Free Room No. 10 by Åke Edwardson Page B

employees of Speed Services AB and six police officers.
    “What are you actually looking for?” Bengtsson had asked as they began.
    “Just a suitcase,” Winter had answered.
    “What’s in it, then?”
    “Clothes, photos, maybe tickets. That’s what we’re going to check.”
    “Mm-hmm,” Bengtsson had mumbled, looking as though he didn’t believe what Winter said.
    There were a lot of suitcases.
    “Lots of suitcases here,” said Halders, who had joined them.
    They tried to work as quickly as possible. It felt like an impossible task; it was an impossible task. What are you actually looking for? Winter thought. It isn’t just a suitcase.
    It was lucky that the peak vacation time was over now, and travel had died down. A third of the lockers were empty. Some contained all the goods of a household, a home in a box. There was a garden gnome in one of the largest lockers. The gnome looked at Winter when he opened the locker.
    After an hour’s work, Bengtsson called out from over by the west end. Winter looked up and saw him take a few steps backward.
    Winter ran through the aisle.
    Bengtsson turned to him with a strange expression on his face.
    “It doesn’t smell,” he said. “Shouldn’t it smell?”
    Winter bent down; the locker was low to the ground. It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.
    He saw a hand. It was wrapped in a transparent plastic bag. The bag was held closed by a rubber band that looked colorless. The hand was white as snow.
    It was locker number 110.
    There wasn’t any smell in there.
    The hand looked like plaster.
    It was plaster. It lay on a table under Central Station. The cold light made it even more naked. As though it were alive. It had been caught in an open handshake, or at rest. The fingers were hardly separate.
    “What the hell is this?” said Halders.
    “A plaster hand,” said Winter. “A perfect casting.”
    “Of Paula’s hand?” said Halders.
    “We don’t know yet,” said Ringmar.
    Halders looked down at the hand. “It’s not large.” He looked up. “Her hand was just as white.”
    “Do you find a lot of these?” Halders asked, turning toward Bengtsson, who was standing a few steps beyond the table.
    “This is the first time,” said Bengtsson, who still appeared to be in some sort of shock. “I’ve seen plaster cats, and frogs . . . but not this.”
    “A perfect casting,” Ringmar repeated. “If it is a casting.”
    “The hand was at rest when it was made,” said Winter.
    “It was probably dead,” said Halders.
    “There’s some sort of scar on the upper side,” said Winter, “a line.”
    He looked down at the hand. He bent down, bent closer. It was a horrible object. It shimmered green now among the green lockers and the green walls, a shade that made people feel nauseated. He was no longer certain that it was so perfect. It looked more like it had been cast from a standard form. Maybe it had even been purchased in some strange shop.
    But the important thing wasn’t what it looked like. It was what it was, what it meant. Symbolized, one could say. Winter was convinced that this hand had something to do with the case. With Paula. It was the murderer’s greeting to them.
    A wave. He wanted them to see him.
    He knew that they would.
    The murderer knew that they would see him soon.
    See him on a shimmery green videotape.
    Maybe he would wave. Make some signal that they would understand.
    They would understand that he knew.
    Winter felt the old familiar chill in his body. It appeared in certain cases, the most difficult ones. There could be years between times. It was a feeling that was related to dread.
    Look at me! the murderer screamed.
    Look what I did!
    This is me !
    “Someone carried the hand here and locked it in,” said Ringmar.
    “Time to watch TV again,” said Halders.
    Winter suddenly thought of ancient statues. They were missing limbs, heads. They were often only a torso, a snow-white torso. He had seen