Room No. 10 (17 page)

“The prosecutor leads the investigation,” Winter answered. “Don’t you know that, Sture?”

Birgersson smiled a thin smile.

“When there’s a reasonable suspect, yes,” he said. “Is there a reasonable suspect in this case?”

“No.”

“So Halders will lead everything, right?”

“I’m talking about after the first of December.”

“Then Molina will take it up, you mean?”

“Maybe we’ll all be taking it easy,” Winter said.

“You’ll have solved the whole thing?”

“
We’ll
have solved it.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Birgersson studied his empty glass with a concerned expression, as though it would never again be full.

“It’s Fredrik’s time now,” Winter said. “He’s more than ready for it.”

“Imagine, hearing you say that,” Birgersson said.

“People change.”

“You? Or him?”

Winter saw two younger men come in through the door, walk through the small space, and sit down at a table nearby. They might be the same age he and Halders had been when they met each other.

“If he’s going to replace me . . . possibly replace me, he has to be told now,” Winter said.

“He might demand to be made a chief inspector, then,” Birgersson said.

“So let him be one,” Winter said.

“Oh, now I need an akvavit,” Birgersson said, looking over toward the bar.

“I’ve spoken with Bertil,” Winter said. “He hasn’t got anything against it. Rather the opposite.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Birgersson said.

Winter followed his gaze and signaled to the bartender, who nodded. Birgersson held up two fingers and the bartender nodded again.

“Smart guy, that one.”

“They all are,” Winter said.

“Are you a barfly?”

“It’s been a long time since I heard that word.”

“Or king of the bar, I guess they say now.”

“Just on payday.”

“I’m sure your pay is plenty to cover the tab,” Birgersson said.

“According to Halders’s UN memories of Cyprus, the British officers’ pay was enough to cover the mess hall tab,” Winter said.

“Of course,” Birgersson said. “Private interests paid for everything else. Just like in your case.”

“It’s not that much,” Winter said.

“Depends on what you compare it to.”

“Feel free to compare it to the British officers.”

“Don’t you still buy handmade shoes from London?”

“Only when I’m ordering suits.”

Birgersson laughed. The man at the bar didn’t move. Two women at a table closer to the exit turned their heads. The place had begun to fill up in the last fifteen minutes.

Two more beers and more akvavit arrived at the table.

“What’s the time now?” Birgersson asked.

“Quarter to five. Why?”

“Another fifteen minutes left to the blue hour,” Birgersson said.

“Mm-hmm.”

“One almost always misses the blue hour.” Birgersson raised his beer glass and seemed to be contemplating the color of the contents. “Instead, one is always sitting bent over an investigation report full of syntax that no God can help.”

“Look forward to your blue hours, then, Sture.”

Birgersson didn’t answer. His eyes seemed to slide off somewhere, through the blue smoke that was beginning to rise in the bar.

Then he fastened his gaze on Winter.

“Be honest now, Erik: Are you tired of this shit?”

“Only when it comes up above my neck.”

“It’s well on its way,” Birgersson said. “Haven’t you noticed how hard it’s become to move your arms?”

He lifted his arm at an angle. A ray of light from the ceiling landed on the glass, and color came into the liquor.

“Once when I was new, you said that this is a battle we can’t win, but that we have to fight to the end,” Winter said.

Birgersson drank, set down the glass, and made a little face.

“Did I say that? Have I said that?”

Winter nodded.

“That must have been when the heaviest drugs started. When heroin came in.”

“No, it was earlier.”

“Oh . . . well . . . what did you think about that?”

“Well, it wasn’t exactly encouraging,” Winter said.

Birgersson didn’t say anything; there was nothing encouraging about the expression on his face, and it was an expression Winter recognized.

“And at the same time it was. Encouraging.”

“Maybe I was having a bad day when I said it,” Birgersson said. “Maybe there was some little twelve-year-old girl who had just been beaten to death.”

“I don’t remember anything about that day other than what you said.”

“Apparently I was serious, anyway.”

“I’m not accustomed to you joking about things like that, Sture.”

“Have to fight to the end, huh? Yes, I suppose that’s how it is.”

