Room No. 10

by Ake Edwardson

  “What’s voluntarily?”

  “Do you mean she was drugged?”

  “Right now, I guess I don’t mean anything,” Winter said.

  But Paula hadn’t been drugged. The autopsy had shown that. Maybe she had been paralyzed. Scared into motionlessness. The autopsy couldn’t show something like that.

  “But if someone dragged her into the hotel . . . into that room . . . then surely someone else must have seen it?” Ney was sitting up now. She was almost on her way down from the bed, with her feet on the floor. Winter realized that some of the shock was finally beginning to subside. The questions were starting to come. “Surely someone would have seen?”

  “That’s what we’re hoping, too,” Winter said. “We’re looking for witnesses. We’re working on that all the time.”

  “Well, there are people who work at the hotel, aren’t there? What did they say?”

  “No one saw her,” Winter said.

  “What about the maids? Don’t they see everything? Don’t they go into the rooms?”

  “Not into . . . that room,” Winter said. It felt like a personal failure to say it. “They hadn’t cleaned there in the past day.”

  “Oh, God.”

  Winter didn’t say anything.

  “If they had, Paula might be alive!”

  Winter tried to disappear, become part of the air, let his face become inscrutable. Color had suddenly come to Ney’s face. She looked younger. Winter again had the vague sense of recognition.

  “And how can someone check into a hotel without being seen?” she said, moving to the edge of the bed. Winter extended a hand to steady her, but she waved it away.

  “She didn’t check in,” he answered.

  “Why wouldn’t she do that? Why didn’t she do that?” Ney’s face was close to him. Her head began to fall forward. She tried to bend it back again with a jerky movement. Winter thought of the taped sequences from Central Station. “Why didn’t anyone see her in the lobby? Why?”

  “We’re trying to figure that out, too. But as I said, we don’t know how it happened.”

  “Do you know how anything happened?”

  “Not much.”

  “Oh, God.”

  She lurched, and now Winter extended a hand and steadied her. She sat down on the edge of the bed again. Her nightgown was large, like a tent. She could have had any body type at all under the nightgown. Her hands were small and sinewy; they looked like they were made of some kind of brittle wood that had been subjected to wind and rain.

  “Her hand!” Elisabeth Ney burst out. “Why her hand?”

  • • •

  Winter ran into Mario Ney in the hall.

  Ney nodded as they passed each other but showed no sign of stopping.

  Winter stopped.

  “What is it?” Ney said, still walking.

  “She’s coming out of the shock,” Winter said.

  Ney mumbled something that Winter couldn’t hear.

  “Sorry?”

  “So it got better here, I said.”

  “Now listen, she had to come here. For a bit.”

  “Are you a doctor?”

  Winter looked at the café at the other end of the hall. It was only a few tables with a large plant in the middle. No one was sitting there now.

  “Can we sit down for a little bit?”

  “I’m on my way up to Elisabeth.”

  “Just for a few minutes.”

  “Do I have any choice?”

  “Yes.”

  Ney looked surprised. He came along almost automatically as Winter began to walk toward the café.

  “She’s waiting for me,” Ney said as he sat down.

  “What can I get for you?” Winter said.

  “A glass of red wine,” said Ney.

  “I don’t know if they have that here,” Winter said, looking over toward the counter.

  “Of course they don’t,” Ney said. “What did you think?”

  “We can go to a bar,” Winter said.

  “I’m going to see Elisabeth.”

  “I mean after that.”

  “Okay,” Ney said, standing up.

  “I’ll wait here,” Winter said.

  Ney nodded and left.

  Winter’s cell phone rang.

  “Yes?”

  “The clerk from the hotel was looking for you. Hotel Revy.”

  It was Möllerström.

  “Which one of them?”

  “Richard Salko.”

  “What did he want?”

  “He didn’t want to say.”

  “Did you give him my cell number?”

  “No. Not yet. I asked him to call again in three minutes. It’s already been two.”

  “Give him the number.”

  Winter ended the call and waited.

  The telephone vibrated in his hand. He had turned off the ringtone.

  “Winter.”

  “Hi. It’s Richard Salko.”

  “Yes?”

  “There was some dude standing outside the hotel today. He stood there for a while.”

  “A dude?”

  “A man. A weird guy. I saw him through the window. He looked up and side to side and up again.”

  “Young? Old?”

  “Pretty young. Thirty. Maybe a young forty. I don’t know. He had some hat on. I didn’t see his hair.”

  “Have you seen him before? Did you recognize him at all?”

  “Don’t think so. But . . . he stood there for a while. Like he just wanted to stand there. Do you know what I mean? Like the place meant something to him, or whatever. Like he’d been here before.”

  “Did he come in?”

  “No. Not that I noticed.”

  “He might have?”

  “Well, only for a minute, if he did. I had to do something in another room, but I was only gone for a minute or two.”

  “Maybe it was one of your regular customers,” Winter said.

  “Maybe. But no one from my shift. Like I said, I didn’t recognize him.”

  “A tourist?” Winter said.

  “He didn’t look like a tourist,” Salko said.

  “How do they look?”

  “Stupid.”

  “How’s it going with the list?” Winter asked.

