Sail of Stone

“Home? You mean to Scotland?” said Macdonald.

“Yes.”

“Not very often. And our farm and our city aren’t by the sea.”

“No, I think you told me that once.”

“Dallas is in its own little world.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You can see for yourself when you come here.”

“Why would I go there?”

Half a second after Winter said it, he knew that he would go there. Go there soon. It was a feeling he didn’t want to feel, that complicated intuition he didn’t want to be without.

He felt a chill. Something was about to set sail; he couldn’t see what. He suddenly wanted to go south, far south.

Aneta shivered as the wind came in through the half-open window. It cleared her thoughts. The sun glowed weakly over the fields. Everything was green, but only for another week. Then it would turn gold like everything that lies out in the sun too long.

This was the countryside; there were cows. She met a tractor that was driving in the middle of the road. The driver had a cap and seemed a bit backward. He was chewing on hay. He wouldn’t have noticed if he’d smashed into her car.

She drove past a farm where pigs were rooting around in the ground next to the road. It smelled like pig shit, but she didn’t close the window. This was the earth and the country they all came from; well, maybe she didn’t, but all the other hicks in this frozen land did. Freeze-dried, as Halders had once said. We are freeze-dried, we’re dry as fuck, and when we’re warmed up and get liquid in us, we swell up times ten. She wasn’t sure she understood, but it sounded great, like a lot of what Fredrik said. Crazy, but great. At the very least funny. Except for the black jokes, but those were gone now.

She stopped at a pullout and read her notes. The last time they’d met she had asked Sigge Lindsten where the cabin was. Suddenly a car came from the opposite direction at breakneck speed, and gravel flew up in her face. She didn’t have time to see the car. She felt a sting on her forehead. She looked in the rearview mirror after the fleeing car, but she only saw dry dust from the road and then her own forehead, on which there was a drop of red. She wiped away the drop with her left index finger and licked up the blood, which tasted like red iron.

She knew that people drove like fugitive lunatics in the country. It was their country, but they rushed around it as though there were no laws. Wanted. Wanted dead or alive.

She had driven too far. She continued for a few hundred yards and found a turnoff and turned around.

She drove back, and there was still dust from the road in the air. She passed the pullout sign, which was old and almost colorless.

She found the right turnoff. Grass was growing in the middle of the desolate road. She was able to park in a natural pocket under a cliff that stuck out from a slope. She got out, and it smelled like the sea, but she couldn’t see it. Seabirds were shrieking on the other side of the slope, which was overgrown with pine trees. She started to climb between the trees. The ground was warm.

21

She felt the wind as she stood at the top of the hill, and she could see the sea, which was large. She knew that it was on its way to the shore, but from here it looked like a congealed rock formation that had stretched as far as it could and become a mountain. The sea was not blue, not green, nothing in between.

Aneta went closer. Below the slope on the other side, pines were growing, same as on the eastern side. Between the pines she could glimpse a house. A car was sitting outside the house. She recognized it.

The car was a silhouette in that image.

A woman was standing on the other side of the car, turned toward the sea. Aneta recognized her, too.

The woman turned around as Aneta carefully made her way down between the trees, but she turned her face toward the sea again as though that were natural, as though it were normal that a detective from the city would come sliding down the slope in the threadbare afternoon.

The woman remained standing with her back to Aneta until it was necessary to turn around.

“I wasn’t surprised,” said Susanne Marke.

“Is Anette here?” asked Aneta.

“Isn’t it peaceful here?” said Susanne, looking out over the petrified sea again.

“Do you come here often?” asked Aneta.

“This is the first time.”

“But you found it easily,” said Aneta, wondering about this conversation and this situation.

“Hans described the way, so it was no problem,” said Susanne.

“Hans? Hans Forsblad?”

Susanne turned around, and Aneta could see the resolve in her face.

“Now listen carefully. There has been a big mistake here, and we’re trying to fix it.”

Aneta waited without saying anything. It would be a big mistake to say something now. She thought she saw the curtain in the only visible window move. That seemed natural, too; a natural repetition when you were dealing with these people.

“Do you hear me? A big mistake, and it won’t help if the co… the police are running around interfering.”

No. Everyone would be so much happier if the police didn’t run all over interfering and instead told people to go away when they called to report thefts, assaults, homicides, murders. A mistake. Call the neighbor.

“It started when Anette’s neighbors called,” said Aneta. “Several times.”

“A mistake,” repeated Susanne.

“Anette’s face was injured,” said Aneta.

“Has she been to the hospital?” asked Susanne. It was a rhetorical question.

“Not that we know of,” said Aneta.

“She hasn’t,” said Susanne.

“Could I see your ID?” asked Aneta.

“What? What?”

“An ID,” said Aneta. “Your ID.”

“Why?”

Aneta held out her hand. She saw how the expression on the other woman’s face changed.

“Surely you don’t think that…”

Aneta didn’t say anything, kept holding out her hand.

Then Susanne smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant smile. Suddenly Aneta recognized the smile, the expression, the eyes. The face.

It was the same face. The two faces had the same origin.

Susanne rummaged around in her handbag and took out a wallet. She rummaged around in the wallet and pulled out a driver’s license and thrust it out with the same smile. The smile had stiffened on her face, which had become cold like the disappearing color in the sea and the sky.

Aneta saw Susanne’s face in the photo, and her name. The license was one year old.

“Who is Bengt Marke?” asked Aneta.

“My ex.”

“Is Hans Forsblad your brother?”

Susanne kept smiling. Aneta didn’t need any other answer. She felt an immediate fear. She felt the weight of her weapon, the weight of safety, unexpected and unnecessary; she wouldn’t need it. She realized that it had been a mistake to drive here alone. It was the kind of mistake Fredrik made. Had made. It had once come close to costing him his life. He had been lucky. The ignorant and bold were often lucky. They didn’t know better. She wasn’t bold, wasn’t ignorant. Therefore, this could end badly.

These people weren’t to be toyed with.