Room No. 10 (12 page)

“Do you usually check people’s names when they check in?”

“Uh . . . no. But . . . she came alone.”

“And she didn’t look like a whore? Is that what you mean?”

The clerk looked down at the desk without answering, as though
he was suddenly taking the shame of the hotel upon himself. He looked up. “She didn’t have a bag either, only a purse.” He waved a few fingers toward the desk. “She set it down when she was writing. And when she left I thought of that, how she didn’t have a suitcase.”

“Describe her purse,” Winter said.

“Oh . . . black.”

“Black? Is that all you remember?”

“Yes . . . and small. A strap. The way ladies’ purses look. I can’t tell them apart.”

He looked over toward the stairs, as though he would see Ellen there. “She looked like she was, like, on her way somewhere. I remember thinking that. This place is close to Central Station, you know, and we have lots of customers who take the first room they find before they move on. Travelers. I’m, like, used to recognizing people who are on their way somewhere.”

“And she looked like she was on her way somewhere?”

“I thought so.”

“And she did get away.”

“So I hear.”

“Sometime during the night, or the early morning.”

“That’s what they say.”

“Don’t you believe it?”

“I don’t believe anything. I don’t
know
anything. I wasn’t here. Got off at twelve.”

“Your colleague didn’t notice anything.”

“I know. I can imagine.”

“What do you mean?”

“He never notices anything. He sleeps.” The clerk smiled. “He hands out keys in his sleep.”

Winter believed him. He had gotten the same impression. This joker was sleepy, but the other one was worse.

“How did she seem?”

“What?”

“Ellen Börge. When she checked in. You were watching her, after
all. You noticed her. What was she like? Did she seem nervous? Was she tense? Was she looking around? Anything?”

“She seemed calm, I thought.”

“It was raining. Was she dry?”

“I don’t really get what you mean.”

“It was pouring rain out there. Did she have an umbrella? Was she like a drowned rat? Did it seem like she was seeking shelter from the rain?”

“Well . . . I didn’t see any umbrella. And she was wet, especially her hair.” He passed his hand over his mullet haircut. “Well . . . maybe she was in here to rescue herself from the rain. But it’s a long way from that to checking in here, isn’t it?”

Winter didn’t answer. Ellen had left home in sunshine, hardly a cloud in the sky. Christer Börge couldn’t say exactly what clothes she’d had on when she left, but it was “something light.” No coat; he claimed that everything was still hanging up. The umbrellas, two of them, were still standing in a prim umbrella stand. Yes, Winter had thought, why would she take an umbrella with her when the sun was shining.

Seven and a half hours later, she had checked in here, come in from the rain.

“Describe her clothing,” Winter said.

•   •   •

“Can you describe her clothing again?” Winter said to Christer Börge.

“Is that really necessary?”

“Please describe her clothing,” Winter repeated.

Börge told him about her clothes.

“I really did try to do my best,” he said when he was finished.

“But you’re not certain?”

Börge shrugged.

“Who can describe his wife’s clothes in detail? Later on? Can you?”

“I’m not married.”

“You get what I mean, right?”

Winter nodded.

“But she probably didn’t have a jacket. It was a warm day, or night. Or afternoon, I don’t know what to call it.”

Winter nodded again, though there wasn’t anything to nod at. Börge was still standing still in front of him, as he had been doing since Winter stepped into the hall. Börge didn’t want him here, and Winter understood.

“Can we sit down for a bit?”

“Why?”

Winter didn’t have to answer this, and he didn’t. He nodded toward the room. It was illuminated by an intense evening light. The sun was going down in red and gold, September colors.

Börge turned around and went into the living room, and Winter followed him. They sat down. There was a sudden scent, as though from the light outside, like spices Winter didn’t know the name of and might never taste. The door to the balcony was wide open. There was no wind. The room, and the balcony, gave an impression of elegance when the light fell in on them from the clear day. But the furniture was as plushy as when he had been here a day and a half or so ago. Maybe it would remain so. He wondered whether Börge would still be living here after a year, half a year. Whether Ellen would come back here. Winter thought that she would live happily ever after somewhere else. She would make contact from there. Christer would continue in unhappiness, or happiness. Maybe he was hiding his anxiety behind a mask of distaste. He was a stranger to Winter, like most people. Winter worked with strangers, some of them alive.

