Room No. 10

by Ake Edwardson

  “Next one,” Halders whispered.

  Winter nodded toward the rough wall. The meager light in the stairwell came from the streetlights outside. This was a long way for the light to come. They stood beside the door, one on each side. There was a peephole in the middle of the door. Halders pressed the doorbell. The ring sounded very loud; the sound was enhanced by the darkness. It was a shrill ring, like in an old-fashioned clock. There was no melody to the ringing; even Halders’s singing earlier had been melodic compared to this ringing. Halders pressed again. Again, there was shrieking and rasping in the hall beyond the door. That was what they heard. No voices, no steps. Winter bent down and carefully lifted the metal flap over the mail slot. He saw only darkness. After about ten seconds he saw the contours of the rug that lay inside the door. A faint light was coming from somewhere inside the apartment, presumably from a window. It was the same worthless light.

  19

  Winter lifted his head and nodded at Halders.

  Halders pounded his fist against the door.

  “Police! Open the door!”

  Winter listened for sounds from inside. It was almost always possible to hear something. No silence was completely quiet.

  “Open the door,” Halders repeated. He tapped his fist lightly on the veneer of the door. It sounded thin, hollow. Another blow and Halders would be through. They were still standing in the gloom of the stairwell. No one stepped out of any of the doors to turn on the lights and ask what in God’s name was going on.

  They didn’t hear anything from inside. There was a rushing sound outside; it could be the wind or the building’s ventilation system.

  Winter thought of the agitated voice on the telephone:

  “They’re screaming in there! There’s a woman screaming!”

  Halders placed his ear against the door.

  Winter felt the door handle, pulled it down.

  The door opened when he tugged at it.

  “Shit, it’s not locked,” said Halders.

  “Take it easy.”

  Halders nodded. He slowly opened the door. Winter felt his pulse, as he felt the weapon in his hand. It felt like now. This was now. This was nothing you could practice for, not in any real way. There could be anything at all in the darkness, inside the apartment. To go in there could be to say farewell to this world. That was what he was feeling right now. He hadn’t had that feeling very many times yet.

  “I’m going to turn on the light,” Halders said. “Be prepared.”

  The hall suddenly lit up, as though there had been an explosion. Winter shielded his eyes with his left hand. They waited for ten seconds and then stepped in. There were clothes lying on the floor, outerwear, innerwear. Shoes.

  They walked carefully from room to room. There was no one in the apartment.

  There were red stains on the floor in the kitchen. There were newspapers lying on the floor. The red stuff had run down onto the newspapers like paint. The papers lay there like a protective layer, as though the red stuff were paint. Winter could see a headline, but it didn’t tell him anything. He could see pictures.

  “What the hell is this?” Halders said.

  Winter didn’t say anything. He bent down. He looked at the stains. It could have been paint. He could have been a painter.

  “There’s a lot,” Halders said, and he turned around and looked at Winter. “Do you feel sick?”

  “No.”

  “You’re pale, kid.”

  “What happened in here?” said Winter.

  Halders turned around again.

  “Whatever it was, it’s over now.”

  “There was no blood in the stairwell,” Winter said.

  “We don’t know that yet, do we? Forensics hasn’t been here yet, have they?”

  What would they look for? Winter thought. What kind of crime had taken place here? If it is a crime.

  “Someone could have cut himself on the arm when he was cutting a ham,” Halders said. “Or butchered a few chickens. What do you think?”

  “Where’s the knife?”

  “He forgot to toss it,” Halders said.

  “Where is he, then?” said Winter.

  “He doesn’t remember,” Halders said.

  Winter didn’t say anything about Halders’s absurd comments.

  “We’ll have to have a chat with the witness,” Halders said.

  “He doesn’t live here, does he?” said Winter.

  “On the other side of the courtyard.”

  “What was he doing in this stairwell?”

  “Was going to visit a friend on the floor below, dispatch says. Guess the friend wasn’t home. But our witness heard a fucking commotion from in here.”

  Winter nodded. Now there was only fucking silence there. Sometimes it could seem as though screams remained in a room he came to, but that’s not how it was this time. Whoever had been here had taken their screams with them.

  Halders looked around again.

  “Fucking weird,” he said.

  “I guess we’ll have to go talk to that guy,” Winter said.

  “I’ll call for another car,” Halders said. “We can’t leave until someone else is here.”

  “I’ll look around a little more,” said Winter.

  He went out into the stairwell and read the nameplate on the door. Martinsson. No first name. He knew absolutely nothing about Martinsson, him or her or them. There hadn’t been time for that. He knew nothing about what had happened here. It was fucking weird, as Halders had said. Without a victim, they knew nothing.

  He went into the hall and continued into the closest room. The double bed was unmade. It looked like two people had lain in it; there was a depression in each of the two pillows. It could have been this morning, yesterday, the day before yesterday.

  There was blood in the bedroom. He saw it the second time he looked. At first it looked like part of the pattern on the pillow. It looked as though it had ended up there on purpose. You had to look at least twice to tell.

