Sail of Stone

21

She felt the wind as she stood at the top of the hill, and she could see the sea, which was large. She knew that it was on its way to the shore, but from here it looked like a congealed rock formation that had stretched as far as it could and become a mountain. The sea was not blue, not green, nothing in between.

Aneta went closer. Below the slope on the other side, pines were growing, same as on the eastern side. Between the pines she could glimpse a house. A car was sitting outside the house. She recognized it.

The car was a silhouette in that image.

A woman was standing on the other side of the car, turned toward the sea. Aneta recognized her, too.

The woman turned around as Aneta carefully made her way down between the trees, but she turned her face toward the sea again as though that were natural, as though it were normal that a detective from the city would come sliding down the slope in the threadbare afternoon.

The woman remained standing with her back to Aneta until it was necessary to turn around.

“I wasn’t surprised,” said Susanne Marke.

“Is Anette here?” asked Aneta.

“Isn’t it peaceful here?” said Susanne, looking out over the petrified sea again.

“Do you come here often?” asked Aneta.

“This is the first time.”

“But you found it easily,” said Aneta, wondering about this conversation and this situation.

“Hans described the way, so it was no problem,” said Susanne.

“Hans? Hans Forsblad?”

Susanne turned around, and Aneta could see the resolve in her face.

“Now listen carefully. There has been a big mistake here, and we’re trying to fix it.”

Aneta waited without saying anything. It would be a big mistake to say something now. She thought she saw the curtain in the only visible window move. That seemed natural, too; a natural repetition when you were dealing with these people.

“Do you hear me? A big mistake, and it won’t help if the co… the police are running around interfering.”

No. Everyone would be so much happier if the police didn’t run all over interfering and instead told people to go away when they called to report thefts, assaults, homicides, murders. A mistake. Call the neighbor.

“It started when Anette’s neighbors called,” said Aneta. “Several times.”

“A mistake,” repeated Susanne.

“Anette’s face was injured,” said Aneta.

“Has she been to the hospital?” asked Susanne. It was a rhetorical question.

“Not that we know of,” said Aneta.

“She hasn’t,” said Susanne.

“Could I see your ID?” asked Aneta.

“What? What?”

“An ID,” said Aneta. “Your ID.”

“Why?”

Aneta held out her hand. She saw how the expression on the other woman’s face changed.

“Surely you don’t think that…”

Aneta didn’t say anything, kept holding out her hand.

Then Susanne smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant smile. Suddenly Aneta recognized the smile, the expression, the eyes. The face.

It was the same face. The two faces had the same origin.

Susanne rummaged around in her handbag and took out a wallet. She rummaged around in the wallet and pulled out a driver’s license and thrust it out with the same smile. The smile had stiffened on her face, which had become cold like the disappearing color in the sea and the sky.

Aneta saw Susanne’s face in the photo, and her name. The license was one year old.

“Who is Bengt Marke?” asked Aneta.

“My ex.”

“Is Hans Forsblad your brother?”

Susanne kept smiling. Aneta didn’t need any other answer. She felt an immediate fear. She felt the weight of her weapon, the weight of safety, unexpected and unnecessary; she wouldn’t need it. She realized that it had been a mistake to drive here alone. It was the kind of mistake Fredrik made. Had made. It had once come close to costing him his life. He had been lucky. The ignorant and bold were often lucky. They didn’t know better. She wasn’t bold, wasn’t ignorant. Therefore, this could end badly.

These people weren’t to be toyed with.

“He will always be my brother,” said Susanne.

Whatever happens, thought Aneta. I believe her. I believe her when it comes to that.

“This is one big mistake,” said Susanne.

“Where is the mistake?”

“Hans hasn’t done anything.”

“No?”

“He wants to put everything right again.”

“If he hasn’t done anything, there must not be anything to put right.”

Maybe it was true. He wanted to make good. It wouldn’t happen again. But what had happened hadn’t happened. Everything was a mistake, and mistakes were always other people’s. Everything was a misunderstanding. The beatings were misunderstandings. Aneta had heard of so many misunderstandings during her career in the brotherhood. No one called it the sisterhood; that would have been absurd. She had heard of how language ceased and violence took over. Blows instead of words. The desperate and languageless hit. Men are hard and women soft. Yes. They own, think they own, another person. Dominance. Complete control. A question of honor. In a twisted way, it was a question of honor. A form of honor. It existed here, too, in this fair-skinned country. It didn’t belong only to medieval bastards from Farawayistan who murdered their daughters for the sake of their own honor.

