Room No. 10

by Ake Edwardson

  “Not that we know of,” Ringmar said.

  “Smart bastard,” Halders said, “just go in and look like it’s raining and borrow a telephone and call.”

  “If he isn’t staying there,” Bergenhem said.

  “Hardly,” Halders said.

  “Can you do that? Just call from a hotel phone like that?” said Djanali. “Is it possible?”

  “We’ve just seen the proof,” said Halders.

  “And no one has seen Elisabeth Ney at the hotel?” Bergenhem asked.

  Winter shook his head. They had sent people there when they found out about the phone call. None of the staff recognized her.

  Now they would go through the list of guests. And try to check out the employees. This list could expand to any size; he had seen that many times. The case expanded outward but simultaneously shrunk inward. It became more difficult to see what was important and what was just air, wind.

  “What should we do?” Halders asked. “Should we ask Prosecutor Molina about a search warrant so we can open all the hotel rooms?”

  Molina was hoping to start a prosecution against someone, but he wasn’t optimistic. He was never optimistic. Winter seldom had occasion to cheer him up.

  “It’s going to be like with the lockers, for God’s sake,” Halders said. “How many rooms are there at Gothia?”

  “We won’t get it,” Winter said. “Molina will never go along with it. And anyway, we don’t have the resources.”

  “The only chance of getting a search warrant for a big hotel is if there’s suspicion that a terrorist is hiding in some cleaning closet,” Halders said.

  “A particular room might be okay,” said Winter, “but not all of them.”

  “I remember we had to wrestle the warrant out of Molina when it was just a question of those couple of rooms at Hotel Revy,” Ringmar said.

  “Would Elisabeth Ney really be in a room at Gothia Towers?” said Djanali. “Isn’t that the last place we should look for the very reason that that’s where he called from?”

  “He’s smart,” said Halders. “He’s going with the penalty-kick method.”

  “What’s that?” Bergenhem asked.

  “The penalty taker knows that the goalie knows that he usually aims for the right corner, so therefore he aims for the right corner because he counts on the goalie thinking that he’ll aim for the left corner instead of the right.”

  “But what if the goalie thinks a step further?” said Bergenhem.

  “Then maybe the penalty taker will already have thought yet another step ahead,” Halders answered, smiling.

  “So then where does the ball end up?” Bergenhem asked.

  “No one knows,” said Winter. “That’s why we’re going to keep looking for Elisabeth Ney. Even at Gothia Towers.”

  • • •

  “Where the hell is she?”

  Ringmar paced back and forth in the lower part of the lobby. Through the wide windows into the corridor inside, Winter could see groups of people milling back and forth. Many of them were carrying large plastic bags that probably contained books, because there was a book fair going on.

  “She’s not here, anyway,” he said in answer to Ringmar’s question.

  They no longer believed she was at Gothia.

  “Maybe she’s just disoriented,” Ringmar said. He stopped and looked at the masses of people on the other side of the glass. “Maybe she’s in there.”

  Winter shook his head.

  “Like looking for a needle,” Ringmar said, turning to Winter. “A disoriented needle. She could wander all over the city.”

  “What’s the alternative?” Winter said.

  “We don’t want to know.”

  “Is there an alternative?”

  “If there is, all of this is more connected than we think.”

  “Will it help us, if it is?”

  “Not necessarily,” said Ringmar.

  “It’s high time to put out a missing-person report,” Winter said.

  “Well, good luck to us,” said Ringmar.

  “Was that a cynical comment?”

  Ringmar studied the people on the other side of the glass without answering. The corridor was full; everyone was forced to move slowly. Hundreds of faces passed like a river. Some of them looked out, looked at Ringmar and Winter.

  “Like a needle,” Ringmar repeated while he observed the haystack on the other side. “Birgitta and I were thinking of going there on Saturday.” He nodded toward the mass of people behind the glass. “But now I don’t feel like it.”

  • • •

  There was chaos outside. The fair was about to close, and everyone was trying to leave at the same time. It had also been very crowded in the lobby. Winter had realized how simple it would be to place an anonymous call from an anonymous telephone.

  “We might as well go back,” Ringmar said.

  They had been driven there in a patrol car.

  They followed Skånegatan straight north, past Scandinavium, Burgårdens secondary school, Katrinelund secondary school, temples of knowledge for those who would carry the city into the sweet future. The pillars of Ullevi looked slimmer from this perspective. Winter had stared at them from another direction for nearly twenty years.

  “Mario could have been anywhere,” Ringmar said.

  “He could have kidnapped his own wife, you mean?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the one who goes wine tasting with him.”

  “What makes you think that, Bertil? That Mario Ney is behind this?”

  “Sometimes it feels like he could be behind an awful lot,” Ringmar said.

  “I don’t think he’s that good an actor,” said Winter.

