Sail of Stone

“He will always be my brother,” said Susanne.

Whatever happens, thought Aneta. I believe her. I believe her when it comes to that.

“This is one big mistake,” said Susanne.

“Where is the mistake?”

“Hans hasn’t done anything.”

“No?”

“He wants to put everything right again.”

“If he hasn’t done anything, there must not be anything to put right.”

Maybe it was true. He wanted to make good. It wouldn’t happen again. But what had happened hadn’t happened. Everything was a mistake, and mistakes were always other people’s. Everything was a misunderstanding. The beatings were misunderstandings. Aneta had heard of so many misunderstandings during her career in the brotherhood. No one called it the sisterhood; that would have been absurd. She had heard of how language ceased and violence took over. Blows instead of words. The desperate and languageless hit. Men are hard and women soft. Yes. They own, think they own, another person. Dominance. Complete control. A question of honor. In a twisted way, it was a question of honor. A form of honor. It existed here, too, in this fair-skinned country. It didn’t belong only to medieval bastards from Farawayistan who murdered their daughters for the sake of their own honor.

“Other people’s mistakes. It’s about other people’s mistakes,” said Susanne.

“Sorry?”

“It’s about other people,” Susanne repeated. “We were talking about mistakes, right? Aren’t you listening?”

“And you’re going to help fix all these mistakes?”

Susanne didn’t answer. She looked at the house. Aneta had also seen the movement in the window. A shadow, a silhouette.

“I’m just going to explain what Hans is actually like to the people who don’t understand,” said Susanne.

“Explain to whom? To the woman behind the window there?” said Aneta, nodding at the house and the window.

Susanne nodded.

“Is it Anette?”

Susanne turned to her again.

“I haven’t had time to check yet, have I? I haven’t had time, have I? You came tumbling down through the trees before I had time to knock, didn’t you?”

“Where is Hans right now?” asked Aneta. “We’re trying to contact him.”

“Look in the trunk!” said Susanne, letting out a laugh that was like a bark that echoed away across the bay.

Aneta didn’t believe many of Susanne’s words, but she believed the half-wild laugh.

Bertil Ringmar stared through the balcony window at the neighbor’s yard, which was entirely too visible behind a hedge that was entirely too low. His neighbor was crazy, an administrator from the hospital world who had gone a bit nuts when he had administrated away everything of value within health care; it all went to pieces, putz weg, every little bit, including his own job, and now he worked on various bits of his own yard.

The telephone rang.

“Hope I’m bothering you,” said Halders.

“As always,” answered Ringmar.

“Do you know what Aneta’s up to this afternoon?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“I asked Erik, and he didn’t know either,” answered Halders as though to himself. Ringmar could hear his concern.

“Call her.”

“What do you think I’ve been doing?”

“What is it about?”

“We’re going to bring in the wife beater anyway for a little questioning, and I thought that she wanted to be there. We’ve found das Schweinehund.”

“Isn’t it der Schweinehund?” said Ringmar.

“Or die,” said Halders. “In any case, we ran into a remarkable specimen this morning.”

“You are a true people person, Fredrik.”

“Yeah, right? I protect people, don’t I?”

Ringmar was still standing at the balcony door. He saw the neighbor come out and walk down the path built alongside a number of concrete slabs that looked like Viking graves. Candles were burning; they were like bonnets on top of the graves. The first time Ringmar had seen it when it was completed, which hadn’t been more than a few weeks ago, he had giggled in the same peculiar way Inspector Clouseau’s boss did in the later Pink Panther films before he lost his wits forever. Ringmar liked those films, especially the inspector’s unorthodox methods of doing his job.

“Aneta won’t do anything stupid,” said Ringmar.

“We all make mistakes,” said Halders.

“She’s worked with you so much that she’s learned,” said Ringmar.

“To make mistakes?”

“To avoid them. By seeing what you do and then doing the opposite.”

“I don’t like this,” said Halders. “It feels like she rushed off.”

“She’ll call,” said Ringmar, looking at his watch. “It’s after working hours.”

He heard Halders grunt an answer that he didn’t understand and then hang up.

The neighbor out there lit some more lights. Ringmar cradled the telephone receiver and then laid it down in an exaggeratedly careful manner. Dusk was on its way. The neighbor began his uncompromising war against darkness. Try to look at it that way, Bertil.

“Perhaps you’d like to knock?” said Susanne. She made a motion as though she were inviting Aneta to step in front of her in line.

They were still standing ten or fifteen yards from the house, which was larger than it looked from the hill. It had more than one window that faced the sea. There was a veranda there. It must have been sensational to sit there as the sun went down. But today it wasn’t going down, not so one could see.

What awaits us in there? Aneta was thinking. Someone is there.

There were no other vehicles on the lot. There was no garage.

Susanne made a sudden movement and Aneta gave a start. She thought she saw something moving out on the water, out of the corner of her eye, but when she looked there was nothing there.

It was as though the water wanted to tell her something.

Or that it meant something, something important that had to do with her, Aneta.

The water was a danger to her.

Don’t come here!

Go away!

She saw a dock that must have belonged to the house. She saw a plastic boat. It was tied to the dock. She saw oars sticking up. The boat floated calmly in the water.

Susanne stood at the front door and knocked. Aneta walked over. Susanne knocked again.

The door opened slowly. It was dark inside. Aneta saw the outline of a face.

“Go away!” said the face.

Susanne started to say something, but Aneta was faster and showed her police badge.

“Could you please open up?” she said.

The face seemed to retreat. The door was still open a few inches. Perhaps that meant they could step into the cottage.

Susanne did.