Room No. 10

by Ake Edwardson

  “What am I supposed to remember?”

  “Come on, Jonas, shape up.”

  “Huh?”

  “Shape up!”

  Sandler jumped. His eyes slid back and forth, and out to the corners of the interrogation room, as though they were looking for something to hold on to, as far away from Winter as possible.

  “You don’t have to yell,” he said at last.

  Winter waited. The ventilation system buzzed like a swarm of flies up under the ceiling. The room’s blinds let in a light that hardly deserved the name. The daylight couldn’t really handle the time of year any longer. Last night a smiling weather woman had half promised snow for the weekend. In the morning, Halders had said he’d thrown a slipper at the TV when that chick had grinned out her prediction.

  “How old was she?” Sandler asked.

  “About your age. Eleven.”

  “She couldn’t have lived there for long. I . . . ought to remember.”

  Winter had thought through the interrogation before setting foot in the room. What did he himself remember from when he was eleven? Quite a lot. He had hung around the streets of Kortedala, and later, western Gothenburg, with a gang that split up when adult life began, earlier for some and later for others. Some grew up when they stopped teasing the girls, and after that they never returned to childhood. It was gone forever. Winter had tried to stay there as long as possible. When he thought of that time yesterday, and this morning, he remembered images and individual episodes. But he hardly remembered any names. There were one or two left in his memory, but his other childhood friends had lost their names. Maybe there weren’t very many of them. They had also lost their faces.

  “How long did she live there?” Sandler asked.

  “We don’t really know.”

  “What was her name?”

  “We don’t know that either,” Winter said.

  “Are you really sure that she really lived there?”

  “Your mom is sure, Jonas.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Shouldn’t we believe her?”

  Sandler didn’t answer that either.

  “Could she be wrong?” Winter asked.

  “I don’t know what she remembers and doesn’t remember.” Now Sandler looked Winter in the eye. “What was this girl’s name?”

  “I don’t know, either.”

  “No? Well.”

  “I thought you could help me with that.”

  “I never remember names.”

  “Try to remember her. When you leave here, try to remember if you played with her.”

  “But why?”

  “Try to remember, Jonas.”

  • • •

  Winter and Ringmar snuck out on the town just before lunchtime.

  The café on Östra Hamngatan had become their regular place. The table at the window had become their regular table. Sometimes Winter and Angela came here, at first alone, then with the children. The table inside the place had been moved a time or two during the last twenty years. It was a table and a place to remember.

  “She must have kept hidden somewhere,” Ringmar said when Winter came back with coffee and two napoleons.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “It’s more difficult than many people think.”

  “Or easier.”

  “She must have had an apartment,” said Ringmar.

  “Or a hotel room.”

  “Not here in the city.”

  “No, it doesn’t seem like it,” said Winter.

  “She must have been at someone’s house. Someone she knew.”

  “We’ve gone through all her acquaintances. The few there are.”

  “We’ll have to go through them again.”

  Winter looked out through the window. The first snowflakes of the season suddenly came falling down to the ground.

  “It’s snowing,” he said.

  “Don’t worry about that. You’re heading for sunshine soon.”

  Ringmar looked at his watch.

  “You have three weeks.” He looked up. “Then we’ll take over for real.”

  The falling snow picked up outside; the air became thicker. A woman hunched over a stroller. The child was holding its hands out to the snowflakes. For children, snow was real precipitation. Winter remembered the snow of his childhood, especially because it had been so uncommon in western Gothenburg. The sea was too warm and too big.

  “How did it go with the boy?” Ringmar asked.

  “I don’t actually know.”

  “What do you think?”

  “He doesn’t want to remember.”

  “Why?”

  “He knew her.”

  Ringmar didn’t say anything. He understood what Winter meant.

  “He knew Paula then,” said Winter. “He doesn’t want us to know that.”

  “And we don’t know it.”

  “Why the hell can’t I figure out who they were? Where they went?”

  “Mm-hmm. And where they came from.”

  Winter stared down at his pastry. He hadn’t touched it. The red raspberry jam suddenly looked unappetizing. He pushed the plate aside.

  “They wanted it like this,” said Ringmar. “I’m certain the woman wanted it like this. No one would know anything about them.”

  “But people did know! Sandler knew, Jonas’s mom. Metzer. Others must have seen them.”

  “Well . . . of course they couldn’t sit in their apartment night and day,” said Ringmar. “That would have been even more suspicious.”

  Winter nodded.

  “I think it’s even more shady that we can’t find the person who held the lease.”

  “Well, we know his name, at least.”

  “But where is he?”

  “And is it his real name?”

  Ringmar stabbed his dessert fork into the top layer of the pastry. It turned into a mess.

  “Why do they make pastries that you can’t cut up nicely and neatly?”

  “You should pick something other than a napoleon if that’s what you want.”

  “I like the taste.”

  “Jonas played with her as a child,” said Winter. “I believe that. And he remembers her.”

  “And he doesn’t want to tell us that,” said Ringmar.

