The Man From Beijing

by Unknown

  They knew nothing, in fact.

  She sat at the table, poking absent-mindedly at the food from the buffet. She was still the only customer in the restaurant. She beckoned to the waitress and pointed at the lamp.

  ‘There’s a ribbon missing,’ she said.

  At first the waitress didn’t seem to understand what she meant. She pointed again. The waitress nodded in surprise. She knew nothing about the missing ribbon. She bent down and looked under the table, in case it had fallen down there.

  ‘Gone,’ she said. ‘I no see.’

  ‘How long has it been missing?’ asked Roslin.

  The waitress looked at her in confusion. Roslin repeated the question, as she thought the waitress hadn’t understood.

  The waitress shook her head impatiently. ‘Don’t know. If this table is not good, please change.’

  Before Roslin could answer, the waitress had gone off to attend to a group of customers who had just entered the restaurant. She guessed that they were local government officials. When she heard them talking, she realised that they were conference delegates discussing the high levels of unemployment in Hälsingland. Roslin continued poking and nibbling at her food as the restaurant began to fill up. There was far too much for the young waitress to cope with on her own. Eventually, a man emerged from the kitchen and helped her to clear away the dishes and wipe the tables.

  After two hours, business began to slacken. Roslin was still playing with her food, but ordered a cup of green tea and passed the time by thinking through everything that had happened to her since she had arrived in Hälsingland.

  The waitress came back to her and asked if there was anything else the lady wanted. Roslin said, ‘I’d like to ask you a few questions.’

  There were still some customers eating. The waitress spoke to the man who had been helping her, then came back to Roslin’s table.

  ‘If you want to buy the lamp, I can fix it,’ she said with a smile.

  Birgitta Roslin smiled back.

  ‘No lamp,’ she said. ‘Were you open on New Year’s Eve?’

  ‘We are always open,’ said the waitress. ‘Chinese working times. Always open when others are closed.’

  ‘Can you remember your customers?’ she asked, not expecting an answer.

  ‘You have been here before,’ said the waitress. ‘I remember customers.’

  ‘Can you remember if anybody was sitting at this table on New Year’s Eve?’

  The waitress shook her head.

  ‘This is good table. There are always customers here. You are sitting here now. Tomorrow somebody else is sitting here.’

  Birgitta Roslin could see that it was hopeless asking such vague questions. She must be more precise. After a short pause, it struck her how to proceed.

  ‘At New Year,’ she began, ‘was there a customer you had never seen before?’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘Never. Neither before nor after.’

  She could see that the waitress was racking her brains.

  The last of the lunch customers were leaving. The telephone on the counter rang. The waitress answered and noted down a takeaway order. Then she came back to Roslin’s table. In the meantime someone in the kitchen had started playing music.

  ‘Beautiful music,’ said the waitress with a smile. ‘Chinese music. You like it?’

  ‘Nice,’ said Birgitta Roslin. ‘Very nice.’

  The waitress hesitated. Finally she nodded, hesitantly at first, but then more confidently.

  ‘Chinese man,’ she said.

  ‘Sitting here?’

  ‘On the same chair as you. He ate dinner.’

  ‘When was that?’

  She thought for a moment.

  ‘In January. But not New Year. Later.’

  ‘How much later?’

  ‘Maybe nine, ten days?’

  Roslin bit her lip. That could fit in. The violence at Hesjövallen took place during the night between 12 and 13 January.

  ‘Could it have been a couple of days later?’

  The waitress fetched a diary in which all bookings were recorded.

  ‘Twelfth of January,’ she said. ‘He sat here then. He had not booked a table, but I remember other customers who were here.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Chinese. Thin.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  The waitress’s answer was immediate and surprised her.

  ‘Nothing. He pointed at what he wanted.’

  ‘But he was definitely Chinese?’

  ‘I tried to speak Chinese with him, but he said only “silent”. And pointed. I think he wanted to be alone. He ate. Soup, spring rolls, nasi goring and dessert. He was very hungry.’

