Sail of Stone

by Ake Edwardson

“They? Who are they?” Macdonald had asked.

  “The men in the village.”

  “Are any of them still here?”

  “No.”

  “None at all?”

  “Not from that time.”

  “What happened to the stranger?” Winter had asked.

  “I guess he’s just gone.”

  They drove west, toward Macduff and Banff.

  “There were lots of people who came and went back then,” said Macdonald.

  Winter didn’t answer. He looked out over the sea below the precipice. One quick movement of the wheel and they would be flying.

  “What are you thinking about, Erik?”

  “About something I’ve seen and yet not seen,” said Winter.

  “A common problem for a policeman,” said Macdonald.

  “Fuck.”

  “When? Where?”

  “Recently,” said Winter. “During this trip.”

  “Think back.”

  “What do you think I’m doing?”

  There were some dark streaks across the sky. The sun disappeared. Macdonald thought about putting in a CD but he hesitated.

  “It has to do with the photograph,” said Winter. “Of Osvald.”

  Macdonald looked up at the sky.

  “We’ll have to find an inn to stay overnight.”

  Winter nodded.

  “I know the place,” said Macdonald. “The Seafield Hotel in Cullen. It’s a classic. I didn’t remember it before, but now I do. You can try Cullen skink there!”

  48

  He heard them talking behind his back. He wanted to know who they were, and why they were there. He didn’t move. He had seen them arrive, and he understood.

  She didn’t say anything when they ordered.

  Maybe she understood too.

  It was only a small favor. He knew that he could ask her. A single conversation. A simple question.

  But he didn’t trust her anymore.

  He had decided to tell everything. It was time. When had he made his decision? It had to do with the sea. The loneliness.

  After all these years. It was easier at first.

  When he was going to leave it all, it was harder. Not hard to leave; he had longed to do that. Longed. But he didn’t want to do it alone, not now.

  Who could believe it would happen like this? That the boy …

  Take the car, the boy had said. I don’t need it.

  There was a shine in the boy’s eyes.

  It’s all over now, the boy had said.

  The boy prayed, he prayed all the time. His good sense seemed to disappear.

  It had been tranquil by the sea. It was a peaceful beach.

  Drive! the boy had screamed. He had hesitated.

  Drive! The boy screamed again and his white hair stood straight up. His body looked old. It was old, but not as old as his.

  The boy was blue in the face. His heart. The blue color disappeared. The boy walked on his own on the other side of the little lake, and he prayed.

  Jesus!

  A cry over the mountains.

  We are all lost, he had said afterward. I will wash away our sins, wash us. I am glad that you sent for me. Drive now!

  At night the dreams came back. Dreams of gold, of silver, of the money that destroyed everything.

  How often had he sat with this pistol in his hand? First it was the threat, soon after. When he was staying hidden in cliffs, huts, on rotten ships. He had shot once.

  Then there were the thoughts of doing it by his own hand. On his own.

  He didn’t know what would happen.

  He carried it with him night and day.

  He’d had it when he heard the voices in the Three Kings, when he saw them. They came from the other world.

  Now his memories flowed on, flowed up. There was water everywhere; the sea washed over him. He had placed the dinghy in the shadow of the waves. The Marino had already begun to sink.

  It was necessary. Egon had already been lost then. The trawler was lost.

  He had felt Frans’s face in his hands. Jesus! There had been no one to listen out there. God wasn’t listening; not God’s son. On the beach there were only stones. He made his choice. No, not then. It was long before.

  There was still money in the oilcloth bags. The weapons were on the bottom or had been carried farther north, like the bodies.

  The boy’s boy hadn’t asked any questions.

  The boy’s boy.

  Here!

  Bring it here!

  They would never find him. Never! His face was different, his body. His name. His life, what was left.

  He saw them out on the street, but it was a coincidence. They had been standing in front of the telephone booth, a coincidence. They had walked by.

  None of them would find out!

