“Sometimes people who are going to the shipyard park here,” said one of the women, older, wearing a dress with a large floral pattern that had survived two world wars.
“What are they going to the shipyard to do?” said Macdonald.
Just then they heard heavy hammering from the other side of the shipyard wall. It was a strange noise. It was suddenly everywhere, like a reminder. Doonk-doonk-doonk.
They said good-bye to the woman and crossed the intersection to the shipyard and found the large gate, which was locked. Next to that, a twenty-foot section of the nine-foot-high fence was missing. They walked in.
The hammering had stopped but started again, doonk… doonk… with a hollow echo that sounded different in there, where everything was reminiscent of a cemetery. The blows came from inside a building that looked like a partially bombed cathedral. One of the walls was missing. Inside everything was dark. They walked closer and went in. The hammering stopped; someone had seen them first.
“You’re trespassing,” said an unfriendly voice.
“Police,” said Macdonald into the darkness. It smelled like rust and dirty water, iron, burned steel, sulfur, fire, earth, tar, sea. It’s a smell from the past, thought Winter. I remember it from when I was a child.
“What tha fockin’ is a’matter?” they heard the voice say, and a man stepped forward, and he still held the hammer, a sledgehammer, in his hand. Behind him stood something that looked like a bow door, and he had banged the shit out of one side. Winter suddenly felt a strong urge to grab that sledgehammer and devote himself to attacking the masses of iron, strike them until he collapsed, powerless. That must be good for you.
The man with the sledgehammer didn’t look like he was here for therapeutic reasons. He wore a coverall that had been around so long that it had lost all color and looked most of all like the skin of the man’s face, which was possibly gray, possibly black and white. A cigarette butt hung from the corner of his mouth. The worker was around sixty, maybe younger, maybe older. In the car, Macdonald had said that it wasn’t exactly easy to determine men’s ages up here. Thirty-five-year-olds might look sixty-five. It was seldom the other way around.
“We just want to ask a couple o’questions,” said Macdonald.
“Aye,” said the man, spitting out the butt and hobbling toward them with a severe limp. He moved the sledgehammer from his right to his left hand as though to compensate for his lack of balance.
He was surprisingly tall, almost as tall as Macdonald, who was the tallest Scot Winter had seen yet. Winter had commented on this earlier. I kept away from the haggis, Macdonald had said. It pushes you toward the earth. It’s like rice for the Japanese.
Bullshit, Winter had said.
It was a conversation that Winter hardly understood; actually, he didn’t at all. The man spoke an awful gibberish, and Winter suspected that Macdonald was guessing at half of it. And suddenly the conversation was over, without ceremony. It was like watching a sport you didn’t understand.
They walked back to the car on Richmond. A double sheet of newspaper blew across the main road to Portessie. Winter could see half a headline, like half a message.
“He’s unemployed, but he goes there for old times’ sake,” said Macdonald. “He’s not alone in that.”
“But he hadn’t met any Johnson or Osvald or anything, from what I understand.”
“No.”
“But our man could have been here,” said Winter.
“Which one?”
“Well, that’s one of the questions,” said Winter.
They drove slowly back through the harbor district: Harbour Office, Marine Accident Investigation Branch, Carlton House, Fisherman’s Fishselling Co. Ltd., JSB Supplies Ltd., Buckie Fish Market. Winter could see trawlers in the small wet dock; he read off the boats’ sterns:
“We might as well ask at the Marine,” said Macdonald.
The Marine Hotel looked like it had been taken from a noir film. If walls could talk, Winter thought as they stood in the lobby. The woman behind the desk was a dyed blonde and maybe fifty and had lively eyes. Behind her was a sign for the “Cunard Suite,” which must have been the most charming the hotel had to offer.
But even in the lobby there was wall-to-wall carpeting.
Winter noticed that the carpets covered all surfaces. The British had a special relationship with wall-to-wall carpeting, as though the myth of British properness was reflected in these carpets that had to cover all naked floors.
Their colors were reminiscent of the hammer man’s coverall.
“I’ll get the man’ger fur ya, luv,” she said, and lifted the telephone receiver.
They stood on the square, Cluny Square. There was a hotel in front of them that looked like a castle. The Cluny Hotel. It was the lunch hour. Winter could see a group of little old ladies mince their way in through the hotel’s wide entrance. Time for tea.
“So,” said Macdonald about the conversation they’d had with “the man’ger.”
“Could be the old man making a return visit,” said Winter.
“Could be any nostalgic at all,” said Macdonald.
“This isn’t a nostalgic,” said Winter.
“What is he, then?” said Macdonald.
“According to all reports, dead since the war,” said Winter.
“Well, then there’s probably not much nostalgia left.”
“Shall we have a cup of tea?” said Winter, nodding toward the hotel.
Macdonald looked at his watch.
“Okay,” he said.
“When were the girls getting to Dallas?” said Winter.
“About the same time as us,” Macdonald said, and smiled.
The hotel had been built in 1880, Victorian up to its trusses. It had six rooms and a dining room in all the shades of pink God had given to man. A young woman who looked nice showed them to a table that seemed fragile. The chairs were narrow armchairs.
Macdonald looked like he was sitting in a child’s chair. Winter realized that he looked the same himself.
The little old ladies were sitting at a larger table next to one of the windows, ten feet away. They smiled at them, someone giggled; a few whispered.
“Good morning, ladies,” Macdonald said, and Winter nodded as well.
A wide, rounded staircase led down from the dining room. Framed black and white photographs hung on the wall all the way down to the reception desk. It was, you could say, a nostalgic display, or a sad one. Most of the pictures showed the former fishing fleet, when it had been proud and great: In the photos from the harbor there didn’t seem to be room for all the boats. Masts stretched as far as the eye could see, like tree trunks in a forest. Like mobile trees. Winter thought of Macbeth again as he stood there looking at the forest of masts. Not until the forest moved toward him did Macbeth have to fear anything in his castle.
He had the witches’ shrill word on it.
And no man born of woman could threaten him.
But Macduff, the man born by Cesarean section, cut down the trees and fastened them to his body and marched.
Winter moved his eyes from the photograph of the masts.
They continued down the stairs, past other pictures, of houses, more boats, of people from other times.
They stood on the street again. The Buckie boys are back in town. Arne Algotsson’s demented drivel popped up in Winter’s memory. It really must mean something. Was John Osvald a Buckie boy? Or was it just an expression? They had asked, but so far no one had known.
On the square was a war monument for World War I. Winter stood in front of it and thought the impossible thought that he had seen it before. He read on the stone: “Their Name Liveth For Ever.”
They were alone in front of the monument. That said something to him too, but he didn’t know what. It meant something that they were standing there alone.