“Other people’s mistakes. It’s about other people’s mistakes,” said Susanne.

“Sorry?”

“It’s about other people,” Susanne repeated. “We were talking about mistakes, right? Aren’t you listening?”

“And you’re going to help fix all these mistakes?”

Susanne didn’t answer. She looked at the house. Aneta had also seen the movement in the window. A shadow, a silhouette.

“I’m just going to explain what Hans is actually like to the people who don’t understand,” said Susanne.

“Explain to whom? To the woman behind the window there?” said Aneta, nodding at the house and the window.

Susanne nodded.

“Is it Anette?”

Susanne turned to her again.

“I haven’t had time to check yet, have I? I haven’t had time, have I? You came tumbling down through the trees before I had time to knock, didn’t you?”

“Where is Hans right now?” asked Aneta. “We’re trying to contact him.”

“Look in the trunk!” said Susanne, letting out a laugh that was like a bark that echoed away across the bay.

Aneta didn’t believe many of Susanne’s words, but she believed the half-wild laugh.

Bertil Ringmar stared through the balcony window at the neighbor’s yard, which was entirely too visible behind a hedge that was entirely too low. His neighbor was crazy, an administrator from the hospital world who had gone a bit nuts when he had administrated away everything of value within health care; it all went to pieces, putz weg, every little bit, including his own job, and now he worked on various bits of his own yard.

The telephone rang.

“Hope I’m bothering you,” said Halders.

“As always,” answered Ringmar.

“Do you know what Aneta’s up to this afternoon?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“I asked Erik, and he didn’t know either,” answered Halders as though to himself. Ringmar could hear his concern.

“Call her.”

“What do you think I’ve been doing?”

“What is it about?”

“We’re going to bring in the wife beater anyway for a little questioning, and I thought that she wanted to be there. We’ve found das Schweinehund.”

“Isn’t it der Schweinehund?” said Ringmar.

“Or die,” said Halders. “In any case, we ran into a remarkable specimen this morning.”

“You are a true people person, Fredrik.”

“Yeah, right? I protect people, don’t I?”

Ringmar was still standing at the balcony door. He saw the neighbor come out and walk down the path built alongside a number of concrete slabs that looked like Viking graves. Candles were burning; they were like bonnets on top of the graves. The first time Ringmar had seen it when it was completed, which hadn’t been more than a few weeks ago, he had giggled in the same peculiar way Inspector Clouseau’s boss did in the later Pink Panther films before he lost his wits forever. Ringmar liked those films, especially the inspector’s unorthodox methods of doing his job.

“Aneta won’t do anything stupid,” said Ringmar.

“We all make mistakes,” said Halders.

“She’s worked with you so much that she’s learned,” said Ringmar.

“To make mistakes?”

“To avoid them. By seeing what you do and then doing the opposite.”

“I don’t like this,” said Halders. “It feels like she rushed off.”

“She’ll call,” said Ringmar, looking at his watch. “It’s after working hours.”

He heard Halders grunt an answer that he didn’t understand and then hang up.

The neighbor out there lit some more lights. Ringmar cradled the telephone receiver and then laid it down in an exaggeratedly careful manner. Dusk was on its way. The neighbor began his uncompromising war against darkness. Try to look at it that way, Bertil.

“Perhaps you’d like to knock?” said Susanne. She made a motion as though she were inviting Aneta to step in front of her in line.

They were still standing ten or fifteen yards from the house, which was larger than it looked from the hill. It had more than one window that faced the sea. There was a veranda there. It must have been sensational to sit there as the sun went down. But today it wasn’t going down, not so one could see.

What awaits us in there? Aneta was thinking. Someone is there.

There were no other vehicles on the lot. There was no garage.

Susanne made a sudden movement and Aneta gave a start. She thought she saw something moving out on the water, out of the corner of her eye, but when she looked there was nothing there.

It was as though the water wanted to tell her something.

Or that it meant something, something important that had to do with her, Aneta.

The water was a danger to her.

Don’t come here!

Go away!