  49

  Aneta Djanali was sitting in Halders’s kitchen. She had wrapped a blanket around herself; she was freezing and the kitchen was the warmest place. Hannes and Magda were at a birthday party at a house three blocks away. It wasn’t evening yet. Halders was making a quiche for some reason. A good smell was coming from the oven. Halders let Lucinda Williams sing from the living room in her cracked voice, lonely girls … heavy blankets cover lonely girls.

  Aneta had had a short conversation with Anette Lindsten. Anette had been on her way down to the house by the sea, she said.

  Was she running away again?

  Everything about this was running away, sometimes invisibly.

  This was part of the hell that struck the women, she thought. A horrid combination of guilt and fear and control and ownership.

  She didn’t want to think about it, but she couldn’t stop.

  It was about a woman’s right to her own life. That was exactly what it was about.

  Control over the woman’s life. What it was about.

  She didn’t doubt for a second what it was about for Anette. Hans Forsblad wouldn’t give up control, would not give up control. Nothing stopped him. He stayed hidden, but he was there. Aneta had seen his eyes. His eyes when he looked at her.

  Two things were missing from her home.

  She had discovered this while she was waiting for her colleagues from Lorensberg, or maybe it was after they were there.

  The shell that had stood next to the telephone on the shelf in the hall. It was large and shimmered blue. It was almost transparent. Aneta had found it in a cove outside Särö, and it had been standing in the same place for two years and she hadn’t even dusted it, as far as she remembered. The traces the snail left behind had been visible, a bare spot in a sea of fine dust.

  And Kontômé. The Kontômé mask on the wall in the hall was gone. Who would want to steal that? It had no financial value.

  Kontômé was there to show her the path through the future.

  The person who had gotten into her apartment had taken these things with them.

  She knew who it was.

  Anette had sounded out of breath on the telephone. Aneta had heard the roaring sound of a motor.

  “She’s afraid for her life,” she said to Halders, wrapping the blanket more tightly around herself.

  Lucinda Williams sang in a broken voice about broken lives and broken words. “Can’t you play something else, Fredrik? That’s making me shiver even more. And freeze.”

  Halders was about to take out the quiche. He placed it on a trivet and walked out of the kitchen and Lucinda Williams was cut off in the middle of the song about the half sentences. After ten seconds of silence she heard beautiful vocal harmonies and a bright and gentle melody.

  “Will the Beach Boys do?” Halders said from the door. “Is that warm and sunny enough for you?”

  “At least on the surface,” she said.

  “Do you know your Beach Boys?” Halders asked.

  “No,” she said, listening again. “But you can hear that something is wrong with those guys, behind those sunny voices.”

  “That’s absolutely right,” said Ha
lders, “but why not forget it for two and a half minutes? After that the song is over.”

  Aneta chose not to listen. She saw Anette’s face in front of her again.

  “She seems to be in constant movement between different addresses. On the run between them,” she said.

  Halders nodded.

  “Isn’t that a common pattern?”

  “But she has her family,” said Aneta.

  “Yes?”

  “But they don’t seem to offer any protection. Or support.”

  “Well, she’s not the only one keeping her distance there,” said Halders.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Her father. We stumbled into his business through his daughter. He hadn’t counted on you getting stuck on this. Maybe not even on you showing up in his … Anette’s apartment.”

  “Business?”

  “He’s sure as shit involved in this stolen goods ring. The theft ring. But how would we have known that if it weren’t for his daughter?”

  “Does she know, do you think? Is she afraid of that, too?”

  “Maybe that is exactly what she’s afraid of,” said Halders. “That he might think that she will expose it.” He put the quiche pan on the table. There was already a bowl of salad there, and a little bottle of dressing. “It might be her father’s shady dealings she’s running away from.” Halders looked up. “He’s sure as shit trying to keep us away from his daughter. And her problems. And her husband, Frützblatt. His sister. And so on.”