  “Actor? He could be a raving psychopath. That doesn’t take any acting talent.”

  “No.”

  “He could be from a degenerate mafia family in Sicily.”

  “He could be from Mars,” said Winter. “We don’t know much about his background.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But we’re talking about his own wife here. And his own daughter.” Winter shook his head. “No, Bertil.”

  “Never rule out the family,” Ringmar said. “Have you given up on rule 1A?”

  “It’s someone else,” Winter said. “It’s not him.”

  18

  It became late afternoon, evening. Where was Elisabeth Ney? No one could see the leaves falling after dark, but they did fall. The crowns of the trees became more and more sparse. Soon it would be possible to see through them, over to the next street, over to the next square, up to the next building. Was she there?

  They did what they could, what they always did in these kinds of situations, and a little more. A woman had disappeared. Her daughter had recently been murdered. She was deeply in shock, disoriented, despairing; no one knew how she felt right now. Her disappearance was connected to the murder in that way. Were they connected in any other way?

  “Are you saying that I have something to do with this?!”

  Mario Ney had started to get up. He sat down again. Neither Winter nor Ringmar needed to do anything. And Ney didn’t look as though he were going to strike out. More like he might leave.

  “Did I say that you do?” Winter said.

  They were sitting in Winter’s office. It wasn’t a formal interrogation, but naturally, it was an interrogation.

  “More or less,” Ney said.

  “I’ll be frank with you,” Winter said. “When people disappear, we want to know what their family members were doing at the time of the disappearance. Where they were.”

  “Can’t you think of anything better?”

  “It’s often the best thing.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Ney said. “I don’t believe that at all.”

  Winter didn’t say anything. Ringmar was silent. Something rattled against the window, as though some of the autumn leaves were trying to get in, or entire branches.

  “In any case, you know where I was,” Ney said.
“I was home.”

  “Was there anyone who saw you?” Ringmar asked.

  “I was alone. My God. You know I’m alone now. What is this? How can you keep doing this?”

  “I mean whether you ran into a neighbor,” Ringmar said.

  “Or whether you made another phone call,” Winter said.

  “Where would I go? And who would I call? Anyway, can’t you check that? Whether I made a call?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Ney said.

  He suddenly looked even more tired, as though it was all over after all. Hope had left this city when it became dark. Or as though he wanted to say something more. Winter thought he wanted to say something more. That was why they were sitting here. Winter’s intuition was strong there. He often depended on it. Ney knew something but didn’t want to say. Whatever had happened, and was happening, he didn’t want to say it. His secret was deep as an abyss. What could it be? What the hell could it be? Could he wear Ney down and find out?

  “What do you think of Elisabeth’s disappearance?”

  “What . . . what do you mean?”

  “Why has she disappeared?”

  “She’s disoriented, of course. She never should have been allowed to leave the hospital, like I said before.”

  Winter nodded. Ney had also said that she never should have gone there.

  “That’s what this is about,” Ney continued.

  Winter nodded again.

  “You’re not saying anything, Winter. You don’t seriously think that Elisabeth’s disappearance has to do with . . . with . . . Paula’s murder, do you? That someone . . . that someone . . .” He didn’t continue the sentence. “Surely that’s not what you mean?”

  Winter didn’t answer right away.

  “That it’s me?” Ney suddenly stood up. “Say it right out if you think it’s me!”

  “Sit down,” Winter said.

  “Say it!” Ney cried.

  Ringmar had stood up. Winter made a motion with his arm, but Ringmar remained standing there. Ney didn’t move. He looked undone, as though he was about to see something he didn’t want to see. Are we going to solve the mystery now? Winter thought. Will we get answers now?

  Ney sat, or rather fell, down on his chair.

  Ringmar walked across the room and looked out through the window. There’s nothing there, Winter thought. It’s just dark there. Ringmar turned around.

  “Is there anything more you want to tell us, Mario?” he asked.

  Ney looked up. He looked like he was having trouble focusing on Ringmar’s form over by the window, directly across the room, which was half dark. It was a room that was always half dark, Winter’s office. It was the same with the Ney family’s living room.

  “Tell us now,” Ringmar said.

  Ney looked at Winter, as though for help. As though Winter were the nice cop and Ringmar the bad one. But Winter couldn’t be nice now.

  “Tell us, Mario,” he said, nodding slightly. “Just tell us.”

  “You all are not right in the head,” Ney said, but his voice was very slow, almost a drawl, as though he was repeating something he’d just thought of but hadn’t believed. This was something Winter sometimes experienced as an interrogator. The thought was one thing, but the words that would convey it were somewhere completely different, at the other end of the brain, the room, the city, the world.

  Winter waited. Ney could get up and go, he had every right to; they weren’t planning to put him on a six-hour hold, or double that. But Ney was waiting, too, as though his thoughts would soon tell him what he should do.

  And then he got up again.