She saw a dock that must have belonged to the house. She saw a plastic boat. It was tied to the dock. She saw oars sticking up. The boat floated calmly in the water.

Susanne stood at the front door and knocked. Aneta walked over. Susanne knocked again.

The door opened slowly. It was dark inside. Aneta saw the outline of a face.

“Go away!” said the face.

Susanne started to say something, but Aneta was faster and showed her police badge.

“Could you please open up?” she said.

The face seemed to retreat. The door was still open a few inches. Perhaps that meant they could step into the cottage.

Susanne did.

Aneta followed her.

There was no light in the hall, which was narrow and long. The light of dusk could be seen outside of a window that was dimly visible where the hall ended and a room began. Someone moved in the room. Aneta saw a face. It belonged to an older woman.

“Mrs. Lindsten?” she said.

There was no answer.

“Signe, hello,” said Susanne.

Aha, she’s Signe to her. Am I the one she doesn’t want to let in?

“Anette isn’t here,” they heard from the room.

Why did you come here alone? thought Aneta.

Susanne walked down the hall, and Aneta followed her.

The light in the room came from the sea. On bright days, it must be a very bright room, thought Aneta. Right now I can’t really see this woman’s face.

“Signe, you have to let Hans talk to Anette,” said Susanne.

“Can’t you leave her alone?” said Signe Lindsten in a voice that was more powerful than Aneta could have imagined.

“He just wants to talk,” said Susanne.

Did he want something else before? wondered Aneta.

“Do you feel threatened by these people?” asked Aneta. “You can tell me.”

“Oh, God,” said Susanne.

“You understand that I’m from the police?” said Aneta.

She thought she saw Signe Lindsten nod.

“Where is Anette?” asked Aneta.

Signe Lindsten didn’t answer. Aneta realized her mistake. A damn stupid question to ask when Forsblad’s loyal sister was standing next to her.

“I’d like to ask you to step out for a minute,” she said to Susanne.

Susanne didn’t move. Aneta realized that Susanne realized that she had to leave, and that she was trying to say something but couldn’t quite figure out what.

Suddenly Susanne turned around, said, “Mistake,” in a loud voice, and left, stomping down the hall in her low-heeled boots, and before Aneta had time to say anything else to Signe Lindsten she heard the car roar to life and drive away. She hadn’t seen the road when she climbed down between the trees, but she hadn’t looked for it.

Winter walked across Heden. Middle-aged men were playing soccer with contorted faces. That was as it should be. He heard screams that sounded like a cry for help. He looked around for the meat wagon but didn’t see it, nor did he see heart-and-lung machines.

He lit a Corps, his first of the day. He was cutting back, but he could hardly cut back more than this. He refrained from smoking during work. If he was going to refrain after work, he would have to ask himself what the point of that time of day, or any time of day, was.

It was the screwed-up viewpoint of a nicotine addict.

But it made sense. He tried to live a different life after the life that had to do with crime and all its consequences.

No smoking then, but smoking afterward. It made sense.

He had tried to explain it to Angela.

“I might understand,” she had said. “While you transition. But later. Elsa might like to have you around when she is, oh, twenty-five. You were not twenty-five years young when we had Elsa. You were forty.”

“I was still the youngest chief inspector in the country,” Winter had said, lighting up. Angela had smiled.

“Have you ever looked that up? Really looked it up?”

“I trust my mother.”

“There are two jobs where it’s apparently possible to remain young and promising for any amount of time,” Angela had said. “Detective inspector and author.”

“I still feel young.”

“Keep smoking and we’ll see in a few short years.”

“They’re only cigarillos.”

“What can I say?” She made a motion to indicate that she was speaking to deaf ears. “What else can I say?”

“Okay, okay. It’s not good for me, and I’m smoking less and less.”

“It’s not for my sake, no, first and foremost it isn’t about me, as a matter of fact. We’re talking about your health-about Elsa’s dad.”

He let the thought go. He saw a soccer ball coming his way and he took the cigarillo out of his mouth and connected perfectly, and the ball flew in a beautiful curve back onto the gravel pitch. That’s how it’s done. First take the cigarillo out of your mouth and then connect with the ball with an extended ankle. That’s how it must have been done when soccer was a game for gentlemen in nineteenth-century England.

