Sail of Stone

47

Winter and Macdonald turned around at Farquharson’s words, as though John Osvald would be standing there to prove them right. But no one was standing in the door, which was closed and painted a kind of sea blue. There were remnants of yellow on the door frame. Yellow and blue are Scotland’s colors just as much as white and blue, Winter thought.

He turned around again and tried to read Farquharson’s face. The old man wasn’t confused. He seemed certain, but without emphasis. It was merely a statement.

“I think he saw me,” said Farquharson.

“We should probably start at the beginning,” said Macdonald.

“It’s as though time doesn’t change anything,” said Farquharson. “It’s more like it sharpens things. Like appearances, for example. People’s facial features.” The man’s eyes flashed. “Only the essentials are left.”

Winter took out the photograph of Osvald, the one where he was half in profile. When he looked at the photograph he felt the same frustration as before, as though he were holding something there in his hands that he should be able to make use of. Something he had seen and yet not seen.

“Mmhmm,” said Farquharson. “That’s him, all right.” Farquharson looked up. “That’s the Swede.”

“And you mean to say that the same man walked in here a little while ago?” Macdonald asked.

“A few weeks ago,” said Farquharson.

“You’re sure, Mr. Farquharson?”

“Yes. It was him.”

“Can you say exactly when it happened? The date?”

“Well, if I can think a bit.”

“What happened?” Winter asked. “When he came in here?”

“He turned around in the doorway,” said Farquharson. “I think he saw me.”

“What do you mean?” Macdonald asked. “Did he recognize you?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“In the same way you recognized him?”

“Yes.”

“What did you do then?”

“Nothing. I guess I didn’t realize until after a bit that it might be the Swede, and then I went out on the street, but he wasn’t there, of course.”

“Why did he come here?” Winter asked. “After so many years.”

“Couldn’t he have been here before?” said Farquharson.

“But you haven’t seen him?”

“No. But he could still have been here.”

“But he’s been declared dead,” said Macdonald.

“I know.”

“You seem calm, Mr. Farquharson. It didn’t occur to you that you saw a ghost?”

“I don’t believe in ghosts.”

“But the ship disappeared with Osvald,” Winter said.

“That’s what they say,” said Farquharson.

“You don’t believe it?”

“I don’t believe anything. I don’t know anything.”

They heard someone coming through the door behind them and they turned around. It was two younger men in thick sweaters and knitted caps. They nodded to Farquharson but didn’t seem to notice Macdonald and Winter. The men walked through the hall and in through another door.

“Norwegian fishermen,” said Farquharson. “We have some Norwegians, and Icelanders. Not many Swedes.”

“Do you have any Swedes right now?” Winter asked.

“We don’t have many rooms,” said Farquharson. “This is no hotel. It’s more so that they can have a change of scenery for a little while, a night or so, if something’s going on with the boat and such.”

“No Swedes?” Winter repeated.

“Not this week. Last week I think there were some.”

“Do you have a register?” Winter asked. Macdonald looked at him. “Where they sign in-do they give the name of the boat then?”

“Yes, those are the rules.”

Farquharson had only to reach for a black binder, which was thick. It was already open. He flipped back three pages.

“The Swedes,” he said to himself. “I wasn’t here then.” He looked up. “A little operation on my hip.” He looked down. “The trawler was called the Mariana. The only name I have next to the trawler’s name is Erikson.” Farquharson looked up again. “I assume it’s the skipper. It’s enough for him to sign in.”

“Do they have to write down their home harbor?” asked Winter.

“Yes,” said Farquharson, “but I can’t read it.” He turned the binder around. Winter read on one line:

MARIANA. STYRSÖ. ERIKSON.

And a date.

It was two and a half weeks ago.

Winter knew that there was a trawler from Donsö called the Magdalena and the skipper was named Erik.

Was there a trawler from Styrsö named the Mariana?

Why wouldn’t there be?

He would call Ringmar and ask him to check.

Farquharson offered them a quick cup of tea. There were pictures of trawlers hanging everywhere. Winter heard a laugh from somewhere, but there was a seriousness in the walls and the pictures and the memories here.

Farquharson gave a short explanation.

“The Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen was founded in 1881 after Mr. Ebenezer J. Mather visited fishing fleets at sea and really saw the crews’ inferior and dangerous working conditions.”

