Room No. 10 (34 page)

They were in the kitchen now. Winter had suggested it. They had sat here eighteen years ago. The chair where Jonas had sat was empty.
Winter remembered which chair it was. Memory sometimes worked that way.

He had a few more questions.

“I understand that a woman and her daughter lived on the fourth floor in this building?”

She turned around with a few buns on a plate that she’d taken out of the microwave oven.

“That time,” Winter continued, “when I was here the first time. Eighteen years ago.”

“I see . . .”

“Is that true?”

“Yes . . . I think it was . . .”

“How well did you know them?”

“It wasn’t long. They didn’t live here for more than a month or so, I think, maybe two. It was a very short time.”

“But you still remember that woman, and her daughter?”

Sandler nodded.

“Why is that?”

“What do you mean?” she said.

She was standing at the kitchen counter.

“If it was such a short time,” Winter said.

“Well . . . I suppose we saw each other a few times out at the playground. Or in the yard. And I suppose Jonas played with that girl a little bit. They were about the same age.” Sandler took a step toward the table. “There weren’t very many children here then. It was mostly older people here.” She walked up to the table and sat down. “And now they’re even older. Or we are, I should say.”

“What were their names?” Winter asked. “What was their last name?”

“I . . . don’t remember.”

“Was it a difficult name to remember?”

“I don’t actually know. Isn’t it easier to remember a difficult name?”

“What was the woman’s first name?”

“I don’t remember that either.” She pushed the coffee cup forward a bit on the table. “That’s strange. I really ought to.”

“What was the girl’s name, then?”

Sandler appeared to consider this.

“I think her name was Eva,” she said after a bit. “I think I remember because Jonas said that name.”

“Did you ever visit them? Did you go to their home?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It . . . just never happened. I suppose we didn’t have time to get to know each other well enough.” She looked around in the kitchen. “And they were never in here.” She looked suddenly at the empty chair beside Winter, as though it reminded her of something, too. “No, wait, I think the girl was here once.”

“Was there any man in the family?”

“Not that I know of. I didn’t see anyone. She never talked about any man.”

Winter could see in her face that it had suddenly become painful to talk, that he had reminded her of something else that she didn’t want to think about, or talk about.

“Why are you asking about her? About them?” she said, looking at him. “What do they have to do with . . . the murder?”

“It’s about that night,” Winter said. “When we came here. When there was a fight in the Martinssons’ apartment.”

“I remember that you asked about that. Back then. I think I told you what I knew about them, the Martinssons. It wasn’t much, I remember that.”

Winter nodded.

“But what do they have to do with it? With that fight? Or with anything else? The mom and the girl, I mean.”

“I don’t know,” Winter said. “Probably nothing.”

“And what do we have to do with all of this?” she asked. “Other than that Jonas apparently spoke a few words to the woman who . . . died?”

“What happened to them?” Winter asked, without answering Sandler’s question. “The mom and the daughter. Do you know? Where did they move?”

“I don’t know. One day they were just gone.”

“Did she say anything beforehand? The mom?”

“No.”

“Or the girl? She didn’t say anything to Jonas?”

“No. I asked him but he said that she was just gone.” Sandler looked out through the French balcony. She saw what Winter saw: a playground faintly lit by the electric light, like a yellow shadow. They could see the swings from here, and some kind of jungle gym. Behind the jungle gym was a slide.

“He was sad because she just disappeared, without saying good-bye,” said Sandler.

•   •   •

Mario Ney called Winter’s cell phone as he was on his way back over the bridge. The traffic was light. It was past ten o’clock. Winter could see a ferry on its way in, abreast of Älvsborg Fortress. It was a clear night.

“Have you learned anything else?” Ney said. “Has anyone seen Elisabeth?”

“Not yet,” said Winter.

“Someone must have seen her.”

“Where are you now, Mario?”

“I’m at home. I’m sitting here by the telephone. She might call. Or someone else. You, for example. You might call. You said you would call me.”

“I was going to do it tonight. In a while.”

“You’re just saying that.”

