Room No. 10

by Ake Edwardson

  “The hell you don’t. I remember that you suspected I had something to do with Ellen disappearing. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s why you’re here now, too.”

  “That’s not why,” said Winter.

  “She’s still not lying in any of the closets here,” said Börge. “You can check once more if you want to.”

  “I saw you today,” said Winter.

  Börge didn’t answer. He took a quick gulp of wine and put down his glass. The foot of the glass had left behind a red ring on the blond wood of the coffee table. Börge didn’t seem to notice it. His movements had become a bit broader. The bottle was barely half-full.

  “I saw you in town. At Nordstan. I happened to see you.” Winter leaned forward. He could smell the faint barn aroma of the wine from the bottle. It was a relatively expensive Pessac. Apparently, if Börge was going to drink, he was going to do it in style. “It was a coincidence.”

  “You don’t think I saw you?”

  “I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t hiding.”

  “I wasn’t, either.” Börge contemplated the wine bottle and then looked up. “Don’t you think I expected you would show up?”

  “It did actually seem that way,” said Winter. “When you opened the door.”

  “Nothing for three years, and then the detective pops up.”

  “It was a sudden inclination,” said Winter, “that I showed up.”

  “What does that word mean? Inclination?”

  “Well . . . I don’t know exactly,” said Winter. “It’s when you—”

  “We have to find out right away,” said Börge, and he hastily stood up and swayed and had to grab the back of the sofa behind him with one hand so he wouldn’t lose his balance. Winter looked at the bottle again. It struck him that it wasn’t necessarily the first bottle of the day. Börge seemed relatively sober, but maybe he had the tolerance of an alcoholic.

  Börge walked across the room to a wide bookcase on the wall next to the window. He studied the spines of the books and reached for one.

  “Swedish Academy’s list of words,” he said, holding the thick volume out to Winter. “Indispensable.”

  He began to page through the book.

  “In . . . incli . . . in-cli-na-tion.” He looked up. “There’s no explanation.” He looked at the book, held it up to the window as though to a source of light. “Not so indispensable.” He tossed it straight across the room in a high arc. It landed behind Winter.

  Winter got up and walked to the bookcase. Börge was still standing there, steadying himself against the spines of the books with his other hand. He stared after the book, as though to see where it had landed.

  One of the shelves was half-empty. There were three framed photographs, very close to one another. They hadn’t been there three years ago, not that Winter could remember. Or maybe they had been. He recognized two of the photos; he had seen them when he had been here. On one, Ellen was smiling at him from a chair that could be standing anywhere. She had an expressionless smile on her face; it revealed nothing. In the other photograph, one could see Christer and Ellen standing together under a tree. It could be the trees outside. It was in a city. The buildings looked familiar. Maybe one of them was the building he found himself in now.

  In the third photograph, Ellen was smiling along with another girl. The girls might be about fifteen, maybe a bit older.

  “Who is that?” Winter asked, nodding at the photograph.

  “Huh?” Börge said, turning his face toward the bookcase. Winter realized that the man was drunker than he thought. The bottle standing on the table wasn’t the first one. He must have been drinking before he went to the liquor store, unless he had downed a whole bottle in twenty minutes, before Winter arrived. It was possible.

  “Who’s the girl standing next to Ellen in that photo?”

  The girls appeared to be standing in an arbor. The bushes were close around them. They had their arms around each other, four arms, four hands. It was summer; their clothes were thin. At the edge of the picture, Winter could see something shimmery. It might be a piece of sky or water, a lake, the sea.

  Börge fixed his eyes on the photo. He swayed again but wasn’t about to lose his balance.

  “That’s Ellen’s sister.”

  “Oh?”

  Börge fixed his eyes on Winter now. He squinted slightly. His speech was even more drawn out, thicker but not slurring.

  “Didn’t you talk to her when Ellen . . . disappeared?”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  “I see.”

  “It was another of my colleagues. But I knew about her, of course.” Winter looked at the girl again.

  “Ellen never showed up at her house. We had someone down there who talked with her, too. Malmö, I think. She lived in Malmö at that point.”

  “I haven’t seen her since . . . then,” Börge said, nodding toward the photograph again.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t think she likes me.” He looked at Winter again. “I know she doesn’t like me.” He nodded, as though to himself. “She thinks everything is my fault.”

  “And yet you took out a photograph of her. And placed it on the shelf.”

  “It’s not for her,” Börge said, waving a sweeping finger in the direction of the photo. “It’s for Ellen, of course!” He took a cautious step closer. “She looks happy there, don’t you think?”

  Winter looked at the photo again.

  “I found it just a month or so ago,” Börge said. “I was going through a few things and there it was.”

  “Did you find anything more?”

  “Like what?”

  “Any more photos of Ellen? Or something else. Some kind of memento.”

  “No, no, nothing.”

  Winter kept his eyes on the girls’ faces. Perhaps there was a resemblance, but he had trouble finding it. Maybe something about their eyes or their hair. Maybe in the very way they held their bodies. Both were tall, thin, with an angularity about their bodies that would change with time.