Macdonald and Winter nodded.

“It has improved, of course,” said Farquharson, “and we hope we’ve contributed to that. But it’s such a special occupation. Fishermen are so strangely cut off from the usual human influences by their work.” He looked at Winter. “There’s not much left of the usual human community out there at sea.”

“You must have seen many people be influenced by that,” said Winter.

“Naturally.”

“Can it make people… inhuman?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” said Winter. “That it makes a person someone else. Into someone… worse.”

“I believe it does,” said Farquharson.

“What about with John Osvald?”

“That was a long time ago,” said Farquharson.

“You have a good memory.”

Farquharson drank his tea and his gaze became hazy, very hazy. He had been a fisherman himself, before the war. He had gone ashore a long time ago.

“They were nervous,” he said after the pause. “Nervous.”

“How so?” asked Winter.

“There was something… something they had done, I think. People came asking after one of them. Well, I assumed it had to do with smuggling. Money. I don’t know.”

“Smuggling? Why smuggling?”

“Why not?” Farquharson said, smiling. “It wasn’t an unknown phenomenon up here.”

“So the Swedes were involved in smuggling?” Macdonald asked.

“I don’t know,” said Farquharson. “I didn’t ask. But something was going on.”

“Smuggling of what?”

“Anything at all. There was a war.”

“But didn’t they fish all the time? With their trawler. The Marino.”

“Did they?” Farquharson said with a sort of lightness in his voice, perhaps a bit of mocking.

“What role did John Osvald play?” asked Macdonald.

“In what?”

“In the group.”

“He was the leader. He was young, but he made the decisions.” Farquharson put down the heavy earthenware mug he’d been holding in his hand. “Well, I wasn’t well acquainted with the Swedish fishermen that came to harbor here. These are really more like observations I made.”

“And then they left,” said Winter.

“Yes. I didn’t know where to, but since then I’ve heard that they were up in Fraserburgh for a while.”

The Saltoun Arms Hotel in Fraserburgh was on Saltoun Square in the middle of town; the hotel was Victorian, and so was the restaurant: palms in the windows, and on the floor, attractive wall-to-wall carpeting; flowery wallpaper on the ceiling; colonial fans that moved at an old-time speed; a glass case with cakes and cookies. A wisp of a melody that might have been Glenn Miller, or rather a British big band from the past. The staff seemed to come from a different era. The other guests in the half-full room were dressed as though they came from the past. A small child screamed a few times and the young couple at the east window did what they could to make the baby happy.

Winter and Macdonald sat with an ale each and waited for their food.

Macdonald looked around discreetly. A waitress passed with a steaming soup tureen.

“I assume that this is what they call larger than life,” he said.

“Mmhmm.”

“This was here before we came, and it will be here when we’re gone. Larger than life.”

Three pictures with country motifs hung on the north wall, like a dream of something other than the sea and the steep cliffs to the west. A farmer was walking behind a horse with the plow. It was the very symbol of work.

Another waitress served their lunch: breaded haddock, chips, green peas. It was a large plate. Winter blew on the hot haddock fillet, which had been fried very lightly. He tasted it.

“Not bad at all.”

It was a classic meal. The waitress, a motherly woman, came back and asked how it tasted.

“The best I’ve ever had!” said Winter.

“I hope it’s not the first,” she said.

“No, no, no.”

Macdonald helped himself to the tartar sauce. He held up a piece of fish and nodded. He looked proud. Winter didn’t have the heart to say that the fish had most likely been hauled up by Scandinavian fishermen in international waters and shipped here in trucks from the fish auction in Hanstholm.

After lunch Winter bought a Press and Journal from a news shop on Broad Street. There was a full-page article on the front page: A fisherman on a trawler from Fraserburgh had been washed overboard off the Norwegian coast.

The Grampian Police had their headquarters on Finlayson Street, North Aberdeenshire Sub-Division. The street was in the northern outskirts, where strong winds blew in all directions. The sky was blue and the houses gray. There was a chill in the air. The house directly across from the police station was called Thule Villa. Winter thought of Prince Valiant on the crooked sign above the closed-down gas station in Dallas.

They were met by Sergeant Steve Nicoll, a skinny young detective with a determined expression. He didn’t know Macdonald but he knew of him. Macdonald had called the week before. Nicoll had done what he could.