  What had happened here?

  He went back to the kitchen.

  They waited for forensics, and then they walked across the courtyard to the building on the other side. Winter heard a dog barking from a grove of trees at the north end of the row of houses. It looked like a forest for children. The trees stood close together, but there didn’t seem to be many of them.

  The barking continued as they walked in through the entrance. Winter could still hear it as he walked up the stairs.

  They rang at another door. Winter read the nameplate: Metzer. It sounded German, or maybe French, or maybe Italian. Quite a few people from other countries lived in this part of town, southern Europeans, Finns. The Finnish colony was large. They had big parties with lots of akvavit, but his colleagues in patrol seldom had to come out here. The Finns took care of their own drunks; they were probably the best in the world at that, they and the Russians. The Swedes were worse at it, even though the country was in the middle of the vodka belt.

  Winter remained standing a few stairs down. The man who might be named Metzer opened the door. Winter didn’t know the name of the guy who made the call. Halders had taken it. Halders and Winter had been in the vicinity. They were investigating a gang that was suspected of smuggling narcotics. Yes, they could go an extra kilometer. The gang wasn’t there anyway.

  “Metzer?” Halders said.

  Winter couldn’t see the man. He was still standing inside the door. There was a draft through the stairwell, a breeze from below, as though someone had opened the front door and was holding it open. Winter could hear the dog barking again; it came up with the wind. The door must be open down there.

  “May we come in?” Halders said.

  Winter heard only a mumble from the door. He still hadn’t seen the man’s face, just Halders’s back.

  “I just have to check something,” he said, and he started to go down the stairs.

  “Did you forget something?” Halders asked, and he turned around.
/>
  “You go in,” Winter answered. “I’ll be right back.”

  The door was open downstairs. He could see that someone had propped it open; the chain was tight.

  A boy with a dog on a taut leash was standing in front of the building. The boy looked at him without saying anything. The dog was quiet now, but it wasn’t calm. It was straining to get to the small collection of trees, as though there were a magnet there.

  “Did you see anyone open the door?” Winter asked.

  The boy shook his head. He might have been eleven, maybe twelve.

  “Do you live here?” Winter asked.

  The boy pointed at the building they had been in earlier. The forensics team was still in the apartment on the fourth floor. Winter could see the light through the windows, and a sudden shadow as one of the technicians moved around inside. We won’t be long, they had said. What kind of crap is this?

  “Do you live over there?” Winter asked. “In that building?”

  The boy nodded.

  “Can’t you talk?”

  The boy shook his head. His hair was dark, yet still light in the glow from the streetlight. Winter suddenly felt it. The boy knows something. He’s standing here because he knows. He’s seen something.

  Winter could see his eyes even from this distance. It was as though they were illuminated from within.

  Winter felt a faint shiver. It passed over his hair like metal. The boy is watching me. Those eyes. The dog is tugging at its leash. The boy is pointing again. What is he pointing at now? He’s nodding and pointing. Toward the grove of trees. His hand is trembling like the leaves in the wind. It’s just as thin as they are. Now the dog is barking. It’s like it’s crazy. What did they see, the boy and the dog? The grove of trees. He wants me to go there. He can’t say it. It looks like he’s trying.

  “Is there something you want to show me?” Winter asked, and he pointed. “Over there? In the grove of trees?”

  The boy nodded.

  “What is it?”

  The boy didn’t answer.

  Winter looked around. There were no other people outside. The wind tore at whatever it could grab. The branches made shadows on the facades of the buildings. It looked like a film being shown at double speed. It was fifty, maybe sixty meters over to the trees. It was only a small grove, like an oasis in a brick desert. The birches swayed like sparse palm trees.

  The boy’s eyes were large and frightened. Winter didn’t want to expose his pistol to him. He held his hand over its butt in his pocket. He looked over at the car. It was closer than the grove.

  “I’m just going to grab something,” he said, and he walked to the car, opened the passenger-side door, and took out a flashlight. Halders had the other one. The flashlight was heavier than his weapon. Winter held it up so the boy could see. It was like a calming object. An unlit flashlight conveyed calmness. A lit one did, too, but mostly for the person holding the flashlight. A pistol could be calming in the same way. But not right now.

  As they walked across the playground, the dog began to bark and tug on its leash again. It looked like a mix of God knows what breeds. It was on the hunt; it was a natural instinct. It could smell scents in the wind that no person could smell.

  He shone the light in among the trees and looked at the boy. The dog had stopped barking, but the leash was taut. The boy was having trouble keeping the dog at the edge of the grove.

  Winter walked closer with the beam of light pointed down. Everything on the ground turned white: leaves, dirt, grass, sand, stone. That was what he saw. The boy was still standing outside. Winter walked back.

  “I don’t see anything,” he said.

  The boy pointed again.

  “Where?” Winter asked. “Where is it?”

  The boy stood a few steps in among the bushes and it looked as though the dog flew ahead through the air as it got a few meters of freedom. When the leash tightened, the dog was jerked backward, like it had been hit by a gust of wind.

