Sail of Stone

“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 Styrso called the Mariana.”

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

“And there’s no fisherman on Styrso 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 without 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.”