“There’s not much about those blokes,” he said. “They kept to themselves.”

“What happened after the trawler disappeared?” Macdonald asked. “With the two Swedes who stayed behind?”

“They were here during the investigation of the shipwreck, at first, and then they just disappeared.”

Winter nodded.

“They showed up in Sweden, I assume.”

Winter nodded again.

“There are suspicions that they were involved in smuggling,” said Macdonald.

“Are there?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s not impossible.”

“What kind of goods could it have been?” asked Winter.

“Hmm… I guess everything was worth smuggling during the war.”

“What was the hardest?” Winter asked. What was worth disappearing for, he thought. Committing serious crimes for. Possibly dying for. “Was there anything that was taboo?” he asked.

“Possibly weapons,” said Nicoll. “Depending on where they came from and who they went to.”

“The resistance movement?” asked Winter.

“There were several,” answered Macdonald.

Nicoll nodded.

“There were those who hated the English more than they hated the Germans,” said Macdonald.

They were standing out on the stairs. The wind tore at the leaves above the open field between the row houses. There were two marked cars outside the station. There was a notice in the stairwell behind them: WE WILL DO OUR BEST.

“How many of you are there here?” asked Macdonald.

“Thirty men,” said Nicoll. “The CID is in Aberdeen.”

“How many detectives?”

“Twelve. The chief inspector is in Peterhead.” Nicoll waved a greeting to two young policewomen who passed them going up the stairs. Both had blond hair. They each cast a glance at Macdonald and Winter. Nicoll smiled. “Both of those gals are unmarried,” he said.

“Unlike us,” said Macdonald.

“So?”

“What’s the biggest thing you work with here?” asked Winter. “The biggest problem?”

“The usual old stuff in new forms,” Nicoll said. “Smuggling. Now it’s heroin.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Unknown ten years ago, familiar now.”

“It’s like at home in Gothenburg,” said Winter.

“It’s like everywhere,” said Nicoll. There was clear resignation in his voice. It was something you only showed to your colleagues, and seldom even then.

Macdonald scratched his head.

“Where would you have hidden if you wanted to disappear for good during the war?” he asked.

Sergeant Nicoll squinted at the sun, which hung above Thule Villa and felt surprisingly strong. Winter felt for his sunglasses in his jacket pocket.

“There are several places along the coast,” said Nicoll. “Fishing villages, smuggling villages where everyone learned to mind their own business and not ask questions. And sometimes to tolerate strangers.”

“Name a place,” said Macdonald.

Winter put on his black sunglasses. Nicoll and Macdonald got darker skin.

“Pennan,” Nicoll said, jerking his head to the left. “I would have chosen Pennan.”

Winter and Macdonald drove via the B9031, which was smaller and close to the sea, through Sandhaven and Rosehearty, strongholds of smuggling with medieval skylines.

The road down to the villages was marked with a barely visible sign. Here there were open spaces and steep slopes down to the sea. The road curved with a thirty-five-degree grade. It was like driving on a roller-coaster.

Pennan was a row of small, white-plastered stone houses next to the quay, two hundred yards long at most. The harbor was small and protected by broad breakwaters. The wind was strong over Pennan Bay. The water was tossed up toward the houses, which lay in shadow under the red cliffs that hung like half a threat. The beach was full of stones. A black log of driftwood sat halfway up the beach.

They had parked outside a house with a dolphin on the wall: Dolphin Cottage, number ten.

“Do you remember the film?” asked Macdonald.

“Yes,” said Winter, “and I actually thought of it not so long ago.”

“Do you recognize the village, then?”

“I think so…”

“The houses are still here,” said Macdonald. “But the film is an illusion. Or a bluff, if you prefer. A good example of how it’s possible to lie with pictures.”

“Is it? How so?”

“Well, you see this little rocky beach,” Macdonald said, nodding toward it. “But in the film, Burt Lancaster wandered around on a rather impressive beach, and it was deserted.”

“Yes.”

“So they put the houses here in Pennan together with a beach in Morar,” Macdonald said. “It’s on the North Sea, just south of Mallaig. A ferry goes from there across to Armadale on Skye.”

“Aha. That’s your ancestors’ neighborhood.”

“Yes.” Macdonald locked the car with the remote and started to walk. “They edited Pennan and Morar together.” He whipped his hand around in the air. “An illusion.”