  ‘Did he have anything to drink?’

  ‘Water and tea.’

  ‘And he said nothing from start to finish?’

  ‘He wanted to be alone.’

  ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘He paid. Swedish money. Then he left.’

  ‘And he never came back?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was he the one who took the red ribbon?’

  The waitress laughed. ‘Why he do that?’

  ‘Does that red ribbon have any special meaning?’

  ‘It’s a red ribbon. What can it mean?’

  ‘Did anything else happen?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘After he’d left?’

  ‘You ask many strange questions. Are you from Internal Revenue? He does not work here. We pay tax. All who work here have papers.’

  ‘I just wondered. Did you ever see him again?’

  The waitress pointed to the window.

  ‘He went to right. It was snowing. Then he was gone. He never came back. Why do you ask?’

  ‘I might know him,’ said Birgitta Roslin.

  She paid and left. She turned right outside the restaurant. She came to a crossroads and paused to look around. One side road contained several boutiques and a car park. The other one was a cul-de-sac. At the end was a little hotel with a sign behind a pane of glass that had cracked. She looked around in all directions once more, studied the hotel sign again.

  She went back to the Chinese restaurant. The waitress was sitting down, smoking, and gave a start when the door opened. She stubbed out her cigarette immediately.

  ‘I have another question,’ said Roslin. ‘That man sitting at the table in the corner – was he wearing an overcoat, or some other kind of outdoor clothes?’

  The waitress thought for a moment. ‘No, no coat,’ she said. ‘How you know that?’

  ‘I didn’t know. Finish your cigarette. Thank you for your help.’

  The hotel door was broken. Somebody had tried to break it open, and the lock looked as if it had only been mended temporarily. She walked up a few steps to reception, which was simply a counter in front of a doorway. There was nobody there. She shouted. Nothing. She discovered a bell and was about to ring it when she suddenly realised there was somebody standing behind her. It was a man, so thin that he was almost transparent, as if he were seriously ill. He was wearing strong glasses and smelled of alcohol.

  ‘Are you looking for a room?’

  She could detect traces of a Gothenburg dialect in his voice.

  ‘I just want to ask some questions. About a friend of mine who I think stayed here.’

  The man shuffled away his slippers making a clopping noise with each step. He eventually turned up behind the desk. Hands shaking, he produced a hotel ledger. Roslin could never have imagined that hotels like the one she now found herself in still existed. It felt like she had been whisked back through time to a film from the 1940s.

  ‘What’s the name of the guest?’

  All I know is that he’s Chinese.’

  The man pushed the ledger aside, staring hard at her and shaking his head. Roslin guessed he must be suffering from Parkinson’s disease.

  ‘It’s normal to know the names of one’s friends. Even if they are
Chinese.’

  ‘He’s a friend of a friend.’

  ‘When is he supposed to have stayed here?’

  How many Chinese guests have you had here? she wondered. If there’s been even just one staying here, you must know about it.

  ‘At the beginning of January.’

  ‘I was in the hospital then. A nephew of mine looked after the hotel while I was away.’

  ‘Perhaps you could call him?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. He’s on an Arctic cruise at the moment.’

  The man peered short-sightedly at the pages of the ledger.

  ‘We have in fact had a man from China staying here,’ he said suddenly. A Mr Wang Min Hao from Beijing. He stayed here for one night. On the twelfth of January. Is that the man you’re looking for?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Birgitta Roslin, scarcely able to contain her excitement. ‘That’s the one.’

  The man turned the ledger so that she could read it. She took a piece of paper from her bag and made a note of the details. Name, passport number and something that was presumably an address in Beijing.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Birgitta Roslin. ‘You’ve been a big help. Did he leave anything behind in the hotel?’

  ‘My name’s Sture Hermansson,’ said the man. ‘My wife and I have been running this hotel since 1946. She’s dead now. I will soon be dead as well. This is the last year the hotel will exist. The building is going to be demolished.’

