number here. I’ll give it to you again. Can you tell me where it is? Get it then. I’ll wait.”
Winter moved the receiver a few inches away from his ear. “These first four numbers say where the payment was made,” he said to the two women. “She’s gone to get some kind of reference catalog.” He heard a voice in the receiver and put it up to his ear again. “Yes, 2237, that’s right. Molnlycke! Are you sure? Yes, those are the numbers. And then the oth-Okay, what does that me-The cashier, you say? So these numbers, 0030, indicate which cashier handled the transaction? So this number combination indicates that the rent payment for the apartment with this number was made on September 2 at the Molnlycke post office at this particular cashier’s service window? Is that right? Thank you.”
Winter was on his way into the courtyard when his cell phone vibrated in the inner pocket of his blazer.
“Winter here.”
“Bertil here. Where are you?”
“On my way into the courtyard. You?”
“Outside the apartment. Andersen’s apartment.”
“I’ll be there in one minute.”
Ringmar was waiting in the stairwell. “Beier’s team says someone’s been inside her apartment recently.”
“What does that mean?”
“Probably sometime within the past few weeks. After her death.”
“How can they know that?”
Ringmar shrugged his shoulders. “They’re wizards, aren’t they? But I think they said something about the dust. Stay tuned. They also say it looks like someone rummaged through all the stuff in there and then tried to put it back more or less the way it was.”
“That sounds clumsy.”
“Could be a red herring. The vic-Helene Andersen may have had some kind of special system for organizing her stuff.”
“Or else someone was in there and rummaged around and wasn’t particularly worried about it being discovered.”
“There’s going to be one hell of a commotion when this gets out,” Ringmar said.
“Then we’ll have to see to it that it doesn’t get out,” Winter said.
“How do you mean?”
“A few days from now, someone might walk into the Molnlycke post office and pay the rent again. We’re going to be there waiting for them.”
“My God,” Ringmar said. “I wonder if it’s even possible. I’m a bit surprised that there aren’t a few TV vans parked out here already.”
They conducted an internal search for Helene Andersen, now that they had her name. Yet another round of searching, only this time with better chances of success.
In a few days we’ll release her name and distribute a real live picture of her, thought Winter. There are photos of the little girl too, on her own and together with her dead mother. If we don’t get any response, that means we’ve come across the loneliest people on earth. They’ve existed but almost only in name.
All the different agencies had to be contacted. Winter hadn’t gone through the mail that was lying in the hall, but the technicians had yet to find any letters from the social services. Perhaps they had disappeared together with the rental slips. Still, there were other ways to find out if she was receiving money from the state or from a job. Soon they would know.
She had a telephone. Winter remembered it, on the little bedside table. Now that they knew her identity, they could pull her phone records and get some history. She’d chosen to have a phone in order to speak to someone.
31
“Then you’re screwed,” the post-office official said.
“Excuse me?”
“The slips are discarded after two weeks or something. Didn’t you say this rent was paid more than three weeks ago?”
“Yes.”
“So you’re screwed.”
“You better do something about that attitude of yours, you smug son of a bitch. I’m investigating a murder and I want my questions answered. So, what do you mean when you say that the slips are discarded?”
“They’re shredded.”
“And that happens after two weeks?”
“Sometimes after a few days. It depends on how much we have to do.”
“Then what’s the point of sending them to you in the first place?”
“I really don’t know. I’ve asked myself the same question. We don’t have any space here, after all.”
“So there’s a possibility that a consignment of canceled deposit slips sent over to you from some post offices still hasn’t been processed?”
“Not for three weeks. Unless it’s ended up at the very bottom or something, or we’ve been short staff-” Something had suddenly occurred to him. “We actually have been understaffed for the past few weeks. So it’s possible we did fall behind. Where did you say the payment was made, again? Gothenburg, I know, but which office? Can you repeat the direct deposit number and the amount? And the apartment number as well.”
Winter realized he was speaking to someone who hadn’t initially been listening. He repeated what he’d said before.
“Hang on,” the drawling voice said, like one of those jazz musicians who come down from Stockholm for a gig at Nefertiti’s. They play better than they speak.
There was a fumbling sound in the receiver, and the voice returned.
“Can you hang on a bit longer? There might be something else here.”
“I’ll hang on,” Winter said.
“I’ve got it here.”
“You’ve found it?”
“Yes, actually. I’m surprised myself.”
So I wasn’t screwed, thought Winter. “I want you to put that slip into a new envelope right away and put it in a safe place. Lock it in a cabinet.”
“Okay.”
Winter looked at his watch.
“Are you going to be there for another two hours?”
“Yes.”
“Another police officer will be by there within the next two hours to pick up the envelope. He’ll ask for you,” Winter said, and looked at the name he’d written down. “Ask him to identify himself.”
“Okay.”
“And thanks for your help. I apologize for swearing at you before. Good-bye.”
He pressed down on the cradle and waited for the dial tone and called Stockholm again, getting a security consultant who asked if he could call Winter back in half an hour.
He put down the phone and stood up, his left shoulder blade stiff from sitting while speaking on the telephone. Much of his time was spent in stiff positions on the telephone. He ought to do calisthenics in his office. Tonight he would go to Valhalla and sit in the wet sauna, if he had time for it. A sauna and a beer at home and the silence