  “Yes,” said Aneta, “but it’s not her dad she’s afraid of, not primarily. I’m sure. It’s the threat from Forsblad.”

  “Why doesn’t she say so straight out, then?”

  “I think she is,” said Aneta. “We’re just not listening well enough.”

  “And now she’s on her way to that cabin by the sea?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  Halders cut a piece of ham and cheese quiche and lifted her plate.

  “You sound skeptical.”

  “Well, I don’t think she trusts anyone. Including me.”

  “Why the beach house?”

  “Maybe it’s the only place where she can feel safe,” Aneta said.

  That night she dreamed that she was driving on a narrow road that led her between low trees that were lit up by her headlights. Everything was black outside. Above her was the sky, but it was also the sea. How she knew that, she didn’t know. It was the dream that told her.

  Somewhere, a woman was singing with a cracked voice, or screaming. She heard the sound of waves from above. Even in a dream, where you accept everything, she thought that it was wrong. Why was the water above her?

  In the light from her headlights stood her mother.

  Her mother made a gesture she didn’t understand. She didn’t understand that her mother wanted to stop her, there on the road.

  Her mother had never shown up in her dreams before.

  Now she was driving on a beach.

  Her mother was suddenly standing there, too, gesturing, raising both hands, standing in the way of the car.

  Suddenly there was water all around! She tried to scream, scream. She couldn’t breathe.

  Her own screams woke her up, or her attempts to scream. She felt an arm around her shoulders. It was warm. She heard Fredrik’s voice.

  Macdonald parked on the square below the Seafield Hotel. The city sloped sharply toward the sea. Winter stood on the square with his overnight bag over his shoulder. It was twilight in the haze. Winter saw the enormous iron structures that were suspended straight across the upper part of Cullen. From a distance, the viaducts could be mistaken for horizontal cathedrals.

  “Impressive,” he said.

  “I agree,” said Macdonald. “But the trains have stopped running.”

  They had called from the car. There were two vacant rooms at the Seafield; more than that. The season was over.

  The building was of white stone, an old inn. The lobby was done in polished mahogany, silver, gold, a tartan pattern that Winter guessed belonged to the owners’ clan, the Campbell family. It had various shades of blue, black, and green, like the sea at the end of the road through Cullen.

  Herbert Campbell discreetly asked them about the evening. Could he perhaps recommend the hotel restaurant? He could, and they reserved a table for eight o’clock.

  They dropped into the bar for an ale before they went up to their rooms.

  “Impressive,” said Winter.

  “It’s famous even in Scotland,” said Macdonald.

  It wasn’t only the shining wood of the bar, the leather furniture, the open fire, the heavy art on the walls. It was the bottles in a row at the bar and the shelves behind them. Winter had to ask.

  “Two hundred forty-one kinds of malt whisky,” said the female bartender.

  “Think about that for a drink before dinner,” said Macdonald.

  Winter called Angela from his room. He stood at the window and saw the street below and half the sea and a group of small stone houses that flocked together down by the harbor.

  “Found a good hotel?” he said.

  “Sarah had a favorite and I agree with her,” said Angela. “I can see the castle from the window right now.”

  “I can see half the sea,” said Winter.

  “How is the investigation going?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Are there any traces of John Osvald?”

  “Maybe.” Winter sat down and then stretched out on the bed. It was hard, but not too hard. Through the window he could see the upper portion of the stone house across the street. A seagull, or some kind of gull, was sitting above a window bay. “It’s as though he’s been here. Stayed here, if you understand what I mean. We’ve even spoken to an old man who knew him back then and claims to have seen him now.”

  “Well, there you go.”

  “I don’t think we’ll find him,” said Winter.

  “You can see the sights, anyway,” said Angela.

  “You too.”

  “We were planning to take the train tomorrow afternoon up to that place in the Highlands.”

  “We’ll probably be driving at the same time. We should be there in time to see you for dinner. A reunion dinner.”