  ‘It’s sad when things turn out like that.’

  Hermansson grunted disapprovingly.

  ‘What’s sad about that? The place is a ruin. I’m also a ruin. There’s nothing odd about old people dying. But I think this Chinaman actually did leave something behind.’

  He disappeared into the room behind the counter. Birgitta Roslin waited.

  She was just beginning to wonder if he’d died when he finally reappeared. He had a magazine in his hand.

  ‘This was in a wastebasket when I came back from the hospital. A Russian woman does the cleaning for me. As I have only eight rooms, she can manage it on her own. But she’s careless. When I came back from the hospital I checked through the hotel. This was still in the Chinaman’s room.’

  Sture Hermansson handed her the magazine. It was Chinese, detailing Chinese exteriors and people. She suspected that it was a PR brochure for a company rather than a magazine as such. On the back of it were carelessly written Chinese characters in ink.

  ‘You’re welcome to take it,’ said Hermansson. ‘I can’t read Chinese.’

  She put it in her bag and prepared to leave.

  ‘Many thanks for your help.’

  Hermansson smiled. ‘It was nothing. Are you satisfied?’

  ‘More than satisfied.’

  She was heading for the exit when she heard Hermansson’s voice behind her.

  ‘I might have something else for you. But you seem to be in a hurry – perhaps you don’t have time?’

  Birgitta Roslin went back to the counter. Hermansson smiled. Then he pointed towards something behind his head. Roslin didn’t understand at first what she was supposed to see. There was a clock hanging on the wall and a calendar from a garage promising quick and efficient service on all Ford cars.

  ‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

  ‘Your eyes must be even worse than mine,’ said Hermansson.

  He took a wooden pointer from underneath the counter.

  ‘The clock’s slow,’ he explained. ‘I use this pointer to adjust the hands. It’s not a good idea for a rickety old body like mine to stand on a stepladder.’

  He pointed up at the wall, next to the clock. All she could see was a ventilator. She still didn’t understand what he was trying to show her. Then she realised: it wasn’t a ventilator, but an opening in the wall for a camera lens.

  ‘We can find out what this man looked like,’ said Sture Hermansson, looking pleased with himself.

  ‘Is it a surveillance camera?’

  ‘It certainly is. I made it myself.’

  ‘So you take pictures of everybody who stays in your hotel?’

  ‘Video films. I don’t even know if it’s legal. But I have a button I press under the counter. The camera films whoever is standing there.’

  He looked at her with an amused smile.

  ‘I’ve just filmed you, for instance,’ he said. ‘You’re in exactly the right place to make a good picture.’

  Roslin accompanied him into the room behind the counter. This was evidently where he slept, as well as being his office. Through an open door she could see an old-fashioned kitchen where a woman stood washing dishes.

  ‘That’s Natasha,’ said Hermansson. ‘Her real name’s something different, but I think all Russian women should be called Natasha.’

  He looked at Roslin, and his face clouded over.

  ‘I hope you’re not a police officer,’ he said.

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘I don’t think she has all the right papers. But as I understand it, that applies to most of our immigrant workers.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s true,’ said Birgitta Roslin. ‘But I’m not a police officer.’

  He started sorting through the video cassettes, all of which were dated.

  ‘Let’s hope my nephew remembered to press the button,’ he said. ‘I haven’t checked the films from the beginning of January. We had hardly any guests then.’

  After a lot of fumbling around that made Birgitta Roslin want to snatch the cassettes out of his hands, he found the right one and switched on the television. Natasha flitted through the room like a silent shadow, and disappeared.

  Hermansson pressed the play button. Roslin leaned forward. The picture was surprisingly clear. A man with a large fur hat was standing at the counter.

