“Happened? What was it that happened?”
“No idea,” said Osvald.
“The ones who came home after the accident in Scotland. Didn’t they say what had happened?”
“We didn’t hear anything,” said Osvald.
“Did anyone ask?” said Winter.
“Yes,” answered Osvald, but Winter didn’t think it sounded convincing.
“But no answer?”
Osvald shrugged his shoulders slightly.
“It sounds almost like mutiny to my ears,” said Winter.
“We actually don’t know,” said Johanna as she followed him to the Skarven, which was on its way in from Vrångö. “Is it significant?”
“I don’t know,” said Winter. And significant in what way, he thought.
“Your father left the industry,” he said.
“But he was ready to retire anyway, as he put it. He was ready to be put in the Maritime Museum.”
“Which section?”
She smiled.
“But he can’t leave the sea entirely,” she said.
“How so?”
“He worries all the time. About those who are out at sea. About Erik and his crew. He listens to all the Danish weather too, and he starts at six in the morning and ends with the last report at quarter to eleven at night. But he never calls out to the boat.”
Winter noticed that she was speaking of her father in the present tense, as though he were sitting next to a radio right now and listening attentively to a monotonous voice repeating numbers, vital numbers.
“Where do they usually fish?” asked Winter.
“Oh, west of Stavanger, maybe, sixty or seventy nautical miles west. They sometimes come near the derricks, which are about fifty nautical miles east of Scotland.”
The Skarven docked at the Donsö pier with a soft thud. It would leave again in four minutes.
“Do you worry when Erik is out?” asked Winter.
“Naturally.”
Winter started to walk toward the boat.
“But now I’m worried about Dad,” she said.
“I will do what I can. We will.”
“Something has happened,” she said. “Something dangerous.”
“It would be good if you try to remember everything he said before he left. What he did. Who he talked to. If he wrote anything down and left it. If anyone called. If another letter came. Everything.”
“He prayed to God,” she said, looking at him. “My father always prays to God.” She nodded at the boat. “You should get on now.”
She gave him a quick hug.
She kept standing there as the Skarven rushed across to Styrsö Skäret. Winter thought of all the women who had stood there throughout the centuries, looking out over the sea and waiting with anxious hearts. That’s how it was with Johanna now; once again it was so. He remembered that she had talked about it, briefly, when they were young. Her mother’s anxiousness, her own. Her brother’s. Winter looked over toward the Magdalena, which had two spotlights lit above the quarterdeck. He saw figures in oilcloth moving around the deck. He saw a face outside the pilothouse, which was highest up, the highest one in the harbor. He saw that Erik Osvald was watching him. He felt a cold wind and went in from the deck.
A glow came from the sheltered houses in Långedrag. Winter swung off into the familiar Hagen crossing and continued north among even more sheltered houses. He parked in front of one of them. He knew the house, knew it well. He had spent a great deal of his childhood and all of his teenage years here.
His older sister had stayed here, in this house, first with her husband and children and then, since a long, long time ago, alone with her girls, Bim and Kristina.
But Bim and Kristina were big now. Bim didn’t even live at home. Kristina was on her way out. Lotta Winter had watched all of this happen, and she tried to deal with it in a rational way, but it wasn’t something that could be dealt with rationally. You’ll see for yourself, she had said. See what? See how fucking easy it is. The separation? The separation, yes; come back when Elsa says bye-bye. You make it sound so final, Lotta. Well, isn’t it? she had said. You know what I mean, he had said. Yeah, yeah, she had said. Forgive me. But it’s … the quiet. Suddenly it’s so quiet. Quiet.
He rang the doorbell. The ring was the same. The same ring for thirty years. She should change it, change it now. Something new and happy and lively, energetic. Zip-a-dee-doo-dah.
She opened the door after four rings.
“Well, well.”
“I came by,” he said.
“I see that.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me in?”
She backed into the hall.
He hung up his coat. He always hung his things on his hook.
“Well, it’s calm and peaceful and quiet here,” she said.
“That’s nice,” he said.
“Like hell it is,” she said.
“You’ve started to curse more in your old age,” he said.
“Thanks a fucking lot. For that last bit.”
“Why?”
“Why? Why do I have such rough and salty language? I think it’s because of the salty and rough winds from the sea that’s only five minutes from here by Mercedes.”
“They never swear there.”
“Sorry?”
“There are no salty fishermen from the west coast who curse.”
“How do you know?”
He told her.
They were sitting in the living room. The view was the same. He could see the playhouse where he used to hide sometimes.
“Actually, I salt my language because the children can’t hear me anymore,” she said. “It’s my way of going back to the way I was.”
“Mmhmm.”
“What does Angela say about you being gone on a Saturday night?”
He looked at the clock.
“I didn’t mean for it to be so late.”
“So you come here and surprise me in the middle of my loneliness on this Saturday night.” She nodded toward the half-full wineglass that stood on the table. “And catch me in the act of drinking.”