  “The list?”

  “I’m still waiting for a list of all the employees you’ve ever had.”

  “I am, too,” Salko said.

  “What the hell kind of comment is that?”

  “Sorry, sorry. But it takes time. We’re talking about a long period of time here. And a lot of turnover.”

  “If we had enough people we’d have done the whole job ourselves,” Winter said.

  “I know how it is,” Salko said.

  “Oh?”

  “I’ll do my best. Keep doing my best. I called you just now, didn’t I?”

  16

  Tourists. The city was full of tourists; they were still there even far into September: pointing, asking, spying around, eating, drinking, laughing, crying. Winter had nothing against tourists. He was happy to give directions. The city might go under without tourists; soon it would be the only industry left. Tourism and crime. Organized, unorganized. Heroin had finally reached Gothenburg. It had only been a question of time, and now, in the late eighties, the junk was here.

  “Comes with our friends from faraway lands,” Halders said.

  They were sitting in a car on the way along the river. No matter where you were going, you ended up along the river. In the autumn sunlight, it looked oily and black. A ferry was gliding out toward Vinga, on its way to Jutland. The risk that it would come back with the junk in its belly was great. Or the chance, if you preferred. There were great profits to be had for the entrepreneurs. I packed my suitcase and in it I put . . .

  They had talked about the drugs, and the more serious violence that the drugs brought along. Big money. Big violence.

  Halders drove along Allén. The scene around them was still of the old-fashioned,
safe sort. Scattered groups were smoking up on the grass, and the smoke spread over the canal along with the fumes of everything else that was gliding around in the air. But the sweet and spicy scent of hash floated above all the other smells, and Winter could smell it as he walked over the canal bridges on late afternoons.

  “You lie down in Allén one day in the September sun, and light a little joint and have yourself a little fun,” Halders sang, keeping rhythm on the wheel.

  “That was very good,” Winter said. “Did you write it yourself?”

  Halders turned his head.

  “Haven’t you ever heard of Nationalteatern?”

  “Oh, them.”

  “You have heard of them?”

  “Of course.”

  Halders smiled a mean smile but said nothing. He stopped for a red light. Two guys in old-fashioned dashikis looked up from what they were doing out on the grass and looked over at the police car. Halders raised his hand and waved.

  “Don’t forget, sneaky sneaky ding-dong, like on pins and needles, one two three, the pigs are up and trawling,” he sang.

  He turned to Winter.

  “Trawling is our thing here in Gothenburg.”

  “Trawl on, then,” Winter said.

  “I don’t give a shit about that small-time crap,” Halders said, nodding toward the dashikis, who had lit their pipe. They began to disappear into the haze.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “But the other stuff. That’s a different story.”

  He stopped at the next red light.

  A man walked by in the crosswalk. He had dark hair, sharp features, looks from the Balkans, maybe Greece, Italy, somewhere south of Jutland.

  “Could be a mule,” Halders said, nodding toward the man.

  Winter didn’t say anything.

  “They’re going to take over,” Halders said. “In ten, fifteen, twenty years the city will be full of mules, and criminal gangs from faraway lands.” He turned to Winter. “And do you know what? A lot of them will have been born here in the city!”

  “You know your future, Fredrik.”

  “It’s necessary, man. You have to be able to see into the future. It’s called imagination. It’s the only thing that separates us from the psychopaths.”

  “Will you and I be sitting here then, Fredrik?” Winter said. “In a government car on our way through Allén? In twenty years?”

  “Twenty years? Well, why not? If we’re not dead, of course. Slain in a shootout with drug dealers from the north suburbs.”

  “You said faraway lands before.”

  “It’s the same thing.”

  In twenty years. Winter might be able to think twenty years ahead, but he didn’t want to. The 2000s were more than a faraway land and a faraway time. They were like a planet that had not yet been discovered. If he made it all the way there, a lot would have happened on the way; a lot of water would have run under the Göta Älv bridge.

  Halders stopped for the third red light.

  A man walked by in the crosswalk. This one looked very Swedish. He moved stiffly and stared straight ahead, as though he were walking in a dream.

  “That guy there,” Halders said. “He needs to buy himself an alarm clock.”

  “Hey, that’s Börge,” Winter said.

  “Börje? Börje who?”

  “Börge, Christer Börge. His wife disappeared about a month ago. Ellen Börge. I interrogated him up at the station day before yesterday.”

  “Why?”

  The light was still red. Börge had passed them and was now on his way down toward Rosenlundsplatsen. Winter watched him. Börge still wasn’t turning his head to either side. He was walking quickly, but not in any particular direction. It was a feeling Winter had. At that moment, Börge had no direction.

  “Why?” Halders repeated.

  “There’s something I can’t put my finger on with that case,” Winter said, turning toward Halders as Börge’s coat disappeared behind the yellow branches.

  “Case? There is no case, is there?”

  “I think there is. I think there’s a crime behind it.”

  “You think she’s dead?”

  Winter flung out his hands.

  The light changed and Halders accelerated.

  “You must have something to go on, right? What makes you think it’s a crime?”

  Winter tried to find Börge again, but he had vanished.