“Hotel Revy,” Winter said.

“Never heard of the place,” Börge said. “I’ve told you that.”

“That’s where she stayed.”

“Stayed? Stayed? It was only a couple of hours. She didn’t have a bag. I don’t call that staying.”

“What would you call it, then?” Winter asked.

Börge didn’t answer.

“Why that particular hotel?” Winter said.

“Why a hotel?” said Börge.

“That’s what I’m asking myself. And you.”

Börge said something that Winter didn’t catch.

“Sorry? What did you say?”

“She had no reason,” Börge said in a low voice. There was something about his voice that Winter didn’t recognize from before, a different tone.

“What do you mean by that?”

“What I’m saying.” Börge looked Winter in the eye. “She had no reason to stay at that place, not even for a few hours. Or to go anywhere at all. She must have gotten sick. Her home was here.” He looked around, at the home. “She belonged here.” He looked at Winter again. “This was where she belonged.”

The guy sounds like he’ll never get to see her come home again, Winter thought. And at that moment, right there on the soft sofa, as the sun was suddenly hidden behind a cloud and everything became dim, dim like in the lobby of Hotel Revy, Winter believed that Christer and Ellen had seen each other for the last time.

T
he awning over the steps out front was blue now. There was no wind and no rain. The steps were dry. There were vertical cracks from the bottom up. A system of rivers without a delta.

Winter went up the stairs. He saw the cracks between the steps, and the weeds that were on their way up from the underworld. The third world, he thought. It goes quickly once it’s started to go backward. An equalization occurs. It goes to hell on both sides of the equator.

It was dim in the lobby, and the darkness was intensified by the bright light outside. The sky was wide open out there, as though it were trying to move the horizons. It had a lighter shade of blue, as though it had been scrubbed by the summer rain.

He was alone in the lobby. Music was coming from somewhere, maybe from a radio. The music told him nothing. It sounded as though no one was listening.

He walked up to the desk and looked around. The music had started again, a low hum. He remembered. Almost twenty years had gone by, but everything was the same. His sense of déjà vu was not déjà vu. It was real. Nothing really happens in twenty years, he thought; everything just repeats itself.

The desk clerk showed up behind the reception desk. He stepped out through a doorway that had been in shadow, like everything else in there. There was no door, only a curtain.

Winter recognized him immediately.

The clerk recognized Winter immediately. Winter could see it in his eyes. They gleamed for a tenth of a second, like a flashlight, through the lobby.

The clerk didn’t say anything, but his eyes made their way over to the stairs, up them, through the corridor, up to room ten. The room was still cordoned off. The whole floor was cordoned off.

This man must have had a few days off. Winter hadn’t run into him during this investigation. But Winter wasn’t the one who interrogated the hotel attendants, not yet. Not until now. What was his name? Winter had forgotten. He had read it and forgotten it, strangely enough. This guy’s name was in Paula’s file, like all the employees of Revy. That meant that his name was in two files with twenty years between them. He didn’t look twenty years older. His hairstyle was different. Time moved more slowly in here, in the dimness. Out there in the light, beyond the awning, everything aged faster. But the clerk had recognized Winter. Salko. His name was Salko. Richard Salko.

“It’s been a while,” said Salko.

“So you recognize me?”

“Just like you recognize me.”

“The years have sure been kind to us,” Winter said.

“Probably depends on what you started with,” said Salko, “in the beginning. What you had from the beginning.”

Salko’s eyes slid off toward the stairs again, and back.

“Horrible thing,” he said. “How could it happen?”

Winter didn’t say anything.

“I wasn’t here,” said Salko. “I was sick.”

“I know.”

“So I have nothing to say.”

“What kind of illness was it?”

“Migraine. It can last for a few days. A week, every once in a while.”

Winter nodded.

“I have medicine. I go to a doctor.”

“I believe you,” Winter said.

