Sail of Stone

by Ake Edwardson

  The tradition at Seafield was that dinner guests were shown into the bar while the table was prepared, and the headwaiter handed out menus and wine lists.

  Winter and Macdonald didn’t protest. They sat down in the two leather chairs by the fire.

  Another female bartender came to their chairs to take their predinner drink order. Winter let Macdonald choose.

  “What do you say to Springbank, the twenty-one-year-old, of course?” said Macdonald.

  Winter nodded as he lit a Corps.

  There was a gentle strain of a melody in the bar. Winter recognized “Galveston,” Glen Campbell. It was probably a coincidence, or was the singer a distant relative of the owners?

  Glen as in Glen Deveron, GlenDronach, Glen Elgin, Glen Garioch, Glen Keith, Glen Mhor, Glen Moray, Glen Ord, Glen Spey, Glen Scotia, Glenrothes, the unknown celebrities from the secluded distilleries.

  The headwaiter arrived with the menus, handwritten and bound in red leather.

  There were few other guests in the bar: a younger couple on a small sofa in front of one of the windows, two older couples sitting together around a coffee table in the middle of the room, a solitary younger man in front of a solitary glass at the bar.

  The bartender returned with the whisky, two tumblers beside it, and a small carafe of water.

  Macdonald poured a few drops of water into his malt whisky. Winter waited. They drank. It was good. A touch of coconut in the finish. Yes. Sherry, toffee, seaweed, grass, peat on the tongue. Yes. A complicated flavor.

  Winter ordered Cullen skink as an appetizer. He thought he liked the taste of smoked haddock boiled with potatoes and milk and onion. Steve grinned behind his bouillabaisse. Winter thought of Arne Algotsson again. How could this still be in his crumbling brain? Why had the name Cullen skink gotten stuck there? Was it just Cullen, just the first part? Was that why? I’ve thought about it before. Why was it this strange little town that stuck with Algotsson forever? Did he even have time to come here? Did anyone else come here? Had someone mentioned the name to him recently?

  The dining room was also done in Scottish colors and polished wood and offered innovative dishes in the Scottish tradition. Macdonald smiled a bit:

  Grilled herring with pan-fried porridge cake.

  Black pudding en croute with calvados and apple glaze.

  Venison with black pudding.

  Winter ordered grilled sole with pesto and garlic; Macdonald ordered a steak. They tried the wines.

  “I thought Craig would have called by now,” said Macdonald, putting down his glass.

  “Mmhmm.”

  “Three calls,” said Macdonald. “Two women.”

  “Well, we know that Johanna called him twice,” said Winter.

  “Craig ought to have been able to check that by now,” said Macdonald. “And the third one.”

  “I don’t think we can trace it,” said Winter.

  “Why not?”

  “They probably thought of that,” said Winter.

  “Who is ‘they’?”

  Yes. Who is “they”? Winter drank the white wine. He smelled the scent of a charcoal grill.

  Who is “they”?

  A surviving fisherman and a woman who made his phone calls.

  Or a former acquaintance of Axel Osvald. He had been here before. Or a new acquaintance.

  The food arrived. They tasted it. It was good.

  Winter noticed that the young couple from the bar was already getting up from their table in the dining room. The woman nodded shyly in their direction and Winter nodded back. The younger man turned around. Winter noticed his profile. It suddenly looked like John Osvald’s profile in the photograph from Winter’s thin portfolio, the photograph in faint sepia tones. The man over there was still standing, in profile like an Egyptian mural. Winter saw it. He saw the photograph in his mind’s eye, he saw the stranger’s profile, Osvald’s profile, the hotel walls, he saw a red wall, a staircase that led …

  “God!” he said loudly, and Macdonald gave a start with his fork halfway to his mouth and the other guests turned sharply around.

  “I’ve seen him!” Winter said.

  Macdonald lowered his fork.

  “Have you suddenly been saved, Erik?”

  “Osvald! He was there!” Winter said, and Macdonald put down his fork.

  “Where was he?”

  “What was that town called … Buckie, right? Where we were looking for the rental car?”

  “Yes. Buckie.”

  “We had tea at the old hotel.”

  “The Cluny Hotel.”

  “We walked up the stairs.”

  “We walked down them, too,” Macdonald said.

  Winter moved his hand as though he were waving away Macdonald’s comment.

  “I think it was as I was walking up. I … we looked at all of those old framed photos that were hanging on the wall in the stairway.”

  “The photos of trawlers,” said Macdonald.

  “Not only that.” Winter could see now, he could see, it was completely clear, completely certain. “One of those pictures showed a bunch of people standing around that war monument on the square outside. In memory of everyone, et cetera. And I remember that next to the picture I read that the picture was taken at the end of the war, after World War Two, and there are people everywhere, like I said, but in the foreground there’s a guy in a cap, and you can see him in profile, and it was Osvald!” Winter leaned forward a bit. “It’s the same face I have in the picture up there in my room, the same profile. Shit, I didn’t see it then, but it’s been lying there ripening in my wonderful subconscious.” Winter looked to the side, but the young couple had left. “I realized it when I saw a guy here get up.”