  “They were only half sisters, as you might know,” Börge said.

  Winter nodded.

  “Never see her anymore,” Börge mumbled. “But I guess I said that before.”

  “Where does she live?” Winter asked.

  “No idea.”

  “I seem to have forgotten her name at the moment,” Winter said.

  “Eva,” said Börge. “At least, that’s what she was calling herself then.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She used different names,” Börge said.

  “Why?”

  “How the hell am I supposed to know that?” He detached himself from the shelf and took a few steps to the left, toward the sofa. Maybe it wouldn’t work this time. “I guess you’ll have to ask her if you see her.”

  • • •

  The morning meeting began with a moment of silence. It didn’t have anything to do with showing respect to anything in particular, it was more like a moment of concentration. Then Halders’s cell phone rang. Winter had just started his run-through.

  “Hmm?” This was Halders’s way of answering the phone. “Yes? Yes, it’s me.”

  He got up and walked out into the corridor and closed the door behind him.

  “It could be someone who used to work at one of the hotels,” said Winter.

  “Have we had time to go through the whole list you received?” Djanali asked.

  “Not yet,” Winter answered.

  “How about the list from the Odin? Is there anyone we know?”

  “Some small-time punks,” Ringmar said.

  “Aren’t there always?”

  “It’s not many, just a couple,” Ringmar said. “But a position at a hotel seems to function as some sort of through station sometimes.”

  “Why?” Djanali asked.

  “Well . . . people don’t seem to ask very many questions at a hotel. Among the staff, I mean. They don’t seem to be very curious.”

&nb
sp; “No, we’ve definitely fucking noticed that,” said Bergenhem.

  The door was wrenched open.

  Halders stepped in with his cell phone still in hand.

  “That was one of the painters,” he said.

  “From Paula’s apartment?” Bergenhem asked.

  “No, van Gogh.”

  “What did he say?” Winter asked.

  “When they got there, Papa Mario was there.” Halders sat down. “It happened a few times.”

  “So?”

  That was Djanali.

  “Well . . . he may have had access to his daughter’s apartment. I don’t even know if we’ve asked him about it. But anyway.”

  “But anyway, what?”

  “He had a bag. He was carrying a bag when he left there.”

  “A suitcase?”

  That was Ringmar.

  “No, we aren’t that lucky. It was some kind of duffel.”

  “Why?”

  That was Bergenhem.

  “The painter didn’t ask if he could look in the bag, Lars. So the contents will remain a mystery.”

  “He was probably getting something for his daughter,” said Djanali.

  “When did this happen?” Winter asked.

  “After she disappeared, the first night,” Halders answered. “We hadn’t stopped the renovation yet.”

  “What was he doing there?” said Bergenhem.

  “I suggest that we ask him,” said Halders.

  • • •

  “I just wanted to see if she was home,” said Mario Ney.

  “You could have called,” said Winter.

  “Maybe she couldn’t have answered. She could have been sick. That’s what I wanted to check.”

  “But the painters were there.”

  “I didn’t know that. I didn’t know whether they were still there.”

  “You had been there a few times.”

  “Yes, so what? Paula wanted me to get a few things.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Clothes. A skirt, I think. A blouse.”

  “Why didn’t she do it herself?”

  “I . . . she asked me. I don’t know. I did it.”

  “What did you get the second time?”

  “The second time?”

  “Didn’t you understand the question, Mario?”

  “Uh . . . yes. The second time . . . I don’t really remember . . . it was some more clothes, I think . . .”

  “But Paula was gone then. What did she need those clothes for?”

  “I must have been . . . I don’t know . . . I must have been confused.”

  He looked Winter in the eye. His gaze didn’t waver. He looked as though he really was trying to think back.

  “No,” he said, after a little while. “That’s not what it was. I just wanted to go back there to see if I . . . could find anything that could help me. Us. Help us find her.”

  “What would that have been?”

  “I don’t know. Anything. Something that could help us.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing?”

  “No.”

  “Were you looking for anything in particular?”

  “No.”

  “What was in your bag?”

  “You mean the duffel?”

  “Yes.”

  “There was nothing in it.”

  “Whose was it?”

  “It was mine.”

  “It wasn’t Paula’s?”

  “It was mine, I said.”

  “What did you have it for?”

  “In case I found anything. If I was going to take anything with me.”

  “What did you take with you, Mario?”

  “I just said I didn’t take anything with me! I just said it!”

  “We asked one of the painters. It looked like there was something in that bag.”

  “What does he know? Who? He couldn’t tell. He was standing on a ladder up by the ceiling.”

  “Was the bag closed?”

  “I don’t even remember. Probably not.”

  “Why not?”

  “It doesn’t close, not all the way. The zipper is broken.”

  “You took a bag with a broken zipper with you?”

  “I just took it. I hardly knew what I was doing. What does it matter if the zipper is broken or not? What the hell does it have to do with this?”

