Room No. 10 (14 page)

“I took my chances that you were home,” she said.

“I came home fifteen minutes ago.”

“Were you smoking on the balcony when I called?”

“No.”

“You’re lying.”

“Yes.”

“Are the plants in our apartment still alive?”

“I let oxygen in for them first thing.”

“Is it hot?”

“Record highs.”

“Then there’s no difference between here and there.”

“It smells like fall here,” he said. “Early in the morning, and late in the evening.”

“I miss it.”

“It will be even stronger when you come home.”

“Speaking of which, I went to the clinic,” Angela said.

“And?”

“Yup.”

“Starting when?”

“December first. Until May first, maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“On their end, it’s open, Erik. They suggested a year. But we don’t want that, do we?”

“No.”

“The question is, what
do
we want? Is this such a good idea?”

“Yes.”

“Is that all you can say?”

“I’ve already indicated my enthusiasm, Angela. It is a good idea. December to May in a mild climate, it’s a damn good idea. It’s the period when Gothenburg is a damn awful idea.”

“But you’ve always been such a local patriot.”

“Not when it comes to Gothenburg in the winter.”

“I guess I agree with you.”

“When you’re as old as I am, you’ll agree even more, Angela. It
goes straight into your bones. The wind, the rain. It gets worse every year.”

“So this is only about the weather?”

No. It wasn’t only about the weather. It was also about life. He needed more than a month of vacation to put some distance between his work and his life. These had been tough years, long years. Now his life was also his work, and it was a life he had chosen, work he had chosen. He sacrificed too much, he knew that. He was a public servant, but it was no service he was doing for himself and his family. It was
him,
but it was too much of his life. He would always be like that, even if and when he came back after half a year in a different country. He wouldn’t change completely. But maybe it would help him, make everything a degree milder. He was curious, curious about how he would be then. How he would think. Maybe he would think even more clearly. Maybe he would think more poorly, more obtusely. No. Maybe his imagination would be different. He thought that it would be deeper, and wider. He would be able to see farther.

“It’s about a lot more than that,” he answered. “You know that, Angela.”

“I know,” she said.

“So what do you say? You’re the one who has to work.”

“I’ll work no matter what.”

“So what do you say? You’ve been to the clinic.”

“So can you take time off, Erik?”

“You’re answering a question with a question. Of course I can take time off. I’ve already had a chat with Birgersson.”

“He didn’t throw you out?”

“Birgersson is starting to become soft. It’s his last year. He’s become like the father he never was.”

“What does that mean?”

“He’s started taking care of us.”

“So that means he’s letting you take time off for half a year?”

“He had thought of suggesting it himself, he said.”

“And you believe that?”

Winter did, actually. If it had been a few years ago, his pride would have stood in the way of this insight. But recently, his pride had stayed away. He had noticed a weariness he’d never felt before come sneaking up on him. It wasn’t his family, the small children. Or they were part of it, of course, but it was
him,
his way of lighting a fire under himself in his work. Nights without much sleep. The late nights at the laptop, when it was quiet and he could try to think.

“Can you really leave in the middle of it like that, Erik? You’ve never been able to do that before. That’s what’s been—” she said, but she interrupted herself.

“I know,” he said.

“So how will it be this time? If I sign the contract and start at the clinic on the first of December, you have to be down there, too. Siv could maybe handle a few days alone with the children, but not a week.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Her emphysema isn’t getting any better, you could say.”

“Hasn’t she quit smoking?”

“Don’t act dumber than you are, Erik. That’s the problem with you smokers. You act dumber than you are. And you’re all dense from the start, anyway.”

“I never pull any smoke down into my lungs.”

“Like I said. Dumber than you actually are.”

He had quit. Then he had started again. Birgersson had quit and that’s how it had stayed. Winter admired Birgersson for that; he had chain-smoked unfiltered cigarettes as an adult and quit before he would die. But he had pulled the smoke down into his lungs. Maybe that made him softer now.

