“You saw that too?” said Macdonald.
“Now that you mention it. But I don’t know.”
“Maybe it was his daughter,” said Macdonald. “The back’s daughter.”
Winter looked at his watch.
“We can go there and ask. The pubs open at eleven.”
Aneta drove south on an open road. The sun was strong and she didn’t have her sunglasses. The sky was as blue as it could get.
“You know the way from here?” asked Susanne.
“I’ve only been there once,” said Aneta.
“That goes for me, too,” said Susanne. She flipped down the sun visor as the road turned. She looked to the side, at Aneta. “What are you going to do when we get there?”
“Make sure everything is as it should be.”
They turned off of Saroleden and drove across the field, which seemed to be suspended in the sunshine. They would be able to glimpse the sea soon. Before that was the forest, and the hill that Aneta had climbed down earlier. She wasn’t planning on climbing this time.
She felt strangely safe with Susanne by her side. Susanne was calm. She wasn’t moving now.
Aneta drove between the trees.
Suddenly she saw her mother, her mother from the dream! Her mother was standing in the middle of the road. Aneta slammed on the brakes.
“What the…,” said Susanne, as she was thrown forward in her seat then caught by her seat belt. The tires squealed.
Aneta closed her eyes, then peeked. The road was empty. There was no black woman there, no hands held up as a signal to stop, nothing but a glimpse of sea between the trees.
Halders started to pass a vehicle at Skalldalen-Skulldale-and the damn truck he’d nearly passed suddenly skidded to the left, and Halders flew out across the shoulder and his car was thrown into a boulder that shouldn’t have been there, absolutely not there, and the car flipped over but only once, and it ended up sitting as though it were going to keep driving, but Halders couldn’t drive; he was stuck, and he thought, It’s strange that I’m sitting here in Skalldalen with my skull still in place and filled with thoughts like these.
After that he was unconscious.
Aneta parked in front of the house. It was quiet everywhere. There were no seabirds screaming or laughing. There was no wind. The sea was like a mirror, but there were no boats out there to see their reflections, and no clouds above.
Susanne still hadn’t gotten out of the car as Aneta stood in front of the door. She didn’t feel calm, but she wasn’t agitated either, as she had been recently. She saw her hand knock on the door, one-two-three times. She called out. She opened the door. She called out again:
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
She turned around, but Susanne was still sitting in the car. The car was half in shadow.
Something moved behind it, another half shadow.
Winter and Macdonald walked across Bayview Road. The door into the Three Kings was half open. It was quarter past eleven.
The woman who had stood behind the bar before was standing there now, too, drying glasses, or maybe polishing them.
She could have been fifty, or fifty-five. It was the same woman as yesterday. They walked across the floor, which shone. There was sun in the room, and it cut across the wood of the bar. The woman continued to rub a glass with a rag as she looked at them. There was no recognition in her eyes. She might as well be looking right through us, thought Winter.
Now she nodded.
“Yes?”
Macdonald looked at Winter. Nice and calm.
Macdonald pointed at one of the ale labels in front of the wooden handles that stood in a row of four.
“Two pints, please.”
The woman put down the glass she’d been polishing and polishing and reached for two new glasses on a shelf behind her. She drew the fresh, cloudy ale into the glasses and placed them on coasters on the bar.
Macdonald paid. The woman took a few steps away.
“I wonder if you can help us,” said Macdonald.
She stopped. Winter could see the tension in her face. She knew. She had immediately revealed something when she hadn’t shown any recognition of them.
She knew, knew something.
“We’re looking for a man,” said Macdonald.
The woman looked at Winter, and back at Macdonald. Then she turned her profile to them.
“Oh?”
“An older man. A Swede. His name is John Osvald.”
“John Osvald,” Winter repeated.
“Oh?”
She was still standing in profile. A muscle moved in her neck. She didn’t ask what it was about. What should we answer if she asks? Winter thought.
“We think he lives here in Cullen,” said Macdonald.
“He might call himself Johnson, too,” said Winter.
“We think he was sitting here yesterday afternoon when we were here,” said Macdonald, nodding toward the empty table and the empty chair by the window.
That was the direction the woman seemed to be looking. The sun was intense through the window; it lit up half the table and half the chair. Everything outside the window was bright. The woman was still looking toward the window.
“I don’t know any Swede,” she said without moving.
She’s afraid, Winter suddenly thought. She’s afraid of this, afraid of us. No. Afraid of saying something. Afraid of someone else.
“He’s lived in Scotland for a long time,” Macdonald said. “He might not sound like a Swede.”
She still didn’t ask why they were asking. She looked. Winter could glimpse the corner of the house on the other side, and a little bit of the beach.
Winter walked across the floor to the table by the window. He could see more of the road and the houses and the beach, and he could see the sea. The roofs of Seatown. The beach was divided by the Three Kings rocks, and it continued on the other side. Winter could see the golf club next to the cliffs; the parking lot, which had a few cars in it.
Winter walked closer to the window to get a better view. He turned around and saw that the woman behind the bar also had a good view.
He saw a figure on the sand, on this side of the Three Kings cliffs. It could have been the same figure they’d seen when they’d parked down by Seatown. The figure didn’t seem to have moved.
Winter turned around again and saw the woman’s face, and he knew. He turned toward the window and the figure down on the beach, and back to the woman again, and everything became clear, he could read everything in her face, and Macdonald seemed to understand without really understanding and came up to the window and saw what Winter saw.
“It’s him,” Macdonald said. He turned to the woman. “That’s Osvald out there, isn’t it?”
She didn’t answer, and that was an answer in itself.
They turned around and walked toward the door.
“I couldn’t stand the lifelong lie anymore,” she said.
They turned around again.
“Sorry?” said Winter.
“I couldn’t stand Da… Dad’s lifelong lie anymore,” she said without taking her eyes from the window.
“Dad’s…?” said Macdonald.