His cell phone rang as he crossed Södra Vägen. The walk light was still on, but a man in a black Mercedes honked at him when he was halfway across the crosswalk. Winter answered the phone with a “Yes?” and stared at the man, who was revving the motor. The city was not a safe place. All the frustrated desperadoes racing around in their Mercedeses. He should throw that bastard in jail.

He turned onto Vasagatan and listened:

“You haven’t heard anything else?” asked Johanna Osvald.

“If I find anything out, you’ll know right away,” he answered.

“I worry more and more each day,” she said. “Maybe I should go over there?”

Yet another generation of Osvalds takes off to look for the last one, thought Winter. Three generations drifting around in the Scottish Highlands.

“What would you do?” she asked.

I would go, he thought.

“Wait and see for a few days,” he said. “We have the missing-person bulletin out, after all. And I’ve spoken with my colleague.”

“What can he do?”

“He knows people.”

“You don’t think something serious has happened?” she asked. “A crime?”

“It’s possible he became ill,” said Winter.

“Then he would have called,” she said. “Or someone else would have called about him.”

“We can help you,” said Aneta Djanali.

“We don’t need any help,” said Signe Lindsten.

It was the answer that Aneta expected, but she still couldn’t understand it.

“We want everyone to leave us alone,” said Signe.

“Is Anette at home?”

Signe looked out through the window, as though that was where her daughter was, somewhere on the stony sea. Or in it, thought Aneta.

The sky had grown dark over the water, and everything had become the same color. Aneta could see the dock down there. She could see the boat. A lawn lay like a thin band that soon transformed into sand thirty yards from the edge of the water.

“Is Anette home, in Gothenburg?” asked Aneta.

The mother continued to look out at the shore and the sea, and Aneta did the same.

“Is that your boat?” she asked.

Signe gave a start.

She looked at Aneta.

“Anette is at home.”

“In Gothenburg? At the house in Fredriksdal?”

The mother nodded.

“She didn’t open the door when we were there.”

“Is that against the rules?”

Technically, it is, thought Aneta.

“Is she very scared of Hans Forsblad?”

Signe gave another start.

“What can you do about it if she is?”

“We can do a lot,” said Aneta. “I mean it.”

“Like what?”

“Put a restraining order on him,” she said, and she could tell how weak that sounded. “We can make a short-term decision on it and then hand it over to the prosecutor. We can bring him in for questioning. We’ve actually decided to do that.”

“Questioning? What does that involve?”

“That we can take him in and question him about his threats.”

“And then what? What happens then?”

“I don’t-”

“Then you let him go, don’t you? You talk to him and then that’s it.”

“He might not dare to-”

“Dare to visit Anette again? If you can call it that. Is that what you think? What the police think? That it’s enough to write up some papers that say he can’t see her, and that somehow you’ll scare him by talking to him? You don’t know him.”

She was expressing genuine frustration, there was no doubt about that.

But there was also something else.

In the background there was something else. It wasn’t just about the man, about Hans Forsblad. Aneta could feel that, see that.

“That’s exactly why,” she answered. “To see what he’s like.”

“I can tell you that here and now,” said Signe. “He is dangerous. He doesn’t give up. He is obsessed, or whatever you call it. He doesn’t want to accept that Anette doesn’t want to live with him. Doesn’t want to accept it. Do you understand? He can’t get it into his head!” She turned out toward the sea again, as though to gather her strength; she made a motion. “It’s like he’s completely crazy.”

“Why haven’t you contacted the police?” asked Aneta.

Signe didn’t seem to be listening, and Aneta repeated the question.

“I don’t know.”

She hasn’t mentioned that her husband called me, thought Aneta. Maybe she doesn’t know. Maybe that’s not what this is about.

“Were you afraid to?”

“No.”

“Did he threaten you?”

“Yes.”

“In what way?”

“I don’t want… it doesn’t matter… it could…”

Aneta tried to put together the pieces of what Signe Lindsten said. It was her job, a part of it, these broken sentences that people spoke out of fear, panic, sometimes with ulterior motives, sometimes out of sorrow, out of schadenfreude, in the effort to come up with the most believable lie. Splintered words that were barely coherent, and she had to unite those words, make them coherent so that she understood, so that someone understood.

Most of the time it was like this. Ragged words spoken by a frightened person.