Room No. 10

by Ake Edwardson

  He unlocked the door with the key they’d been using since the murder.

  The hall was dark at first, but it quickly became lighter to his eyes. It still smelled like paint and wallpaper paste in there. It was a harmless smell, as though it couldn’t hurt anyone. It stood for the future, or at least for change. It lingered for a long time. Winter had repainted his whole apartment in stages, and the smells were like a calendar. Memory was bound up with scents.

  He walked slowly through the whole apartment, turning on all the lights.

  The electric light might have given a false sense of daytime, but for Winter it only intensified the night.

  He wasn’t tired.

  He felt the excitement, or the first hint of it. Maybe it meant something.

  He stood in Paula’s bedroom. The gray wall behind the bed was like a half-timbered pattern of wide white strokes, painted with a brush. There were remnants of spackle. The primer coat wasn’t finished. Winter wondered what pattern would have been on the wallpaper that never made it onto the walls. He suddenly wanted to know.

  37

  Winter left the bedroom, passed the hall, and walked into the living room. Three of its four walls were painted white. The color stung his eyes in the bright electric light. The surface of the three walls was smooth. There was still a sheet of plastic on the floor, gray like the sea.

  He felt the surface of the wall. It was smooth as sand. It was like touching skin, naked skin. He drew back his hand. The plastic made a dry sound as he stepped on it. It was quiet in there. It was always quiet in Paula’s apartment.

  He looked at the walls again, slowly turning around in the room. He looked at the plastic. The door out to the hall. The window, which was a hole out into the night. And the hall, which had received the same base treatment as the bedroom.

  Winter went back to the bedroom. The bed stood half a meter away from the wall. The painters must have pulled it out. Winter observed the walls here in the same way he had observed the walls in the other room. The brushstrokes of primer back and forth. The uneven surface. The irregularities were visible, but there were so many of them that they formed their own sort of pattern, which stretched from floor to ceiling.

  He walked back to the door and systematically began to feel along the short wall between the door and the window with his hands.

  He continued along the long wall, passing the window, continuing on the other side. The irregularities slipped past his hands like pebbles on a beach. There was a beach like that about twenty kilometers from here. It was his. There was a similar one about twenty kilometers west of Marbella. He would consider it his in a week.

  The rain began to strike the windowpane. The black clouds had looked like they would give way to the clear sky as he stepped into the building, but now they had come back.

  He took his hands from the wall and smelled them. They smelled like oil, solvent, paint thinner. It could be an intoxicating odor. Winter lowered his hands and walked across the room to the bed, walked around it, and started to feel along the wall behind the bed, from right to left. The base work seemed to be particularly careful here, or unusually sloppy. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference. The light from the high ceiling lamp in the middle of the room didn’t help.

  He felt something at the level of the headboard. It was a meter from the floor. He moved his hands as though around a frame. Yes. There was something under the crosshatched layers of paint. A square. Five by five, maybe. He moved his fingers around the equilateral surface. He carefully pressed his hand against the surface and it gave a few millimeters.

  He looked around for something to cut with. He thought about his keys, but they were too thick.

  Out in a kitchen drawer he found a small, narrow knife. He took a pair of gloves out of his jacket pocket and pulled them on.

  Back in the bedroom, he carefully made a small cut at the upper right corner of the square. He saw a piece of plastic and pulled carefully on the corner, which was now sticking out. It came away. He could see more plastic, and something white inside the plastic coating. A protective cover. Winter carefully cut out the square on two sides and was able to pull out the object.

