but he wasn’t there, of course.”
“Why did he come here?” Winter asked. “After so many years.”
“Couldn’t he have been here before?” said Farquharson.
“But you haven’t seen him?”
“No. But he could still have been here.”
“But he’s been declared dead,” said Macdonald.
“I know.”
“You seem calm, Mr. Farquharson. It didn’t occur to you that you saw a ghost?”
“I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“But the ship disappeared with Osvald,” Winter said.
“That’s what they say,” said Farquharson.
“You don’t believe it?”
“I don’t believe anything. I don’t know anything.”
They heard someone coming through the door behind them and they turned around. It was two younger men in thick sweaters and knitted caps. They nodded to Farquharson but didn’t seem to notice Macdonald and Winter. The men walked through the hall and in through another door.
“Norwegian fishermen,” said Farquharson. “We have some Norwegians, and Icelanders. Not many Swedes.”
“Do you have any Swedes right now?” Winter asked.
“We don’t have many rooms,” said Farquharson. “This is no hotel. It’s more so that they can have a change of scenery for a little while, a night or so, if something’s going on with the boat and such.”
“No Swedes?” Winter repeated.
“Not this week. Last week I think there were some.”
“Do you have a register?” Winter asked. Macdonald looked at him. “Where they sign in-do they give the name of the boat then?”
“Yes, those are the rules.”
Farquharson had only to reach for a black binder, which was thick. It was already open. He flipped back three pages.
“The Swedes,” he said to himself. “I wasn’t here then.” He looked up. “A little operation on my hip.” He looked down. “The trawler was called the
“Do they have to write down their home harbor?” asked Winter.
“Yes,” said Farquharson, “but I can’t read it.” He turned the binder around. Winter read on one line:
MARIANA. STYRSO. ERIKSON.
And a date.
It was two and a half weeks ago.
Winter knew that there was a trawler from Donso called the
Was there a trawler from Styrso named the
Why wouldn’t there be?
He would call Ringmar and ask him to check.
Farquharson offered them a quick cup of tea. There were pictures of trawlers hanging everywhere. Winter heard a laugh from somewhere, but there was a seriousness in the walls and the pictures and the memories here.
Farquharson gave a short explanation.
“The Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen was founded in 1881 after Mr. Ebenezer J. Mather visited fishing fleets at sea and really saw the crews’ inferior and dangerous working conditions.”
Macdonald and Winter nodded.
“It has improved, of course,” said Farquharson, “and we hope we’ve contributed to that. But it’s such a special occupation. Fishermen are so strangely cut off from the usual human influences by their work.” He looked at Winter. “There’s not much left of the usual human community out there at sea.”
“You must have seen many people be influenced by that,” said Winter.
“Naturally.”
“Can it make people… inhuman?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” said Winter. “That it makes a person someone else. Into someone… worse.”
“I believe it does,” said Farquharson.
“What about with John Osvald?”
“That was a long time ago,” said Farquharson.
“You have a good memory.”
Farquharson drank his tea and his gaze became hazy, very hazy. He had been a fisherman himself, before the war. He had gone ashore a long time ago.
“They were nervous,” he said after the pause. “Nervous.”
“How so?” asked Winter.
“There was something… something they had done, I think. People came asking after one of them. Well, I assumed it had to do with smuggling. Money. I don’t know.”
“Smuggling? Why smuggling?”
“Why not?” Farquharson said, smiling. “It wasn’t an unknown phenomenon up here.”
“So the Swedes were involved in smuggling?” Macdonald asked.
“I don’t know,” said Farquharson. “I didn’t ask. But something was going on.”
“Smuggling of what?”
“Anything at all. There was a war.”
“But didn’t they fish all the time? With their trawler. The
“Did they?” Farquharson said with a sort of lightness in his voice, perhaps a bit of mocking.
“What role did John Osvald play?” asked Macdonald.
“In what?”
“In the group.”
“He was the leader. He was young, but he made the decisions.” Farquharson put down the heavy earthenware mug he’d been holding in his hand. “Well, I wasn’t well acquainted with the Swedish fishermen that came to harbor here. These are really more like observations I made.”
“And then they left,” said Winter.
“Yes. I didn’t know where to, but since then I’ve heard that they were up in Fraserburgh for a while.”
The Saltoun Arms Hotel in Fraserburgh was on Saltoun Square in the middle of town; the hotel was Victorian, and so was the restaurant: palms in the windows, and on the floor, attractive wall-to-wall carpeting; flowery wallpaper on the ceiling; colonial fans that moved at an old-time speed; a glass case with cakes and cookies. A wisp of a melody that might have been Glenn Miller, or rather a British big band from the past. The staff seemed to come from a different era. The other guests in the half-full room were dressed as though they came from the past. A small child screamed a few times and the young couple at the east window did what they could to make the baby happy.
Winter and Macdonald sat with an ale each and waited for their food.
Macdonald looked around discreetly. A waitress passed with a steaming soup tureen.
“I assume that this is what they call larger than life,” he said.
“Mmhmm.”
“This was here before we came, and it will be here when we’re gone. Larger than life.”
Three pictures with country motifs hung on the north wall, like a dream of something other than the sea and the steep cliffs to the west. A farmer was walking behind a horse with the plow. It was the very symbol of work.