  “I want to go home now.”

  • • •

  “Shit,” Ringmar said. “We almost had him.”

  They were still sitting in the half-dark office, sitting twilight again. Everything became quieter when the lights were low. Maybe that’s when you think best. Winter observed the slow movement of the trees. I need a smoke out in the fresh air. I’m not going to get up, not yet.

  “We almost had it,” Ringmar continued.

  “What was it we had?”

  “A secret.”

  “What kind of secret?”

  They tested their method again, the routine: questions, answers, questions, answers, a quick tempo, straggling sometimes, sometimes on the way to a single point.

  “About him.”

  “Just about him?”

  “His family.”

  “His wife? His daughter? Both of them? One of them?”

  “Both,” Ringmar said. “It’s connected. They’re connected.”

  “In this case?”

  “Yes.”

  “More than as mother and daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  “In what way?”

  “I don’t know yet. So we have to dig further into the past.”

  “In this family’s background?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have we not been observant enough?”

  “No.”

  “In what way?”

  “We’ll see. We’ll find out.”

  “Does it have to do with Mario’s background?” Winter said.

  “Maybe. But that could be a dead end. Italy, Sicily. It could be the wrong direction.”

  “Does it have to do with Elisabeth’s background?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “She has a secret.”

  “Is she the only one who knows it?”

  “No.”

  “Who else knows?”

  “Mario.”

  “So that’s his secret?”

  “Yes.”

  “But it’s about her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it about Paula?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No.”

  “What if it is about Paula, then?”

  “Yes, what then?”

  “Is it her adult life?”

  “I don’t know. We still know too little about her.”

  “How can we find out more?”

  “You know how, Erik. We just have to keep working.”

  “What if this is about Paula’s childhood?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Something from her childhood? That’s connected to her murder, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it connected with the family?”

  “Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes.”

  “You said yes last.”

  “It is connected with her family.”

  “Only her family? Or someone else outside the family?”

  “I don’t see anyone. But there could be someone.”

  “Is it connected to Mario’s childhood?”

  “No.”

  “Elisabeth’s childhood?” Ringmar repeated.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I can see Elisabeth. This is about her. Mario showed us that, without saying anything.”

  “Elisabeth’s childhood?”

  “Yes. Maybe.”

  “We haven’t gone back to her childhood.”

  “We haven’t had time.”

  “Do we have time? Do we have the energy?”

  “Is it a good idea?”

  “What could there be in Elisabeth’s childhood that would shed light on this?”

  “A shadow. The past always casts shadows.”

  “Should we search their apartment again? Really search it?”

  “We won’t find anything there, I’m afraid.”

  “Where should we look, then?”

  “Only one place left.”

  “Paula’s apartment?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ve gone through the place twice.”

  “Then there will have to be a third time. Third time’s the charm, as he said.”

  “Who said that?”

  “It was me.”

  “Now it’s time
for a break.”

  • • •

  The break room felt like a blinding operating room compared to the twilight in Winter’s office. They drank vending machine coffee that was far too hot. Winter let the plastic mug stand. This was routine, too. Everything was routine, necessary routine. In the same way, imagination was also routine; intuition was routine. Thinking was routine. Some people had just never learned it. You had to learn how to think. Even thinking badly could be trying, and it was infinitely more difficult to think well.

  Ringmar took a sip of the cooled poison and made a face.

  “Let it stand,” Winter said.

  “It’ll be the death of me,” Ringmar said.

  “My cappuccino machine is coming next week,” Winter said. “I’m going to have it in my office.”

  “Really?”

  “Maybe.”

  Ringmar smiled and lifted the mug again but set it down. A colleague from the city desk came in and pressed out his coffee and nodded and left again with the hot cup balancing between his fingertips.

  They heard the wind outside. It had come up as they were sitting in Winter’s office. He had seen it in the trees outside the window, and he could see it now. The wind tore at the trees outside the entrance to the police station. They swayed with half-naked branches. The branches were like hands, slowly waving farewell. Winter followed their movements. Ringmar did, too. He turned to Winter.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Presumably.”

  “Is it a symbol we ought to see?”

  Symbol. The white hand. Where was the symbolism? In the hand itself? The fact that it was a hand? In the paint, the white paint? In the reproduction itself?

  “The white hand,” Winter said, but it was as though to himself.

  “I went down and looked at it this afternoon,” Ringmar said.

  Winter nodded.

  “As though I would learn something more this time.”

  “The white paint,” Winter said.

  “Yes?”

  “It could be the paint.” He took his eyes from the trees and turned to Ringmar. “The color. White. What does it stand for?”

  “Well . . . innocence. Something innocent.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Purity.”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you thinking now, Erik?”

  “Is it the color, Bertil? Is that what we should concentrate on?”

  “How far will we get with that?”

  “Love,” Winter said. “Doesn’t white stand for love, too?”