Room No. 10 (21 page)

“Lay off now, Fredrik!” Winter said.

“I was just joking,” Halders said.

•   •   •

Winter and Ringmar sneaked out of the police station right after the meeting. Winter suggested a place where they could talk, maybe think.

Ringmar drove to Gullbergsvass and parked below the big gas tank. The scent of snuff from the tobacco factory was strong.

They walked across the street and continued along the quay. The rusty boats bumped back and forth in the water. Some were inhabited by society’s dropouts. Ringmar nodded toward a houseboat that must have been able to sail at one time. Now it was red with rust, and it wasn’t a home any longer. Its windows were empty and black. A gull lifted from its deck and flew with a hoarse cry toward the other side of the river. A barge passed in the background. A light rain began to fall. Winter turned up the collar of his coat. He looked up and saw the sky open up to the north as the rain cloud moved south. The rain stopped. Winter lit a Corps. The smoke floated out across the road, after the rain.

“That’s where the stripper lived that Bergenhem fell for,” Ringmar said as they passed the half-sunk houseboat.

Winter nodded. Bergenhem had fallen, hard, and several times—in the boat, on the floor in a bar, in a field. He had nearly died. That was a case that returned to Winter’s thoughts more and more often recently. It was a gruesome case. He had moved on; they had all moved on. Sometimes he didn’t understand why. It was like being in the middle of a war and surviving and then going out again and surviving and then going out again.

“Maybe you should be a little firmer during the meetings,” Ringmar said, turning to Winter. “I mean, about meeting discipline.”

Winter took the cigar from his mouth.

“Are you thinking of Halders?”

“Yes . . . and Bergenhem.”

“Halders thinks better when he lets his mouth run.” Winter smiled. “Look at you and me.”

“It gets too personal,” Ringmar said. “Bergenhem took offense.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Halders went too far.”

“Is Bergenhem gay?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, it’s his business,” Winter said.

“Exactly. It’s not, for example, Halders’s business.”

“Lars is a young man who’s searching, but I don’t think he’s gay,” Winter said, smiling again. “And if he is, I don’t give a shit.”

“Maybe he does, himself,” Ringmar said. “Give a shit, that is.”

“Does he need to talk about it, you think?” Winter asked.

Ringmar shrugged.

“Hanne will be back after Christmas.”

“Will she?”

Hanne Östergaard had been the pastor and spiritual caregiver for the police. Winter had worked closely with her at certain times. Those had been complicated cases. She had been a help, to him and to others. For the past two years, she had been a seamen’s chaplain in Sydney. When she got the job, she had told Winter about it. He had asked her if it was possible to get farther away from the underworld of Gothenburg, and she had said no. They hadn’t gotten a substitute for her. That was how it worked in the police administration. His colleagues had to wait with their inner suffering. Maybe it would go away on its own.

A net of gray birds unfurled over the barracks on the other side. They looked like more rain. Winter heard the toot of a tugboat. The river had its own sirens.

“I don’t want to be firm,” he said, pulling in smoke and blowing it out. The smoke was floating over the water now; the wind had changed. “It almost always leads us the wrong way.”

Ringmar kicked at a small stone. It flew into the water and skipped three times.

“Have you been practicing that long?” Winter asked.

“You should see what I can do with my left hand.”

Winter saw the swarm of birds turn to the south and fly straight toward him. He still couldn’t tell whether they were crows, magpies, jackdaws. He could hear the sound of their wings, like a second wind.

“She wrote that she would become like a bird,” he said, following the birds as they passed overhead and continued to the south, becoming smaller, starting to disappear in the gray of the sky. “She would be like the bird who flew by outside.”

Ringmar didn’t answer. Winter took his gaze from the sky and looked at Ringmar, who looked like he’d gone pale. It could be the light. It made everything pale.

“We’ve analyzed the contents and surface of that letter but we haven’t gotten much farther,” Winter said.

“We’ve never run into anything like it,” Ringmar said.

“Maybe that can help us.”

“How would it help us, Erik?”

“We have no starting point. Sometimes that’s good.”