“I remember that recluse in the film,” said Winter. “He lived in some shack on the beach.”

“Maybe we’ll find him here,” said Macdonald.

“I remember the inn, too, and the innkeeper.”

“It’s still here,” said Macdonald.

They were standing outside Pennan Inn. Temporarily closed due to bad weather.

“We could have stayed overnight here,” said Macdonald. He looked up at the sky. It was starting to grow dark.

Winter turned around.

“I recognize that telephone booth,” he said, nodding at the red kiosk on the other side of the strip of road.

“I’ve never been here,” said Macdonald.

A woman came out of one of the houses, seventy yards away. She walked toward them and greeted them as she passed. She was wearing a kerchief but was no older than they were. A few cars were parked beside theirs.

“Excuse me,” said Macdonald.

“On a very clear day you can see Orkney,” the woman had said.

“How about the northern lights?” Winter had asked.

“Oh, you’ve seen the film.” It was a statement, for the most part. “You’ve come to see it for yourselves?”

“We’re not here for that reason,” Macdonald had said.

She had taken them to the next-to-last house in the row. Everything was closed and shut up as they walked along the quay.

In 1900, three hundred people had lived here, she had said. Now twenty people lived in Pennan permanently.

They walked past a construction site. Winter thought of Dallas.

“The first new construction in a hundred years!” said the woman.

They stood in front of a cottage. She knocked hard three times.

“Her hearing is bad.”

After the fifth knock of her knuckles, there was rustling behind the heavy door, which still had its red base color.

“Mrs. Watt?” said the woman.

The door creaked open. The face of an older woman became visible. She had small, sharp eyes.

“Aye?”

“Mrs. Watt, these gentlemen would like to ask you a couple of questions.”

They climbed back uphill in the car. The dolphin house they’d parked in front of had been the inn in Local Hero. In the summer, dolphins played out in the water of Moray Firth.

Mrs. Watt had a memory that came and went. In addition, she had spoken a kind of Scottish that seemed to be too much even for Macdonald. Once she had nodded to herself and said, “Gie yehr ain fish guts to year ain sea myaves.”

“What did that mean?” Winter had asked when they were standing outside again.

“‘Give your own fish guts to your own seagulls,’” Macdonald had answered, “but I don’t know what it means.” He began to walk. “Maybe that you should take care of yourself and to hell with everyone else.”

At the summit there was only sky and sea over the edge.

Mrs. Watt had spoken about “a stranger.”

He had lived by himself in a little hovel next to the Cullykhan caves in the cove next to Pennan Bay.

“But there’s nothing there now,” she had said.

They had climbed over there, but there was nothing there.

“He was there and then he was gone,” she had said.

“When was that?”

“The war. During the war.”

“What did he do?”

“What everyone else did, I assume. Smuggled.”

“Did you meet this stranger?” Winter had asked Mrs. Watt.

“No.”

“Did you see him?”

“No.”

“Where did he come from?”

“No one knew. Not that I know of. And no one asked. Not then.” She had squinted her sharp eyes, which were like black stones. “They had probably checked him out and I guess he was allowed to stay.”

“They? Who are they?” Macdonald had asked.

“The men in the village.”

“Are any of them still here?”

“No.”

“None at all?”

“Not from that time.”

“What happened to the stranger?” Winter had asked.

“I guess he’s just gone.”

They drove west, toward Macduff and Banff.

“There were lots of people who came and went back then,” said Macdonald.

Winter didn’t answer. He looked out over the sea below the precipice. One quick movement of the wheel and they would be flying.

“What are you thinking about, Erik?”

“About something I’ve seen and yet not seen,” said Winter.

“A common problem for a policeman,” said Macdonald.

“Fuck.”

“When? Where?”

“Recently,” said Winter. “During this trip.”

“Think back.”

“What do you think I’m doing?”

There were some dark streaks across the sky. The sun disappeared. Macdonald thought about putting in a CD but he hesitated.

“It has to do with the photograph,” said Winter. “Of Osvald.”

Macdonald looked up at the sky.

“We’ll have to find an inn to stay overnight.”

Winter nodded.

“I know the place,” said Macdonald. “The Seafield Hotel in Cullen. It’s a classic. I didn’t remember it before, but now I do. You can try Cullen skink there!”