  “Because he met her again as an adult.”

  “Which he doesn’t want to tell us either.”

  “Because he saw her more times than he wants to tell us.”

  “Which he’s lying about.”

  “Because he . . . murdered her,” said Winter.

  “Okay.”

  “He’s too cold not to have done it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Give me a counterargument,” said Winter. “It can’t be that hard.”

  “He’s just a scared boy,” said Ringmar.

  “Keep going.”

  “He happened to talk with a poor girl who happened to get into trouble. That’s all. He never knew any little girl who could be our Paula because she never existed.”

  “Who?”

  “The mysterious little girl, of course. At least, she never existed for him. Maybe she lived there, but he’s forgotten. It was such a short time. It didn’t mean anything.”

  Because she never existed. Winter thought of what Ringmar had said, of the illusion, the interpretation. She had never existed. Not as they knew her. She was someone else. Always had been.

  Ringmar had been contemplating his napoleon, and now he looked up with his fork suspended above the rest of the pastry’s simultaneously delicate and hard shell. He looked around, as though someone had caught what they’d said and was now continuing to listen. But they were sitting far from all the other patrons, and relatively near the clattering counter and the hissing coffee machines behind it.

  “Why did he murder her?” Ringmar asked. “I’m not saying I agree with you. I’m just asking.”

  “Because he’s sick,” Winter said. “Is there a reason when that’s the case?”

  • �
� •

  Winter and Ringmar left the café. The sun stung their eyes. Winter reached for sunglasses he didn’t have. They belonged in the other season, the green winter.

  “Did you exchange phone numbers?” Ringmar asked.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Bertil.”

  “Hitting on girls at a café. In the middle of the day. During working hours. You’re going to be a legend in the department, kid.”

  “She was the one who . . .” Winter said, without finishing his sentence.

  “Talk about shifting the blame.”

  “Okay, fine, I have her number.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Angela.”

  “That’s unusual.” They were walking through Brunnsparken. A drunk on a bench saluted the plainclothes officers, his bottle in the air. “Sounds English.”

  “Or German. She had a German last name.”

  “Was she German?”

  “I don’t know any better than you do, Bertil. She spoke Swedish, anyway. Sounded like she came from here in town. Downtown dialect.”

  “What does that sound like?”

  “Not like your Hisingen talk, anyway.”

  “I’m proud of my background, kid.”

  “Wish I could say the same.”

  “Forget that dad took off with the money. He hasn’t murdered anyone, any—”

  “Hey, that’s him there,” Winter interrupted, nodding at the mass of people who were passing in front of them, on their way into Nordstan. Ringmar followed Winter’s gaze.

  “Who?”

  “Börge. Christer Börge.” Winter nodded again at the mass of people as they stopped at the crosswalk. A streetcar passed, creaking wretchedly. “Ellen Börge’s husband. We talked about her a little while ago, Bertil.”

  “Oh, right,” said Ringmar. “She hasn’t turned up, as far as I know.”

  “No, she hasn’t turned up.” Winter nodded at the mass of people again. “That’s him, farthest out to the left. In the blue stocking cap.”

  The man turned his head, as though he heard them talking about him. But that was impossible; the distance was too great. Winter could see his eyes fell on them, moved away, went back to what he had been looking at before. It was definitely Christer Börge.

  “Are you sure?” Ringmar said. “Do you remember faces that well? Even when they’re wearing stocking caps?”

  “I remember this one. I’m worse with names.”

  “But you know that that one’s name is Börge.”

  “I remember this one,” Winter repeated.

  “Poor bastard,” said Ringmar, looking over toward Börge’s hat. It looked as though it had been put on to attract attention.

  Winter didn’t answer. People began to move as the light changed, and they walked quickly across the street. Börge didn’t turn around. The mass of people disappeared in through the doors of the gigantic shopping center as though it were a tunnel.

  “I think I’ll pay him a visit,” said Winter.

  “Why?”

  “It’s a shame about him. You said it yourself.”

  “You can’t let this case go, Erik.”

  “No.”

  “What can you accomplish by visiting this poor guy and picking at an old wound?”

  “I don’t know. But I feel like I ought to do it.”

  “Is it intuition?”

  “Call it whatever you want.”

  “Do you still believe he had something to do with her disappearing?”

  “I don’t believe anything. That’s our motto in the department, isn’t it? Like Birgersson says: Believing is for church.”

  “I think we have to make our way back now,” said Ringmar.

  “Go ahead,” said Winter. “I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

  He left Ringmar and crossed the street on green.

  There was a chance he could find Börge again, as long as blue stocking caps hadn’t suddenly come into fashion. But it wasn’t necessary to find him. Winter had his address, if he hadn’t moved. Apparently he was still in town.

  Why am I doing this? Winter thought.

  He saw the stocking cap outside Åhléns, in front of one of the display windows. Börge was standing in front of the toy department. He was turning his head in different directions, as though he were looking at everything except what was in the display window. The Christmas display would appear in a few weeks, and then Christmas, and then the New Year, and simultaneously the new decade, the nineties.

