Room No. 10 (37 page)

Winter didn’t want Ney to see something he might have seen before.

Ney’s face looked almost peaceful for an instant. As though he had encountered death and accepted it. Another’s death, accepted another’s violent death.

“She was missing for over twenty-four hours before we . . . found her,” said Winter. “I have to ask you again, Mario.” Winter leaned forward. “Do you have any idea where she might have been during that time?”

“Ab-so-lute-ly-no-i-de-a,” Ney said, with emphasis on every syllable in every word. It was like a new language. Then something seemed to happen to his eyes and he searched for Winter’s gaze. “Why would I?”

“I don’t know, Mario. But she was somewhere. Indoors, somewhere. No one saw her out anywhere.”

“Just because no one saw her doesn’t mean that she was indoors the whole time,” said Ney.

“Could she have traveled somewhere?” Winter asked.

“Traveled? Where would she have traveled?” He threw out his arm and hand, a gesture that could contain everything they could see. “She lived here. This was her home.”

“Where did she come from?” Winter asked. “Where did her parents live?”

“I think it was . . . Halmstad.”

Halmstad. Another city to the south, along the coast, halfway to Malmö, Copenhagen. Winter had a vague idea of how people from there talked; he had a few colleagues from Halland, but he hadn’t heard that kind of dialect in Elisabeth Ney.

“But she moved here when she was young,” Mario continued.

“Did you meet her parents?”

“Yes. But they’re gone now.”

“Does she have any siblings?” Winter asked.

“No.”

Like Paula, Winter thought. No siblings.

“Is her family still in Halmstad?”

“There’s never been anyone there,” said Ney. “They moved to the city when Elisabeth was pretty young, or half-grown, or whatever it’s called. I don’t think they knew anyone there then.”

“But didn’t they make any friends?”

“Yes, I think they did. But no one I know.”

“But Elisabeth did.”

“Do you mean she might have gone there? To Halmstad? And then straight back again? Why would she?”

“I’m just trying to figure out where she was,” said Winter.

“I know where she is,” said Ney.

“Sorry?”

But Ney didn’t answer. He looked out at the courtyard again.

“What do you mean, Mario?”

“She’s at home,” Ney said, his eyes on the sky.

Dusk was falling like rain outside. Winter could almost hear it, or maybe it was the rush-hour traffic out on the highway. Everyone wanted to go home.

•   •   •

On his way home, Halders bought crispbread,
filmjölk,
whole milk, apples, and smoked sausage at the ICA store on the corner. He knew he’d forgotten something but couldn’t come up with it during the whole trip to his house five blocks away, and then it was too late anyway.

“Where are the eggs?” Djanali asked when he’d taken everything out of the bag and placed it on the counter in the kitchen.

“I knew there was something.”

“I promised Hannes and Magda pancakes for dinner,” said Djanali. “You can’t make pancakes without eggs.”

“Have you tried?”

“Don’t try to get out of this, Fredrik.”

“I’ll go now,” he answered.

So it was never too late. And he went. Dusk would turn to evening in a few minutes. Evening came before the day was over. In a month it would take over completely, evening and night. Everyone would light Advent candles, and Christmas lights at the same time, a month early. Magda had already asked him about his wish list. She had always gotten a head start. But Hannes would put in his requests the week before Christmas Eve. He, on the other hand, would give his wish list to the children before the end of November. He knew what he wanted.

It was nice to walk. Halders exercised at work because it was part of the job, but he wasn’t an enthusiast. It had been a long time. He carried what some people called “a healthy weight.” It didn’t feel healthy to him. When this winter finally decided to go the hell away, he would pull on his workout clothes and go out and pound the asphalt. Maybe run the Göteborgsvarvet, a half marathon. Astound the whole world.

He carried the carton of eggs home as if it were the last drop of water.

Djanali was making pancakes as though it had been her job for years. She hadn’t done it before, not at Halders’s house. He wondered whether that meant anything. Whether she had decided to stay, and not just for tonight. She still hadn’t moved in. The house was big enough. There was room for everyone. It was home.