“Please, Lotta.”
“Maybe I’m like Mom? Maybe I have an alcoholic inside? Who’s just been waiting for the right moment.”
“That’s true,” he said.
“You see.”
“Joking aside, Lotta. Maybe you need someone. A new husband.”
“Get remarried? Hahahahahahahahaha.”
“Well …”
“You get married. Do it and then come here and lecture me about it.”
“How much have you actually had to drink?”
“Only four bottles of wine and a barrel of rum.”
“Where’s Kristina?”
“Taken into custody by the authorities.”
“I chose the wrong time for a visit,” he said.
“You picked the wrong time to come.”
Winter placed one leg over the other. He was used to bantering with his sister, but this was a little worse, a little bigger.
“Do you know who that is? Who I was quoting?”
“What?”
“Picked the wrong time—it’s Dylan. It’s what you’re listening to right now. It’s this song, actually. ‘Highlands.’ Can you hear?”
He heard Dylan mumble, “Well my heart’s in the Highlands … blue-bells blazing where the Aberdeen waters flow.”
Well. That was a little odd. Aberdeen. A remarkable sign, and he knew better than to look at it as something that just happened, that didn’t mean anything. There were coincidences everywhere, and the important thing was to accept them. To sometimes let yourself be guided by the coincidences.
Everything has a purpose. Yes.
There is a higher power.
Dylan mumbled, on the way to his destruction in a city that was made of ruins and empty of life.
“Music to make you happy,” said Winter.
She laughed, actually laughed.
“When
did you go over to the happy genre?” she said. “Feel-good music?”
“Do you still have a phone?” he asked. “Or have the authorities disconnected it?”
“Why?”
“If we’re having a party, Angela and Elsa can come.”
“I’m glad you came, Erik,” said Lotta.
He nodded. He had called. Angela and Elsa weren’t going to come. Elsa was sleeping. Angela was wondering. I’m not a bitch, she had said. But one begins to wonder. Is it strange if I’m wondering?
He was going to go home in a few minutes.
“I don’t know what it is,” said his sister. “I have to pull myself together. It’s suddenly as though nothing means anything anymore.”
She looked tired in the ugly hall lighting, tired and sad.
“You know that it does,” said Winter. “You have a lot of things that mean something.” He could hear how empty that sounded.
“But that’s not what it feels like. Not now.”
“Come to my house.”
“Now? What, I don’t know …”
“Come to my house tonight. Kristina is already in custody, right?”
She smiled.
“She’s out in the islands, actually, at a friend’s house. On Brännö.”
“Aha.”
“Well …”
“Come along. You don’t even need to finish your drink. I have lots of bottles at home, wine and enough rum for fifteen men.”
17
Lotta made Winter call home first. A nice surprise, Angela had said. Of course she should come. Absolutely.
“If only we had something special to offer you,” she said when they came.
“Erik promised me fifteen barrels of rum,” said Lotta.
She went home when it was almost dawn.
“What we can’t do during the day we do at night,” said Angela, who was standing at the window watching the taxi disappear into Allén.
“There is no day, there is no night,” said Winter.
“No?”
“That’s how it is.”
“I don’t know if what you’re saying is positive or negative,” said Angela.
“It’s a state of being. At sea.”
“I don’t think I want to hear more about the sea right now, Erik.”
“Soon you’ll be living a stone’s throw from it.”
She didn’t say anything; she kept standing at the window. There was a faint glow in the east. The sun was coming up but it wasn’t above the sea.
“I don’t know,” she said.
He waited, but she didn’t say anything more.
“I really don’t know,” she said after that.
“What don’t you know?”
“About the sea. The land. The house.” She turned around suddenly. “I might just end up alone. Elsa and me. It might be isolated. Far from everything.”
“The idea isn’t that you and Elsa are going to live there on your own,” he said.
She didn’t answer.
“Did you hear what I said?”
She walked over to the sofa where he was sitting.
“We should probably think it over one more time,” she said.
“It’s still a good piece of land,” he said. “We should probably still buy the land, right?”
On Sunday afternoon they took a walk in the Garden Society. Elsa ate an ice cream and then fell asleep. Winter felt a bit tired. It must have been that last barrel of rum at dawn.
They sat on the grass. A couple paddled by on the canal in a kayak. They heard a laugh from them; it floated on the water.
Angela had a dark circle under one eye.
She was on at five in the afternoon. It would be a long night, but there was no night, she thought now, there is no day in health care, and no night. Everything is governed by the frailty of the body, by the regular rhythm of the nurses handing out medicine. And suddenly the rhythm could be broken by an alarm, by the nasty sound of ambulances outside the emergency entrance.
Everyone to his station.
“You have become very interested in fish all of a sudden,” she said.
“Angela …”
“Yes, I know that we weren’t going to talk about it, but I’m doing it anyway.”
