Room No. 10

by Ake Edwardson

  “Winter is in the process of emptying all the lockers at Central Station.”

  “My thanks.” Halders took a few steps into the room. He wasn’t completely passé yet; they still listened to him. He saw the branches moving grandly outside the window. The crown of the tree was very green.

  “There are almost four hundred of them, you know,” said Djanali.

  “Then they need help.”

  • • •

  Paula Ney had owned a black Samsonite and that’s what they could look for. They had gotten its approximate measurements from Paula’s parents. It wasn’t one of the largest models. It was one of the older ones.

  Bengtsson was opening lockers with the help of two part-time employees of Speed Services AB and six police officers.

  “What are you actually looking for?” Bengtsson had asked as they began.

  “Just a suitcase,” Winter had answered.

  “What’s in it, then?”

  “Clothes, photos, maybe tickets. That’s what we’re going to check.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Bengtsson had mumbled, looking as though he didn’t believe what Winter said.

  There were a lot of suitcases.

  “Lots of suitcases here,” said Halders, who had joined them.

  They tried to work as quickly as possible. It felt like an impossible task; it was an impossible task. What are you actually looking for? Winter thought. It isn’t just a suitcase.

  It was lucky that the peak vacation time was over now, and travel had died down. A third of the lockers were empty. Some contained all the goods of a household, a home in a box. There was a garden gnome in one of the largest lockers. The gnome looked at Winter when he opened the locker.

  After an hour’s work, Bengtsson called out from over by the west end. Winter looked up and saw him take a few steps backward.

  Winter ran through the aisle.

  Bengtsson turned to him with a strange expression on his face.

  “It doesn’t smell,” he said. “Shouldn’t it smell?”

  Winter bent down; the locker was low to the ground. It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.

  He saw a hand. It was wrapped in a transparent plastic bag. The bag was held closed by a rubber band that looked colorless. The hand was white as snow.

  It was locker number 110.

  There wasn’t any smell in there.

  The hand looked like plaster.

  It was plaster. It lay on a table under Central Station. The cold light made it even more naked. As though it were alive. It had been caught in an open handshake, or at rest. The fingers were hardly separate.

  “What the hell is this?” said Halders.

  “A plaster hand,” said Winter. “A perfect casting.”

  “Of Paula’s hand?” said Halders.

  “We don’t know yet,” said Ringmar.

  Halders looked down at the hand. “It’s not large.” He looked up. “Her hand was just as white.”

  “Do you find a lot of these?” Halders asked, turning toward Bengtsson, who was standing a few steps beyond the table.

  “This is the first time,” said Bengtsson, who still appeared to be in some sort of shock. “I’ve seen plaster cats, and frogs . . . but not this.”

  “A perfect casting,” Ringmar repeated. “If it is a casting.”

  “The hand was at rest when it was made,” said Winter.

  “It was probably dead,” said Halders.

  “There’s some sort of scar on the upper side,” said Winter, “a line.”

  He looked down at the hand. He bent down, bent closer. It was a horrible object. It shimmered green now among the green lockers and the green walls, a shade that made people feel nauseated. He was no longer certain that it was so perfect. It looked more like it had been cast from a standard form. Maybe it had even been purchased in some strange shop.

  But the important thing wasn’t what it looked like. It was what it was, what it meant. Symbolized, one could say. Winter was convinced that this hand had something to do with the case. With Paula. It was the murderer’s greeting to them.

  A wave. He wanted them to see him.

  He knew that they would.

  The murderer knew that they would see him soon.

  See him on a shimmery green videotape.

  Maybe he would wave. Make some signal that they would understand.

  They would understand that he knew.

  Winter felt the old familiar chill in his body. It appeared in certain cases, the most difficult ones. There could be years between times. It was a feeling that was related to dread.

  Look at me! the murderer screamed.

  Look what I did!

  This is me!

  “Someone carried the hand here and locked it in,” said Ringmar.

