Sail of Stone

9

Aneta Djanali made breakfast with her bad dreams winding around in her head like a lingering fog. She put water in the kettle but forgot to turn on the power and waited in vain, standing at the kitchen counter, until she realized what had happened and looked around to see if anyone was standing there smirking.

No one was standing there.

Sometimes she missed having someone there to let out an indulgent laugh at her absentmindedness. Who was always there. Sometimes Fredrik was there, and there was nothing wrong with his indulgent laugh, but he wasn’t always there.

And she wasn’t always in his kitchen, at his counter.

Was this what being a live-apart couple was?

No. That presupposed a relationship that could be called a relationship, something accepted and… and, well, confirmed, established.

Something obvious. For both people. They weren’t there, she and Fredrik. Why weren’t they there? Or were they on their way there without needing to confirm it, or even think about it?

Life is complicated.

She toasted two pieces of bread at the same time. It was more complicated than toasting one slice, but compared to other parts of her life it wasn’t particularly complicated. She spread butter on the bread, sliced some cheese, spooned some blackberry marmalade on the cheese. Simple, easy actions, like brewing tea: milk in the bottom of the mug, pour in the tea, two sugar cubes, stir, let cool.

Drink the tea. Eat the bread.

Empty the brain.

For fifteen minutes.

The moon was still up when she came outside, but it was lingering, pale, behind thin clouds, like in a fog. Her car was in shadow from the sun, which shone happily in another part of the sky. The car was cold when she got in, the scent of night still in the leather. Everything from the night was lingering this morning. That’s what she thought.

She drove south. There was a line of cars at Linnéplatsen. Three lanes, keeping time. Some idiot kept revving the engine, stared at her, revved it again, staring from his Audi.

Should she throw open her door and show her ID?

The light turned green and the idiot flew away, on his way to Le Mans, the Nürburgring, made it seven yards, swerved to the left, accelerated, on his way to a late start in Monte Carlo, roared past a few asphalt mixers and the road worker farthest out lost his cap in the rush of wind.

Aneta lifted the phone and called the officer at dispatch and gave him the disappearing license plate number on the car up ahead.

No goal today for Audi.

She had seen the flash of racism in his eyes.

You soon became sensitive to such things. A sunburn from Africa always caused reactions, no matter the year, decade, century, millennium. You know, of course, that all humans have their origins in Africa? she said once when Fredrik was playing racist. Yes, playing. That was at first; then he had stopped.

She passed Sahlgrenska Hospital going up the hill. She drove into Toltorpsdalen, which sounded like it belonged in a fairy tale. She turned left at the church and crept over the damned speed bumps, fifty yards between each one. Workers in vehicles hated the speed bumps: bus drivers, taxi drivers, delivery people, police. She looked around. The people in the neighborhood hate the speed bumps sometimes; the more accelerations, the worse the air. Fair Toltorpsdalen already had the city’s worst air even before that; it was among the worst in north Europe.

In Krokslätt everything sloped downward. She rolled without accelerating off of Krokslätt’s Parkgata and parked behind Sörgård School.

It was idyllic. The city was of two minds here, on the boundary between the crude downtown of Mölndal and the abyss of the big city that began at Liseberg. It was quiet here, Fridkullagatan ran like a protective arm to the west and the north; here it was calm like the eye of a cyclone. A person who stayed here found peace.

Anette Lindsten had not stayed here. Why she had left the protective pocket of Fredriksdal for the condemned Kortedala was a question that only love could answer. Anette had moved to the windswept district of seasons for the sake of love, a district where the authorities were now blowing up their own buildings, and when even love had been smashed to pieces, Anette had returned here, home again.

Aneta stood outside the house, which was hidden behind a hedge that would be difficult to climb over or chop your way through. The house was wooden, like most houses here, built between the wars, expanded during the welfare period, well cared for in less fortunate times, these times. Aneta hesitated outside the iron gate, which had recently been scraped and would soon be painted again. Why don’t I leave these people alone? What answer do I want? I am tired of this shit, tired of women having to live long lives of fear, in exile in their own country, worse than that, living in protected places like refugees, hidden from state entities and their verdicts, and from the powers that be, which is me, us, the police. Them, she thought. I wouldn’t haul children out of a church on order. It has been done before and those pictures are not in the most beautiful albums of humankind’s time on earth. Now Anette is hiding here at home. Is that enough for her?

She saw her hand ring the doorbell. All I want is to see that Anette is okay.

Her hand rang again. She could hear a dog barking inside; maybe it had been audible before. The door was opened and within it she saw jaws opening, and not to smile. The dog growled. She knew a Rottweiler when she saw one. In most cases it was a matter of striking first.

“Quiet, Zack!”

She could see the top of the man’s head as he bent toward the muscular monster down there. What did the people of Fredriksdal say about them when they were out for a walk?