“Is there more blueberry jam?” Hannes asked.

“Both blueberry and strawberry.”

“Where did you learn to make pancakes like this?” Halders asked.

“At home, of course.”

“You had pancakes at home?”

“Why wouldn’t we? We loved pancakes.”

“Your parents escaped from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. I didn’t think pancakes were their thing,” said Halders.

“Their thing?” Djanali said, pancake turner in hand. “Their thing?”

“Isn’t it everyone’s thing?” Magda said. “Pancakes are everywhere. Didn’t you know that, Dad?”

“I was mostly thinking of blueberry jam.”

“You were not,” said Magda.

“Strawberry jam, then.”

•   •   •

The curtain moved, but it was barely visible. Must be the ventilation, he thought. The air intake was up there, to the left of the window, or the air blower, depending on how you looked at it.

Room number ten looked like last time he had stood here. And the first time, eighteen years ago. At least it felt that way. Time moved in both directions, as though it met itself halfway. As though he himself were standing there, and here at the same time. Standing halfway. As far backward as forward. Equally difficult to see in both directions. Or equally easy.

He walked up to the window and looked down at the street. It wasn’t very easy to see it; faint light from a streetlight that was reminiscent more of the fifties than a new century. If it was the fifties. He hadn’t been born yet in the fifties. He was born in 1960, and that was the best decade yet in the world, if you could believe what most people said. Ellen Börge was born in the sixties, the year after him. How had the sixties been for her? Winter turned around. The room lay mostly in darkness; the only illumination was the fifties-era lights outside.

Paula Ney had sat in this darkness; she must have. Waited. Listened. Suffered. That letter. Winter took a few steps into the darkness, as though to test it out, maybe challenge it. It was the same darkness now as it had been then. It was a witness to what had happened. There must be more letters. From other times. Why haven’t I read any other letters from Paula? The first things I learned about her were in a letter. She wrote it. Where are her letters? At home? No. Not at home and not . . . at home. If it’s possible to say that she had two homes. Her parents haven’t saved anything. Isn’t that strange? Is that connected to the silence? With a secret? What is the secret, this family’s secret? If I knew that, I’d know everything.

He heard voices out in the hallway, maybe whores, johns, Social Democrats. A woman’s laughter, a man’s laughter. No children’s laughter. This was the place for people who had left all of that behind.
It’s gone, lost and gone forever. And now Revy is in its final days. The child. The child that was Paula. Why am I thinking of Paula as a child? Is it the swings? The playgrounds? The woman and the girl in the miserable apartment building in Hisingen? Why am I thinking about them right now? I’ve got so much else to think about. Others who were children once. Some who are now. My own, for example.

A door slammed hard farther down the hall. Life went on as usual all over, such as it was. A car went by down on the street; the red taillights cast their light all the way up to room number ten. Everything suddenly looked older in there, like something from a film from the past, the fifties, the sixties, the seventies, the eighties. The eighties. What a little greenhorn I was then. I stood here and didn’t know anything more than that I was standing here. Ellen, I thought. Where are you, Ellen? Though I knew even then that she was gone, probably dead. Just as dead now. Wonder how it’s going for her husband now? Christer. It’s about time I talked to him. It’s been a long time. He goes to evening prayers at the church. He was my age, too. Everyone was my age; I guess there’s just one age. Paula was my age, when I was green, and Ellen before that, and Christer. And Jonas. And his mother that time when the boy was a boy.

A laugh rolled past outside, like gravel on the floor, no pearls. They had looked for secrets in room number ten but hadn’t found more than what they already knew. There were no more letters in this room. The one that existed was enough. He had read it before he came here. There was a macabre power in the words that was impossible to avoid. There was a message in those words that he couldn’t see. A secret. Like this room; he knew that it was a room and he knew what was there, but he couldn’t see anything really clearly.

Winter opened the door and stepped out into the hall. It was lighter there, but not by much. The red wallpaper dampened what light there was. Of course it was red. There was gold here and there. All was as it should be at Hotel Revy.