“When it . . . that happened, I was lying at home.”

Winter held up a photograph.

“Seen her before?”

Salko studied Paula’s face.

“That’s not the same picture as in the newspaper.”

“No.”

“She hardly looks the same.”

“That’s why I’m showing you this one.”

“No,” said Salko, shaking his head. “I haven’t seen her before.”

“She hasn’t been here?”

“Not that I know of.”

“None of your colleagues recognize her either.”

Salko shrugged.

“Yet she chose this hotel,” Winter said.

“Did she?”

“What do you mean?”

“Was she the one who chose it?”

Winter didn’t answer.

Salko shrugged again.

“She checked herself in, if you can put it like that.”

“She went up to the room, number ten,” Winter said. “As far as we know, she never left the room. She didn’t have a key. No one saw her come or go. She stayed there during the night. She had a visitor. We don’t know when. No one here saw any visitor.”

“It’s a hotel,” Salko said. “People come and go.” He threw out his hand toward the lobby. “You can see for yourself. It’s so damn dark in here that you can hardly see your hand in front of your face.”

“Why is that?” Winter asked.

“Ask the owners.”

They would. But it wasn’t a crime to skimp on electricity. And anonymity was part of this place. Electricity didn’t go very well with anonymity.

“I hear you’re going to close,” Winter said.

“Who told you that?”

“Is it just a rumor?”

“Don’t ask me.”

“You don’t know anything about it?”

“There are so many rumors,” Salko said. “This place has been about to shut down for twenty years.”

“You must have a precarious job situation,” Winter said.

Salko didn’t smile. “Maybe this time it’s true. The rumors might be true.” He looked straight across the desk at Winter. “I suggest you ask the owner.”

Winter nodded. He noticed that Salko moved his gaze. He heard a sound behind him and turned around. The door was swinging, but he didn’t see anyone. He hadn’t heard anyone walk through the lobby. He turned back to Salko.

“Who was that?”

“Sorry?”

“Who was that, who went out through the doors?”

“I didn’t see anyone.”

“But the doors were moving.”

“Must be the wind.”

“There is no wind.”

“I didn’t see anyone, I said.”

Winter could tell that he was lying. That was something you learned in twenty years. Seeing lies, that was his inheritance.

“We’ve talked to the maid and she didn’t notice anything. I mean, the day before, or the few days before. Also, she didn’t clean the room the last two days.”

Salko shrugged for the third time.

“It was empty. What’s the point?”

“Don’t you do . . . well, an inspection? Go through the rooms every day? Or night?”

“No.”

“Aren’t the rooms cleaned every day? At least if someone is staying there?”

“It’s up to the guest. There’s a sign you can hang up.”

“No cleaning, please?”

“Do not disturb.”

“That’s not the same thing,” said Winter. “I can’t understand how a hotel can not give a damn about cleaning.”

Salko noticed the shift of nuance in Winter’s voice. If he had been planning to shrug, he stopped himself.

“You realize what that could mean?” said Winter. “Do you realize?”

•   •   •

Nina Lorrinder was half a head taller than Aneta Djanali.

She had also been half a head taller than Paula Ney.

It was quarter past five and the pub on Västra Hamngatan had opened. It was called the Bishops Arms and was the closest you could get to London in Gothenburg. Djanali had been there before, one relatively recent evening, along with Halders. After half an hour Ringmar and Winter had shown up. Winter had ordered a pint of the recently arrived fresh ale for everyone. It was the first time for Djanali, and the last. She could get a cheaper drink with the same taste and scent by wringing out a dishrag.

“Ahhhh,” Winter had said when he’d taken a drink. “One more?”

But now there wasn’t one more. There wasn’t any ale at all. Djanali and Lorrinder were drinking tea.

Lorrinder and Paula Ney had each had a glass of white wine. They had sat at this table. It was the only one in the place that was empty, as though word had gotten out.

Djanali had asked Lorrinder whether they should sit there, and she had nodded. This is macabre, Djanali thought. Maybe it will help her remember.

“How long did you sit here?”

“Haven’t I already answered that?” Lorrinder asked, but without a hostile tone.