Sail of Stone

again.”

“Of course we can,” said Halders. “But not tonight.”

Aneta looked around when they parked. She couldn’t see the glow of any cigarettes in any front seats, no silhouettes.

“Do you think he was serious?” she said.

“About sleeping at your place?”

“Did you think it was funny?”

“Oh, Aneta, it was just another way to provoke us.”

“You didn’t see his eyes.”

“I did, too.”

“He was trying to make eye contact with me,” she said.

Halders opened the front door.

“He wouldn’t dare come here,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“Because I told him I’d kill him if he did. It was when you were inside and I was outside waving good- bye.”

The morning was light and warm. There were people smiling on Vasagatan. The sun was round and kind. The sky was blue. Birds were singing.

Winter was walking to the Palace. He saw the temperature on the gauge over Heden: sixty degrees. Already. No one was playing soccer on the fields at Heden. A mistake on a morning like this. The air was easy to breathe in and breathe out. He yearned to sacrifice an ankle.

The sun shone in. Ringmar stuck in his head after Winter had sat down and started to go over the cases: thefts, assault, homicide, robberies, threats, more thefts, criminal damage, another homicide, two more robberies. Reports, testimonies, statements. Papers, cassette tapes, videotapes. Many cases, all at once. A suspected murder. A confessed murderer. A drunk dispute in a neighborhood in Gamlestaden. Almost all homicides and almost all murders looked like that. Case open and closed within twenty-four hours.

“Do you have a minute?” said Ringmar.

“No, I have two,” said Winter, putting down a sheet of paper.

Ringmar sat down. His face was sharply lined. He was twelve years older than Winter, which meant that he had some hard years behind him that Winter had in front of him. Maybe the hardest. And Ringmar had twelve years more of duty as ombudsman and protector to the public in front of him. How would the lines in his face look then? And Winter had twenty-four years left, t-w-e-n-t-y-f-o-u-r years in front of him, in the same role. Dear God. A third of a life the same way as this. Lift me up, take me away.

At the same time, this was his life. He knew this life. He was good. He had knowledge and aggression, maybe not as much aggression as Halders, but more knowledge. He had patience. He could work hard. He could think. That was that. One could think here; it was still possible to take time for thoughts. And thinking could lead to results. A person who didn’t think well didn’t get results. Not the big results, the ones you got from thinking outside the routine. Thinking outside the beautiful melodies. Winter listened to Coltrane when Coltrane was in his most discordant period, and it was a similar atonal platform that he, Winter, started out from. It never worked to think in a straight line. It was possible to follow logic, but it was logic that couldn’t be followed by anyone else. It was his logic, the same way it was Coltrane’s logic, Pharoah Sanders’s logic, or Miles Davis’s logic. He had sent off for a book from Bokus.com and he’d received it yesterday: Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece, by Ashley Kahn, and he was going to try to start reading it tonight if he had time to listen first, which he was starting to do now. The Panasonic was on the floor. He was playing Kind of Blue for the thousandth time.

“‘So What,’” said Ringmar.

The first song. Ringmar knew Kind of Blue. It was simply part of a general education to know that album. Winter didn’t really understand people who didn’t understand it. There was nothing to understand, incidentally. You just had to listen.

“The woman from Donso called half an hour ago,” said Ringmar. “Mollerstrom transferred it to me.”

“Good.”

“It was this Johanna, in other words.”

“I understand that, Bertil. What did she want?”

“Just to ask if we’d heard anything.”

“Have we?”

“No.”

“Has Mollerstrom checked with the national control center?”

“I assume so.”

“How did she sound?” said Winter.

“Calm, I think. But of course he’s been gone a few weeks now, her father.”

“Yes. Something has happened.”

“Must have,” said Ringmar.

The music continued, “Freddie Freeloader.” Winter thought of Johanna Osvald, of her brother, her father, her grandfather. He thought of Scotland, of Steve Macdonald.

Ringmar rubbed his hand over the lines in his face.

“How’s it going, Bertil?”

“Not bad. Moa has a new apartment on the way. Good for her, I suppose. But for my part, she could have lived at home for a while longer.”

Winter looked at him.

“You’ll understand in twenty years,” said Ringmar.

“Okay, we’ll discuss it then.” Winter fingered for his pack of Corps, but no. He wanted to be strong. There were many years left.

“Where is she moving to?” he asked.

“Kortedala,” said Ringmar.

27

The news came via Interpol before the morning was over. Or maybe it came directly from Inverness to Mollerstrom. He was the one who came in to Winter with the printout and directed him to the department’s intranet.

“Just tell me,” said Winter.

“He’s dead,” said Mollerstrom.

Winter tried to call but couldn’t get through. He tried again five minutes later.

The chief inspector’s name was Jamie Craig, from the Northern Constabulary, Inverness Area Command. He didn’t sound like a Scot but like an Englishman like anyone else, a dry accent, clinical, technical.

“He seems to have been wandering around town for a little while,” said Craig.

“You mean Inverness?”

“No. Fort Augustus. It’s on the southern tip of the lake. Just a village, really.”

“The lake? What lake?”

“Loch Ness, of course.”

Of course. The world-famous waterway southwest of Inverness. Nessie. The lake monster. Winter had not visited Loch Ness, hadn’t seen Nessie.

“But they found him a bit up east, in the hills, by a minor road, and by a small artificial lake called Loch Tarff. At least I think it’s artificial.”

“And the car?”

“No car.”

“Where is his rental?” asked Winter.