  ‘Lundgren from Järvsö,’ said Hermansson. ‘He comes to stay here once a month in order to be left in peace so that he can drink himself silly in his room. When he’s drunk, he sings hymns. Then he goes back home. A nice man. Scrap dealer. He’s been coming to stay with me for nearly thirty years. I give him a discount.’

  The television screen started flickering. When the picture became clear again, two middle-aged women were standing in front of the counter.

  ‘Natasha’s friends,’ said Hermansson solemnly. ‘They come now and then. I’d rather not think about what they do for a living. But they’re not allowed to entertain guests in this hotel. Mind you, I suspect they do so when I’m asleep.’

  ‘Do they also get a discount?’

  ‘Everybody gets a discount. I don’t have any set prices. The hotel’s been operating at a loss since the end of the 1960s. I actually live off a little portfolio of stocks and shares. I rely on forestry and heavy industry. There’s only one piece of advice I give to my trusted friends.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Swedish industrial stocks. They’re unbeatable.’

  A new picture appeared on the screen. Birgitta Roslin sat up and took notice. The man’s picture was very clear. A Chinese man, wearing a dark overcoat. He glanced up at the camera. It seemed almost as if he were looking her in the eye. Young, she thought. No more than thirty, unless the camera’s telling a lie. He collected his key and disappeared from the screen, which went black.

  ‘My eyes are not too good,’ said Hermansson. ‘Is that the man you’re looking for?’

  ‘Was it the twelfth of January?’

  ‘I think so. But I can check with the ledger and see if he checked in after our Russian friends.’

  He stood up and went to the reception counter. While he was away Birgitta Roslin managed to play through the pictures of the Chinese man several times. She froze the picture at the moment when he looked straight at the camera. He’s noticed it, she thought. Then he looks down and turns his face away. He even changes the way he is standing, so that his face can’t be seen. It all went very quickly. She rewound the tape and watched the sequence again. Now she could see that he was on his guard all the time, looking for
the camera. She froze the picture again. A man with close-cropped hair, intense eyes, tightly closed lips. Quick movements, alert. Perhaps older than she’d first thought.

  Hermansson came back.

  ‘It looks like we’re right,’ he said. ‘Two Russian ladies checked in, using false names as usual. And then came this man, Mr Wang Min Hao from Beijing.’

  ‘Would it be possible to make a copy of this film?’

  Hermansson shrugged.

  ‘You can have it. What use is it to me? I installed this camera and video set-up for my own amusement. I wipe the cassettes every six months. Take it.’

  He put the cassette in its case and handed it to her. They went back into the lobby. Natasha was cleaning the globes over the lights that illuminated the hotel entrance.

  Sture Hermansson gave Birgitta Roslin’s arm a friendly squeeze.

  ‘Are you going to tell me now why you’re so interested in this Chinese man? Does he owe you money?’

  ‘Why on earth should he?’

  ‘Everybody owes everybody else something. If somebody starts asking about people, there’s usually money involved somewhere.’

  ‘I think this man can provide the answers to certain questions,’ said Roslin. ‘But I’m afraid I can’t tell you what they are.’

  ‘And you’re not a police officer?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you don’t come from these parts, do you?’

  ‘No, I don’t. My name is Birgitta Roslin, and I come from Helsingborg. I’d be grateful if you’d get in touch if he turns up again.’

  She wrote her address and telephone number on a piece of paper and gave it to Sture Hermansson.

  When she emerged into the street she noticed that she was sweating. The Chinese man’s eyes were still following her. She put the cassette into her bag and looked around, unsure of what to do next. She really should be on her way back to Helsingborg – it was already late afternoon. She went into a nearby church and sat down in a pew at the front. It was chilly. A man was kneeling by one of the thick walls, repairing a plaster joint. She tried to think straight. A red ribbon had been found in Hesjövallen. It had been lying in the snow. By coincidence she had succeeded in tracing it to a Chinese restaurant. A Chinese man had eaten there the evening of 12 January. Later that night or early the next morning, a large number of people had died in Hesjövallen.