Room No. 10

by Ake Edwardson

  “But why?” Ney said. “I just don’t get it. Why?”

  “That letter . . .” Winter said.

  “Don’t talk about that damn letter,” said Ney.

  “But we have to.”

  “I don’t want to. Elisabeth doesn’t want to. No one wants to.”

  Winter lifted his glass and drank without bothering to smell any of the wine’s bouquet. This made the wine lose its taste. Ney drank. He didn’t seem to be smelling the bouquet either. They could have been drinking swill from a box. Winter had never done that. Wine belonged in glass bottles. Someone who drank from a box might as well also drink wine from a paper cup for the sake of consistency.

  Ney put down his glass.

  “I don’t understand this guilt she’s feeling,” he said, without meeting Winter’s eyes. “Because it seems to be something like that. Like she wants to beg for forgiveness. She is begging for forgiveness. She had nothing to beg for forgiveness for. Nothing.”

  “Nothing that once happened to all of you? Your family?”

  “Like what?” Ney asked.

  “Something she was thinking about,” Winter said. “That she couldn’t let go. Something you might not remember yourself.”

  “I can’t do this,” Ney said, looking straight at Winter now. “I can’t remember anything like that. There isn’t anything. What could there be that . . . would make Paula write a letter like that? In such a . . . situation. Oh, my God.”

  “She went away on a trip,” Winter said. “A long trip.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “Why did she go?”

  “She was young. Younger. Oh, God. She was still so young.”

  Ney suddenly looked frightened of his own words. It was as though they had attacked him. He had recoiled as though he’d been hit. It was as though someone Winter couldn’t see were standing there. There was a sudden cold draft from the door, maybe from the window. Ney’s eyes turned inward. His face closed like a heavy door.

  “For a long time, you didn’t know where Paula was,” said Winter.

  “We knew where she was,” said Ney.

  “Oh?”

  “We knew she was traveling in Europe.”

  “Italy? Did she go to the place where you grew up?”

  Ney didn’t answer. That was answer enough.

  “Sicily?”

  “There’s nothing left there,” said Ney. “Nothing for her to see.”

  “But did she go there?”

  “It doesn’t exist,” said Ney. “There’s nothing she could find there.”

  “Find? What was she searching for?”

  “Searching . . .”

  Ney seemed to be searching for words, himself. He looked as though his own background was so far away that he couldn’t remember it or put it into words. I’ll have to be careful here, thought Winter. If Paula traveled to Sicily, it might not have anything to do with her death. Why am I even thinking that it does? Is it because of her father’s silence? And her mother’s? She is silent, too, in her own way.

  “Paula didn’t even know Italian,” Ney said, as though that were a crucial factor in deciding not to go to Italy.

  “But didn’t Elisabeth say that Paula spoke Italian?”

  “Just a few words,” Ney answered.

  The trip, Winter thought again. What happened during that trip? What happened after it? Ten years after it?

  • • •

  What happened in this apartment? Winter walked from room to room. Paula had lived in her apartment for the past seven years, and that was a very long time. Who had come here? Not many people. Paula and her loneliness. She’d had her parents. Her family. Her job. A few friends. Was that a lonely life? If it was, then Winter was lonely, too. That was what he had. It was enough for him. It wasn’t loneliness.

  He walked over to the window. Guldheden was outside; the tall buildings, the slopes and the hills, the city squares, which were modern and yet belonged to a different time. Squares that were built in the fifties will always be modern, Ringmar had once said. The fifties and sixties. We’ll never have a more modern time. Winter thought about when he had turned twenty. He was going to become a lawyer. He became a cop. When he’d become one, he had stood as he was standing now, right now, and looked over Guldheden from a different angle, a different point, but it had been the same buildings and hills.

  His own apartment had been sparsely furnished, bare, unfinished, and that was somewhat natural. He wasn’t finished with anything yet. But this . . . Paula’s apartment was still covered, draped, and there wasn’t much that told of a life under there. Her apartment was as sparsely furnished and bare as Winter’s had been; when she died she was only two years older than Winter had been back when he became a cop, and he felt a sudden despair. Yes. The feeling came and went very quickly. No modern 2010s for Paula; no more twenty-first century. Nothing would be finished in this apartment, or anywhere else.

  He saw a small van weaving its way along down there among the tall brick buildings. It stopped in front of a mailbox and a woman got out. It wasn’t Paula’s fault; she hadn’t had any fault in the matter. A pen had been stuck in her hand. That bastard. Her hand didn’t exist. It was hidden behind all the white.

  The mailwoman emptied the mailbox, placed the sack in the yellow vehicle, got behind the wheel, drove into the roundabout, and disappeared northward. Winter had seen her white hands turning the wheel as she drove through the roundabout. He remained standing at the window. The leaves were beautiful. They were mostly yellow, but a different yellow.

  Suddenly, the city out there felt bigger than ever. You could hide out there. Do some deed and then hide. But I will get you, you bastard.

  He knew that it would be dangerous.