Winter could still see the ferry in the corner of his eye. A floating ten-story building bathed in its own light. As the ferry glided into the harbor it looked like it was on its way to a party. From up here, the whole city looked like it was on its way to a party.

“How long have you lived out there, Mario? In the apartment in Tynnered?”

“What? Why do you ask?”

“How long have you had the apartment?” Winter repeated.

“The ap— Oh, we’ve had it for a long time. Since Paula was little. Why?”

“How little?”

“What is this? What are you getting at?”

“How old was she when you moved in there?”

Winter heard Ney mumbling something, as though he was talking to himself.

Winter repeated the question.

“Five,” said Ney. “I think she was five.”

•   •   •

The sheets were on the third shelf on the right. But in order to get to them, the maid had to pass another shelf and then follow the wall to the right as it curved like a bow. For that reason, one could say that the supply closet was almost made up of two rooms. A person standing in the doorway couldn’t see the inner room.

The maid had had her hands full of what was now on the floor, spread out where she’d dropped it. She had screamed. It had been heard out in the stairwell and down on the floor below and up on the floor above.

She hadn’t been able to move for the first minute, just stood there and screamed, just a loud and long scream.

•   •   •

Elisabeth Ney’s body lay on a bed of blindingly white sheets. Almost everything in the supply closet was blindingly white.

Winter tried to see everything at once.

He was the first one inside.

One of the hotel managers had called the police, and three colleagues had been waiting outside the door when Winter arrived. Ringmar was on his way, along with Aneta Djanali.

The maid was resting in one of the hotel’s staff rooms. It was uncertain whether she would be able to say more than a few words to Winter tonight.

She had never seen anything like this.

He walked carefully around the body. The bed of sheets was fifteen or twenty inches high.

This wasn’t a coincidence. The murderer had prepared it. When? While Elisabeth Ney . . . waited? Or earlier? In preparation for something the murderer knew would happen? Yes. No. Yes. Yes. Someone with access to this room. This hotel. Someone with access to hotels. An old hotel. Right in between Revy and Gothia Towers, which was a long way. Not luxurious and not shabby. A hotel for the average citizen. Like Elisabeth Ney. How did she get in here? In this damn closet? She hadn’t checked in to the hotel, he knew that already, and above all she hadn’t checked in here. Winter waited for the doctor. The doctor. Start healing. Tell me whether she died here. Winter studied the body. He thought it had happened here. How else would it have happened? He got up and walked back through the strangely shaped closet. Two police officers were standing guard out in the stairwell. Winter asked them to move so he could push open the door to see its front side. There was nothing there, it was blank; no signs, no numbers. Why here? he thought.

•   •   •

“Why here?” said Ringmar. Djanali was standing next to him. She was observing Ney’s dead body and her surroundings. It was a scene.

“He wanted us to see it this way,” she said. “This is how we were supposed to . . . encounter her.”

Winter nodded.

“He must have planned it carefully.”

“The supply room door wasn’t locked,” Winter said.

“Why not?” Ringmar asked.

“Inconvenient,” Winter said, “the cleaning staff ran in and out of here all the time.”

“Well, he must have been here,” Djanali said, looking around again, “he must have come here earlier. Maybe several times.”

Winter nodded again.

“Someone must have recognized him.”

“We’ll see,” Winter said.

“Or is he so well-known here that no one recognizes him?” said Djanali. “He could come and go as he pleased.”

“Good point,” said Winter.

“Maybe he still is,” said Djanali.

“Could this be where the murderer works?” Ringmar said.

No one commented on what he said.

No one believed it. They would question everyone who worked here; but that was part of the routine. They might get other answers; maybe some would help them.

“Why here?” Ringmar repeated, mostly to himself.

“Because it’s a hotel,” said Winter.

“This isn’t a real room,” said Ringmar, “and above all, it’s not room number ten.”

“That doesn’t matter anymore,” said Winter, “to him.”

“What do you mean?”

“This isn’t . . . the same type of murder as Paula’s murder.” Winter looked down at the body. “It resembles it, but that’s not important here. Not that way.” He looked up. “It was planned, but not the way he planned Paula’s murder. This came afterward. He might not even have planned it this way.”

