’ll always be with me wherever I go and if I’ve made you angry at me I want to ask for your forgiveness and I know that you’ll forgive me no matter what happens to me and no matter what happens to you and I know that we will meet again.

  • • •

  Elisabeth Ney’s face was pale and closed. She had opened her eyes a little while ago, but she still looked . . . closed in. Closed off. Closed up. Winter didn’t know. He was sitting on the chair next to the bed. There was a vase of red roses on the nightstand. He couldn’t see a card.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said.

  “I pop up everywhere,” he said. “I apologize for that.”

  She blinked once, as though to accept the apology.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  She blinked again. That must mean yes. Two times was no.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing here,” she said after a little bit. “How I ended up here.”

  “You needed to rest,” Winter said.

  “Am I sick?”

  “Haven’t you spoken with a doctor?”

  “They say that I need to rest.”

  Winter nodded.

  “But they let you in.”

  She said this in the same slow way as
everything else. There was no accusation in her voice.

  “I wanted to see how you felt,” he said. “And I admit that I wanted to ask a few questions, too.”

  “I understand. And I do want to help. But I don’t know what I should say.” She moved her head on the pillow. “Or what I should remember.”

  Her brown hair looked black against the pillow. The light fell in through the blinds and gave her circles both above and under her eyes. Her chin looked like it was in two parts. There was a particular characteristic in her eyes that Winter thought he’d seen before, on someone else. It was a pretty normal observation. There were people everywhere who weren’t related at all but still resembled each other. That’s the way it was with Ney. He had seen those eyes on someone else. He didn’t know who, or where, or when. Someone he had met or had seen on the street, at the store, in a bar, in a park. Anywhere and anytime.

  There was green in her eyes.

  “It’s possible that Paula met a man at the gym,” Winter said.

  “At the gym? What gym?”

  “Friskis & Svettis. Didn’t you know that?”

  “Uh . . . yes. Of course.”

  She didn’t look certain. But that didn’t have to mean anything. This time, it might be the words themselves that were the truth.

  “Didn’t Paula ever say anything about it?”

  “That she worked out?”

  “Whether she met someone there.”

  “Well, she didn’t even say that she’d met anyone at all. In general. I told you that before.”

  Winter nodded.

  “She would have told me about it, if it were true.”

  “Is there any reason that she wouldn’t want to say anything?” Winter asked.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Maybe she wanted to tell you that she had met someone. But she couldn’t do it.”

  “Why wouldn’t she be able to?”

  “Maybe she was afraid to.”

  “Why would she be afraid to tell me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you mean that she was with someone who forced her to keep it a secret?”

  “I don’t know that either. It’s just a . . . manner of questioning.”

  Ney had raised her head from the pillow. Winter could see the depression her head had left on the pillow. It was like a shadow.

  “She should have told me. Whatever it was.”

  Winter nodded.

  “Do you think she went to that hotel voluntarily?” she asked.