Sail of Stone

53

When everything was over, Winter could look back. When everything was said and done, he saw that everything meant something else. Everything came undone.

Identity is a loan, a role, a mask. We cross the border between truth and lies and the light thickens into dark.

O, never

Shall sun that morrow see!

Your face, my thane, is as a book where men

May read strange matters. To beguile the time,

Look like the time…

Winter had read Macbeth late in the evening, a paperback he’d found in the little book and stationery shop next to the entrance of the hospital in Elgin where Macdonald had received care for his gunshot wounds. In two or three days he would be transported to Raigmore Hospital in Inverness, but that was too risky now. But he would survive.

You could have said that Macdonald had been lucky, if that expression could be used in this situation. But it wasn’t luck. It was something linked to everything that had happened, everything that had come to a head on the beach in Cullen.

It was John Osvald’s daughter who had called the police even before the shots were fired. John Osvald’s daughter.

Her name was Anna Johnson, and she had seen them walk toward her father on the beach. She had stood at the window with the view of half the beach, and it was enough for her to see her father, and then the men who approached him, and Macdonald, who got too close.

She had come rushing across the sand at the same time the ambulance screamed up from between the cliffs.

It had been nearby when the call came, on its way west from Macduff.

It took Macdonald to the nearest emergency room, twelve miles to the west on A96.

Macdonald’s blood had been black in the sand. The large spot had looked like a stone. Suddenly there was a shallow wave, as the sea rose, and the blood had been washed away.

John Osvald hadn’t moved.

They still had to talk to him. He was mute now.

He was sitting in the jail in Inverness. Chief Inspector Craig still hadn’t spoken with him.

His grandson had been motionless on the beach, crushed. Winter had tried to talk to Erik Osvald even while Macdonald was still lying injured in the sand. Erik had bent over him. Winter didn’t know whether Macdonald was dead. He had felt his heart pounding like the hammer at the shipyard at Buckie. He hadn’t tried to talk to Erik, he had screamed, kept screaming as the sound of the shots was still echoing over Cullen; Winter had screamed his question to Erik Osvald, the usual old damned question: Why?

They would piece it together, stitch by stitch.

Erik Osvald had been in contact with his grandfather.

The grandson was still in a state of shock. It wasn’t yet clear when they had first made a connection.

But the blue trawler, the Magdalena, that shining modern vessel, was in the harbor at Cullen as proof. Money had been put into it, lots of money.

It was a matter of penance, of guilt.

But in the end, that wasn’t enough for John Osvald.

Night fell over Elgin. Macdonald was unconscious; he was in critical but stable condition. Winter could see Sarah at his bedside; half the wall was made of glass and for a second he thought of the walls around Jamie Craig’s office at the police station in Inverness.

The light around Steve and Sarah was blue.

Angela held on to his shoulders.

“Let’s go out for a while,” he said.

The air was fresh and clean on the street, but the wind was mild. Indian summer continued. Winter could see the silhouette of the cathedral above the buildings of the city. He couldn’t help but think of the viaducts through Cullen. Seatown below.

He and Steve and Sarah and Angela had passed through Elgin when they drove to Aberdeen. That was only yesterday. Good God.

Macdonald had said that Elgin Cathedral had once been considered one of the most beautiful in Scotland, the only one that could compete with St. Andrews in beauty.

Now it was only a shell, but the façade was the same, and its beauty remained when the cathedral became a silhouette in the night. The darkness did what it could to maintain beauty.

They sat on a bench. Neither of them spoke.

Winter’s phone rang. He let it ring.

“I think you should get that,” said Angela.

He answered. It was Ringmar.

“How is Steve doing now?” Ringmar asked.

“He’s going to make it,” said Winter.

They had spoken during the afternoon, after the shooting. Ringmar had also had information, shocking information. It was a unique afternoon.

“Have you been able to talk to Aneta more?” Winter asked.

“No. She’s still out there looking.”

“Are there any traces at all?”

“No, not yet,” said Ringmar. “We did find the plastic boat, but we haven’t found Anette.”

“And Forsblad still isn’t talking?”

“No. Halders had almost started to hope that the guy would drown, but he turned around and swam back to shore and since then he hasn’t said a word.”

“It’s so damned senseless,” said Winter.

“When isn’t it?” Winter heard Ringmar’s tired voice. “Aneta is convinced he killed her. We just have to find the body.”

“We just have to keep looking,” said Winter. “And keep questioning.”