  It was a flat packet encased in thick plastic, the same plastic that covered the floor. That would protect everything in there. Winter carefully unwound the plastic. It was wrapped in several layers around its contents. The contents were a photograph and two sheets of thin paper. He could see writing on the paper. It was handwriting, script. Blue ballpoint, pale text. It looked like letters. He moved his eyes to the photograph. It was black-and-white. Two small children, each on a swing. The swing set was on a playground he recognized. The children were looking at each other. It looked like they were laughing. It was a boy and a girl. Winter recognized the boy, who was in half profile. About fifteen meters beyond the swings was the grove of trees. The branches were hanging straight down, as though all the wind had died the day the photograph was taken. There was a man halfway between the grove of trees and the playground. He was watching the children. The picture was sharp enough and the distance was short enough for Winter to recognize his face. Christer Börge. Winter saw the photograph tremble. It was as though the branches of the trees had moved. He saw Christer Börge’s face; that was all he could see right now. Börge’s eyes were aimed straight ahead, as though there were no camera, no photographer. Who took this picture? Winter thought. Was it Anton Metzer? He noticed that he was also holding the two sheets of paper in his left hand. He began to read the writing on the top one. He kept going; it went quickly. There were ten lines. He recognized the handwriting. Winter had read these lines before. The paper began to tremble, too, as the photograph had done ten seconds ago. He changed hands, like that would help. He read the writing on the other paper. It was a bit longer, maybe fifteen lines. He didn’t count them. Before he had finished reading, he felt tears fill his eyes.

  • • •

  The rain fell as though the world would soon become a landless sea. When Winter had gotten the car door open and closed it behind him, he was as wet as if he had swum from the house to his parking space. He used the arm of his coat to dry his face. He could taste salt on his lips. It wasn’t just water.

  The rain sluiced over the windshield as if it were coming from a fire hose. He closed his eyes for three seconds, opened them, tried to blink away what was in his eyes, and started the car.

  His cell phone rang as he was driving down toward Linnéplatsen. There was no traffic on the streets. Sahlgrenska looked dark, as if all the power lines had snapped under the masses of water. Another storm was here, along with the new day. Technically, it was a new day.

  His phone. He couldn’t get the damn phone out of his coat pocket! His wet fingers slipped on the zipper of his inner pocket. Why had he zipped it? It must have happened when he’d lost consciousness for a few seconds. As he left the house. He couldn’t remember how he’d left. Whether he’d gone down the stairs. The cell phone gave a chirp in his pocket. At least they had left a message. He turned up toward Konstepidemin, parked outside the Institute of Psychology, finally got the zipper open, and read the screen.

  He called voice mail service: You have one new message. It was received . . . and so on. He knew when it had been received.

  A voice as though out of a great roar:

  “Winter! Is this Winter? If you hear this, call me.”

  A pause. Winter heard the roaring in the background, or rather in the foreground. It must be the rain. It seemed to be falling against something hard, like a hammer on an anvil.

  “Winter! I’ve go—”

  And the connection was broken. It must have been the storm. A slave transmitter gone to hell. But he had recognized the voice.

  It was Richard Salko, the desk clerk at Hotel Revy.

  Salko had given Winter a list of employees. Christer Börge’s name hadn’t been on it. That could mean anything. Winter hadn’t had time to check all the employees through the years himself.

&n
bsp; Salko had sounded agitated.

  There was no number to call. The call had come from a private line. But Winter had Salko’s home number in the phone list on his phone. He dialed it, waited, listened to the lonely signals on the other end until he disconnected and threw the phone on the seat beside him. He ran a red light onto Övre Husargatan. There was no one to crash into. The traffic lights must have gotten hung up in the storm.

  • • •

  His phone rang as he turned onto Vasagatan. It glowed on the leather seat as though it had caught fire. Winter grabbed it without looking away from the street.

  “Yes?”

  “Erik. Where are you? What’s going on?”

  “I’m on Vasagatan,” he said.

  “Great.”

  “I’m just going to check something first.”

  “On Vasagatan?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “Christer Börge. I’m on my way to his place.”

  “Now? Can’t it wait a few hours?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” said Angela. “And above all, don’t do it alone.”

  “I won’t do anything stupid,” he answered.

  • • •

  Maybe it was stupid to pick Börge’s lock. But no one answered the doorbell. Winter had given him a reasonable amount of time. He could hear the bell faintly inside. The storm outside swallowed every sound.