He walked down the curved staircase. Even that looked like something from another epoch, a belle epoque.

The desk clerk looked like something from another epoch and yet didn’t.

It was the same desk clerk as throughout the years.

“So the room is free again, then?” he said.

Winter nodded.

“It feels nice somehow,” said the man. “It’s like it will be a bit normal again here.”

“Normal?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m not sure I do.” Winter turned around to leave. “And anyway, this place is closing down soon.”

A man came in through the revolving door with a suitcase and a laptop bag. He looked like he’d come straight from the train; maybe he’d walked from Central Station. It wasn’t far. His cheeks bloomed red. The temperature must have fallen outside when the sun went down. It was winter now. The man had a winter coat on. Winter was wearing his winter coat. The man announced he had arrived, filled in a form, went up the stairs with his bags. No bellhop here.

“A normal guest,” said the desk clerk.

“In what way?”

“He’s here to sleep and work.”

“What room did you give him?”

“Not ten, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Do you have the list?”

The desk clerk reached for a paper next to the cash register.

“I don’t know how complete it is.”

Winter took the paper without answering.

He quickly read through it.

“There are more than I thought,” he said.

•   •   •

His cell phone rang out on the stairs. He nearly lost his balance as he took it out. It had certainly become slippery outside, but he was inside. It was colder in the wind.

“It’s the same type of paint,” said Torsten Öberg.

“But we don’t have a can,” said Winter.

“He does.”

“Did you find anything more in the room?”

“Traces of paint?”

“Yes. Or anything.”

“It’s the same type of rope, as you know. We’ll see what they come up with in Linköping.”

“I don’t exactly feel optimistic,” said Winter.

“Well, at least you know about the paint.”

“I guess he must have brought a can in with him,” Winter said.

“We can’t be entirely certain of that.”

“I understand what you mean, Torsten.”

“But how it happened, I can’t explain. I’ll leave that to you.”

“Thanks.”

“But it seems unbelievable.”

Unbelievable. Yes. No. Maybe Elisabeth Ney had walked through the city to her rendezvous with a white-painted finger. Maybe there was an explanation. There always were explanations, but many of them were not at all relevant. There was a lot that could never be explained. The most inexplicable things were almost always a result of human actions.

W
inter took shelter under an awning that had extended far out over the sidewalk since the summer. The rain fell harder. Ringmar stuck out a hand and it looked like it was being hit by a water cannon.

“Well, I guess we’ll be standing here for a while,” he said, shaking off his hand.

“I can think of better places,” said Winter.

“Don’t be so impatient,” said Ringmar.

Winter laughed. Bertil had been trying to get him to be more patient ever since they first met. Was that two years ago? No, three. Crazy how time flies.

It was hard to keep up, hard to hold himself back for the sake of patience. He looked up at the sky. It wasn’t holding back right now. The rain increased, the wind increased. November was sweeping in with its customary arrogance. Here I am. I’m taking over now. If you don’t like it, leave.

“Gothenburg is not for weaklings,” said Ringmar.

“Have you ever considered moving away?” Winter asked.

“Only a few times a day.”

“The South Pacific, perhaps?”

“Do you mean Skåne?”

“Yes. Or Tahiti.”

“What would I do there?”

“Walk around in shorts,” said Winter.

“I don’t look good in shorts. And it rains in the South Pacific, too. Rains like hell, sometimes.”

“Have you been there?”

“No. Have you?”

“Only in my dreams.”

“Dream on, man. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

As though nature were answering Ringmar’s words, the skies opened up completely and all the rain in the universe poured down on the city, or maybe just on the street where Winter and Ringmar were standing.

They were on their way to a meeting. Maybe it was important, maybe not. No one would know until afterward. This was something Winter was in the process of learning as a half-green detective. You knew afterward. Maybe it was too late by then, and maybe it wasn’t. But their routines were necessary. First the routines, then the thoughts. He was also slowly beginning to discover that it was possible to think during the routines. That it was possible to think at all. At first he had been skeptical. Now he was starting to realize that perhaps he hadn’t taken a wrong turn in his life.