  “The end of the war,” said Macdonald. “Osvald disappeared four years earlier.”

  “It was him,” Winter said. “I’m as good as positive.”

  “Well,” said Macdonald, “it’s a little late to go check now.”

  “We’ll have to do it first thing tomorrow morning,” said Winter.

  He had left the window open, and his room smelled like the sea. Ringmar called as he was about to turn off the lights for the night.

  “There’s no trawler from Styrsö called the Mariana.”

  “I didn’t think there would be,” said Winter.

  “And there’s no fisherman on Styrsö named Erikson.”

  He had a restless night. He dreamed of many things, none of them pleasant. Everyone was scared in his dreams; he was scared.

  He had called Elsa before dinner. He wished he had her voice recorded on tape. Next time he traveled. But he wasn’t sure that he would travel without her again.

  He dreamed of water, black water. He saw a face under the water. He couldn’t see who it was. It shone with a dreadfully strong light, as though from within itself. There was nothing in its eyes.

  It was someone he had known.

  He woke at dawn and was thirsty. He pulled up the blinds a little bit and saw half the sea. He thought he heard it. He heard seabirds screaming. There was a black bus down there, on the other side of the street, next to the post office. He thought of his dreams again; a sense of fear remained in the room even now that he had been awake for a while. He drank a glass of water and considered a mouthful of whisky but refrained. It would be another day.

  It wouldn’t be like any other day he had experienced.

  When he lay down again he thought about how this day that had now begun would be the last. Why did he think that? It was like a dream where truths that no one wanted to hear took form.

  50

  They left after an early breakfast. Macdonald hadn’t slept well, either. Neither of them blamed the whisky. It was something else. It was this city. Something that had been here.

  It could be called intuition. An impulse, sometimes immediate. To know without being able to present the evidence. That could be the most frustrating part. That could be the deciding factor: intuition. They both had it. A detective wi
thout intuition was doomed, doomed like a fish out of water.

  It wasn’t far to Buckie; it was shorter than Winter thought. They could have taken a taxi there last night, but he wanted to have a clear head. He wasn’t tired now. It was gone now.

  They drove along the coastal road through Portnockie, Findochty, Portessie. It was a calm morning. The sea was calm. The sun was hanging above the eastern mountains now, lighting up the horizon. Winter could see the smoke from a ship that was balancing on the line of the horizon. There were no clouds. It was one of the most beautiful mornings God had made.

  The Cluny Hotel was half lit up by the morning. Macdonald parked outside of the Buckie Thistle Social Club. A small group of schoolchildren walked by. One of the children was carrying a soccer ball under his arm.

  A maid in a gray apron was vacuuming the lobby. She had begun with the lowest tread and looked up in surprise when the two men nodded a greeting and stepped up the stairs.

  Winter held the photograph in his hand, John Osvald’s profile.

  He walked slowly up the stairs, from frame to frame containing the city’s black and white history. The fishing industry and fishing had been the present and future for this city of the past, Buckie. Now the past remained. The Cluny Hotel belonged to the past.

  They walked in a staircase whose walls shone with red velvet.

  Winter saw masts, forests of masts. Had he been wrong? Was it someone else he’d seen … and somewhere else?

  He looked at the picture of the young Osvald again, taken on an island in a Swedish archipelago. Winter could see the sea behind Osvald. It was also a calm day, a beautiful day. Maybe Osvald had turned his face away to avoid getting the sun in his eyes.

  “Here we have a few thousand,” said Macdonald, who was a step ahead. Macdonald pointed at another framed photo. He stood three steps from the restaurant level up above.

  Winter studied the picture. The square, Cluny Square, was black with people. They were standing in a thousand circles around the monument, the Buckie War Memorial, finally erected in 1925 in memory of the dead during the first great war.

  Now it was 1945. Winter read the few words on the label next to the frame. The people of Buckie gather at the monument to celebrate the end of the Great War. There was a date on the label. It was a spring day. It was a beautiful day; the sun plowed shadows through the mass of people. Winter looked at the faces in the foreground. A man in a cap stood near the camera. He had turned his head to the side, as though to avoid the sun. It was John Osvald.

  “Yeah, it’s him,” said Macdonald.

  Winter looked at the two faces, back and forth. There was no doubt. Macdonald held up Winter’s photograph, compared.

  “Yeah,” Macdonald repeated. “No question.”

  “But it doesn’t tell us that he’s still around,” said Winter.

  “Around where?” said Macdonald.

  “Around life,” Winter said.

  They stood on the square. The letters on the stone of the pedestal were forever: Their Name Liveth For Ever.

  Two elderly people were sitting on a park bench in front of the building next to the square. They seemed to be the same couple Winter had seen last time he’d stood here. He walked over to the building. There was a sign on the wall: “Struan House—Where older people find care in housing.”

  They were two old men. Winter walked over. He asked the men if they were around when the end of World War II was celebrated. They looked at him. Macdonald translated to Scottish. They asked why he wanted to know that. Macdonald explained. Winter took out the photograph. They looked at it and shook their heads.