  He slowly opened the door. There was no mail on the doormat. No papers. It was too early for the daily paper, but Winter doubted that any paper carrier would venture out this morning.

  He walked through the hall without turning on the lights. He felt his pistol against his hip. The hall was weakly lit by the streetlights outside, but the lights were swinging so violently in the wind that the light streaked around the apartment in a circle that he couldn’t follow. It was like a discotheque in the seventies. The trees outside the window appeared to be dancing.

  There were no shoes in the hall this time either.

  Winter had been in Börge’s hall, and in the living room, but nowhere else in the apartment. He had planned to come here with a warrant, but since he was already inside, he no longer needed permission.

  The light was good enough in the living room for him to approach the glass case and discover that the three photographs were gone.

  He turned around.

  There was a closed door at the far end of the room.

  Winter drew his weapon, checked it, walked across the room, passed the white sofa, pressed himself up against the wall beside the door, pushed down the handle, and opened the door with the tip of his pistol. He waited a few seconds and cast a quick glance into the room. He saw a bed, a table, a chair, a wall. He pulled back his head, waited, looked again. If there had been anyone in here, he would have known it by now. There was no one there. A narrow door was ajar behind and next to the bed. Winter walked across the room and pushed open the door. He saw something flash on the floor. He used his hand to feel for a light switch inside the door, and he found it. The light was weaker than he had expected.

  There were shoes on the floor. It looked like hundreds of shoes. Like a gray exodus, a colony of rats. Winter suddenly felt vaguely sick to his stomach, as though he was about to lose his balance. He had seen some of those damn shoes once, many years ago. They were impossible to wear out. Somewhere down there in that pile they would still be able to find a pair that matched the print on the floor at Central Station.

  He pulled the closet door closed, walked out into the hall, saw how it turned the corner. He followed the bend and saw the door at the end of the strangely built hall. It reminded him of the hotel corridor at Revy. The door down there reminded him of Revy. Everything was starting to remind him of Revy. Winter walked carefully through the corridor. He didn’t need more light than what leaked in from the rest of the apartment behind him.

  The number 10 was painted in white paint on the door. There was some distance between the digits, as though they didn’t really belong together.

  The door was locked. He put his shoulder into it, but it didn’t open. He took his mark and kicked the bolt with his heel. The door flew open and he tried to avoid falling into it while simultaneously holding his pistol in front of him.

  There was only darkness inside. The room had no windows. He could see contours, but that was all. This room must be as big as the bedroom. Who built a room without windows? Had Börge built it himself?

  He took a step inside and the stench became even stronger than when he had kicked open the door. The sick feeling inside him welled up without warning. He turned away from the door and breathed heavily. Sweat broke out on his forehead. Jesus God.

  He forced himself up, fumbled for the light switch, blinked as the light exploded from somewhere inside. He blinked again, looked, blinked, looked.

  The ropes hung in neat loops along the nearest wall. They gleamed with the same steel-blue color as the shoes in the closet.

  The workbench below was full of objects. All of them were white. The bench seemed to be made of steel. The objects were reflected in the bench, as though they were resting on water. All of them were human body parts. Arms, legs, heads, a miniature torso. It looked like the reconstruction of a Greek temple, three thousand years after a visit from vandals. Nothing was whole any longer. Winter could see strange molds of wood and metal, as though they had been built from memory, from invisible instructions. But the results looked real. He had seen it before. Now he’d had the opportunity to visit the workshop.

  But plaster doesn’t smell. These looked like body parts, but they didn’t exude any bodily secretions, or any stench. Winter thought the smell had lessened in the few minutes he’d been standing there, but it was still like standing in a room that had been sprayed with ammonia.

  He took a step forward, and one to the side.

  The metal eyebolts on the wall gleamed dully like the steel workbench and the ropes. The wall, too, seemed to be made of plaster. Remnants of rope were still hanging from the large eyebolts. The ropes were frayed at the ends, as though someone had tried to chew them off.