  The boy nodded down toward the ground. Winter shone the beam around down there: leaves, dirt, grass, sand, stone. Several stones lay in an undefined half circle. It was probably the remains of an open fire. Winter bent down. There were darker stains on the stones, but it could be the humidity, or moss. He looked at the boy again.

  “Did you see something here?” Winter asked.

  The boy didn’t answer; he kept staring downward.

  “There’s nothing here,” Winter said.

  “A . . . a . . . hand,” said the boy.

  “What?” Winter was still crouching down. “What did you say?”

  “There was a hand there.”

  • • •

  They sat at a kitchen table with a vase of cut flowers that Winter didn’t know the names of. Flowers, birds, plants, he wasn’t good at that stuff. Leaves, dirt, grass, sand, stone; that was more his area.

  The boy was eleven years old. His name was Jonas. He looked just as frozen in here as he had outside. There was a mug of hot chocolate in front of him. His mother was sitting beside him. She looked young, but she must have been older than Winter, at least over thirty. Winter could see her features in the boy’s face; not all of them, but there was no dad at the table he could compare with.

  “We weren’t home,” said the mom. Her name was Anne. Anne Sandler. Both Jonas’s and her names were on the nameplate on the door. No dad there, either.

  Winter had asked about times. When the witness named Metzer had reported the possible fight in the Martinssons’ apartment, Anne and Jonas hadn’t been home.

  “We were at the pool.”

  Winter nodded.

  Jonas drank a sip of hot chocolate. Winter had said no thanks to hot chocolate, but yes to a cup of coffee. It was strong and hot.

  “He doesn’t usually make things up,” Anne Sandler said, nodding to Jonas.

  The boy hadn’t said much since they came in. The dog was quiet, too. It had done its duty.

  “It was a hand,” he said.

  “Oh my God,” Anne Sandler said, looking at her son.

  Winter nodded down at the boy. He didn’t look as frozen anymore.

  “There were fingers and everything.”

  “I believe you,” said Winter.

  “It stopped here,” Jonas said, aiming at his wrist.

  “Oh my God,” Anne Sandler repeated.

  “Was it big?” Winter asked. “Like a grown-up’s hand?”

  “I don’t know . . . pretty small.” The boy looked at his own hand, as though he was comparing. “But it was pretty dark out.”

  “Can’t we stop now?” Anne Sandler said, and she looked at Winter. Her eyes were pleading.

  “Soon,” he said, looking at the boy.

  “Did it look like a child’s hand?”

  The boy shook his head.

  “Like a . . . lady’s hand? A woman’s hand?”

  “Maybe,” Jonas said.

  His mother looked at her hands, removed them from the tabletop, placed them in her lap.

  “It was dark out,” Jonas continued.

  “But you could see anyway?”

  “Yes. There’s a streetlamp there. And Zack was barking more than he usually does.”

  “That dog,” Anne Sandler said. “He doesn’t do anything but bark.”

  “I’m working on training him,” Jonas said, looking at his mother.

  “It’s too late,” she said. “He’s too old.” She looked at Winter. He realized that talking about the dog was calming her down. “It’s like they say: You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

  “Zack knows good tricks,” said Jonas.

  “You saw the hand clearly?” Winter asked.

  The boy nodded and looked at the dog, who was performing the trick of sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, and drank hot chocolate again. He looked up.

  “But it didn’t look real.”

  “What do you mean, Jonas?”

  “It was so white. Like plastic. Or a cast.”
r />   “That’s enough,” his mother said, and she got up and took Winter’s half-drunk coffee cup with her into the kitchen. Winter heard the coffee land in the sink.

  • • •

  They drove back over the Älvsborg bridge. The downtown glittered to the east like there was a festival. To the west, the river widened to the sea. The blackness became wider, and larger. The temperature had sunk in the last few hours. Maybe it will snow, Winter thought. Snow in October. White on the ground.

  “Is the boy credible?” Halders said.

  Winter shrugged.

  “I think so.” He held on to the ceiling handle as Halders spun through the roundabout down toward Karl Johansgatan. “But it could have been anything. The light wasn’t the best.”

  “But you did see stains?”

  “Yes. but it could have been anything.”

  “I guess our friends from forensics will have to tell us what it is.”

  Winter didn’t answer. Soon he wouldn’t have any friends in forensics, if he ever had. They were out on the thoroughfare along the river. The dead shipyard cranes on the other side stretched far into the sky. They should be reminiscent of something, but soon no one would remember what it was. It had been part of this city. Now all of that was gone, everything that should form the face of a city. Gothenburg had a lot of faces now. Many of them were turned away. It was impossible to see them.

  “They sure were happy, our friends,” said Halders. “Another discovery site, and only fifty meters away.”

  “Yes, they were really glowing.”

  The neon lights became brighter the closer they got to downtown. Eastern Nordstan wasn’t lacking for anything. Halders stopped at a red light. A group of people dressed for a party passed on their way to Lilla Bommen. No one even glanced at the two young detectives in the anonymous car.