The man turned his face to her.

She didn’t recognize him.

“Yes?”

He had opened the door halfway.

“I would like to… have a word with Anette,” said Aneta. She felt caught off guard. She didn’t understand why.

“She isn’t here,” said the man.

The dog growled in agreement and turned and disappeared.

“But she moved home,” said Aneta.

“What? What do you mean? And who are you, by the way?”

She finally showed her ID and said her name.

“What do you want with her?” said the man, without looking at what she was holding in her hand.

Aneta felt something horrible inside, a feeling of dizziness.

She tried to see past the man into the hall, and she saw the dog waiting for her, or for some part of her. The monster was already licking its lips.

She felt the feeling again: a lost foothold. She made her voice stronger than it was.

“I would like to speak with her father.”

“What?”

The man looked truly surprised.

“Sigge. Lindsten,” said Aneta. “I would like to speak with him.”

She saw doubt in the man’s face. He sneaked a look at the ID, which she still held in her hand.

“Is that a real badge?” he said with a tone that said “Are you a real police officer?”

“Is her father home?” said Aneta. “Sigge Lindsten? Is he in the house?”

“I’m Sigge Lindsten, for God’s sake,” said the stranger in the door. “I’m her dad!”

She saw the other face in front of her, the other Lindsten dad who had worked calmly in Aneta’s apartment, removing everything that was there. The dad, the nice and collected one. And the brother, the dismissive brother.

“Pe… Peter,” said Aneta, the feeling of dizziness more and more marked.

“What? Who are you raving about now?” said the man.

“Peter Lindsten. Her brother. Anette’s brother.”

“Anette doesn’t have a brother, dammit!” said the man.

Bertil Ringmar was hanging around the window, gazing out at the river, Fattighusån. The buildings on the other side were new, private residences for the privileged. The poorhouse for which the stream was named was gone now. They’re gone all over now, he thought. The houses are gone but the poor are still here.

“Don’t you get depressed, looking out over Fattighusån every day?” he said, turning to Winter, who was sitting at his desk doing nothing.

“I do.”

“Do something about it, then.”

Winter let out a laugh.

“That’s the point,” he said.

“It’s the point for you to be depressed?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Then everything is so much easier when you leave here.”

“Is that why you leave so often?”

“Yes.”

“Mmhmm.”

“I have thought about it,” said Winter, “about this damn office.”

“What have you thought?”

“That I don’t want to be here anymore. Sit here anymore.”

“You don’t?”

“I’m going to set up an office in the town.”

“Are you?”

“In a café. Or a bar.”

“Your office in a bar?”

“Yes.”

“Interrogations in a bar?”

“Yes.”

“That’s brilliant.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Have you talked to Birgersson?”

“Do I have to?”

Ringmar smiled. Birgersson was a chief inspector and the chief of the homicide department. Winter was a chief inspector and deputy chief. Ringmar was only a chief inspector, and that was enough for him. He knew that nothing worked without him anyway. Look at Winter. Look at him! Sitting on his chair and doing absolutely nothing, and it would stay that way if Ringmar weren’t there. If, for example, he didn’t keep this conversation going.

Look at this room. There was a sink in one corner, where Winter could shave if he was restless. There was a map of Gothenburg on one wall. There were some mysterious circles and lines from past investigations. There were lots of lines. Winter-and he himself-had redrawn the map of the city. Their map showed the criminal Gothenburg. That city stretched in many directions, to unfamiliar points. No such points existed in the official map of Gothenburg.

Winter was sitting in a chair that was entirely too comfortable, too new. He had recently rewallpapered the office. He had put in new bookshelves, different lamps from the ones that shone the way for other colleagues in other rooms in this beautiful building. He had lugged in his own little furniture arrangement.

It was time to get out of here. A café. A bar.

On the floor, a yard from Ringmar, stood the eternal Panasonic and the eternal tenor sax wailing atonal blues. Coltrane? No. Something else, from our time. It was good. Depressingly good.

“What is it?” said Ringmar, nodding toward the portable stereo.

“Michael Brecker,” said Winter. “And not just him. Pat Metheny, Jack DeJohnette, Dave Holland, Joey Calderazzo, McCoy Tyner, Don Alias.”

“Alias? What’s his real name?”

Winter laughed again and lit a Corps. The thin cigarillo made a bobbing motion in his mouth.

“You listed a whole investigation squad,” said Ringmar.

“If you want to look at it that way.”

“May I borrow it?” said Ringmar.

Winter turned around in his chair and reached for the CD rack and took out a CD case and tossed it like a Frisbee to Ringmar, who caught it with an elegant motion. He saw a man’s back, clad in a black coat, wandering along a river. It said “Tales from the Hudson” at the bottom. Ringmar thought of the sluggish river behind him and thought of something else.