  There was a large stain on the floor. It spread out like a deep shadow. It still looked damp.

  This was where he held her prisoner, Winter thought. Ellen. She came home in the end.

  He felt the sick feeling well up again, like the storm.

  38

  Winter stood on the sidewalk and tried to get all the air he could swallow. The rain had stopped, but the storm was tearing at the lindens as though it were out for some kind of revenge. Maybe it was a hurricane. Winter held his face to the sky to get as much water inside him as he could. The taste in his mouth from his recent vomiting was still chokingly strong. His stomach still felt like fire.

  Winter had seen Paula’s suitcase to the right of the large stain up there. He hadn’t opened it.

  His cell phone rang while he was still standing with his face turned up toward the black sky. He was surprised that he could hear it ringing over the roar of the wind.

  “Yes?” he shouted into the handset as he backed into the front door for shelter.

  He heard a voice but no words.

  “I can’t hear you,” he shouted.

  Suddenly he heard, in the middle of a sentence. The line became clear, as though it had ended up in some part of the eye of the storm.

  “Say that again.”

  “It wasn’t to scare her!”

  “Jonas!”

  He got no answer.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m . . .”

  The words disappeared out into the night again. Or the morning. The morning was coming closer now. Maybe there would be light on this day, too.

  “Listen to me, Jonas! Can you hear me?”

  Winter heard mumbling, but he didn’t know whether Jonas could hear him. They were like two people standing there talking to themselves on the same telephone line.

  Suddenly he heard Sand
ler’s voice, strong and clear:

  “I wanted to warn her about him! About Börge! I tried to do it before! I wasn’t brave enough.”

  “I’m standing outside his house,” Winter said. “I was in there.”

  The storm took off with their conversation again. Winter thought he heard the name Börge mentioned again, but he wasn’t sure. The voice became weaker, as though the person on the other end were being lifted by the storm and swept away. Winter himself could feel it tearing at his clothes. For a few seconds, it felt as though he would lose his balance.

  “Jonas?” he shouted. “Jonas?”

  No answer now.

  What should he say? Could Sandler hear him? Did he understand that he was in danger? Should he ask him to stay where he was? But Winter didn’t know where he was. It sounded like he was outside. That was dangerous. But it might also be dangerous for him to be inside. The phone beeped in Winter’s ear. The call had definitely been dropped. Winter stared at his car. It was still withstanding the wind. He turned around and saw the black windows of Börge’s apartment. Perhaps he could see the light that was still on in the innermost room, but only because he knew it was there. He thought of his conversation with Sandler. It had been cut off, just like his conversation with Richard Salko. Salko had never tried to get hold of him unless it was important, life or death. Winter knew that. He kept the phone in his hand and dialed Salko’s home number. No one answered this time, either.

  There was one place Salko could be. It was the only place Winter could think of now. It was the place where it all began.

  • • •

  Hotel Revy looked as if it were swaying in the wind. The narrow streets in the neighborhood around the building seemed to have disappeared. But they were there; Winter had driven on one of them until he couldn’t get any farther because of two downed birch trees. There were more trees in this city than anyone had realized. Downtown looked like a jungle, like a sudden northern wilderness. That couldn’t be on purpose.

  He stood on the stairs that led up to the closed, dark hotel. The sign was still there; in the storm it looked even more like a giant spider on its way up the wall. The early dawn colored the sky behind the cracked facade with black and with a dull shade of red that began to rise up out of nowhere. Winter could see the window that belonged to room number ten. He walked up the stairs and pressed down on the large brass door handle. It swung open without a sound. Winter illuminated the lock with the flashlight he’d taken out of the glove compartment of his Mercedes. He didn’t see any damage to the lock. But the brass was just as ancient as everything else belonging to the hotel, and its even surface could just as easily be made up of ten thousand scrape marks.