“Have you been able to talk to Aneta more?” Winter asked.
“No. She’s still out there looking.”
“Are there any traces at all?”
“No, not yet,” said Ringmar. “We did find the plastic boat, but we haven’t found Anette.”
“And Forsblad still isn’t talking?”
“No. Halders had almost started to hope that the guy would drown, but he turned around and swam back to shore and since then he hasn’t said a word.”
“It’s so damned senseless,” said Winter.
“When isn’t it?” Winter heard Ringmar’s tired voice. “Aneta is convinced he killed her. We just have to find the body.”
“We just have to keep looking,” said Winter. “And keep questioning.”
“Forsblad’s sister came up with a story about how she and Anette had become a couple, and that’s what made the brother go insane,” said Ringmar. “But Anette’s father, Sigge, claims that’s all a lie. It’s just her way of making things better, according to him.”
“Yeah, he’s just the guy to tell the difference between truth and lies,” said Winter.
“I believe him, in this case,” said Ringmar.
“He’s a swindler,” said Winter. “And maybe more than that.”
“He says he was only keeping her furniture for her in that warehouse on Hisingen.”
“Well, good God,” said Winter.
“Anyway, he’s not getting away from
“Where was he at the time of Anette’s disappearance?” Winter asked.
“Well, we’re not exactly finished with that puzzle now, but presumably he was with his gang at their very own Hisingen IKEA. In any case, they were there when Meijner and his guys came knocking.”
“Say hi to Aneta,” said Winter.
He sat with the silent phone in his hand. The darkness over Elgin was even denser now. The cathedral’s silhouette had grown even sharper. It had three towers, the way there were three rocks, three kings, elsewhere. The cathedral could remind him of the three rocks on the beach in Cullen, if he wanted it to. The Three Kings.
Anna Johnson had come running down the stairs, through Seatown and across the beach.
It was our secret, she had said later, it was our secret, no, it was my secret.
“Couldn’t we walk around a little?” said Angela, getting up from the bench.
Winter got up. Steve’s brother and sister, Stuart and Eilidh Macdonald, came out of the hospital on the other side of the cobblestone street. They had only said a quick hello a few hours earlier. Dallas wasn’t more than ten miles away.
Everything had been confusion then, and fear.
“Well, your bandages saved Steve’s life,” said Stuart Macdonald.
He looked at Winter’s chest under the suede jacket. Winter had borrowed a shirt at the hospital. His clothes were still in the car since they’d checked out of the Seafield Hotel.
“They were extremely makeshift,” said Winter.
“But very tight.” Stuart Macdonald looked tired in the eternal blue light from the hospital, as though he were Steve’s older brother. “They stanched it off, or whatever they called it in there. It helped him retain a little blood, anyway. Enough.”
“The risk was that he could have strangled,” said Winter.
“It’s always a balancing act,” said Stuart, and he actually smiled. “This time it worked.”
“I was the one who brought him there,” said Winter.
“Sorry?” said Eilidh.
“I was the one who took him there. If it weren’t for me, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“You’re feeling guilty, you mean?” Eilidh asked.
“Yes.”
“Let me just say that Steve is a grown man with his own free will,” she said. “He doesn’t let himself be taken anywhere.”
“I agree,” said her brother. “And Steve is still alive, isn’t he?”
Winter and Angela walked along the stone streets to the Mansion House Hotel, which looked like a castle from a distance. Winter stumbled. Angela caught him.
“I need a whisky,” he said.
“You need to lie down,” she said.
In the room, he poured a whisky and then lay down. Angela sat in an easy chair with her feet on his thighs. They had opened the window, and the mild wind brought in fresh air. They hadn’t turned on any lights.
“What happened once upon a time out there at sea?” said Angela, whose face was half lit by the streetlight outside. He could see her face in half profile. “During the war.”
“I can only imagine, so far,” said Winter.
“What do you imagine, then?”
“A transaction,” he said.
“What kind of transaction?”
“Well, it seems that John Osvald and his crew were involved in smuggling. That’s what his grandson Erik said. But he hasn’t learned anything about what actually happened.”
Winter carefully shifted Angela’s feet down to the edge of the bed, turned onto his side, and took the glass and sipped the whisky.
“But it wasn’t an accident?” said Angela. “When the boat sank?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Will we ever know?” said Angela.
“I don’t think so.”
“But whatever happened was terrible enough that John Osvald switched identities,” said Angela. “Become someone else, and leave your old self behind.”
Winter nodded.
“Good God,” she said.
“He tried to,” said Winter. He drank again. The whisky tasted like the wind that came in through the window. “He must have wrestled with his God.”
“Did he wrestle with his son?” said Angela, who had pulled her naked feet close to her body. She curled up in the easy chair, as though she were cold.
“John Osvald?” Winter changed position on the bed. “Well, that’s the next question.”
“I didn’t mean physically,” said Angela.
“No, no, I realize that.”
“So what happened on the mountain, then? Outside Fort Augustus?”
“I have thought about that many times during the past few days,” said Winter.
“I’ve started thinking about it now,” said Angela. “It’s hard not to.” She shuddered. “And it’s hard to.” She looked at him. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And at the same time you think about Osvald and his unknown daughter.”
“She wasn’t unknown,” said Winter. “She was unknown to us, but that doesn’t mean she was unknown.”
“Did anyone else in that city know about it, then?” Angela asked. “And who was her mother?”
“Her mother is dead, according to the daughter,” said Winter. “And she says that she didn’t know Osvald until a few years ago.”
“But she believed him? Believed that he was her father?”
“Apparently he could prove it,” said Winter. “But I don’t have any details yet.”
Angela shuddered again.
“Are you cold?” Winter asked. “Should I close the window?”
“No. The wind is nice.”
“Do you want a whisky?”
