Room No. 10 by Åke Edwardson Page B

and the ears were smaller than they should be. The eyes had a particular shine that Winter suspected was there a little too often. He had a smile that wasn’t calming. That face belonged on the other side of the law, on page one or two or three in the crime registry. It belonged to a new client.
    Or a new crime-buster.
    “Identification, please,” said the crew-cut thug, extending his hand and smiling his strange smile again.
    “Listen here . . .”
    “Identification! We don’t want every Tom, Dick, and Harry scraping on the door of the CID.”
    “I work here,” Winter said, backing up a step as his aggressive colleague took a step closer. He was a colleague. Winter recognized the scent of yesterday’s liquor in the thug’s morning-fresh breath. There were a few small ruptures in his eyes. He wasn’t in a joyful morning mood. Winter wasn’t either. He was starting to become annoyed by this act.
    “We haven’t ordered any shoe or window polishing today,” his colleague said, smiling his smile again and shoving Winter in the shoulder. Winter landed one where it hurts most.
    “I have never seen the like!”
    Winter was staring straight into a different face, more wrinkled than the other one, but with clearer eyes. The face was close. Winter sensed a vague but definite scent of tobacco. It came from the man’s clothes and was blended with a fresh smell from the cigarette he was holding in his hand. The smoke suddenly stung Winter’s eyes. He blinked to avoid tears. That wouldn’t look good.
    “What the hell are you two doing?!”
    The older man turned toward the younger one, who was sitting beside Winter, the guy with the smile, and pressed his face close to him. There was no smile on the older face. The smile had disappeared from the younger one.
    “Do we have to send you out on the street where you belong again, Halders?!”
    “He started it.”
    “Shut up !” the older man yelled; he kept his face where it was, and Winter could see the man’s spit fall like drizzle across Halders’s face. So his name was Halders. He must be new to the unit; not quite as new as Winter but almost. Winter knew that this yelling and spittingand chain-smoking man was Sture Birgersson, the chief inspector and the boss of the CID. A problem solver with an imagination. That was how he solved problems. But this problem had made him dangerously red in the face. His blood pressure didn’t know where it should go; it looked as though the blood was racing around his body, desperately searching for a way out.
    “Are you sitting there blaming someone else , you fucking cowardly shit?!”
    He pulled his face away from Halders and threw a hard look at Winter. Winter saw that Birgersson’s eyes were yellow, clear and yellow. This was the first time he was working under him. The first day, first hour, first minutes. A brilliant start.
    “And what are we going to do with this mannequin?”
    Halders sneered.
    “I said shut up !” Birgersson yelled, without looking at Halders. His face came close to Winter’s again. “I guess you misunderstood the job, huh? Have you seen too many American cop movies? Miami Vice, or whatever the hell they’re called? Snobby fags in Armani suits who can beat up anyone they like? Is that what you think this job is all about?”
    Winter opened his mouth, but Birgersson yelled “ Shut up! ” before he had time to say anything.
    “I put in my vote for you, kid.”
    Birgersson stared into Winter’s eyes. Birgersson’s eyes resembled a lunar landscape. He also seemed about as far away as the moon, even though he was so close that Winter could smell the cigarette stink from his mouth. The smoke from the cigarette in Birgersson’s hand rose and stung in Winter’s eyes again, and he had to strain not to blink. Blinking would be a sign of weakness. If he blinked even once, he would be thrown out of this corridor and this department on his head, and he would never again get to solve a case dressed in