  • • •

  The plane glided down with the usual slow landing and the loud noise. Winter was standing in the east parking lot, and he saw the plane touch down like a giant bird on a course to the north. The wrong course. But later this evening it would turn back. In less than two months he would be sitting onboard. They would be sitting onboard.

  He went in and waited outside Arrivals. People were standing in a half circle outside the doors. He thought he recognized a few faces, and that wasn’t unusual. He was one of many with relatives in Costa del Sol. Málaga wasn’t far away.

  Lilly was sleeping in her stroller and Elsa was carefully pushing it ahead of her.

  “Papa! Papa!”

  Elsa let go of the stroller and Winter caught it with one arm and Elsa with the other. She could jump high, higher than she could just two weeks ago.

  She gave him several kisses; he didn’t have a chance.

  He caught Angela’s waist and gave her a kiss on the lips.

  “Welcome home.”

  “Hi, Erik.”

  “Did the trip go well?”

  “Lilly’s ears hurt a little, but it stopped.”

  “She cried a whole lot,” said Elsa.

  “Enough to sleep until tomorrow,” said Angela.

  Winter bent down and gave his younger daughter a kiss. She didn’t wake up. She smelled good; he had almost forgotten that scent.

  • • •

  Elsa and Lilly were sleeping when he uncorked another bottle and carried it into the living room. Angela was sitting in the easy chair next to the balcony. The door was cracked and they could hear the traffic down there, like a distant roar. The curtains moved in the breeze.

  “The weather is warmer than I thought,” Angela said. “And the city looks bigger. It’s funny.”

  “It’s easy to forget,” said Winter.

  “How warm Gothenburg is?”

  “Yes. Warm and tender.”

  “Like your cases.”

  He drank the wine. It was cool; it tasted of the minerals in the Alsace soil.

  “Paula.”

  “Yes. Do you know anything more?”

  “I don’t know if I know,” he answered, and he told her about the past few days.

&n
bsp; “My leave of absence went through,” he said afterward. “The boss at county didn’t have any objections.”

  17

  They lay in the bed and listened to the sounds of the night. There weren’t many. No sirens, hardly any noise from cars. Winter looked at the clock; soon the hour of the wolf. The wind had come up outside; the temperature had dropped. There was a draft from the half-open window. He got out of bed and walked across the room and closed the window. The wind was tearing at the branches of the trees around Vasaplatsen. He could see the leaves falling even in the dark. He tried to see whether anyone was standing and smoking on the balcony across the park, but there was no glow. He walked back to the bed and felt the warmth of the wood floor. That was one of the reasons to stay in the apartment. The children could play on that floor without the risk of catching cold. A new heated floor wasn’t the same thing, and this quality of wooden floor didn’t exist anymore.

  “Soon it will start to get light,” Angela said.

  “It’s hours until then.”

  “I don’t think I can sleep.”

  “Why not?”

  “My head is spinning.”

  “Do you want a glass of water?”

  “Yes, please.”

  He got out of bed again, passed the hall, took a glass from the shelf in the kitchen. Familiar noises were coming from down in the courtyard. It was the paperboy. In three minutes the paper would plop down in the hall. Angela might take it and start reading right away, local news without an extra day’s delay.

  Winter guessed that Paula’s murder was hardly newsworthy any longer. Too little was happening. At least for the journalists. At the same time, some of them understood that the less they got out of the CID, the more there was to get. Silence was telling, in its own way. But in this case, the silence spoke in a different way. The silence surrounding Paula. It was a silence he couldn’t get at. There was something suppressed about it that he’d never really come across before. Like a silence that’s only a false front. That you know something tremendous is hiding behind. You can see the silence, touch it, but it’s not real. It appears to be connected to everything else, and all the details, for their part, seem to be real, but it doesn’t fit together. It’s like reading the instructions for a dream. They don’t exist. They can’t ever exist.

  He went back with the glass of water.

  “Thanks.”

  “Why is everyone so quiet?” he said, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

  “What do you mean? Here?”

  “Paula. Everyone around Paula. It’s so quiet.”

  “Well, you talked to her father. Didn’t he open up a little?”

  “I don’t actually know. I don’t know what he wanted.”

  “Your work is hurting you, Erik. You think that everyone has a hidden agenda behind what they say.”

  “Well . . .”

  “That everyone lies. Or tries to hide the truth.”

  “Isn’t that the same thing?”

  “You know what I mean. And then, when someone just tries to tell it like it is, or just wants to . . . well, get something off their chest, maybe, then you don’t believe that either.”

  “The chief inspector as psychotherapist.”

  “Now you’re starting to understand,” she said, and he saw a smile flash in the dark of the bedroom.

  “I’ve understood that for a long time. I even invite it.”

  “Yes, I know, Erik. But try to see it like that again sometime. Not everyone lies.”

  “People lie until there’s proof to the contrary,” he said.

  “Isn’t it the other way around?”

  “It used to be.”

  “You promised me once that you wouldn’t become cynical.”

  “I’ve kept that promise.”

  They heard a new sound in the hour of the wolf.

  “Lilly,” said Angela. “She’s started to wake up early.”