“That implies that you’ll get tired of all the shit,” Winter said. “Because it is shit. Lots of it.”

“A big pile,” Birgersson said, raising his beer glass. “All the way up to the sky. Cheers to all the shithouses that make room for all the shit. That take care of it. All the shitheads.”

Winter raised his glass in a toast, without really understanding what Birgersson meant.

“The reason I’m still tolerating a little shithead like you is that you’re trying to avoid becoming a cynic,” Birgersson said.

Winter didn’t know what he should say in response to Birgersson’s words. He had sometimes been worried that he wouldn’t be able to become anything other than a cynic. That anyone who lived and worked in this segment of the world and humanity became a cynic. A cynic or an idiot. Or both.

“A cynic stops thinking,” Birgersson said, as though he had read Winter’s thoughts. “Your brain becomes automatic.”

“A person might wish it would, sometimes,” Winter said.

“Oh, no, kid. That’s not for you.”

“Not for you either, Sture.”

Birgersson laughed his laugh again, a hiss that caused the two younger men at the table next to theirs to interrupt their low-voiced conversation and quickly cast a glance at the furrowed man in the white shirt with an open collar and rolled-up sleeves.

“No,” Birgersson said after thirty seconds, “who would even think of calling me a cynic?”

•   •   •

Who would even think of calling Fredrik Halders a cynic? Quite a few people, to be frank. Everyone he had ever come in contact with, to be honest.

He considered himself to have reasons for his outlook on life, and
not just the reasons he had come to through his work. But people undergo spiritual changes in their lives; some do, at least, and Halders had the good fortune of being one of them. He saw it as good fortune. He knew what was going on, and he didn’t want to turn to stone before his children even grew up.

He was standing in Paula Ney’s apartment again. What am I looking for here? Is it still the photograph? No. He was listening for something. It wasn’t the wind outside the window, or the patter of rain against the pane, and it wasn’t the cars in the roundabout down there, outside of Doktor Fries Torg. Not all the sounds of the city and nature. He didn’t need to listen for them; they were logged into his brain after all these years on the streets, in cars, in houses, in parks, everywhere it was possible to set foot. He looked down at his feet; one was standing in front of the other, as though he were about to throw himself out through the window. The skies were gray out there; you had to fly high to reach the blue sky. Had she flown up there? And down again? Halders looked around for an answer. The shrouds were still there in the apartment. The silence was still there. He listened again but didn’t hear anything. He knew that there were answers in there, maybe several. Necessary answers, tragic answers. In the answers he collected there was nothing that made the world a better place, more loving. It was just a battle.

•   •   •

The morning was brighter, as though the naked sky had one last need to expose everything. Winter pushed his bike into the rack, locked it, and walked toward the entrance. A bird of prey was circling high above the police station. The bird was sharply outlined against the blue. Suddenly it dove and disappeared behind the building.

Winter took the elevator past his own floor.

Torsten Öberg was waiting in his office. Winter had heard cameras flashing as he passed some of the rooms in the forensics unit. He had smelled a sharp scent. A woman had passed him with a plastic bag. It looked heavy.

“It will take another couple of days to get an answer from SKL,” Öberg said before Winter had had time to sit down.

Winter nodded. He saw the rope in his mind. The knot. The fleck of blood that could have come from anywhere. If it was blood.

“You said you didn’t want the VIP treatment.”

“We wouldn’t have gotten it anyway,” Winter said.

He could see the city through the window behind Öberg. It was higher up; it was possible to see very far. He could glimpse the sea far off in the haze of heat, behind the Älvsborg bridge, which looked like the skeleton of a prehistoric animal from here. I should switch offices, he thought, upgrade a floor. The bird was back; might be a hawk. The perspective made it look like it was circling right above the bridge, a giant creature on prehistoric wings.

“We have a clue,” Öberg said. “A shoe.”

Winter leaned forward. He felt something across his scalp, like a sudden wind from outside.

“Someone had spilled soda pop in front of that storage locker,” Öberg continued. “They had cleaned there, but not well enough. Which was good for us. Soda pop is good for a forensic investigator. There’s a lot that gets caught in Pommac.”

