Aneta guessed where they were going, but she felt confusion inside of her; not the dizziness from before, but something that reminded her of it.
The V40 was driven by Susanne Marke. Aneta had seen her get into the car on one of the deserted streets in the old part of Nordstan. Aneta had been waiting there. She knew where Susanne would be during the afternoon, because she had asked. She had guessed four o’clock as the end of her workday, and it was a good guess.
But she couldn’t guess where Susanne would drive. Now she was driving into Fredriksdal, and into the familiar driveway. Sigge Lindsten’s car wasn’t there. Aneta drove by and saw Susanne getting out of the car. In the rearview mirror she saw her walk toward the house without looking around. Then the road curved and Aneta could only see other houses that didn’t mean anything to her.
She turned around in a narrow intersection five hundred yards to the north. When she came back, Susanne’s car was gone.
“Forsblad didn’t show up at work this afternoon,” said Halders when she called from the car. “And there’s no one answering in the love nest in Norra Ålvstranden.”
“I saw her ten minutes ago,” said Aneta.
“Are you over there?”
“No, she went to the Lindstens’ house.”
“I’ll be damned.”
“It was just a short visit.”
“How do you know?”
She told him.
“You still don’t know what Anette Lindsten really looks like these days, right?” said Halders.
“No, what …,” she said, and then understood what Fredrik meant.
“You’re totally wrong,” she said.
“It’s important to think outside the box,” said Halders.
“Do you really think so?” said Aneta, mostly to herself. “No, she can’t have changed that much.”
“Best to check, isn’t it? To be completely certain.”
She sat with the phone in her hand. Susanne Marke was Anette Lindsten, who was Susanne Marke, who was …
No.
But Sigge Lindsten had called. That is, if he was Sigge Lindsten. He could have had a fake ID. The house in Fredriksdal was fake, maybe just a set like in a movie studio. This was just a movie. She suddenly thought of the film festival in Ouagadougou. She had been to the movies in Ouagadougou, a drafty bunker where the white light from outside filtered in through ten thousand holes in the curtain. It was a domestic film, which surprisingly enough was about people who lived in a city in the desert. The city seemed to lack gods, or spirits. The movie was in Mossi with French subtitles, and she understood the words but never the true meaning of what the people said. It wasn’t just another culture, it was another world.
Maybe the two men she had met in the apartment that might have been Anette Lindsten’s really were Anette’s father and brother. But the apartment was in her name. Susanne Marke’s apartment was in Susanne Marke’s name. The car was in Bengt Marke’s name. Who was Bengt Marke? Was he also named Hans Forsblad? Or Heintz Fritsfrütz? She almost giggled. Then she felt a chill.
She started the car and drove south, far south.
Winter got hold of Steve Macdonald during lunch.
“Guess what I’m eating,” said Macdonald.
“I know where it came from,” said Winter.
“The fish or the chips?” said Macdonald.
“I know the fisherman who hauled up the haddock,” said Winter.
“That’s fantastic,” said Macdonald. “Is there a stamp or something here under the breading?”
Winter told him about his visit to Donsö.
“And now his father has gone walkabout in the Highlands.”
“He is still missing, at least. Or he hasn’t contacted anyone.”
“Have you put out a bulletin?”
“Yes.”
“Send over all the information and I’ll have a chat with the people up in Inverness.”
“Thanks, Steve.”
“Otherwise?”
“I’m going to build a house. By the sea.” Winter paused. “I think.”
Macdonald laughed.
“I like your resolve,” he said.
“It’s a nice plot of land,” said Winter. “You can smell the sea.”
“Good.”
“Do you ever go home?”
“Home? You mean to Scotland?” said Macdonald.
“Yes.”
“Not very often. And our farm and our city aren’t by the sea.”
“No, I think you told me that once.”
“Dallas is in its own little world.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You can see for yourself when you come here.”
“Why would I go there?”
Half a second after Winter said it, he knew that he would go there. Go there soon. It was a feeling he didn’t want to feel, that complicated intuition he didn’t want to be without.
He felt a chill. Something was about to set sail; he couldn’t see what. He suddenly wanted to go south, far south.
Aneta shivered as the wind came in through the half-open window. It cleared her thoughts. The sun glowed weakly over the fields. Everything was green, but only for another week. Then it would turn gold like everything that lies out in the sun too long.
This was the countryside; there were cows. She met a tractor that was driving in the middle of the road. The driver had a cap and seemed a bit backward. He was chewing on hay. He wouldn’t have noticed if he’d smashed into her car.
She drove past a farm where pigs were rooting around in the ground next to the road. It smelled like pig shit, but she didn’t close the window. This was the earth and the country they all came from; well, maybe she didn’t, but all the other hicks in this frozen land did. Freeze-dried, as Halders had once said. We are freeze-dried, we’re dry as fuck, and when we’re warmed up and get liquid in us, we swell up times ten. She wasn’t sure she understood, but it sounded great, like a lot of what Fredrik said. Crazy, but great. At the very least funny. Except for the black jokes, but those were gone now.