  “What are you doing tonight, then?”

  “Eating dinner.” He changed position on the bed. “I’m going to try that soup. Cullen skink.”

  “It doesn’t sound good.”

  “Steve says it isn’t good.”

  “Then I understand that you have to try it.” He heard a sound behind her, a door opening, a male voice, a female voice.

  “Oops, here comes room service.” Winter thought he heard Sarah Macdonald’s voice. Angela came back. “A bottle of good white wine.”

  “Have you talked to Elsa?” Winter asked.

  “Only twice this afternoon.”

  “I called, but no one was home at Lotta’s. And no answer on her cell.”

  “They’re at the movies right now.”

  “Okay. I’ll call later. See you tomorrow. Hugs and kisses.”

  He dropped the phone next to him on the bed. He saw Arne Algotsson’s face before him as the confused old fisherman said the word for the Scottish haddock soup.

  He sat up and massaged his shoulder, which had grown stiff in the car. His body needed more massaging now that he was past forty.

  There was a knock at the door.

  He called out a “Yes?”

  “Fancy a walk before dinner?” he heard Macdonald’s voice say.

  They walked south on Seafield Street, passed Bayview Road at the curve, and continued down a few stairways that led to the strange little houses, which formed a small, closely built neighborhood next to the harbor. Winter could see a beach beyond them.

  This was Seatown. They walked along the narrow streets, which didn’t have names. The numbers on the houses didn’t make sense.

  “I think the numbers show what order the houses were built in,�
� said Macdonald.

  They passed Cullen Methodist Church.

  Farther down the street was a red telephone booth, as old as the one in Pennan. As Winter passed he listened for rings.

  Hundred-year-old stairs had been carved out of the wall down to the docks. Smaller fishing boats were on shore now, during the ebb. Their bellies shone white, like fish on land. The sky had darkened and was blue on the way to black. The moon was faint, but it was there. The horizon covered everything the eye could see. The houses in Seatown were luminous. Children’s clothes waved at them with short arms from a clothesline.

  “Where are all the people?” said Winter.

  They walked back, past the church and the phone booth. A curtain moved in one of the windows of a house that looked like it would soon collapse. The house was black. The curtain moved again. Who wouldn’t be curious?

  They encountered a child walking along the western house walls with his eyes on the ground. It was a boy of about ten, in short pants and a cap. He could have been from the 1950s. All of this could have been from the 1950s, in some cases even the 1850s.

  Winter thought of the smell that existed in almost every British building. It was a smell from the past.

  They walked up the stairs again and took a right onto Bayview and walked in the shadow of the viaducts and took a left on North Castle Street. The Three Kings pub was there.

  Macdonald looked at his watch.

  “One for the long road back to the hotel?”

  “Of course,” said Winter.

  Inside it was dark; the windows were small and couldn’t let very much light in even on a brilliant day. There was a middle-aged woman behind the bar. Apparently all the bartenders in Cullen were women. A man was sitting at one of the tables by the windows. He had his back to them. There was a glass in front of him. He had a knitted cap on his head. A fisherman, thought Winter.

  Macdonald ordered two glasses of ale. The woman tapped them up and served them. They remained standing on the bar as the ale cleared. The woman appeared to be looking out through the window where the man in the cap was sitting. He hadn’t moved while they had been inside.

  “Skaal,” said Macdonald, raising his glass.

  They drank. Winter couldn’t help watching the man’s back, which was thin and hunched forward. He still didn’t move. The whisky glass in front of him was empty; the pint glass was empty. The man was like a frozen figure. One of many who’d frozen into place in these coastal towns and slowly crumbled away from wind and salt as the economy sailed away with the fishing industry. Macdonald drank again. Maybe he should be glad that his grandfather, or maybe it was his great-grandfather, had left the coast. Otherwise perhaps he would be sitting like that. At the same time, I’m from the coast myself. But I am from another world.