“Forsblad’s sister came up with a story about how she and Anette had become a couple, and that’s what made the brother go insane,” said Ringmar. “But Anette’s father, Sigge, claims that’s all a lie. It’s just her way of making things better, according to him.”

“Yeah, he’s just the guy to tell the difference between truth and lies,” said Winter.

“I believe him, in this case,” said Ringmar.

“He’s a swindler,” said Winter. “And maybe more than that.”

“He says he was only keeping her furniture for her in that warehouse on Hisingen.”

“Well, good God,” said Winter.

“Anyway, he’s not getting away from that story,” said Ringmar. “The man is a professional criminal.”

“Where was he at the time of Anette’s disappearance?” Winter asked.

“Well, we’re not exactly finished with that puzzle now, but presumably he was with his gang at their very own Hisingen IKEA. In any case, they were there when Meijner and his guys came knocking.”

“Say hi to Aneta,” said Winter.

He sat with the silent phone in his hand. The darkness over Elgin was even denser now. The cathedral’s silhouette had grown even sharper. It had three towers, the way there were three rocks, three kings, elsewhere. The cathedral could remind him of the three rocks on the beach in Cullen, if he wanted it to. The Three Kings.

Anna Johnson had come running down the stairs, through Seatown and across the beach.

It was our secret, she had said later, it was our secret, no, it was my secret.

“Couldn’t we walk around a little?” said Angela, getting up from the bench.

Winter got up. Steve’s brother and sister, Stuart and Eilidh Macdonald, came out of the hospital on the other side of the cobblestone street. They had only said a quick hello a few hours earlier. Dallas wasn’t more than ten miles away.

Everything had been confusion then, and fear.

“Well, your bandages saved Steve’s life,” said Stuart Macdonald.

He looked at Winter’s chest under the suede jacket. Winter had borrowed a shirt at the hospital. His clothes were still in the car since they’d checked out of the Seafield Hotel.

“They were extremely makeshift,” said Winter.

“But very tight.” Stuart Macdonald looked tired in the eternal blue light from the hospital, as though he were Steve’s older brother. “They stanched it off, or whatever they called it in there. It helped him retain a little blood, anyway. Enough.”

“The risk was that he could have strangled,” said Winter.

“It’s always a balancing act,” said Stuart, and he actually smiled. “This time it worked.”

“I was the one who brought him there,” said Winter.

“Sorry?” said Eilidh.

“I was the one who took him there. If it weren’t for me, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“You’re feeling guilty, you mean?” Eilidh asked.

“Yes.”

“Let me just say that Steve is a grown man with his own free will,” she said. “He doesn’t let himself be taken anywhere.”

“I agree,” said her brother. “And Steve is still alive, isn’t he?”

Winter and Angela walked along the stone streets to the Mansion House Hotel, which looked like a castle from a distance. Winter stumbled. Angela caught him.

“I need a whisky,” he said.

“You need to lie down,” she said.

In the room, he poured a whisky and then lay down. Angela sat in an easy chair with her feet on his thighs. They had opened the window, and the mild wind brought in fresh air. They hadn’t turned on any lights.

“What happened once upon a time out there at sea?” said Angela, whose face was half lit by the streetlight outside. He could see her face in half profile. “During the war.”

“I can only imagine, so far,” said Winter.

“What do you imagine, then?”

“A transaction,” he said.

“What kind of transaction?”

“Well, it seems that John Osvald and his crew were involved in smuggling. That’s what his grandson Erik said. But he hasn’t learned anything about what actually happened.”

Winter carefully shifted Angela’s feet down to the edge of the bed, turned onto his side, and took the glass and sipped the whisky.

“But it wasn’t an accident?” said Angela. “When the boat sank?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Will we ever know?” said Angela.

“I don’t think so.”

“But whatever happened was terrible enough that John Osvald switched identities,” said Angela. “Become someone else, and leave your old self behind.”

Winter nodded.

“Good God,” she said.

“He tried to,” said Winter. He drank again. The whisky tasted like the wind that came in through the window. “He must have wrestled with his God.”

“Did he wrestle with his son?” said Angela, who had pulled her naked feet close to her body. She curled up in the easy chair, as though she were cold.

“John Osvald?” Winter changed position on the bed. “Well, that’s the next question.”

“I didn’t mean physically,” said Angela.

“No, no, I realize that.”

“So what happened on the mountain, then? Outside Fort Augustus?”