She stopped at a pullout and read her notes. The last time they’d met she had asked Sigge Lindsten where the cabin was. Suddenly a car came from the opposite direction at breakneck speed, and gravel flew up in her face. She didn’t have time to see the car. She felt a sting on her forehead. She looked in the rearview mirror after the fleeing car, but she only saw dry dust from the road and then her own forehead, on which there was a drop of red. She wiped away the drop with her left index finger and licked up the blood, which tasted like red iron.
She knew that people drove like fugitive lunatics in the country. It was their country, but they rushed around it as though there were no laws. Wanted. Wanted dead or alive.
She had driven too far. She continued for a few hundred yards and found a turnoff and turned around.
She drove back, and there was still dust from the road in the air. She passed the pullout sign, which was old and almost colorless.
She found the right turnoff. Grass was growing in the middle of the desolate road. She was able to park in a natural pocket under a cliff that stuck out from a slope. She got out, and it smelled like the sea, but she couldn’t see it. Seabirds were shrieking on the other side of the slope, which was overgrown with pine trees. She started to climb between the trees. The ground was warm.
21
She felt the wind as she stood at the top of the hill, and she could see the sea, which was large. She knew that it was on its way to the shore, but from here it looked like a congealed rock formation that had stretched as far as it could and become a mountain. The sea was not blue, not green, nothing in between.
Aneta went closer. Below the slope on the other side, pines were growing, same as on the eastern side. Between the pines she could glimpse a house. A car was sitting outside the house. She recognized it.
The car was a silhouette in that image.
A woman was standing on the other side of the car, turned toward the
sea. Aneta recognized her, too.
The woman turned around as Aneta carefully made her way down between the trees, but she turned her face toward the sea again as though that were natural, as though it were normal that a detective from the city would come sliding down the slope in the threadbare afternoon.
The woman remained standing with her back to Aneta until it was necessary to turn around.
“I wasn’t surprised,” said Susanne Marke.
“Is Anette here?” asked Aneta.
“Isn’t it peaceful here?” said Susanne, looking out over the petrified sea again.
“Do you come here often?” asked Aneta.
“This is the first time.”
“But you found it easily,” said Aneta, wondering about this conversation and this situation.
“Hans described the way, so it was no problem,” said Susanne.
“Hans? Hans Forsblad?”
Susanne turned around, and Aneta could see the resolve in her face.
“Now listen carefully. There has been a big mistake here, and we’re trying to fix it.”
Aneta waited without saying anything. It would be a big mistake to say something now. She thought she saw the curtain in the only visible window move. That seemed natural, too; a natural repetition when you were dealing with these people.
“Do you hear me? A big mistake, and it won’t help if the co … the police are running around interfering.”
No. Everyone would be so much happier if the police didn’t run all over interfering and instead told people to go away when they called to report thefts, assaults, homicides, murders. A mistake. Call the neighbor.
“It started when Anette’s neighbors called,” said Aneta. “Several times.”
“A mistake,” repeated Susanne.
“Anette’s face was injured,” said Aneta.
“Has she been to the hospital?” asked Susanne. It was a rhetorical question.
“Not that we know of,” said Aneta.
“She hasn’t,” said Susanne.
“Could I see your ID?” asked Aneta.
“What? What?”
“An ID,” said Aneta. “Your ID.”
“Why?”
Aneta held out her hand. She saw how the expression on the other woman’s face changed.
“Surely you don’t think that …”
Aneta didn’t say anything, kept holding out her hand.
Then Susanne smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant smile. Suddenly Aneta recognized the smile, the expression, the eyes. The face.
It was the same face. The two faces had the same origin.
Susanne rummaged around in her handbag and took out a wallet. She rummaged around in the wallet and pulled out a driver’s license and thrust it out with the same smile. The smile had stiffened on her face, which had become cold like the disappearing color in the sea and the sky.
Aneta saw Susanne’s face in the photo, and her name. The license was one year old.
“Who is Bengt Marke?” asked Aneta.
“My ex.”
“Is Hans Forsblad your brother?”
Susanne kept smiling. Aneta didn’t need any other answer. She felt an immediate fear. She felt the weight of her weapon, the weight of safety, unexpected and unnecessary; she wouldn’t need it. She realized that it had been a mistake to drive here alone. It was the kind of mistake Fredrik made. Had made. It had once come close to costing him his life. He had been lucky. The ignorant and bold were often lucky. They didn’t know better. She wasn’t bold, wasn’t ignorant. Therefore, this could end badly.
These people weren’t to be toyed with.
“He will always be my brother,” said Susanne.
Whatever happens, thought Aneta. I believe her. I believe her when it comes to that.
“This is one big mistake,” said Susanne.
“Where is the mistake?”
“Hans hasn’t done anything.”
“No?”
“He wants to put everything right again.”
