Room No. 10 (39 page)

“I don’t get anything,” said the boy. “It’s cheaper that way.”

“Is it as fun that way?”

“Is what as fun?” Sandler asked in turn, and he changed position on the chair.

I’m not falling into that trap, Winter thought, looking at the tape recorder in front of him on the blond wood table.

“Not having money,” he said.

Sandler shrugged.

“I talked to your mom the other day,” Winter said.

He could tell that Sandler gave a start, a barely visible shudder across his shoulders, but he was trained to see such things.

“Oh?”

“She hasn’t mentioned anything to you?”

“No. Why would she?”

“When did you last talk to her, Jonas?”

He shrugged.

“Try to think back.”

He appeared to be thinking back. Maybe he knew.

“Quite a while ago.”

“Aren’t you wondering why I visited her?”

He shrugged again. He transformed before Winter’s eyes, regressed, one could say. He became defiant.

As though Mom’s shadow had fallen over the room.

“When you lived out there as a boy,” Winter said, “you played with a girl who lived in the same stairwell. Can you tell me a little about her?”

I
don’t remember that,” said Sandler. He looked down at the table. “A girl? There were a lot of children there.” He raised his eyes.

“Were there?” Winter asked.

“Yeah, so what?”

“According to your mom, you were the only children in that stairwell.”

“Yeah, so what? There were probably a ton of other kids in those yards. That’s what I remember, anyway.”

“But you don’t remember this girl? Or her mom?”

Sandler didn’t answer. He appeared to be thinking back. Winter waited for him to say something. Maybe the boy has something to say. Or something to hide.

“Did they live in the same stairwell?” Sandler asked.

“Yes.”

“What about them? Why are you asking about them?”

“Just try to remember.”

“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.