“I have thought about that many times during the past few days,” said Winter.

“I’ve started thinking about it now,” said Angela. “It’s hard not to.” She shuddered. “And it’s hard to.” She looked at him. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And at the same time you think about Osvald and his unknown daughter.”

“She wasn’t unknown,” said Winter. “She was unknown to us, but that doesn’t mean she was unknown.”

“Did anyone else in that city know about it, then?” Angela asked. “And who was her mother?”

“Her mother is dead, according to the daughter,” said Winter. “And she says that she didn’t know Osvald until a few years ago.”

“But she believed him? Believed that he was her father?”

“Apparently he could prove it,” said Winter. “But I don’t have any details yet.”

Angela shuddered again.

“Are you cold?” Winter asked. “Should I close the window?”

“No. The wind is nice.”

“Do you want a whisky?”

“No.”

“A little tiny one?”

She didn’t answer.

“Angela?”

“I don’t think I should,” she said.

“Sorry?”

“I shouldn’t drink alcohol,” she said, leaning forward so he could see her face.

“Shouldn’t drink…,” he repeated.

“That’s all I’m going to say,” she said.

“You don’t need to say more,” he shouted, hopping up out of the bed and spilling several of the ridiculously expensive drops.

“When did you know?” he asked. They were both lying on the bed now. The window was still open. It was still Indian summer in Elgin, or maybe it should be called brittsommar in October. “It must have been pretty recently.”

Angela had a glass of mineral water in her hand. She drank it and placed the glass on the nightstand and gently bit her lower lip. She looked out through the window.

“What are you thinking about?” Winter asked.

“Still about what happened in Fort Augustus,” she said. “Between father and son.”

“Mmhmm.”

“Do you have any theories?”

Winter sat up. He could smell the scent of the river outside. The evening was making way for the night.

“I think Axel Osvald dreamed of his father his entire life. That’s only natural. And the circumstances were so dramatic. And this sense of loss got stronger and stronger.” He turned to Angela. “I think we’ll be able to find out much more about him now, from Erik, and from Johanna. Now that we know how we should ask. Why we should ask.”

“But the dad, John, he made contact?”

“He must have, at least once Axel was here,” said Winter. “And of course he also did indirectly, through Erik Osvald.”

“He also had his daughter call?”

“Yes.”

“Did he know what would happen?”

“When they met, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“He didn’t know his son,” said Winter.

“What do you mean?”

“He didn’t know him. He didn’t know who Axel was. He couldn’t anticipate that there might be an extreme passion, maybe an obsession.”

Winter changed position again where he was sitting on the edge of the bed. “Do you understand? Something could give way. Something could give way very easily. The fact that he took off his clothes had to do with his strong Christian beliefs, his own strong beliefs. It had to do with cleansing, something like that. He wandered on the mountain and prayed and took off his clothes bit by bit. A cleansing bath. On the beach, John Osvald said that his son was washing away his sins. John couldn’t do it himself.”

“Do you think the father told?” said Angela. “Told Axel?”

“Told him what?”

“Told what he had done. What had happened out at sea that time.” She pushed her hair away from one temple. “What his guilt consisted of. The extent of his crime.”

“Yes,” said Winter. “I think so. I think he told. And it ended in disaster.”

“Did Axel Osvald really commit suicide?”

“I don’t know,” said Winter. “But I think so. Suicide. Yes. Lying there naked was suicide.” He ran his hand through his hair. “But maybe in one way it was also murder.” He took his hand from his head. “I don’t know.”

“Will we ever find out?”

“How would we find out?” Winter asked.

“Through John Osvald,” said Angela.

“Maybe,” said Winter, but he didn’t think they ever would.

Later he thought about the sea again. A different sea, a different beach. This beach was on the other side of the North Sea, across from this city and this ancient landscape.

He carefully pushed Angela’s arm off of his chest and slid out of bed. Angela was snoring, but very lightly, a relic of her polyp period.

He poured a finger of whiskey into the glass and stood by the window, which was closed. He opened it a few inches. The air was still fresh out there, but now it was cold. It smelled like water. He saw the sea and that beach in his mind’s eye. He and Angela and Elsa were there, as well as another person he didn’t know yet, a small person. They were all digging in the sand, and then in the soft earth on the plot of land above them. There was dirt in his shovel. He pushed a wheelbarrow filled with sand. He laid stones. He pounded a hammer against a wall.

It was a new era of life.