  “Time to watch TV again,” said Halders.

  Winter suddenly thought of ancient statues. They were missing limbs, heads. They were often only a torso, a snow-white torso. He had seen hundreds on his trips to southern Europe.

  This was the opposite. A limb with no torso, a lone hand. Did that mean anything here? A statue was a dead thing that depicted the living.

  Winter turned to Bengtsson.

  “The timer had started to count down the second day,” he said. “Someone locked this locker hardly forty hours ago. Should still be on the hard disk, right?”

  Bengtsson nodded.

  • • •

  According to the display, the locker had been locked at 12:17 a.m., almost exactly thirty-nine hours ago.

  The videotape showed a back and not much more.

  They stood in front of the display in the bare room inside the office. The back was visible at the far end of the corridor. The image was as sharp as it could get, but that wasn’t much help now.

  They could see only a back, a long coat, the back of a wide-brimmed hat. It wasn’t possible to determine how large the person was. They would have to measure against the height of the lockers.

  “There’s our man,” said Halders.

  Winter ran the sequence again. It lasted for fifty seconds. During that time, the Back had time to put coins in the slot, put something in, close it, turn the key. They could follow what he was doing from his movements.

  “That bastard has gloves,” said Ringmar.

  “Good,” said Halders. “Who has time to check fingerprints on ten thousand five-krona coins?”

  They ran the tape again.

  “Look how he moves,” said Ringmar. “Not even a half profile. It’s just his back the whole time.”

  “A long coat in the middle of summer,” said Halders. “He was certainly dressed for a spot in the limelight.”

  “He knows exactly where the cameras are,” Winter said, turning toward Bengtsson again. “Or is it luck?”

  “Run it again,” said Bengtsson.

  They ran it again. Winter felt an excitement, and an even greater frustration. They might have the murderer right there. He really was here in this city; at least he had been recently. He stood there in the image, walked there in the image with the jerky movements of the digital resolution.

  Winter could reach out his hand and touch him.

  And he knew that Winter could do this, knew that Winter would see this. Why did he do it? It was a risk, after all. He was exposing himself. He was protected by his clothing and the way he placed his body, but still his clothing and his placement were visible. A body always revealed something about its owner. Height. The manner of walking, of moving the parts of the body, even when it was affected by technology.

  The Back extended his hand. Winter saw the movement now, from the back. He extended the hand with . . . the hand.

  “He’s avoiding the cameras in his face, from the front,” said Bengtsson.

  “It can’t be luck,” said Ringmar.

  “Then he knows this place better than I do,” said Bengtsson.

  “Is that possible?” Ringmar asked.

  “No.”

  “The
n he’s studied the room and the lockers carefully,” said Halders, “ahead of time.”

  “Or else he’s a former employee,” said Ringmar. “He knows where the cameras are.”

  “No,” Bengtsson said again, “it’s just me and a couple of old extras here. And they don’t have backs like that.” He looked at Ringmar. “And I don’t either.”

  “Maybe he’s in other tapes,” said Winter. “If he walks around and checks the angles.”

  “Those would probably be erased,” said Halders.

  “There are a few days. We have a few days.”

  “This may have been planned far ahead of time,” said Ringmar. “He might have been here months ago.”

  Winter didn’t answer.

  The figure disappeared from the display.

  “He never took the stairs!” Winter said.

  “The secret camera,” Ringmar said.

  “What do you mean by that?” Halders asked.

  “If he had taken the stairs, we would have gotten him straight in the face,” Ringmar explained.

  “Do you see the light under the stairs?” Winter said.

  He ran the sequence again. It was like a light turned on for a few seconds.

  “He took the elevator!” Winter said.

  “Isn’t there a camera in it?” Halders asked.

  “No,” Bengtsson answered. “But there is outside it.”

  “Not from what we’ve seen,” said Ringmar.

  “It should work,” said Bengtsson. “It’s worked before.”

