Sail of Stone

28

Will you tell the next of kin?” Craig had said, and Winter had said yes. That was part of his job, a much too large part. There was no practice for it in the police training, and entirely too much experience of it later.

He called Johanna Osvald’s cell but only got her voice mail in his ear. This wasn’t something you could tell someone on voice mail.

He looked at the clock and looked up the timetable for the southern archipelago. He looked at the clock again. He would make the 10:20 Skarven if he drove too fast on Oscarsleden.

Winter stood on the deck with the wind in his hair. Someone was fishing on the cliffs just behind the harbor. He had gotten a bite, or was about to: the gulls were wheeling in their own circles, screaming encouragingly to the man, who was wearing a wide cap for protection against the bird shit that sometimes fell like snow from the sky.

The Skarven moved out. No café on board. Few passengers were going out to the islands at this time of day, and at this time of year. Two months earlier there wouldn’t have been room for him on board; the archipelago boats swerved out like overloaded passenger junks in the Yellow River, brown limbs everywhere, children, strollers. Last summer he and Elsa and Angela had planned to go to Vrångö but fled the boat when they got to Brännö Rödsten. Too many people, like a sun-and-sea-and-salt-and-sand madness that seized the people of the city when the sun was at its warmest.

Madness. Winter tried to brush his hair out of his eyes and thought of something Erik Osvald had said when they met out on Donsö.

“There’s nothing wrong with mad cow disease,” he had said. He saw everything from the professional perspective of a fisherman: “We like to see one of those crazy cows on TV at regular intervals!”

Skarven went directly to Köpstadsö. There had been a strong wind out on the open sea during the journey over, as though the weather had changed. Winter could see black clouds in the west now, on their way up from the other side of the earth.

On the water down there, Erik Osvald and his three crew members were engaged in the eternal, anxious search for fish, the attempt to bring up the maximum legal amount.

There is a higher power, Erik Osvald had said, besides the Norwegian Coast Guard! It was a joke, but there was gravity to it. A higher power. If there isn’t, everything is so meaningless, he had said.

This life changes you, twenty-five years on the North Sea, all year round, all day long. It’s freedom. It’s loneliness.

It’s an old-fashioned way to live.

But we Swedish fishermen are still out one week and then home one week. The Swedes are almost the only ones who use that system, and it means that we earn less than the Danes and the Scots and the Norwegians.

And the past. He had spoken about the past: My dad went out Monday morning and came home on Saturday morning.

A life at sea until he became tired and stayed on land and listened to the weather reports when his son was out there.

Axel Osvald, if it was Axel Osvald that Craig’s men had found; if it was him, his death had been strange and tragic, strangely tragic, alone and naked next to a pitiful little lake next to another, larger lake in a mountainous inland, miles from the sea.

What had he been doing there? How had he ended up there? How had his thoughts wandered while he himself wandered up slopes and rough terrain? Winter had not been to Fort Augustus, but he could imagine what it looked like.

The sea was calm between Styrsö Skäret and Donsö. Winter couldn’t see Osvald’s modern trawler, the blue Magdalena. They were out for a new week, west of Stavanger and east of Aberdeen, hunting for whitefish. In six days they would put in at Hanstholm and go home in the afternoon with invoices in hand. But Erik Osvald would come home before that, and he, Winter, was the one who was coming with the information that would make the fisherman return home. Or how would it happen? Would a helicopter pick him up? Or would he set course for Scotland and Moray Firth and the harbor entrance to Inverness right away? Go through the canal in the city, the river Ness, and down into Loch Ness and down to Fort Augustus? No, not with that monster of a trawler. And no, because his father was lying and waiting in a refrigerated room in Inverness. His son could anchor in the harbor.

Skarven lay still, and Winter went ashore. The time was as the timetable had predicted: 10:55. The quay was empty. There were a few older trawlers out along the edge, and Winter wondered whether any of them had belonged to Axel Osvald. Or maybe had even existed in John Osvald’s time.

John Osvald both existed and didn’t exist. He had the unique phantom quality that people get when they disappear and are never found; their souls get no peace, and those who survive them don’t either.

But if he were alive? If John Osvald were alive? Those who still existed, those who were here… could you call them the surviving relatives, then? Was Johanna Osvald a surviving relative?

Winter asked a woman outside the store for directions to the school. She answered and pointed, a crooked movement.

He walked along a narrow street without sidewalks and could smell the sea, and he listened to the peculiar silence that is created by lots of space in every direction. The wind had disappeared in here, as though it didn’t exist. The clouds had disappeared; the sky was completely blue. He felt warmth on his face.