  “Him,” he said, nodding toward the empty branches.

  “Do you think he did it? Killed his wife?”

  “I don’t know. There’s something I could understand here, but that I don’t understand.”

  Halders laughed.

  “That might not be because of him,” he said, “it might be because of you, man.”

  “I wish I were like you, Fredrik.”

  “I know just what you mean. Lots of people wish that.”

  “Happy and unconcerned and ignorant.”

  “Imagination is better than knowledge,” Halders said.

  “That’s Einstein,” Winter said. “You quoted Einstein.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Halders said, and smiled. “But there you go.”

  “I wish I were like you,” Winter repeated.

  “Flattery doesn’t work on me.”

  “You’re a lucky person, Fredrik.”

  Halders stopped for the fourth light.

  “So you brought Börge in for questioning, Einstein? What did Birgersson say about that?”

  “He’s the one who suggested it.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “But I had talked about it earlier myself.”

  “I guess you really sucked up to the boss.”

  “Haven’t you ever gotten to conduct an interrogation, Fredrik?”

  “So Birgersson is that interested,” Halders mumbled, without answering Winter’s question.

  “I guess he suspects something, too,” Winter said.

  Halders didn’t say anything. He was driving on Första Långgatan now. A streetcar whistled by on its way west. Halders rolled down his window. Winter felt a cool breeze. The level of sound increased. There was scratching from their police radio, mumbling, talking, but nothing was directed at them.

  “Did you get anything out of him, then?” Halders asked as he turned right, down toward the river, and stopped at the fifth light. Semi trucks from the West Germany ferry roared by on Oscarsleden. “Did a light bulb come on while questioning Mr. Coat?”

  “Just that he loved his wife.”

  The light turned green and Halders made a flying start and drove west. Winter watched the ferry pass under the Älvsborg bridge. His perspective distorted the image. It looked as though the smokestacks were going to crash right into the span of the bridge.

  “Did he say that? During the interrogation?” Halders turned his head. “That he loved her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then he’s the guilty one.”

  “It was the second time he said it,” Winter said.

  “Then he’s doubly guilty.”

  • • •

  It was quiet in the cafeteria, giving a sense of reverence. A man had shuffled down in his hospital pajamas, surrounded by his family. They conversed in quiet voices and Winter couldn’t hear any words. Some teenagers came in from the street and sat down without ordering anything. They looked around with big eyes, as though they had chosen the wrong door somewhere.

  Mario Ney was back in thirty minutes. Winter had worked on his notes during that time. By now they had questioned all the guests who had been at Hotel Revy at the time of Paula’s death. There weren’t very many, and all of them could be crossed off the investigation. Some of them would land in other investigations. The hotel was going to close down, and no one knew yet what would come in its place. For Winter’s part, they could just as soon tear down the whole thing. But not yet.

  Ney sat down in front of him, but it was clear this was temporary—he was sitting on the edge of the chair
. Winter could have decided on a different meeting at a different time with Ney, but there had been something about the man that made Winter decide on now. It was an expression on Ney’s face. Winter recognized it, but in a different way than with Elisabeth. It was the restlessness of someone who is suffering from knowing something. Who wants to get rid of it.

  “Where are we going?” Ney asked.

  “Do you still want a glass of wine?”

  “Yes. But if you . . .” Ney said, but he didn’t finish his sentence.

  “I always want a glass of wine,” Winter said. “I’m just going to get rid of the car.”

  • • •

  The bar was near Winter’s apartment. He had put the car in the parking garage after he let Ney out on the next block.

  They each ordered a glass of wine of high quality. A girl of about twenty served them. She set down a glass of water for each of them without being asked. Winter didn’t recognize her.

  “I’ll get this,” Winter said when the woman had left the table.

  “You mean the police will?”

  “Won’t be approved, unfortunately.”

  “Do you work like this often?” Ney asked. “You’d become an alcoholic.”

  “I’m working on it,” Winter said.

  “Watch out. It can go quicker than you’d think.”

  Winter nodded.

  “I’ve seen it with people around me,” Ney said.

  “Around you where?”

  “Nowhere in particular,” Ney answered, letting his gaze float out around them.

  It was peaceful in the bar. It was another blue hour. Winter didn’t recognize the bartender. The man had a black circle around his eye, and he wasn’t just wearing it because it was twilight. He had definitely been hit, but probably not in here. It wasn’t that kind of place.

  “I have to apologize for being brusque earlier,” Ney said. “At our house, I mean.” He looked at Winter. “And I’m not just saying that because you’re buying me a drink.”

  “I can buy you two.”

  “Do you understand what I mean?” Ney said.

  “I understand if you overreacted. It’s normal.”

  “Is it?”

  “When something like this has happened, everything is normal,” Winter said. “And nothing. Nothing is normal anymore.”

  He looked around the bar again. Its corners had started to grow darker in the last few minutes. The contours began to dissolve, as though he had already had a few glasses. Everything became dimmer, and would continue to do so until someone got the bad idea of starting to turn on lights. They could sit in twilight until then. The wineglasses still stood on the table. It’s as though neither of us wants to lift the glass, Winter thought. That’s not why we came here.