Sail of Stone

12

In the morning, Winter called Johanna Osvald’s number, but she didn’t answer; no one answered. There was no answering machine.

It was Saturday. He had the day off. There had been a suspected case of manslaughter or possibly homicide on Tuesday night, but it wasn’t a case for him and hardly for any other detective either. The deceased and the perpetrator had both been identified and linked to each other both figuratively and literally, by matrimony among other things. Till death do us part. Some people certainly take that seriously, a detective had said this past week, and then wanted to bite off his tongue when he saw that Halders was sitting there with the remains of his personal grief. But Halders had just said, It doesn’t matter, Birkman, I have been like that myself.

Till death do us part.

It was more than just words.

Winter had proposed to Angela and she had said yes: Are you finally going to make an honest woman out of me?

That had been some time ago. She hadn’t said anything more, and neither had he.

Now you have to take responsibility, Winter. You can’t just talk about things like that. It’s a big responsibility, and you have to take it.

He drove south. The sun was on its way up. It was still early morning, and a transparent haze was in the air.

Go ahead, Angela had said. If it will really help. I really hope it helps.

On Monday they had to settle the deal. Okay. He would settle it, clinch it, get the ball rolling. It was just a piece of land. They wouldn’t move there right away. He had promised, or whatever it was called… offered his decision, a future, yes indeed, the everlasting future up until. Until.

Decisions like this were heavy as stones. You couldn’t release them just any way, at any time.

The sun began to hit just right between the roofs of the houses on the field outside of Askim. He pushed in the CD. It was Angela’s disc and it was Bruce Springsteen. He had given the guy a few chances and he was worth it. Springsteen was not John Coltrane, and he didn’t pretend to be, either. But Springsteen’s melodies were filled with pain and a melancholy light that Winter appreciated. There was almost always death there, just like in his life. Springsteen sang nakedly:

Well now, everything dies, baby, that’s a fact.

Fact. Dead. That is my job. Sometimes in that order, most often the opposite.

But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.

Not always as you’d like. But death comes back in a new cloak. But is it life, then?

Everything floated up, returned in a new guise. Nothing could be hidden.

Sooner or later.

Even secrets that lie on the bottom of the sea don’t stay. He drove past the swimming beach. All the parking lots were empty and there were no bikes. He caught a glimpse of the sea, but it was empty too, rolling in toward the end of the season. Not even on the bottom of the sea. He dialed Johanna Osvald’s number again. No answer. That didn’t ease his worry, not enough to forget it. He felt that he had betrayed something or someone when he hadn’t answered, hadn’t answered the first time. At first it had felt good, but now it didn’t feel good. What had he betrayed? His duty? Himself?

For Christ’s sake, you don’t need to chase after adventure.

The mystery will come to you when it’s become a mystery.

Do you chase after crime? Are you calling because you want affirmation?

What’s the next step? Are you going to take out an ad in the paper?

Wanted: crime. Contact the eager inspector.

The obsessed inspector.

Everybody’s got a hungry heart.

No, no. Come on.

He turned off the impassioned Springsteen on his way from one relationship to the potential other one. He had arrived. The sea rolled gently and heavily like before. He got out of the car, left it in the stand of trees. The grass was still equally green on both sides of the path he and Angela and Elsa had recently made. They had trampled it down as though it would always be there.

He stood at the edge of the beach. He took off his shoes and walked into the water, which was cold but became warm. He turned around and looked across the field. He closed his eyes and saw the house; it could be standing there within a year, maybe even sooner. Would he be happy there? Here. What would it involve, living a life so close to the sea? Could it involve anything other than something positive?

He turned toward the water again. He thought of the conversation he’d had in his office with Johanna Osvald. She had lived close to the sea, much closer than he would ever get. Her entire family. Not just close to the sea, on the sea. The sea had been their life, was their life. Life and death. Death was real in a different way for fishing families; he thought he understood that much. A working life of hazards, a life of worry for those who stayed home.

It must have been very dangerous before. The war. The mine barriers, the U-boats, the destroyers, the coast guard. The storms, the waves, the collisions, the crush injuries, the pressure from all directions. It must have been a very great pressure. How did they handle it?

The colleagues. What sort of life did they live together?

He had listened to Johanna Osvald and he started to understand what she had really been talking about. Behind her words there was an unease that he had not been able to understand but that he thought of now. A fear that had been passed down from generation to generation to generation.

He sat down in the sand, which was still warm after the summer. He heard two seagulls laughing at some inside joke. He could see them now, on approach to his land, soon to be his land. Were they part of the deal? Was that what they were having such a damn good time about? Now they were laughing again, belly-landing elegantly on the path, taking off again, rattling out another laugh in his direction, returning to the winds in the bay and gliding out toward the sea. He followed them with his gaze until they disappeared and he could see only the contours of the islands in the southern archipelago. He got out his phone again and called right across the bay to those islands, but no one answered this time either.

Johanna had been the most beautiful person he had seen up to then. She was dark like no one else, as though she came from a different group of people, which was of course true in a way.

He had met her brother, but he was already on his way out to sea in earnest. His name was Erik, too.

Johanna hadn’t mentioned him when she came to see Winter.

He and Erik had drunk a beer down at Brännö pier one time, but they never went up to join the dancing. They had spoken, but Winter didn’t remember about what. He remembered that Erik hadn’t cursed. He remembered that he’d talked to Johanna about it. No one on the islands cursed, ever. There were no curses there.

Life could be hard, but it wasn’t necessary to reinforce that fact with words.

He remembered that the Mission Covenant Church was important for the people on the islands, and it became more important the closer they lived to the open sea. Vrångö farthest out. And Donsö. Donsö in particular, she had said, and laughed a laugh that glimmered like the crests of waves around them where they lay on the cliffs on southern Styrsö, looking out over the more God-fearing island on the other side of the sound.

Then she had sat atop him and started to move, slowly, and then faster and faster. The church may have guided her life as well, but she was still just a person, sinful like him.

In the car on the way home his phone suddenly blared from its place on the dash.

“Yes?”

Möllerström again, always Möllerström.

“She called again. You obviously haven’t contacted her.”

“I haven’t done anything but!”

“Okay.”

“Are you in the office?” asked Winter.

“Where else?” said Möllerström.

“Can she be reached at this number I got before?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks, Janne. And take a vacation now.”

Möllerström hung up without saying anything more. Winter called again, a number he now thought he would never forget. She answered after the first ring.