“We don’t even know if it’s the same murderer,” said Ringmar.

“Do you mean that the murderer was . . . forced to murder Elisabeth Ney even though he hadn’t planned to?” asked Djanali.

“We’ll see,” said Winter, and he looked at the body again. It was an unusual situation: leaning over a dead person he had met earlier, had spoken to, asked questions of, listened to. A murder investigation was unusual in and of itself. Most murderers were known minutes after the crime. Sometimes before they even committed it. But even when a murder was investigated, it was very unusual for the investigator to have met the victim previously. It had happened to him before, but only once. He had felt . . . shocked then, and he felt shocked now. The feeling didn’t hamper his thinking. Maybe it helped him to think clearly. It got his blood flowing.

•   •   •

Winter left Ringmar and Djanali and walked out into the stairwell. The air felt healthier out there, even if it wasn’t. He couldn’t think of
anything healthy here. All the shades of white reminded him of illness and death. Everything was white in a hospital, a morgue. In a church. White was the color of death in every shade.

His cell phone rang.

“I’m outside now,” said Halders.

“Come up,” said Winter.

He waited in the stairwell.

Halders went straight into the storeroom when he arrived. The doctor had arrived just before him. It was a man Winter had never met before. He was young, maybe ten years younger than Winter. He appeared to take a deep breath before he stepped in. Winter had had a few words with him.

Halders came out.

“Well, shall we go?”

•   •   •

Mario Ney was waiting at the apartment. Winter had sent a car there from the Frölunda station.

Halders drove through the Tingstad tunnel. The voices on the radio took on another tone, as though they were suddenly speaking another language. Winter had never liked going through tunnels. Once he had gotten stuck in a traffic jam in one of the kilometers-long tunnels in Switzerland, and it hadn’t been a pleasant experience. A claustrophobic woman a few cars ahead had gone crazy and started to jump from car roof to car roof toward light and freedom.

Once they got out, Winter had driven into the first rest area and got out, stood still on the firm ground and inhaled as much air as there was, fresh or not. It had been like coming down from a great height.

“It didn’t look like it had happened very long ago,” Halders said.

“We’ll have to see what the doctor says.”

“I didn’t recognize him,” said Halders.

“Neither did I.”

“What did Mario Ney say?”

“I haven’t told him yet.”

“Did he wonder why you wanted to see him?”

“I didn’t give him time to,” Winter answered.

“I don’t think it’s the same murderer,” Halders said. “That’s what I don’t think.”

Halders turned off of the highway. Winter could see the gray high-rises of Västra Frölunda a kilometer away. They rose to the sky like building blocks. A social structure that had gone to hell. Everything was gray today. Gray was yet another shade of white, some kind of white.

“Or the same motive,” Halders continued. “That could be it.”

“What are the motives?” Winter asked.

“Maybe they don’t exist,” said Halders. “Except in the murderers’ heads.”

“The murderer’s,” said Winter. “They’re one and the same.”

Halders parked in one of the many empty spaces in the parking lot below the apartment buildings. Winter got out of the car. It wasn’t so long ago that I was here. Never thought I’d be coming back with this news.

“Is it possible he’ll become violent?” Halders asked.

“I really don’t know, Fredrik.”

“If he accused us before, he has even greater reason now.”

Winter nodded. He had made the decision that Elisabeth Ney needed care. He hadn’t put her under guard. He hadn’t protected her. Perhaps he hadn’t considered it fully, or far enough into the future. How far ahead can you think? To the next murder? He walked across the courtyard. Is that where the boundary lies? Or should you think farther? They passed the playground. It was larger than the one up in Hisingen. There were more swings. He thought of the boy again, and the girl. They had done a search for renters who had subleased an apartment that had been rented by a man whose name Winter didn’t know. That renter had moved away a long time ago. Most people had moved away; it was a passing-through area. Could one call it that? Most people moved through, and on, but Metzer had remained, and the boy’s mother, Anne.