“But you’re working on the murder of a woman,” Angela continued. “Aren’t you leading the investigation? Shouldn’t someone else take over right away?”

He had told her, of course. She had read Siv’s day-old
Göteborgs-Posten
every day. A person who had done that long enough didn’t miss much. He had given a few statements himself.

He hadn’t given any details. Not to the readers. Not to Angela.

She was assuming the case wouldn’t be solved before he left.

September. October. November. Three months, almost.

He suddenly thought of Ellen Börge. He suddenly saw her face in front of him. Eighteen years. They didn’t know any more now than they had eighteen years ago. Two hundred and sixteen months. But you’re working on the murder of a woman, Angela had said. Which murder? Which woman? He couldn’t let it go, let Ellen go. Her face popped up in his head when he saw Paula. He knew that he was also working on the murder of Ellen, that maybe he always had been, and that it had contributed to the weight of his work and commitment. His failure. The weight of his failure. His mistake. He had made a mistake back then. If he could just figure out what it was. If only he could figure it out, and remember. Before he left it. Before he got the sun in his face.

“We’re going to solve it,” he answered after the short silence between Vasastan and Nueva Andalucía.

“Are you as sure as you sound?”

“No. Yes.”

“Oh, God.”

“But we’re doing what we decided, right?”

“But what are we
doing,
then, Erik? In four days the girls and I are coming home and we have to have made our decision. In two days, actually. They want a decision by then.”

“We’ve already decided,” he answered.

•   •   •

Eighteen years earlier, the sun was going down faster than ever. He was cold. His jacket was still up in his office. A few hours ago it had been almost seventy degrees, but in the twilight it was autumnal September again.

He crossed Drottningtorget. A newspaper from today or yesterday blew past, on its way to the canal. He could see a
B
and an
S
from a headline that was impossible to read. The paper blew away, as though it had a meeting with a reader.

He went into Central Station. There was noise from the loudspeakers, a voice that was impossible to understand. There must be a school somewhere for people who are going to speak over loudspeakers, he thought, a school of unclarity. Bus drivers, streetcar drivers, announcers at train stations. Honing their pronunciation until it was impossible to make it out, redo the homework if a single bastard understood a thing.

He turned to the left and could feel the swelling in his ankle. There was a considerable bruise there. He was limping slightly.

Halders had thrown himself on top of him when they were playing soccer at Heden late yesterday afternoon. Soccer was the physical training of the season. And Halders couldn’t forget. It had been a month since Winter had hardly brushed Halders outside the department door, but Halders did not forget easily. He had stomped Winter with his cleats and then looked as innocent as an Italian defender. What was his name, the bone splitter on the Italian national team . . . Gentile. Claudio Gentile, the man who left invalids in his wake in the grass. Innocent expressions after horrible crimes. A fitting name: the nice one, the generous one. Yes, he lavished his skill on them, just like Halders did. Halders was lavish with his charm, a very lovely man in all ways.

“Did you twist your ankle?” Halders had asked.

Winter had stood up, but he had trouble putting weight on his leg. He noticed Ringmar shaking his head.

“Are we even now?” Winter had asked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Halders had said.

Winter thought of Halders’s expressionless face as he passed the storage lockers. Would he be able to cooperate with him in the future? Was Halders familiar with that expression, “cooperate”?

He had to swerve out of the way of a large extended family who tramped out of the locker area with backpacks that were heads taller than they were. All of them had the same clothes, the same faces. The loudspeaker blared again and the family began to run. The train was going to start rolling, to Kiruna, Constantinople, Kraków.

Maybe Ellen Börge was on her way. Or else she wasn’t on her way anywhere anymore.

He went in through the doors to the little information room, the smallest room in the station, boxed off for the thousands of people who were looking for information about their travels. Maybe there was a logic to it, but Winter had never understood it. He himself had had to stand in line for hours before train trips to find out something he needed to know in order to be able to stand in the next line and buy the ticket itself. It was pure Italy, corporate fascism, and when he thought the time had come, he would buy his first Mercedes and stop standing in line.