“I thought I owed it to her.”
“You carry a lot of debts, Erik. Constantly.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“How many calls do you get every day when people’s loved ones are missing or they want to report a stolen bike or they’ve fallen down the stairs or been punched in the face?”
He didn’t answer.
“All those people you’re all duty-bound to meet personally, to listen more thoroughly to their problems. God, it has to be hundreds a week. And none of you have time. That must make you feel so guilty.”
Winter saw Elsa move on the blanket. Angela had raised her voice, but only slightly.
“Can we talk about this later, Angela?”
“Later? Later when? I go to work at four thirty, darn it.”
“She’s been trying to reach me for a long time, and it does concern a missing person, after all.”
“Really? How long has this person been missing? A grown man. Is there a bulletin out? Have you contacted Interpol?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, you have now, but not when you went out to Donsö.”
“It was when I went there that I understood that it was time to go farther.”
“And none of that could happen over the phone?”
He heard the sound of paddling again, a laugh again, water. He looked at her.
“I think it was good that I went there and talked to them. Unfortunately.”
“Unfortunately? What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. It’s a hunch. And it doesn’t feel good.”
Aneta Djanali had decided to let Anette Lindsten go; let her go to an independence without a husband and without violence. Anette would find her own way via her detour to her childhood home.
Aneta had started to feel a bit sorry for Sigge Lindsten. The traveler. She smiled as she sat in the car on the way to the police station. He had never explained what it was he sold. Maybe reference books. About English football. That went like hotcakes among old ladies out in the woods. She smiled again. She was also a traveler. How many of her working hours did she spend in her car? An awful lot.
Fredrik honked behind her. She stopped and he took the last parking spot. She would get her revenge. She had to drive around. More time in the car.
They went in through the glass doors. It was Monday morning. Inside, the usual number of unfortunate souls waited to speak to someone. She could see the usual lawyers wander back and forth with the usual facial expressions. The usual binders. She thought of Forsblad. He didn’t work in the court, not in that way.
The unfortunate souls in the waiting room hung their heads. Someone sneezed, someone screamed, someone cried, someone laughed, someone cursed, someone made gestures that could only be made here. Some poor person in a coat with a torn collar stared at the messages on the bulletin boards: Investigators needed in Uddevalla. Yes, thank you. Substitutes on the city squad, temporary positions. Thank you, good sir. I wasn’t planning on staying forever anyway.
Police went in and out through the doors to the stairs and the elevators. Someone waved. Someone dropped something solid on the floor. Someone else picked it up.
This was her life, her world. Was it supposed to be like this? Was there any alternative? Was it better somewhere else? Which other paths were there?
She suddenly thought of Gabin Dabiré’s music; she played it more and more often, and other music from Burkina Faso; folk music from the Lobi, Gan, Mossi, and Bisa people, and from the surrounding countries. Mali, of course, but also Ghana, Niger. The music was like paths, or like people who walked on the paths with a rhythm that everyone who listened had to follow.
“I’ll buy you coffee,” said Halders.
“The coffee i
s free here,” she said.
“It’s the thought that counts,” he said.
The elevator stopped. Möllerström was coming down the hall.
“A man was asking for you,” he said. “He just called.”
“Who was it?”
“Sigge something,” said Möllerström. “I have the number.”
“I have it myself,” she said, going into the office she was sharing with Halders while they renovated their floor. It would be finished before the new century was over, if everything went well. She dialed the Lindstens’ number. The childhood home.
“We’re not really rid of him, it seems,” said Lindsten in his calm way.
“What happened?”
“He’s calling and threatening.”
“Threatening? Threatening Anette?”
“Yes, her, and me too if we don’t put Anette on the phone. He screamed at my wife.”
“May I talk to Anette a little?”
“She’s … asleep, I think.”
“Should I come over right away?”
“Then I heard her cell phone ring,” said Lindsten, as though he hadn’t heard Aneta.
“Yes?”
“I think it was him.”
“She should probably turn it off.”
“Yes. I’ve told her so.”
“Forsblad told me he was able to borrow a key from her. To the apartment,” said Aneta.
“She told me. It seems he had to get something.”
“What was it?”
“I don’t know. But he must have been the one who gave it to the people who cleaned out the place,” said Lindsten.
“I got it from him. Rather, he threw it at me.”
“Keys can be copied,” said Lindsten.
“Could you ask Anette to call me when she wakes up?” said Aneta.
“Yes.”
“I want her to call.”
“So what can you do?”
“I want to talk to her first,” said Aneta.
“No one here is making anything up,” said Lindsten.
She heard the dog let out a bark in the background.
“I didn’t think you were,” she said.
Aneta waited for a call that didn’t come. She called the Lindstens, but no one answered. She looked up. Halders had entered the room.
“No one is answering at the Lindstens’. I don’t like this. Something isn’t right.”
Sail of Stone Page 13
