across from the exhibition.
“Have you seen the exhibit?” asked Winter.
“I don’t need to,” said Macdonald.
“Now you’ve hinted so much that soon I will insist that we make a serious attempt to solve the monster mystery,” Winter said. He got out of the car. “We’ll be world famous.”
“I don’t want to be famous,” Macdonald said. “I just want to be rich.” He got out and locked the car with the remote. “Like you.”
“And I just want to be famous,” said Winter.
They went into the bar. A movie poster was hanging on the wall, an ad for a ten-year-old Hollywood production about the monster myth, with Ted Danson in the lead role. Winter didn’t feel disappointed that he hadn’t seen it.
Macdonald ordered two pints of Scotch ale.
Winter took out his pack of Corps and lit one of the cigarillos.
“So you haven’t given up that crap yet,” said Macdonald. “I thought you’d quit.”
“Soon,” Winter said, pulling in the pleasant smoke and letting it out again as discreetly as he could.
Fort Augustus was two rows of houses in a U-turn, gas stations, pubs. It smelled like fried fat and gas and maybe rotting seaweed in the parking lot in front of Morag’s Lodge.
Macdonald read from a piece of paper. They walked down the street to Poacher’s and went in. The air was thick with smoke from the late-afternoon drinkers. The volume was loud.
The manager showed them to a room behind the bar. His face was gray from way too many years in the poisoned air. Perhaps he had never been closer to the sea than this.
“Funny geezer,” said the man, an Englishman whose name was Ball. “Didn’t seem to know what he was doing, or why.”
“Apparently he was asking questions,” Macdonald said.
“Apparently,” said Ball. “But in any case I couldn’t answer them, because I didn’t understand what he said.”
“No words at all you remember?”
“Nix.”
“Was he agitated?”
“No, he was… confused, but on the other hand that’s nothing strange in here,” Ball said, smiling, “and people become agitated rather often when they’ve drunk their wallet empty and aren’t allowed more credit.”
“How would you care to describe him, then?” Winter asked.
Ball looked at him.
“Are you a Swede too, like him?”
They knew that Ball knew that the dead man was a Swede.
“Yes,” said Winter.
“I can barely hear it,” said Ball.
“What was he like?” Macdonald repeated.
“Well, since you asked, he seemed… spooked. Scared. Wacky somehow, and, well, scared.” Ball made a movement with his head. “Like this, you know, it was like he was looking around for someone who was after him. He acted like he was being followed or something.”
“Did you see anyone?”
“What, following him?”
“Yes,” Macdonald said.
“Nah.”
“When he left the pub, then?”
“Nah. I suppose I watched him go, because he seemed strange, but then he shut the door behind him and that was that.”
“So he didn’t say a single word in English?” Winter asked.
“Nah.”
“Did you talk to anyone else who talked to him?” Winter asked.
“Only old Macdonald down at the Old Pier,” said Ball. “It seems the Dane was staying there, from what I hear.”
“Sorry?” said Macdonald.
“The Dane had a room there, right?”
“The Swede,” said Winter.
“Yeah, yeah, what the hell difference is there? Anyway, he definitely had a room there.”
“Not that we know of,” said Macdonald, looking at Winter.
“Then it must have been a different Swede,” Ball said, smiling with teeth that were not Scandinavian. There was a certain degree of difference in the status of teeth in Scandinavia and Great Britain. “Old Man Macdonald talked about a Swede.”
“Not to the police,” said Steve Macdonald.
“Probably no one asked,” said Ball. “Old Man Macdonald doesn’t say anything if you don’t ask straight out.”
Macdonald asked Macdonald straight out. Yes. A Swede in “the older ages” had stayed at the Old Pier for a night. The guesthouse was on the north shore of the lake, north of Fort Augustus. The smell of water and overgrown stones was strong as they walked up the steps. Old Man Macdonald was in the older ages himself. He steadied himself with a cane. A fire was burning in the large room. It snapped like a pistol shot from wood that wasn’t completely dry.
“You should have let the police know,” said Macdonald.
“I never got around to it,” Macdonald said, scratching with his cane like a tic.
“What do you mean when you say he was old in general terms?” Macdonald asked.
“Over eighty for sure, but moved like a fifty-year-old or something,” said Old Man Macdonald. He could have been over eighty himself. There were black flecks on his face.
“What was his name?” Winter asked.
“I’ll have to look in the register,” said Old Man Macdonald.
They followed him to the reception desk.
He flipped back a few pages.
“John Johnson,” he said.
Yet another Johnson. Winter saw that Steve noticed.
“When did he stay here?” asked Winter.
John Johnson had rented the room the night before Axel Osvald had shown up in Fort Augustus and then wandered from there up into the mountains.
“When did he leave? Early? Late?”
“Probably morning.”
“What time?”
“Well… nine, I think.”
“What did you talk about?”
“When?”
“Whenever,” said Steve.
“He didn’t say a word,” Old Man Macdonald said.
“How did you know that he was Swedish, then?” Macdonald asked.
“He probably said something then,” said the old man.
“What?”
“Don’t remember.”
“Are you senile?” Macdonald asked.
“Do you want a beating, you damn cocky island fool?” Old Man Macdonald said, raising his cane.
“Calm down,” said Steve Macdonald.
The old man lowered his cane. Steve Macdonald smiled. The old man grinned. “Damn Mac,” he said.