Ringmar kicked at another stone. It didn’t reach the quay. They met a man on a flatbed moped. He didn’t say hello. Winter turned around and saw him stop at one of the boats, a small trawler that had recently been repainted. It looked seaworthy. The man was wearing a red knitted cap. He disappeared belowdecks. That boat could pass the equator, Winter thought. It’s up for it.

“Are there other letters?” Ringmar said, and he took aim at another stone but stopped himself.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know . . . either that Paula had written something like this
before . . . that wasn’t about murder, of course, or kidnapping . . . but that she’d communicated like this before.”

“To whom?”

“Her parents.”

“They would have at least said
that,
wouldn’t they?” Winter said.

Ringmar didn’t answer. Winter heard the moped start. He turned around and saw the man in the cap swing around and pass them. There was a full garbage bag on the flatbed. It bounced with a nasty sound as the moped passed them.

“They can’t keep quiet about everything, surely?” Winter continued.

“Where did the money for Paula’s apartment come from?” Ringmar said.

Mario Ney had signed the contract of sale for the condo in Guldheden. He had nine-tenths ownership.

“Does that matter?” Winter said.

“It was a lot of money,” Ringmar said.

“An inheritance from Sicily?” Winter said.

Ringmar smiled.

“Have you ever been there, Erik?”

“Yes. About ten years ago. Taormina. But I guess that’s not really Sicily.”

“What is it, then?”

“The dream of Sicily. That’s not what it looks like in reality.”

“I wonder what Mario’s reality looked like.”

“He doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“No, exactly.”

•   •   •

“Has he done it before?” Ringmar said, and he stopped. The quay was wet and shiny and looked like a highway built of stone.

“The murderer? Has he murdered before? Is that what you mean?”

“Yes. And forced the victim, or victims, to write farewell letters?”

“Where are those letters, then?”

“Maybe never sent,” Ringmar said.

Winter thought. Rain was falling again, but so gently that it wasn’t visible as it hit the ground.

“Do you mean that there are families out there who are sitting with farewell letters from their loved ones that they haven’t told anyone about?”

“I don’t know if I thought that far.”

“Say someone has disappeared from the family, left, has maybe run away, and then a letter about love and forgiveness arrives.”

“But that person never comes back?”

“The family believes that he or she has disappeared of their own volition,” Winter said. “He or she is alive, but wants to live in peace.”

“Well, that’s not unusual,” Ringmar said. “And a last message is perhaps not unusual either.”

“Are there ones like that?” Winter said. “That are like Paula’s message.”

“I hardly dare to think about it,” Ringmar said.

“The question is how we find out,” Winter said.

“Not the press,” Ringmar said.

“No, that would be too much. People would be a little too panicked. Are there degrees? More or less panicked?”

Ringmar didn’t answer. They had almost reached the base of the bridge. What had looked small at a distance was very large now. The traffic clattered up there with an awful noise.

“It’s like with the hand,” Ringmar said. “That’s the kind of thing we can’t just tell the public.”

The white hand. Winter had looked at it again yesterday. It was one of the strangest things he’d seen in an investigation.

The hand was white like new-fallen snow. It was clean; it looked untouched. The word “innocent” had popped into his head. That wasn’t a good word.

“I dreamed about it last night,” Ringmar said. “It was waving at me.”

They were standing under the bridge now. The din above them was like chains on iron. The gentle rain swept over the river like a
fog. Winter could see the silhouettes of gulls through the mist of rain, gliding between the riverbanks. A boat siren tooted again. It sounded like the cry of a whale.

Paula had had her photograph taken two days before she was murdered. She had sat in a photo booth at Central Station. That was quickest, simplest, cheapest.

Winter was sitting with the four quick pictures in front of him. Paula’s last face. He thought of her mother, and then about her again.

What was she going to do with these pictures? A trip? Photos are always good to have along on a trip. If you get lost.

He studied her face. It was the same, in four versions. She was possibly lowering her eyelids in one of the pictures. She wasn’t smiling. She was just looking, straight at him. She didn’t look like she was on her way anywhere.

•   •   •

Djanali wound the video forward and backward. Her eyes hurt from the green light in the images, the worthless light of Central Station.