There were many children on the playground, more than he’d expected. He heard shouts but no words. A soccer ball rolled his way and he sent it back. It flew over the goal and the fence behind it and disappeared into the crevice of a cliff.

“Aaah-oh,” said a boy who looked like a short fisherman.

The other children looked at Winter and then at the cliffs. He understood. He went out again and around the playground and he climbed down into the crevice. The ball wasn’t there. He dug around through grass and other strange plants, maybe seaweed. To the right was a hole, like a cave. He peeked in but didn’t see anything. He started to crawl. He felt the ball before he saw it, and he wiggled himself backward and his suit stretched at the seams, protesting. Winter got up with the ball in his hands, a triumphant gesture. All the children were standing in a line up there, and they applauded. Winter threw the ball up and the little fisherman took it. He and all the others turned around when they heard a female voice:

“And what are you all doing here? The bell rang, didn’t you hear it?”

Winter saw her come up to the edge of the cliffs and look down.

“Oh… hi.”

“Hi,” said Johanna Osvald, giggling.

Winter couldn’t help but smile. He didn’t want to, not with the message he had brought.

“Is it really him?” she asked. They were sitting in a little workroom that was Johanna’s. A large Mac stood on the desk, an older version, gray. There were papers all over, and binders. More paper than in Winter’s office in the Palace. Through the window he could see the cliffs where he’d dug up the ball. She must have seen him, too, or the children who had lined up to study the fool from the mainland down there. An interruption in archipelago life.

Children’s drawings hung on the walls on both sides of the window. For a split second he thought of what it must be like to spend all your days with children but not have any of your own. Maybe it was a relief to come home; a silence to keep and to tend to.

Winter had told her as soon as there was a fitting opportunity. He had chosen his words carefully.

“It could be a mistake,” she said now.

He nodded but said nothing.

“You believe it too?”

“I don’t know anything, Johanna, no more than I’ve told you. But my colleague in Inverness also found a photograph…”

“Yes, I heard that, but how easy is it to recognize people in photographs? To compare a photo with… with a… a dead person…,” she said, and hid her face in her hands.

Winter looked at his own hands. What should I do with them? Should I hold her?

He leaned forward and touched her arm, which was bare. She shivered and he got up, took a cardigan that was hanging on the desk chair, and placed it over her shoulders.

Photographs. Dead people. He had seen enough of both for a lifetime. She was absolutely right. There were no similarities between the living and the dead. Eyes that could see; eyes that couldn’t see. A superficial likeness, yes, but no likeness. Everything he had seen, a living face, a young girl, a young boy, a smile from a shelf in a home that was suddenly shattered by an incident that could never be described. The silence that would be there forever. A shallow silence. Nothing to keep and to tend. The same face, but without life. I can’t stand it, he thought every time he stood there. This is the last time.

There was always another last time.

It was for a lifetime; he had seen enough. An eternity. No. Life didn’t belong to eternity, it was death that was eternity; life was the pause between the quiet eternities. For many, it was a short pause; he knew because he had been there, just after eternity had taken over.

And the photographs of the dead. There were always photographs of the dead on his desk. What a fucking job, photographs of dead people on your desk, broken cheekbones, empty eye holes, mouths like mine shafts. Choke marks like tattoos across the throat.

And the pictures of those who were completely still, untouched. They looked like they had fallen asleep. Pictures like that were often the worst.

He placed them all under other pictures, of houses, roads, vehicles, cliff crevices, whatever the fuck else, or under papers filled with words, because words were not as gruesome at a distance, not from a yard away.

Now he could hear children’s voices, shouts, laughter. He saw several children through the window. Recess again. Forty-five minutes go by quickly.

Johanna Osvald looked up.

“I have to go there, of course,” she said. “There’s only one way to make sure that it’s… Dad.”

Winter nodded.

“They’re probably waiting for me to come,” she said.

“Do you have anyone who can go with you?”

She looked at him. Did she mean… no, he didn’t think so. This was for her, her family. There was no murder, no marks. No blunt objects.

But there was still a why. That had been with him on the way here, on the archipelago boat, in the car before that, in his conversation with Craig, in his conversation with Johanna. Why.

“Where is Erik now?” he asked.

“I don’t know, exactly. I’ll have to call out there to him.”

Winter nodded again.

“He can do what he wants,” she said. “But I’m going to try to fly over there as soon as I can. Today, if possible.”

“I can help you,” said Winter, and made a call from the telephone that stood on the desk between them.