  “Don’t you check things like that?” Halders asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Let’s do it, then,” said Halders.

  They found the sequence. But all they saw was a bit of a coat that was hidden by the elevator door.

  “He must have climbed on the wall,” said Bengtsson.

  “Is it the same coat?” said Ringmar.

  “Yes” Winter said, turning to Bengtsson. “How often do you clean down here?”

  “Sorry?”

  “How often do you mop the floor down here?”

  Winter could see a bit of the floor out there, smooth stone tiles, even these shimmering green.

  “I’m not the one who cleans,” Bengtsson answered. “I’ll have to ask Helén.” He went out to the office and came back after thirty seconds. “At least four or five times a day, she says.”

  “Shit,” said Winter, “but we’ll try.” He turned to Bergenhem, who had just come back after checking the fire alarm above the elevator. “Make sure to cordon that locker off. And call Öberg.”

  “What does this hand mean?” said Halders. “It does mean something, right? He means something with it. He knew that we would find this plaster shit sooner or later.”

  “He didn’t know when,” said Winter.

  “Okay, maybe he thought it would be later, but he knew, and he knew about the surveillance, and he took the risk of leaving . . . the message.”

  “Maybe it’s not a message,” said Ringmar.

  “What is it, then?” Halders asked.

  “It’s exactly what it looks like. Storing an object. Someone wanted to store it in the locker.”

  “In the same locker he retrieved Paula’s suitcase from?”

  “We don’t know anything about that,” said Winter. “We don’t know if she even left it here. We don’t even know if it’s relevant to this case. She could have given it away, sold it, stored it somewhere else entirely.”

  “Well, we have to check the tapes again,” Halders said, “the scenes where locker number 110 plays the lead role.”

  Winter nodded.

  “And check who was here just after midnight the day before yesterday.” He turned to Bengtsson. “Were you here?”

  “Yes. Here in the office.” Bengtsson looked around, and then out through the closed door, as though he was only now realizing that he had been only ten or twenty meters from a possible murderer.

  “We close at twelve thirty,” he continued, “and open at four thirty in the morning.”

  “Were there any people out there then?” Halders asked.

  “When?”

  “Twelve thirty at night. Around midnight.”

  “At least one,” Bengtsson said, nodding toward the flickering monitor.

  “Did you see anyone else?”

  “Yeah . . . there were probably some other people out there. Out in the station, that is. Some poor souls who wanted to stay warm as long as they could.”

  “No one by the lockers?”

  “When I closed up down here it was empty.”

  “Should we watch a movie again, then?” said Halders.

  5

  There!” Halders flew up and pointed with his whole hand. “That’s her suitcase!”

  Winter saw a black Samsonite. Ringmar saw it, and Bengtsson. Winter saw a woman he didn’t recognize, and the open locker, number 110. The woman set the suitcase inside and locked up and walked away without looking around. He had seen part of her face; her clothing in the late summer. No long coat, no hat. Her hair was very light on the screen, white or blond. She was wearing dark glasses that largely ruined any chance of identification.

  “She isn’t worried about the cameras,” said Ringmar.

  “Maybe she doesn’t know about them,” said Winter. “Or doesn’t care.”

  “Do we know her?” said Halders.

  “So it’s not Nina Lorrinder, the friend?” Ringmar asked. “You’re the only one who’s met Lorrinder, Fredrik.”

  “It’s not her; I can tell through the sunglasses,” said Halders. “Lorrinder is prettier. And above all, younger.”

  “What time is it?” Ringmar said.

  He was thinking of the time he saw on the screen. What was happening there had happened four days ago.

  “Five thirty,” said Bengtsson. “In the afternoon.”

  “When did Paula meet her friend?” Ringmar asked. “For that trip to the movies?”

  “Six fifteen outside Biopalatset,” said Winter. “The movie began at six thirty.”

