Free Room No. 10 by Åke Edwardson

seven?” Ringmar asked, wiping mayonnaise from his upper lip.
    “That’s when the time runs out,” Winter said. “There’s a counter mechanism for up to seven days, and when it’s counted down and no one has collected his things from the locker, Bengtsson opens it and checks it out.”
    Ringmar looked at his shrimp sandwich.
    “So he found this?”
    They were sitting at one of the new cafés in Central Station. Bengtsson had called for help, locker-opening help. The search warrant was still in effect.
    “Where is he?” Ringmar asked, setting down the sandwich on the plate, placing his napkin over it, and looking around.
    “I was just kidding, Bertil,” Winter said, looking at the plate. “I’m sorry. The sandwich looks wonderful. So fresh. You don’t need to hide it.”
    “Then you can eat the rest,” Ringmar said, pushing the plate over.
    “I don’t have much of an appetite right now.”
    “I did have one,” Ringmar said. “You pulled me away from my lunch on the town.”
    “I’m sorry, Bertil, it was just something Bengtsson said.”
    “Are you blaming him now? He’s not even here.” Ringmar looked around again. “Where is he?”
    “Coming soon. But what he said was that pretty often they have to open lockers because of food smells. Or whatever they call it.”
    Ringmar got up and grabbed the plate with his half a shrimp sandwich and carried it over to the cart of dishes.
    “I’ll buy you a new one,” Winter said when Ringmar had returned.
    “Not here.”
    “It’s even worse than it sounds,” Winter said. “The food comes from someone’s pantry. When people are evicted they take what they can with them and lock it in here. Some photographs. Some knickknacks. Some clothes. Food from the fridge.” He flung one hand out. “It’s their living room and kitchen all in one.”
    “Room number three hundred,” said Ringmar. “Or number ten.”
    “Soon we’ll get to see what it looks like for ourselves.”
    Winter had asked Bengtsson whether he had ever checked all the boxes at the same time before. Almost, Bengtsson had answered; one time when a horrible smell was driving all living things out of Central Station. They finally found food that some poor evicted bastard had brought from his fridge. The owner never came back. Maybe he, or she, had jumped in front of a train. That was common. The tracks were nearby, after all.
    “What does he do with all the things that people never retrieve?” Ringmar asked, drinking the last of his café latte. There was no regular coffee here. “And I’m not talking about rotten cheese.”
    “Keeps most of it for a few months,” Winter answered. “If there’sspace. If no one calls, he gives the things to the Salvation Army. Which then gives some of it away to the homeless.”
    “So you could say that it’s a cycle,” Ringmar said.
    He knew that many of Bengtsson’s customers were vagrants. Many died with the key in their pocket, or disappeared in other ways. Some actually left on a train.
    “He empties ten or fifteen deserted lockers every day,” Winter said. “Here he comes, by the way.”
    •   •   •
    Halders couldn’t find any postcards in Paula Ney’s apartment. Not from ten years ago. Not from any year at all. Apparently no one thought about her, not even with the hasty thoughts that fit on a postcard, or else they had also been removed from the apartment, along with the photographs.
    The bag, he thought, the suitcase. She never traveled away, but the suitcase has to be somewhere. I don’t think it’s been emptied. Someone has saved it for some special reason.
    A painted right hand. What the hell kind of sick shit was that? Never seen such a thing. Can’t have to do with identification. Birthmarks. We don’t need that. Is there a photo of the hand in the suitcase now? Why am I thinking like this? Is the white hand on its way somewhere? Why did that bastard need her hand? A hand collector? Good God. Halders walked over to