She would be able to make it. The next boat was the Skarven back at 11:40, but that would be too late to make the plane from Landvetter to Heathrow. She would connect there.

“It’s things like this that make it a disadvantage to live on an island,” she had said after two phone calls.

Right now there was no one available who could drive over to Saltholmen.

But there was another way to get to the mainland.

Winter had called dispatch, who transferred him to the marine police at Nya Varvet.

“We have a patrol boat down by Vargö,” his colleague had said. “They’re not doing anything anyway.”

“Are you sure you want to go right away?” Winter had asked Johanna, with his hand on the receiver.

She had nodded in her rush to go home and throw her things in her overnight bag.

On the way over he asked about Axel Osvald. The boat went fast, faster than Winter had thought was possible in the interior waterways. No sirens, but apparent speed and apparent right-of-way.

“It wasn’t the first time he went to Scotland to look for his father… your grandfather,” said Winter.

“No, as I believe I said before.”

“What did he tell you about those previous trips?”

“Not so much. Almost nothing.”

“Why not?”

“My dad was a man who didn’t talk very much,” she said.

Winter noticed that she spoke of her father in the past tense. She didn’t seem aware of it herself. He had seen it many times. A sort of mental preparation for the worst. To know before you know for sure. To start the task of mourning right away.

He had done it himself, on a plane to Marbella a few years ago. His father was sick and Winter knew, knew without knowing.

“What did he tell you when he did talk about it, then? You must have asked, right?”

She saw islands and rocks and skerries swish by. She turned around, as though she wanted to make sure that that really was Brännö, Asperö. This was her world. Winter looked around too. Everything was familiar to her, everything near the water. Downtown Gothenburg was not on the sea. This was what was on the sea, even in the sea.

“There were only two trips,” she said. “I mean, before this one.”

He waited. They were on their way in; he could see the buildings at Nya Varvet, the Nordic School of Public Health in the old flotilla barracks that had gotten new clothing. Everything had gotten new clothing there. Everything in the entrance to the harbor was familiar to him, even the transformed façades. He had biked through Nya Varvet ten thousand times in his youth, and many times after that as well. He walked there sometimes with Angela and Elsa. In the summer, the restaurant Reveille had nice outdoor seating that few people knew about, and that was good too. A beer, twenty yards from the water, a few grilled fish dishes, a skewered turkey dish that turned up on the menu year after year.

“When was he there the last time?” asked Winter.

“It was a long time ago, at least ten years ago.”

“Why did he go this time?”

Johanna Osvald looked at Winter.

“I don’t actually know.”

A marked car was waiting on the quay. This was quicker than if they had gone in via Saltholmen and Winter had then had to drive on the narrow, slow road through Långedrag.

“Will I make it?” she said as she got into the car.

“You’ll make it now,” said Winter, nodding at Detective Inspector Morelius, who was the driver. An old friend from a different time.

“Are we allowed to do this?”

“What?”

“Go by police boat and a police car to make a plane?”

“Yes.”

Morelius started the car.

“Call me when you get there,” said Winter. “When you’ve… made the identification.”

It sounded awkward, but what was he supposed to say? When you’ve seen your dead father?

She nodded.

“My colleague in Inverness, Craig, he’ll meet you at the airport or send a car.”

She nodded again, and Morelius went up toward Kungssten and the highway past Frölunda, to the east. Winter looked at his watch again. She would make it. They had gotten a move on. She could have waited a day, but he wanted to know too. He didn’t know and he wanted to know. He felt the pull… he couldn’t stop thinking about Axel Osvald. Or about John Osvald. There was something here, something he wanted to know, or search for.

There was a mystery.

“We’re going out again,” said the skipper of the police boat. “We can let you off at Saltholmen.”

He stood on deck during the short trip back to the marina.

He continued to think in his car on the way into the city.

Mystery. There’s a mystery. Something happened once that led to what’s happening now. There are no coincidences. There’s a reason Axel Osvald was found where he was found. Or for why he died. Someone or something led him to his death. I don’t think it was a higher power. Or was it? Some sort of higher power?

They were eating dinner. Halders had made farina at the request of first Magda and then Hannes.

“I’ve never eaten farina,” said Aneta.

Everything on her plate was white: the farina, the milk, the sugar. The plate was white. If she hadn’t heard Magda’s request she might have suspected Fredrik of yet another kind of joke.

“Sure you have!” said Magda.

“No, it’s true.”

“You just did! I saw you take a spoonful!”

“Well, now I have. But I never had before.”