“If he hasn’t done anything, there must not be anything to put right.”
Maybe it was true. He wanted to make good. It wouldn’t happen again. But what had happened hadn’t happened. Everything was a mistake, and mistakes were always other people’s. Everything was a misunderstanding. The beatings were misunderstandings. Aneta had heard of so many misunderstandings during her career in the brotherhood. No one called it the sisterhood; that would have been absurd. She had heard of how language ceased and violence took over. Blows instead of words. The desperate and languageless hit. Men are hard and women soft. Yes. They own, think they own, another person. Dominance. Complete control. A question of honor. In a twisted way, it was a question of honor. A form of honor. It existed here, too, in this fair-skinned country. It didn’t belong only to medieval bastards from Farawayistan who murdered their daughters for the sake of their own honor.
“Other people’s mistakes. It’s about other people’s mistakes,” said Susanne.
“Sorry?”
“It’s about other people,” Susanne repeated. “We were talking about mistakes, right? Aren’t you listening?”
“And you’re going to help fix all these mistakes?”
Susanne didn’t answer. She looked at the house. Aneta had also seen the movement in the window. A shadow, a silhouette.
“I’m just going to explain what Hans is actually like to the people who don’t understand,” said Susanne.
“Explain to whom? To the woman behind the window there?” said Aneta, nodding at the house and the window.
Susanne nodded.
“Is it Anette?”
Susanne turned to her again.
“I haven’t had time to check yet, have I? I haven’t had time, have I? You came tumbling down through the trees before I had time to knock, didn’t you?”
“Where is Hans right now?” asked Aneta. “We’re trying to contact him.”
“Look in the trunk!” said Susanne, letting out a laugh that was like a bark that echoed away across the bay.
Aneta didn’t believe many of Susanne’s words, but she believed the half-wild laugh.
Bertil Ringmar stared through the balcony window at the neighbor’s yard, which was entirely too visible behind a hedge that was entirely too low. His neighbor was crazy, an administrator from the hospital world who had gone a bit nuts when he had administrated away everything of value within health care; it all went to pieces, putz weg, every little bit, including his own job, and now he worked on various bits of his own yard.
The telephone rang.
“Hope I’m bothering you,” said Halders.
“As always,” answered Ringmar.
“Do you know what Aneta’s up to this afternoon?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“I asked Erik, and he didn’t know either,” answered Halders as though to himself. Ringmar could hear his concern.
“Call her.”
“What do you think I’ve been doing?”
“What is it about?”
“We’re going to bring in the wife beater anyway for a little questioning, and I thought that she wanted to be there. We’ve found das Schweinehund.”
“Isn’t it der Schweinehund?” said Ringmar.
“Or die,” said Halders. “In any case, we ran into a remarkable specimen this morning.”
“You are a true people person, Fredrik.”
“Yeah, right? I protect people, don’t I?”
Ringmar was still standing at the balcony door. He saw the neighbor come out and walk down the path built alongside a number of concrete slabs that looked like Viking graves. Candles were burning; they were like bonnets on top of the graves. The first time Ringmar had seen it when it was completed, which hadn’t been more than a few weeks ago, he had giggled in the same peculiar way Inspector Clouseau’s boss did in the later Pink Panther films before he lost his wits forever. Ringmar liked those films, especially the inspector’s unorthodox methods of doing his job.
“Aneta won’t do anything stupid,” said Ringmar.
“We all make mistakes,” said Halders.
“She’s worked with you so much that she’s learned,” said Ringmar.
“To make mistakes?”
“To avoid them. By seeing what you do and then doing the opposite.”
“I don’t like this,” said Halders. “It feels like she rushed off.”
“She’ll call,” said Ringmar, looking at his watch. “It’s after working hours.”
He heard Halders grunt an answer that he didn’t understand and then hang up.
The neighbor out there lit some more lights. Ringmar cradled the telephone receiver and then laid it down in an exaggeratedly careful manner. Dusk was on its way. The neighbor began his uncompromising war against darkness. Try to look at it that way, Bertil.
“Perhaps you’d like to knock?” said Susanne. She made a motion as though she were inviting Aneta to step in front of her in line.
They were still standing ten or fifteen yards from the house, which was larger than it looked from the hill. It had more than one window that faced the sea. There was a veranda there. It must have been sensational to sit there as the sun went down. But today it wasn’t going down, not so one could see.
What awaits us in there? Aneta was thinking. Someone is there.
There were no other vehicles on the lot. There was no garage.
Susanne made a sudden movement and Aneta gave a start. She thought she saw something moving out on the water, out of the corner of her eye, but when she looked there was nothing there.
It was as though the water wanted to tell her something.
Or that it meant something, something important that had to do with her, Aneta.
The water was a danger to her.
Don’t come here!
Go away!
She saw a dock that must have belonged to the house. She saw a plastic boat. It was tied to the dock. She saw oars sticking up. The boat floated calmly in the water.
Sail of Stone Page 16