  “She would have had time to deposit the suitcase herself and then go to the theater,” Ringmar said.

  “But she didn’t, did she?” Halders said. “That’s not her, is it?”

  “Run the tape again,” Winter said.

  He saw an unfamiliar woman place an unfamiliar suitcase in a familiar locker.

  “It could be a regular citizen, and any Samsonite at all,” Ringmar said, pointing at the monitor. “After a few hours she retrieved the suitcase again and someone else used the locker, and someone else, and so on.”

  Winter looked at Bengtsson.

  “It’s not possible,” Bengtsson said, “we’d see it. That shady bastard had to pay a three-day surcharge to open the locker.” He nodded toward the screen. The woman in the picture was leaving for the fourth time. Winter thought of the making of movies, of retakes. They still hadn’t gotten it right.

  “Number 110,” Bengtsson clarified.

  “So it’s one hundred percent that the Back took out the same suitcase that the blond woman put in?” Halders asked.

  Bengtsson nodded.

  “Who is she?” Ringmar said.

  • • •

  They had two people who were connected to the murder of Paula Ney. One clear, one unclear, like a shadow, but both unknown. Sending a picture of the woman to the media would be pointless; they would get tens of thousands of witnesses who had seen a blond woman in sunglasses. It would be essentially the same as sending out a picture of a man’s back.

  “There’s something . . . crafty about this,” Ringmar said. “On both of these characters’ parts.”

  • • •

  They had returned to the cafeteria. The waitress was already treating them as regulars. She smiled several times. We’re not getting away from here, Winter thought. Look at her. The case begins and ends here. If it does end. He didn’t want to think of any sort of symbolism; he did that too readily and such things coul
d lead anywhere, often in the wrong direction. It seldom led forward. He pushed away thoughts of someone sitting at a train station, never getting to see their train come up on the monitor. Sitting there for hours, days. A harsh fate. But not as harsh as death. The waitress smiled at him as she placed his cappuccino on the table. He had seen that they had whiskey at the bar, half a meter’s worth of bottles. The waitress was blond, like the woman on the monitor.

  “Take the blond,” Ringmar said. “She trots in with her nose in the air but with sunglasses on its tip. It’s a disguise. She knows she’s being observed, or will be. Maybe she’s wearing a wig, for that matter.” He sipped his latte. It tasted like milk and nothing else, and he suddenly missed the horrible coffee from the machine up at high command. It was Halders who called it “high command,” because their unit was on the floor above the floor below. “But she doesn’t care. It’s crafty somehow . . . there’s something arrogant about it. She choo—”

  “Why would she care?” Halders interrupted. “She wasn’t committing any crime. Just leaving a friend’s suitcase. Paula was going to get it later.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “No.”

  “She’s leaving someone else’s suitcase,” Ringmar continued. “It might be her own, but we’re assuming that it’s someone else’s because she didn’t retrieve it herself. Why? Why drag a suitcase there? It looked pretty heavy when she lifted it in. Was it because Paula Ney asked her to? Or was the suitcase stolen? Why keep it at Central Station? Why wait several days to pick it up?” He nodded over toward the departure hall. “I mean, when the Back picked it up.”

  “Well, there is one thing that indicates that this woman is involved in Paula’s murder, somehow,” Winter said.

  “What’s that?” Halders said.

  “She hasn’t contacted us,” Winter said.

  • • •

  They were still sitting at Central Station. They couldn’t move. We can think here, Winter thought, there’s something about this place. If we leave, our imaginations will disappear. We have other people who are good at working with photos. But this is the thinking booth. This is high command. I don’t like my office anyway. I’m not going back.

  The café had no windows facing the train tracks, but he could see out through some sort of arcade that had arisen at the same time as the other renovations. He could tell that the sun had gone down now, outside. Electric lights were blazing all over the station. The light wasn’t noticeable until the sun went behind a cloud or went down. The columns cast faint shadows over the white walls. Everything looked like plaster.