“What kind of porridge did you eat at home when you were little?” asked Magda. Her big brother looked embarrassed. That’s none of your business, he seemed to be thinking. He’s becoming more and more like Fredrik, thought Aneta. Big gestures, a look that doesn’t let you go. But he’s more calm. Let it stay that way. He doesn’t say more than he needs to. He keeps to himself in his room. He thinks about his mom. Fredrik is worried about him.

“Oatmeal,” said Aneta.

“Millet pudding,” said Halders.

“What’s that?” asked Magda.

“A kind of grain that’s common in Africa,” said Aneta. “It’s actually a grass.”

“But you haven’t been to Africa, have you?” asked Magda.

“Stop it, Magda,” said Halders.

“I’ve been there,” said Aneta, “but I was born here, as you know.”

“Did you have millet pudding?” asked Halders.

“My mom hated millet,” said Aneta.

Halders scooped more of the white goo onto her plate.

“That’s actually the reason my mom and dad left Africa,” said Aneta.

“Really?” asked Hannes.

“No,” answered Aneta, smiling at the boy. “I was just kidding.”

“Why did they move, then?” asked Magda.

“They would probably have ended up in prison otherwise.”

“Why?” asked Magda. “Did they do something wrong?”

“No.”

Halders got out the teakettle again. They were sitting in the living room, which looked different since Halders had moved in after the death of his ex-wife. Not a huge transformation, but different.

The children were playing Pass the Pig in Hannes’s room. They could hear the howls when one of them got a double razorback.

“So you got to talk about Burkina Faso’s difficult past,” said Halders.

“Is that a problem for you?”

“Quite the opposite.”

The Everly Brothers were crying themselves out of the record player, track by track. Crying in the rain. It started over, feelings betrayed on repeat. Bye bye love, bye bye happiness, hello loneliness, I think I’m gonna cry.

“That song is the same age as I am,” said Halders. “Nineteen fifty-seven.”

“Good lyrics,” said Aneta.

“Yes, aren’t they?”

“A bit final, maybe.”

“Mmhmm.”

“It’s almost worse than Roy Orbison,” said Aneta, “in terms of how depressed they are.”

“Roy Orbison isn’t depressed,” said Halders.

“Then we have different views on the concept of being depressed,” said Aneta. “Or is it called distressed?”

Halders didn’t answer; he drank his tea. He listened again. All I have to do is dream.

“If you want to, you can read anything at all into song lyrics,” he said.

“In the case of these guys, there aren’t really all that many alternatives,” said Aneta. “It’s about love that has disappeared, right?”

“So sad to watch good love go bad,” said Halders.

“Yeah… about like that.”

“It’s one of the Everlys’ best songs,” said Halders.

“There you go. Then it’s a good example.”

She drove home late. Fredrik had asked her to stay but she wanted to wake up in her own home. It was like that sometimes.

Fredrik had been disappointed, really disappointed. He hadn’t wanted to show it, but she could tell. He hadn’t been able to go out and cry in the rain, because it wasn’t raining.

“It’s Hannes,” he’d said. “Fuck knows what’s going to happen.”

But of course it wasn’t just Hannes, or Magda, or just Fredrik. It was what everyone knew, that nothing would ever be the same again. No mom, no grandma later on, when they were adults themselves and had families. Only Grandpa Fredrik. Maybe. It would never be as it had been, but it could be better than now. It could be as good as it could get.

Fredrik hadn’t said anything, nothing really dead serious like that. But they both knew. She needed to think. It was as though she never had time to think about it, or could think about it. There was time to think of everything but that.

I have to think.

Of going with Fredrik to his beloved Ouagadougou. Only that. Good God. A week in Burkina Faso and we’ll see how tough you are, Detective Inspector Halders.

She laughed out loud there in the car, quickly and impulsively.

She drove off of Allén and onto Sprängkullsgatan. People were taking shelter from the rain outside the Capitol Theater after the last show. It was no later than that. Everyone was blue in the face, blackish blue from neon and night. Like a gang of black people from Ouagadougou, on their way out of the movie theater, one of many. At least we have that. What am I thinking? “We.”

She parked on Sveagaten.

Do I miss it? Is that what’s starting to happen? Will I eventually be drawn back to the Africa I was never born in? My Africa. Because it always has to be that way? My rhythm is there.

When she unlocked the front door facing the street, she saw something behind her that shouldn’t be there.

She turned around quickly and a car flashed its lights and took off to the north with a roaring start. She didn’t have time to see the license number, and it wasn’t a model she recognized.

She saw a figure disappear quickly to the south, a man or a woman. A hasty departure. Bye bye love.

But she wasn’t smiling when she closed the door behind her.