“The Hudson River,” he said.

Winter knew what he was thinking about.

“How is Martin?” asked Winter.

“Good.”

“Is he still in New York?”

“Yes.”

Ringmar’s son Martin worked as a chef at a good restaurant in Manhattan. Third Avenue. He had a complicated relationship with his father. Or maybe it was the other way around. Winter didn’t know, but he had his own idea of what had happened. He hadn’t asked, not about everything. And Ringmar had reestablished contact with his son. They spoke to each other, before it was too late. For Winter it had been too late, or almost too late. He had spoken with his father days before his death. Bengt Winter had died at Hospital Costa del Sol outside of Marbella and Winter had been there. It was the first time they’d seen each other in five or six years, and the first time they’d spoken to each other. It was a tragedy. Worth crying oneself to sleep over night after night.

“Have you thought about going over and visiting soon?” asked Winter.

“Thought about it.”

“Go, for fuck’s sake.”

Ringmar moved his head in time with the piano music that streamed through the room. He rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“They had some sort of catering job for a firm in the World Trade Center,” he said.

Winter didn’t answer, waited.

“Martin was there sometimes; he was in charge of getting the buffet set up or something.”

“When did he tell you that?” asked Winter.

“When do you think? After nine-eleven, of course. There was no reason to before.”

Winter nodded.

“But he wasn’t there that day.” Ringmar walked away from the window and sat on the chair on the other side of the desk. Winter took a drag. It sounded like the volume had been turned up, but the music had just changed tempo, become even more nervous. Desperate. Tales from New York. “Good God. He was supposed to have been there that day but that consulting firm or whatever the hell it was changed the reception to the next day.” Ringmar rasped out a rough sound, like half a laugh. “There was no reception the next day.”

“How did Martin react?”

“He’s thanking God, I think.”

“Mmhmm.”

“He’s started to visit the church next door,” said Ringmar, and Winter thought that his face brightened. “He says that he sits there without praying or anything. But that he feels peace there. And thankfulness, he says.”

“Go over,” said Winter.

“I’ve been about to,” said Ringmar. “But now he’s coming home.”

“Is he?”

“Just a break. For a few weeks.”

Winter left early and walked by way of Saluhallen, the indoor market. He bought a pound of farmer cheese from Brittany and two Estonian flatbreads; that was all.

A bar on Södra Larmgatan glowed invitingly. It was new and he didn’t see a name. He went in and ordered a beer from the tap and sat at a window table. A man was sitting alone at the bar. The bartender was preparing glasses and olives and plates and bottles and doing all the other pleasant things bartenders occupy themselves with during the hour of blue twilight before guests arrive. Winter lit a Corps. This was the best time in a bar, as good as empty, a sense of anticipation before the evening, an unidentifiable serene sound. He looked around. The twenty-first century had introduced new trends in bar design. It was no longer mini-mini-minimalistic, the kind of design that gave the impression that you were sitting in a deserted hangar.

There was leather and wood and a warm light here. No bare lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling.

He could have his new office here. Here, by the window. During interrogations you could hold the candle a little closer to the person being interrogated in order to see the play of his eyes. The video camera could stand on the windowsill.

His colleagues from the jail could wait at the bar.

He took his phone out of his inner jacket pocket and called home.

“I’m on my way,” he said.

The bartender dropped a glass on the floor. The floor was made of stone. The man at the bar yelled, “Cheers!” and raised his glass.

“The streetcar is lively, I hear,” said Angela.

“Ha ha.”

“Be good and come home now,” said Angela.

Winter looked around.

“What do you say about a little drink before dinner?” he said.

“It depends on the place,” she said.

“It’s new and I’m the only one here,” he said, watching as the man at the bar climbed off his stool and made some sort of bow toward the bartender and left the bar with the exaggeratedly decisive movements of someone who is half drunk.

“I have to ask Elsa,” said Angela.

“Do you have to ask her permission for everything?”

“Ha ha ha.”

“I promise not to smoke,” said Winter.

“She says it’s okay if I come, but she wants to invite herself along to keep an eye on us.”

“Södra Larmgatan, right across from Saluhallen.”

He hung up and drank his beer. People outside were on their way somewhere. The sun was on its way to the Southern Hemisphere. The sky was colored orange, which meant that the sun would come back tomorrow. The light outside was blue because the hour was blue. A long evening awaited. He thought he would let it take its course; he wouldn’t interfere.

The phone rang again. He didn’t recognize the number on the screen. He debated letting it ring, but if he did it would be the first time.

There’s a first time for everything.

He didn’t answer.

He felt a sensation in his body when the ringing stopped.

Something has happened.

He lifted his hand toward the bartender.

This calls for a celebration.