She followed the woman’s every movement from the second she became visible until she disappeared.

She followed the man’s movements.

It wasn’t cold in the room, but she was freezing. When she pressed the buttons on the remote control, her fingers felt like ice.

The woman’s face was like a mask behind her sunglasses, under the wig. No way in hell that was her own hair. Now I’m starting to think in Fredrik’s words. No way in hell. No way is enough. It’s not necessary to swear so damn much.

The fake blond dropped off the suitcase between the times of 6:29 and 6:31 p.m. She was not alone in the area, but it wasn’t crowded either.

Djanali began to look at the other people in there. They were faces of strangers, straight on, in profile. Strangers’ backs.

She caught a glimpse of a coat.

A pair of shoes.

At the edge of the image.

The coat. A detail, but visible.

The shoes.

On the other side of the row of lockers. Someone was standing there, not moving. The room curved in sharply there. It turned into another room.

Djanali took out the video of the woman and put in the video of the man. Hardly six hours later he had come and taken out the suitcase. Put in the hand. Djanali looked at the coat, at the shoes. It could be the same coat. The shoes were black, wide. Large. Size ten or eleven. She switched to the other film. The shoes. Black, wide. Öberg had guessed size ten. They remained still. The camera’s view didn’t reach above the man’s legs. The lower part of the coat flapped suddenly, as though from a gust of wind, but the shoes didn’t move. What brand were they? She was no expert on men’s shoes. But she was good at making observations.

She lifted the telephone receiver.

•   •   •

“Is he trying to hide by standing there?” Halders said.

“Or he’s observing,” Ringmar said.

“It’s not really normal to just stand still in that place, is it?” Djanali said.

“Maybe he’s warming up in there,” said Bergenhem.

“There was a heat wave at the time,” Djanali said.

“Run it once more,” Winter said.

They ran it once more. The coat fluttered, the shoes didn’t move. Winter saw that it could be the same coat, the same shoes.

“What is he doing there the first time?” Bergenhem said.

“Making sure, of course,” Halders said.

“That the suitcase really ends up in the locker?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why doesn’t he pick it up right away?”

“Don’t know, sir.”

“Why take the long way around the lockers at all?” Djanali said.

“Exactly,” Ringmar said.

“The woman drops off what we think is Paula’s suitcase. This man sees her doing it. Makes sure, maybe. Then he waits six hours to pick it up. Why?”

“And why double the risk of being discovered?” Ringmar said.

“That was the point,” Winter said.

Everyone in the room turned to him.

“This is a movie that was filmed for an audience,” Winter continued. “We’re the audience.”

“They directed it?”

That was Bergenhem.

Winter nodded.

“That’s the only explanation I have. We are meant to see it. They knew that we would sit here and watch this and wonder what it’s about.”

“So what is it about, then?” Djanali asked.

“Some diabolical game,” said Halders. “They’re playing with us.”

“But why?” said Bergenhem.

“That’s always a very good question,” Halders said.

“We have to get a closer look at those shoes,” said Ringmar.

“Looks like Ecco Free,” said Halders.

“Do those really still exist?” Bergenhem asked.

“Every well-stocked shoe store in the city sells about twenty pairs of Ecco Free per year,” said Ringmar.

“That doesn’t sound like much,” said Bergenhem. “So they must have regular customers?”

“Maybe twenty years back,” said Djanali.

“Why twenty years in particular?” Winter asked.

“What?”

“Why did you just think of twenty years back in time?”

“I . . . don’t know, Erik. I could have said thirty.”

Halders didn’t say anything. He considered the shoes on the screen. They were waiting to be enlarged. The shoes looked clean, almost unused. The soles were thick.

“I’ve seen shoes like that,” said Halders, “and quite recently, at that.” He lifted his eyes from the screen. “Where did I see them?”

•   •   •

It was eighteen years earlier. Winter stood up from his chair. There was a strong scent of coffee in the small room, because he had just knocked over the plastic mug on the table in front of him. Halders had jumped to the side at the last moment to avoid getting the hot coffee on his thigh.