“Was it Pommac?” Winter asked.

Öberg smiled.

“We haven’t finished analyzing it yet.”

“A shoe print,” Winter said.

“For what it’s worth,” Öberg said.

“There’s a lot to suggest that our man made it,” Winter said. “Depending on how old it is.”

“It’s fresh.”

“How fresh?”

“One day. Two.”

“It’s our man.” Winter thought about what he said. “If it’s a man. Is it a man? A man’s shoe?”

“Yes . . . this is the only print we have.” Öberg opened the folder that lay on the table between them. “From what I understand, it’s
mostly men who wear shoes like this. Or wore them, maybe.” He took out a few photographs and held one of them up in front of Winter. “Do you recognize this pattern?”

Winter took the photograph in his hand. At first the image looked like an uneven surface, maybe a deserted landscape. After a few seconds, he saw some kind of pattern. He saw stripes. At the edge there was something that might be part of a letter.

He looked up.

“Do you recognize it?” Öberg repeated.

“It looks familiar. I don’t really know what it is.”

“Not your brand?”

“No.”

“But it was once on the foot of every man,” said Öberg. “Well, besides yours.”

“What is it?”

“Ecco.”

“Ecco?”

“Ecco. Sound familiar?”

“Of course.”

“Ecco Free. A very common brand of shoe. At least it was twenty years ago or so. But now apparently it’s had some kind of revival.”

Winter shook his head.

“Not what we were hoping for, is it?” Öberg said.

Winter looked down at the photo again without answering. The landscape looked less deserted now. The picture was more like a map that might be possible to make out.

“But the sole isn’t new,” Öberg said. “If we find the shoe, we can compare them.”

“A twenty-year-old sole?”

“No. Not even Eccos last that long.” Öberg nodded at the photograph in Winter’s hand. “I used to wear them myself.”

“Do people really still wear this kind of shoe?” Winter said, but it was mostly to himself. “I haven’t seen ones like these for a long time.”

“Maybe that’s to your advantage, then,” Öberg said. “Maybe there are only a few people who still buy Eccos in this city’s shoe stores after all.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“But I think there were some knockoffs of that brand, from what I remember. Don’t know if they’re still around.” He looked up. “I guess you’ll have to find out.”

“You didn’t find anything else in front of the locker?” Winter asked, putting down the picture.

“Maybe this will do for a while.”

“You never know,” Winter said, getting up.

“I can’t figure out that plaster hand,” Öberg said.

“You’re not alone,” Winter said.

“The work was actually pretty clumsily done.”

Winter nodded.

“Some kind of mold was used,” Öberg said. “I don’t know where you get hold of something like that.”

“It can hardly be common.”

“But plaster . . . normally I think there’s some sort of plastic substance that you cast in forms like that. Like for mannequins and things.”

“Mannequins,” Winter repeated.

He closed his eyes and saw an empty face in front of him, and naked limbs in a color that wasn’t found in people. There was nothing human about mannequins.

“There was no trace of plaster on her hand,” Öberg said. “Only paint.”

Winter opened his eyes.

“And nothing new about that, I understand.”

“No, the most common semigloss enamel paint in the world.” Öberg leaned back in his chair. “Can be bought even in the most poorly stocked paint stores.” The haze of heat beyond the bridge had lifted. Winter could see the opening to the sea. “Tack-free after five
hours.” Öberg looked at Winter. “But it went faster than that on her body.”

“Call me as soon as you hear from SKL,” Winter said, getting up. “Give them a call and ask nicely if they can give us a slightly faster answer.”

“I’m always nice,” Öberg said.

W
inter heard words, but that was all. He didn’t understand what was being said. It was like one sound among others.

“Erik? Are you listening?”

It was Ringmar’s voice.

Winter tore himself away from his daydream. He had been somewhere for a few seconds, but now he couldn’t remember where.

“I’m listening.”

“What did I just say?”

“Repeat,” Winter answered.

“That’s the kind of thing you can only get away with in the army,” Halders said.

“Isn’t this the army?” Djanali said.