  “Would you like to come along into the hotel and look at the photo on the wall?” Macdonald asked.

  The two men got up after a minute.

  Inside, they walked up the stairs without great difficulty.

  “Has it been hanging here long?” one of them said, in front of the photograph.

  They studied the picture.

  “So I’m there in that sea of people,” said the other, nodding at the sea of people.

  “I can’t see you, Mike.”

  “I don’t remember where I was standing,” said Mike.

  “Do you recognize him?” Macdonald asked, placing his index finger on Osvald’s cap.

  “So it’s the same guy?” said Mike.

  “See for yourself,” Macdonald said, holding out Winter’s photo.

  “Yeah,” Mike said, comparing it a few times. “But he’s a stranger to me.”

  Macdonald and Winter got into the car. The owner of the pub on the other side of the street rolled up the blinds. There were chairs on the tables inside the windows. A ray of sunshine lit up part of the bar. Winter suddenly felt very thirsty.

  “We’ve gotten this far, anyway,” said Macdonald.

  “Don’t you want to get farther?” said Winter.

  “So where should we go?” Macdonald asked. “What should we do?”

  “I don’t know,” Winter said. “And it’s a question of time, too.”

  Macdonald looked at his watch.

  “The girls will get on the train in an hour or so.”

  “We should probably start on our way up to those high lands ourselves,” said Winter.

  Macdonald studied the pub owner, who had started to take the chairs down from the tables. He was wearing sunglasses for protection from the sun, which shone intensely between the two houses behind Winter and Macdonald.

  “I sense that we’re close,” Macdonald said, turning to Winter. “Don’t you feel it too?”

  Winter nodded but didn’t answer.

  “We’ve followed him. At least partially, we’ve followed in his old footsteps,” said Macdonald.

  “Or new ones,” said Winter.

  “New and old,” Macdonald said. “We can drive through Dufftown so you can buy a few bottles at the Glenfarclas distillery.” He turned the key.

  His phone rang. He got it out of his leather jacket after the fourth ring.

  “Yes?” Macdonald nodded at Winter. “Good morning yourself, Inspector Craig.” He listened.

  “Sorry it took some time,” said Craig, “but it was like I couldn’t convince the authorities of the penalty in this case.”

  “I understand,” said Macdonald.

  “It’s not exactly murder,” said Craig.

  “Not technically,” said Macdonald.

  “In any case, I have the information now,” said Craig. “Sure enough, two of those calls to Glen Islay B and B on Ross Avenue came from a landline in Sweden, dialing code thirty-one.”

  “The daughter,” said Macdonald. “Johanna Osvald.”

  “Yes,” said Craig. Macdonald heard the rustle of paper. Someone said something in the background. Craig’s voice came back. “There weren’t too many phone calls to Glen Islay during that time period. The off season. But one of them might be of interest. At least, it’s a little odd. It’s from the days when this Axel Osvald was staying there.”

  “Yes?”

  “Someone called from a phone booth,” said Craig.

  “Good,” said Macdonald.

  Telephone booths were good. Cell phones were trickier; with those they could establish the area, but then it could be difficult. Telephone booths were not as mobile.

  First they could tell that it was a phone booth, and then which one it was, and where it was. Sometimes they seized the whole booth for a technical investigation.

  “It was a woman,” said Macdonald, “according to the matron at Glen Islay.”

  “Whatever you say,” said Craig, “The call came from a telephone booth up in Cullen. Have you ever been there?”

  “Cullen?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m on my way,” said Macdonald.

  51

  Aneta Djanali drove home. It was a brilliant day, really brilliant. Everything above the buildings was blue. There were sharp shadows all over Sveagatan. There was a fresh smell in the wind.

  She walked quickly t
hrough the hall, after having checked the new lock, and she went into the bedroom and took off her blouse and the thin undershirt, and it was as she was unbuckling her belt that she froze.

  She pulled the belt tight again and put on her blouse and felt her pulse. What had she seen? No. What had she not seen?

  She walked slowly out into the hall.

  The shell.

  The shell was in its place on the shelf.

  She approached it slowly. She didn’t want to touch it.

  She listened for sounds now, listened inward, backward. She turned around slowly, following the sound of bare feet.

  “I didn’t think you’d come back so soon,” said Susanne Marke.

  The woman was standing barefoot in her hall, in her hall!

  Aneta could still hear hammering in her head, a sledgehammer between her eyes. She heard herself:

  “Wha … what are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you,” said Susanne. She had a strange expression in her eyes. “You were supposed to come home soon.”

  “Wh … why?” said Aneta. That was the most urgent question. Not how, when, what, who.

  “You still don’t get it?” said Susanne.

  Aneta didn’t think to move. Susanne was standing still. She had nothing in her hands.

  “What am I supposed to get?”

  Susanne suddenly laughed, hard, shrill.

  “About Anette and me!”

  “Anette and … you?” Aneta echoed.

  Susanne took a step forward, and another. She was still a few yards away.

  “Why do you think everyone is keeping so quiet about everything?” she said. “Including Anette? Why do you think?”