He walked up to the counter, and the line stared at him as he passed.

“We happen to be in a line here,” someone said.

How nice for you, he didn’t say. Only Halders could have said that.

The clerk behind the counter recognized him and nodded. She pointed toward the door behind her with a hand that was holding a city map. In front of her stood a man with dark glasses and a leather vest. He mumbled something Winter couldn’t hear.

In the room, a woman was leaning over a desk full of papers. She looked up when Winter came in. Behind her he could see lots of notes attached to a bulletin board. They were in several layers. Maybe there was a logic to that, too. The room was very small, without windows.

Winter introduced himself and showed his ID. The woman might have been ten years older than he was. She looked at his ID and then at him with an expression like she didn’t really believe this. He had seen that reaction before. He looked too young. But that problem would go away.

“Well, please sit down,” said the woman.

Winter tried to sit on the chair in front of the desk, but it didn’t work; there was no room. And his foot hurt. It throbbed harder when he sat down.

“Thanks, I’ll stand.”

“You’re here about a passenger?”

Winter took a photograph out of his breast pocket and handed it over. She looked at Ellen Börge’s face as she had just looked at Winter’s face. She looked up at him.

“And the idea is that we might recognize her here?” She looked at Ellen’s face again. “But she looks like lots of other people.”

Winter didn’t answer. He let her look at the photograph again.

“Well, I don’t recognize her, anyway. So the idea is that she might have been here?”

The idea, he didn’t know what the idea was. The only thing he wanted to know was whether Ellen Börge had been to the station. Whether anyone had seen her. If she had been here there was hope, at least that she might be alive. If she had been here, they didn’t have to abandon all hope. Ye who enter here. He thought of a church, a cross, a grave.

“Is that the idea?” the woman repeated.

He had the urge to answer yes.

“We’re just trying to find out whether she left from here,” he said. “She’s missing. We’re looking for her.”

“Well, I don’t recognize her, anyway,” the woman repeated. “When did she disappear?”

Winter told her the approximate date.

“But she could have been here later, of course,” he added.

“She stayed hidden at first, and then she started traveling?” the woman asked.

Winter shrugged.

“So what can I do?”

“Show the photo to your colleagues.”

“There are only three of us.”

“Show it to them. We’ve given copies to everyone who works at the station.”

“That must have been quick,” she said, making a face. “There doesn’t seem to be anyone else who works here. Everyone comes to us.” She waved a hand at the door behind Winter. “You saw the lines, I’m sure? Everyone comes here.”

“Maybe she did, too,” Winter said, nodding at the photograph, which the woman was still holding in her hand.

•   •   •

He was sitting in the perfect apartment again. Nothing had been moved in it; maybe nothing had ever been moved there. Christer Börge was sitting across from him. His clothes were the same. The balcony door was open out onto the afternoon. The room smelled like sun and fall, and something Winter didn’t recognize. But he recognized Börge’s face. The man had looked disappointed when he opened the door. He knew that Winter was coming, but he looked as though he had been waiting for someone else. Winter thought he understood. Börge was living on hope. Maybe that was all he was living on. He looked thin, more slender than when Winter had met him the first time. That wasn’t long ago. For Börge it must have felt like seasons, several Indian summers in a row.

“You have to have some clue,” Börge said.

“To be honest, we don’t,” Winter said.

“Why wouldn’t you be honest?” Börge said, but Winter couldn’t tell whether there was a smile on his face, or the shadow of a smile. “Isn’t the idea that police officers are supposed to be honest?”

The idea again. It was haunting him today. That was probably the idea. As though everything were preordained. Everything is repeated. Maybe I’ll be sitting here again in twenty years. Maybe Ellen and Christer will have four kids. Maybe she never will have come back. Maybe I’ll have kids, a family. Is that possible? No. Yes. No.