Sail of Stone

Aneta followed her.

There was no light in the hall, which was narrow and long. The light of dusk could be seen outside of a window that was dimly visible where the hall ended and a room began. Someone moved in the room. Aneta saw a face. It belonged to an older woman.

“Mrs. Lindsten?” she said.

There was no answer.

“Signe, hello,” said Susanne.

Aha, she’s Signe to her. Am I the one she doesn’t want to let in?

“Anette isn’t here,” they heard from the room.

Why did you come here alone? thought Aneta.

Susanne walked down the hall, and Aneta followed her.

The light in the room came from the sea. On bright days, it must be a very bright room, thought Aneta. Right now I can’t really see this woman’s face.

“Signe, you have to let Hans talk to Anette,” said Susanne.

“Can’t you leave her alone?” said Signe Lindsten in a voice that was more powerful than Aneta could have imagined.

“He just wants to talk,” said Susanne.

Did he want something else before? wondered Aneta.

“Do you feel threatened by these people?” asked Aneta. “You can tell me.”

“Oh, God,” said Susanne.

“You understand that I’m from the police?” said Aneta.

She thought she saw Signe Lindsten nod.

“Where is Anette?” asked Aneta.

Signe Lindsten didn’t answer. Aneta realized her mistake. A damn stupid question to ask when Forsblad’s loyal sister was standing next to her.

“I’d like to ask you to step out for a minute,” she said to Susanne.

Susanne didn’t move. Aneta realized that Susanne realized that she had to leave, and that she was trying to say something but couldn’t quite figure out what.

Suddenly Susanne turned around, said, “Mistake,” in a loud voice, and left, stomping down the hall in her low-heeled boots, and before Aneta had time to say anything else to Signe Lindsten she heard the car roar to life and drive away. She hadn’t seen the road when she climbed down between the trees, but she hadn’t looked for it.

Winter walked across Heden. Middle-aged men were playing soccer with contorted faces. That was as it should be. He heard screams that sounded like a cry for help. He looked around for the meat wagon but didn’t see it, nor did he see heart-and-lung machines.

He lit a Corps, his first of the day. He was cutting back, but he could hardly cut back more than this. He refrained from smoking during work. If he was going to refrain after work, he would have to ask himself what the point of that time of day, or any time of day, was.

It was the screwed-up viewpoint of a nicotine addict.

But it made sense. He tried to live a different life after the life that had to do with crime and all its consequences.

No smoking then, but smoking afterward. It made sense.

He had tried to explain it to Angela.

“I might understand,” she had said. “While you transition. But later. Elsa might like to have you around when she is, oh, twenty-five. You were not twenty-five years young when we had Elsa. You were forty.”

“I was still the youngest chief inspector in the country,” Winter had said, lighting up. Angela had smiled.

“Have you ever looked that up? Really looked it up?”

“I trust my mother.”

“There are two jobs where it’s apparently possible to remain young and promising for any amount of time,” Angela had said. “Detective inspector and author.”

“I still feel young.”

“Keep smoking and we’ll see in a few short years.”

“They’re only cigarillos.”

“What can I say?” She made a motion to indicate that she was speaking to deaf ears. “What else can I say?”

“Okay, okay. It’s not good for me, and I’m smoking less and less.”

“It’s not for my sake, no, first and foremost it isn’t about me, as a matter of fact. We’re talking about your health-about Elsa’s dad.”

He let the thought go. He saw a soccer ball coming his way and he took the cigarillo out of his mouth and connected perfectly, and the ball flew in a beautiful curve back onto the gravel pitch. That’s how it’s done. First take the cigarillo out of your mouth and then connect with the ball with an extended ankle. That’s how it must have been done when soccer was a game for gentlemen in nineteenth-century England.

His cell phone rang as he crossed Sodra Vagen. The walk light was still on, but a man in a black Mercedes honked at him when he was halfway across the crosswalk. Winter answered the phone with a “Yes?” and stared at the man, who was revving the motor. The city was not a safe place. All the frustrated desperadoes racing around in their Mercedeses. He should throw that bastard in jail.

He turned onto Vasagatan and listened:

“You haven’t heard anything else?” asked Johanna Osvald.

“If I find anything out, you’ll know right away,” he answered.

“I worry more and more each day,” she said. “Maybe I should go over there?”

Yet another generation of Osvalds takes off to look for the last one, thought Winter. Three generations drifting around in the Scottish Highlands.

“What would you do?” she asked.

I would go, he thought.

“Wait and see for a few days,” he said. “We have the missing-person bulletin out, after all. And I’ve spoken with my colleague.”

“What can he do?”

“He knows people.”

“You don’t think something serious has happened?” she asked. “A crime?”

“It’s possible he became ill,” said Winter.

“Then he would have called,” she said. “Or someone else would have called about him.”

“We can help you,” said Aneta Djanali.

“We don’t need any help,” said Signe Lindsten.

It was the answer that Aneta expected, but she still couldn’t understand it.

“We want everyone to leave us alone,” said Signe.

“Is Anette at home?”

Signe looked out through the window, as though that was where her daughter was, somewhere on the stony sea. Or in it, thought Aneta.

The sky had grown dark over the water, and everything had become the same color. Aneta could see the dock down there. She could see the boat. A lawn lay like a thin band that soon transformed into sand thirty yards from the edge of the water.

“Is Anette home, in Gothenburg?” asked Aneta.

The mother continued to look out at the shore and the sea, and Aneta did the same.

“Is that your boat?” she asked.

Signe gave a start.

She looked at Aneta.

“Anette is at home.”

“In Gothenburg? At the house in Fredriksdal?”

The mother nodded.