  Börge walked quickly toward the north exit.

  Winter followed him at a distance of thirty meters.

  Börge went into Systembolaget, the liquor store. Winter waited outside. Börge came out with a bag. Winter could see the contours of the necks of a few bottles. Börge continued toward the exit and took a right after the automatic doors and he was gone.

  Winter went out. He could see Börge crossing the thoroughfare at a crosswalk fifty meters away. He must have walked quickly. Winter could see him stop at a bus stop next to a handful of other people. No one else had a blue stocking cap. The bus was already approaching. Börge got on last and the bus drove off. Winter couldn’t find him as it passed. The sun cast reflections straight across the black windows. It looked like fire.

  27

  Perhaps it was Börge’s face he saw in the back window of the bus, a white fleck in the dirty glass.

  Winter kept walking east, past Central Station, the GP building, Gamla Ullevi.

  He checked a car out from the police garage and drove to Börge’s address. There was an empty parking space a block away.

  The name was still at the front door.

  Winter looked around. Things mostly looked the same. No one dared to touch the patrician villas in the central parts of Gothenburg. The streets here were left unmolested by idiotic Social Democrats. The suburbs and the central hubs of the small cities had to take the brunt of the changes.

  He walked in through the doors and up the stairs. Börge lived on the third floor. The stairs were well kept and the stairwell let in light through painted windows. It was like a church.

  Three years ago. Three years ago, he had walked up these stairs a few times. After that: four or five phone calls to see how things were, maybe fewer. Börge had called him once or twice. He had sounded subdued, as though he had placed a handkerchief over the receiver.

  As Winter extended his finger toward the doorbell, it hit him that Börge might not live alone any longer. That maybe he should have called before showing up, after all.

  But he didn’t want to.

  He rang the bell, and Börge opened the door after the first ring, as though he had been standing and waiting just inside the door. Maybe he had seen Winter enter the front door, maybe he’d seen him even from the bus, or inside Nordstan.

  Börge didn’t look surprised.

  “Oh, so it’s you.”

  It was mostly a statement. A tiredness in his voice, like after an illness. Börge had aged in three years, maybe in a normal way. A few crow’s-feet around his eyes. But I probably have some, too, Winter thought. I see my own face every morning and don’t notice the changes.

  “May I come in?”

  Börge gestured in toward his apartment, turned around, and walked back through the hall.

  “You’ll have to take off your shoes,” he said over his shoulders. “It’s just been cleaned.”

  Winter didn’t know whether this was some sort of joke, but he pulled off his handmade English shoes and placed them beside a few pairs that stood on a shoe rack under the coat rack in the hall. Winter hadn’t thought of them before; maybe they hadn’t been there. The pairs appeared to be identical. It was a good idea, maybe not to always wear identical shoes, but to switch shoes regularly. Winter had had this carefully impressed upon him by his shoe dealer in Mayfair. He went over once a year and always got the same advice. He didn’t need to buy shoes every time. The shoes he wore were made to last. Börge’s shoes were simpler,
of course, but not junk.

  Börge was already sitting down when Winter stepped into the living room.

  There was a bottle of red wine on the table, and a half-full glass. Winter had smelled the wine on the man’s breath out in the hall.

  Börge nodded toward the bottle of wine.

  “Would you like a glass? It’s not crap.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Do you want a glass, then?”

  “No thanks. I’m driving.”

  Börge smiled, possibly a sour smile:

  “Good excuse.”

  He was dragging out his syllables a bit, a sign of mild intoxication. Maybe a few glasses on an empty stomach. Winter could see from the level in the bottle that Börge was onto his second glass. Maybe this was a regular afternoon treat.

  “Sit down,” said Börge.

  Winter sat in the easy chair across from Börge. A few blackbirds drifted around outside the window, as if searching for a home. Winter could hear their cries through the glass.

  Börge lifted his glass.

  “Well, it looks like we’re sitting here and celebrating something.”

  “Are you, then?”

  “What do I have to celebrate?” He put down the glass. “This is more like a nice way to get through the day.”

  Winter nodded.

  “You don’t have any opinions on it?”

  “No, why would I?”

  “Well, you know . . . you’re a policeman.”

  “It hasn’t yet gone so far that we step into people’s homes and take their bottles.”

  “But you did step in here,” said Börge.

  “Do you want me to leave?” said Winter.

  “No, no. It’s nice to have company.”

  This was the second time he’d said the word “nice.” But it felt anything but nice in there. It suddenly felt cold, as though all the warmth had left the radiator and drifted out through the window, to the birds who were still flying back and forth. Must be trees on each side of the window, Winter thought. I didn’t think of that when I came in here.

  “How’s it going, Christer?”

  Börge had reached for his glass of wine again, but he stopped in the middle of his movement.

  “Are you really interested, Winter?”

  “I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

  “What are you interested in?”

  “I don’t understand.”