  “Why didn’t you tell us that you were in Paula’s apartment those times?”

  “Why would I? It’s not important, is it?”

  • • •

  “Is it important?” Birgersson asked.

  For once he was sitting behind his desk. A toothpick was sticking out of his mouth. That was a bad sign. It would likely be exchanged for a cigarette soon.

  “He was keeping it to himself.”

  “It might actually be like he says,” said Birgersson.

  “I’m inclined to agree,” said Winter.

  “Inclined? That’s a funny word. You don’t hear it so often. Do you know what it means, exactly?”

  “No, not exactly,” Winter said.

  “Then I guess we’ll have to find out,” said Birgersson, getting up.

  “Is that necessary?” Winter asked.

  “I think better when I’m focused on looking for answers to questions,” Birgersson answered, walking over to the narrow bookcase, on which stood about thirty volumes. He took down one of them.

  “Let’s see,” he said, flipping through the pages.

  “This is the second time this has happened to me,” Winter said.

  Birgersson looked up with a questioning glance.

  “Fifteen years ago or so. At Christer Börge’s house.”

  “Christer Börge? The missing wife?”

  “He looked up a word in the Swedish Academy’s list, too.”

  “Well, there you go.”

  “Strange,” Winter said.

  “Maybe it’s more common than you think,” Birgersson said, and he kept flipping pages.

  “Wonder if he’s still alive,” said Winter.

  28

  No explanation,” Birgersson said. He closed the book, placed it on the bookcase, walked back, sat down in his chair again, and nodded at Winter. “That’s how it goes sometimes.”

  “That’s how it went then,” Winter said.

  “Sorry?”

  “There was no explanation.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t remember what word it was,” Winter asked. “Give me a minute.”

  “I’m not thinking of the word,” said Birgersson.

  “I can’t stop thinking about that case, Sture. Or whatever I should call it. Ellen’s disappearance.”

  “You’ll probably have to live with it for the rest of your career,” said Birgersson.

  Winter didn’t answer.

  “Career,” Birgersson repeated, and he picked up a new toothpick, looked at it, stuck it in his mouth, looked over the table at Winter. “Next fall I’ll be rid of mine.”

  “Congratulations are in order,” said Winter.

  “Yes, aren’t they?”

  Birgersson leaned over the photographs they had placed out on the desk. There were more of them on a bench along the long side of the room.

  They depicted mother and daughter.

  Birgersson had placed the two faces alongside each other. It was approximately the same angle, lighting, distance. The same silence. In their own way, the same faces.

  Birgersson looked at them in silence.

  “Who does she look most like, Erik?” he said at last, looking up. “Of her parents?”

  “I don’t actually know, Sture.”

  “Her mom? Her dad? I don’t really see any resemblance here.”

  “Why are you asking?”

  “Just hit me that I’ve hardly seen any photos of this family.”

  “There are hardly any,” said Winter.

  “What does he want with . . . the white trop
hies?” Birgersson said, looking down at the pictures again, other pictures. “It’s as though he’s collecting something. But he . . . leaves it there.”

  “It’s got something to do with ownership,” Winter said.

  “He had the right to them? The hand? The finger?”

  Winter nodded.

  “Is that how you see it?”

  “He felt that he had the right to everything that was them,” said Winter. “He could take what he wanted. And leave what he wanted.” Winter nodded toward the photographs. “Do what he wanted.”

  “The plaster hand, then?”

  “A confirmation,” said Winter.

  “Confirmation of what?”

  “Of what I just said.”

  • • •

  Nina Lorrinder had called Halders during the early afternoon. Halders looked at the clock as he picked up the receiver: two thirty, and outside the darkness was coming. In two hours he would drive Hannes to bandy practice. The kid had chosen the calmer bandy rather than the more aggressive ice hockey. Halders had played hockey. Hannes took after Margareta, Halders had thought when Hannes told him what he wanted to do this fall. That’s good.

  “Homicide unit. Halders.”

  “Yes . . . hi. It’s Nina Lorrinder.”

  “Hi, Nina.”

  “Yes . . . there’s something . . .”

  Halders sat up straighter in his chair and reached for a pen.

  “Tell me, Nina.”

  “I don’t know how to say this . . . but when I walked by the building where Paula lived. Well, you know that I live a little farther away. I was on my way to the streetcar stop. And then I saw someone standing in among . . . the bushes below the building. It’s right across the square. There’s a playground there.”

  “I know what it looks like, Nina. Who did you see?”

  “I don’t know if it means anything. Maybe it was dumb to call. But it was . . . him. It was starting to get dark but there’s a streetlight right above there and he turned his head as I walked by and I saw that it was him.”

  “Him? Who was it?”

  “The guy Paula met at Friskis.”

  “Are you completely sure that it was him?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “He was just standing there. It looked like he was looking up at the building. At the window, up a ways.”

  “Then he turned his head, you said?”

  “Yes. It was probably because he heard me. As I was walking on the path behind there.”