  “I’ll go.”

  He went out into the hall again and into the girls’ room. They had asked Elsa whether she wanted her own room, but she wanted to share with Lilly. She thought that it would be “fun.” Lilly moved in. She had already crawled up into a half stand when Winter lifted her up and whispered into her ear.

  • • •

  He walked by Ringmar’s room before the morning meeting. Ringmar was reading from a thick pile of documents in front of him.

  “You look full of energy,” Ringmar said as Winter sat down.

  “My family came back yesterday.”

  “Aha. No more bachelor life.”

  “That was long ago,” Winter said.

  “Everything was long ago,” said Ringmar, and he looked down at his document again.

  “What are you reading?”

  The telephone on Ringmar’s desk rang before he could answer.

  “Yes?”

  Winter heard only a voice, no words. Ringmar nodded twice. He looked at Winter and shook his head. Winter leaned forward.

  “Where is he now?” Ringmar said into the receiver, and listened. “We’ll have to hope he stays there.”

  Winter saw a wrinkle deepen between Ringmar’s eyes.

  “Elisabeth Ney has checked herself out of the hospital but she hasn’t come home,” Ringmar said as he hung up the phone.

  “I’m listening,” said Winter, and he felt his skin tighten at a spot above his right temple.

  “That was Möllerström. Mario Ney called here and as Möllerström was about to transfer the call to you, he disappeared.”

  “To me? He wanted to talk to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where was he?”

  “Möllerström asked right away, like the good policeman he is. Ney is at home. He had called the hospital and found out that Elisabeth had checked out at her own request and that she hadn’t asked for anyone to meet her.”

  “No one asked, probably,” Winter said. “Or they thought she would be met by someone.”

  “In any case, she hasn’t come home. It’s been three hours since she left the hospital. She doesn’t have a cell phone.”

  “When did Ney call the hospital?”

  “Just now, according to Möllerström. And then he called here right away. Möllerström tried to get hold of him again when he disappeared into the ether, but no one answered at the house.”

  “She could be walking around the city,” Winter said. “Sitting in a café. Shopping. Riding around on the streetcars.”

  Ringmar nodded.

  “All so she wouldn’t have to go home again,” he said.

  “Or she could be disoriented.”

  “She could have disappeared,” said Ringmar.

  “That word can mean many things, Bertil.”

  “We’re going out to Tynnered,” said Ringmar.

  • • •

  “Isn’t there any supervision?” said Mario Ney even as they were in the stairwell. He had been waiting with the door open; he must have been standing at the kitchen window and saw them park down below. His words echoed through the stairwell. There was sweat on his forehead. “How could she just be discharged like that?”

  “Can we come in, Mario?” said Winter.

  “What? Yes . . .”

  They walked into the hall. Ney closed the door with a bang. Winter could hear it echo through the stairwell. It sounded like it turned around down at the front door and came back up again, like a lost soul.

  “Can we sit down in the living room, Mario?”

  “Sit . . . sit down? But we don’t have time to sit down!?”

  “We have people out in the city looking for Elisabeth,” said Ringmar.

  “In the city? But what if she isn’t in the city?”

  “Where else would she be?” Winter said.

  Ney didn’t answer. They went into the living room. Ney sank down into an easy chair. He looked at Winter.

  “She’s been gone for more than three hours,” he said after ten seconds.

  “When did you last speak wi
th Elisabeth, Mario?”

  “You know that. It was before you and I went and drank wine.”

  Ringmar looked at Winter.

  “Why did you call the hospital?” Winter asked.

  “Call . . . I call every day. What’s so strange about that?”

  “Nothing. But you usually visit her. Every day.”

  “Call and then visit, yes.”

  “What did she say to the staff when she left?” Ringmar asked.

  “Don’t you even know that?”

  “We have people who went over there,” Winter said. “But Bertil and I wanted to come out here right away.”

  “She must still be disoriented,” said Ney. “Otherwise she would never do this. Never.”

  Earlier, it was a mistake to admit her, Winter thought. Now it’s wrong that she was released. Either he’s learned his lesson or something else is going on.

  “Did you speak with Elisabeth earlier today?” Winter asked.

  “No.”

  Winter looked at Ringmar.

  “Did someone else talk to her?” Ney asked.

  Winter didn’t answer.

  Ney repeated his question.

  “We don’t know yet.”

  An hour later they would know. Someone, a man’s voice, had called for Elisabeth Ney, and a nursing assistant had arranged for her to take the call by going into the hospital room and bringing her to a telephone discreetly placed next to the common room.

  Half an hour later she had left the floor. No one at the reception desk remembered her going out through the shining doors. It was like a hotel, Winter thought. Strangers came and went.

  • • •

  “Where did he call from?”

  Halders had come into the room a few minutes after the others.

  “Gothia,” Winter answered. “The hotel.”

  “Oh, shit. We’re sticking to the hotel theme.”

  “The call came from a telephone in the lobby,” Ringmar said.

  “But of course it wasn’t any of the employees who called?” Halders said.