Sail of Stone

27

The news came via Interpol before the morning was over. Or maybe it came directly from Inverness to Möllerström. He was the one who came in to Winter with the printout and directed him to the department’s intranet.

“Just tell me,” said Winter.

“He’s dead,” said Möllerström.

Winter tried to call but couldn’t get through. He tried again five minutes later.

The chief inspector’s name was Jamie Craig, from the Northern Constabulary, Inverness Area Command. He didn’t sound like a Scot but like an Englishman like anyone else, a dry accent, clinical, technical.

“He seems to have been wandering around town for a little while,” said Craig.

“You mean Inverness?”

“No. Fort Augustus. It’s on the southern tip of the lake. Just a village, really.”

“The lake? What lake?”

“Loch Ness, of course.”

Of course. The world-famous waterway southwest of Inverness. Nessie. The lake monster. Winter had not visited Loch Ness, hadn’t seen Nessie.

“But they found him a bit up east, in the hills, by a minor road, and by a small artificial lake called Loch Tarff. At least I think it’s artificial.”

“And the car?”

“No car.”

“Where is his rental?” asked Winter.

“We don’t know. He didn’t have a car when we found him, and he didn’t have any clothes on.”

“Come again, please?”

“This looks strange, sure. He seemed confused when he wandered around the town but he was fully dressed and he paid his way in a pub. Bought a pint and a ploughman’s, I think.”

Craig described what he knew.

A man of about sixty had shown up in Fort Augustus and walked around as though he hadn’t been completely right in the head. People in the city were used to eccentrics from all corners of the world coming there to discover the lake monster again, become famous too, but this man hadn’t been crazy that way. He had moved strangely, spoken incoherently to people he ran into. He had gone into the pub next to the gas station and drunk a Scotch ale and left his ploughman’s lunch: bread, cheese, relish.

Someone had seen him wandering off to the east. Then the bulletin about Axel Osvald was released, and this someone called Craig at Longman Road.

After that it was only a question of a little time. They had driven on the old road, B862, east of the lake, back toward Inverness, and had people comb the countryside, and they hadn’t had to climb around in the hills and the rocks for more than half a day, and hardly that.

“He was on the other side of that little lake,” said Craig, “hidden from the road.”

“Without clothes?”

“Not even socks,” said Craig, and Winter wondered to himself if that was an English expression for someone who was truly naked.

“But you think it’s our man, Axel Osvald? Why?”

“This is where it gets even stranger,” said Craig. “Of course I can’t be one hundred percent sure that it’s him, not yet, but the fact is that his clothes are spread out on the ground almost from down by the southern tip of the lake and up to where we found him. It’s a distance of a few miles. You can get the precise distance if you want, naturally.”

Naturally. Pronounced with dry self-certainty. Winter wasn’t sure that Steve Macdonald knew this man, not personally. They seemed to have made opposite journeys. Craig might have been from London, and he was a chief inspector in Inverness. Steve was from Inverness and a chief inspector in London.

“So we find a naked man and in the area we find a whole set of clothes, including shoes and outerwear, and we think, aha, there might be a connection here,” said Craig. “We gather up the clothes. We find a wallet with a driver’s license in this Osvald guy’s name, and the photograph looks like the dead man.”

“How did he die?” asked Winter. “Your preliminary assessment, I mean. The Interpol message mentioned possible natural causes.”

“His heart,” said Craig. “That’s as preliminary as I can be. Of course, they’re not done in pathology but there’s no outward sign of violence on the body, no wounds or anything. The doctor has bet two pints on a heart attack. It was cold up there. An older man up in the mountains at night, without clothing, possibly confused-well, it probably couldn’t have ended any other way.”

“Heart attack,” repeated Winter.

“I don’t actually think I could survive a night up there naked,” said Craig. “At least not if I was alone,” he repeated in the same expressionless voice.

“When can you have a complete report ready?” asked Winter.

“About what?”

Still the same voice, clinical and analytical.

“I was thinking first and foremost of the cause of death.”

“This afternoon, I think.”

“Thanks.”

“Everything else will be in the reports tomorrow, I hope. Everything we know, that is. It’s not so much. But the case, if we can call it that, sure seems to be clear.”

Winter had expected Craig to say “open and shut” about the case, but he didn’t say it. For that matter, it wouldn’t have been consistent with his image.

“But the rental car is still missing, then?”

“Yes. We spoke with the people at Budget; it was rented for two weeks, and it so happens that the time wasn’t up until yesterday. They filed a report of a possible theft with us, and that meant that we, well, took a little extra notice about this… the disappearance, the missing-person bulletin. Along with the witnesses from Fort Augustus, of course.”

Winter could hear a change of nuance in Craig’s voice, as though he might feel that he needed to justify his actions. That it had taken longer than it should have to start the search for Osvald. But Winter had no such views. He was aware of the assumptions and the reality. It couldn’t have been the first time a stranger had wandered around Loch Ness.

“Shouldn’t the rental car be somewhere nearby?” said Winter. “In the city there, Fort Augustus.”

“It should,” said Craig. “That bothers me. But if it had been in the same place for a few days, it was probably stolen. There are lots of cars and lots of car thieves around Loch Ness.”

“I understand,” said Winter.

“We have a bulletin out on the car, of course,” said Craig. “It will probably be found somewhere in the area, cannibalized, as usual.” He paused. “Naked, as we say.”

“The dead man,” said Winter. “How long had he been lying there?”

“The doctor said forty-eight hours the last time I spoke with him, within six hours either way.”

“Could he have been moved to where he was found?” asked Winter. “Could he have died somewhere else?”

“No,” said Craig. “We’re quite certain that he got to the place where he died on his own.”

“Then the question is why,” said Winter.

“Isn’t it always?” said Craig.

“Yes. The big question.”

“Steve told me that we would end up there sooner or later if I talked to you,” said Craig.

“Steve? Steve Macdonald? You know him?”

“Yes. We worked together for a while in Croydon. He put in a good word for me when I was trying to get the position as chief inspector up here.” Craig paused. Winter heard something that could have been a short laugh, dry as sand. “I don’t know if I should thank him or not.”

There was a drop of warmth in Craig’s voice. Winter couldn’t help but smile. He had gotten a lesson in Englishness. Craig wasn’t the one who’d started this conversation with talk about their mutual friends. It was also a question of being professional, of course.

“What do the witnesses say?” asked Winter.

“Well, what I said before, more or less. He had acted confused, as though he didn’t really know where he was. He had said things… it seemed like he was asking questions; that was the impression one person had gotten from him. And the pub owner. He had repeated something that sounded like the same thing, if I can say so. But it wasn’t possible to hear what it was.”

“Why not?”

“Why not? It wasn’t in English, or Scottish. I assume he was speaking Swedish, but that’s not our everyday language in Fort Augustus.” Craig paused again, briefly. “Of course this is old Viking land, but I don’t think people remember the Nordic language.”

Old Norse, thought Winter. There are many Nordic words in Scotland, words for places, other things.

“So he walked around speaking to people in Swedish,” said Winter. “He wasn’t just talking to himself? You said yourself that he seemed to be confused.”

“Well, we haven’t really asked in detail, but the witnesses have said that he spoke to them as though he were asking something.”

“Mmhmm.”

“I can’t help you there. I can certainly press them a little more about how he spoke to them and whether he might have been asking questions, but I can hardly get farther than that, can I?”

“No.”

“If worse comes to worst you’ll have to come here and test Swedish words on people,” said Craig. “I’ve heard that there aren’t so many.”