Sail of Stone

7

It took a few seconds for her to understand. No one had touched her. The darkness was part of the room, the hall.

He had shut two doors, a sound she hadn’t heard. The light had suddenly disappeared when the doors closed. She heard him on the other side of the bedroom door. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. She felt the SIG Sauer in her belt, its weight against her hip, security.

He had no business there. That was the law and it was on her side; it stood here next to her in a black robe and white wig, an orb in its hand.

A fat shadow.

She just wanted to turn and leave this house. Leave quickly.

These people’s problems were not hers. And the problem wasn’t there anymore. The two of them had split up and gone their separate ways, or paths, to find happiness. There was happiness somewhere, maybe everywhere, like a promise to everyone: The grass is greener here, the sky is bluer.

Now she could hear a scream from inside. He hit the door, one, two, three. Soon she would be able to see the axe through the chips of plywood. After that, something that might look like Jack Nicholson’s crazy face. But there was no one here who could yell “Cut!”

If someone could, it would be her.

He opened the door, wild eyes, blank, no focus, until now.

“Who are you?”

“Police,” she said, and held her identification so he could see.

“Po… police? What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” she said. “This isn’t your apartment.”

“My apartment? I lived here. I lived here, for fuck’s sake!”

“Not anymore,” said Aneta. “I must ask you to leave.”

Yes, she thought. I’ll do it this way. It could get messy otherwise. Unpleasant.

“I have no intention of going,” said Hans Forsblad.

“Do you want to come with me?” she said. “I could arrest you.”

“You?” He tried to laugh but it was a weak attempt. “How the hell would you manage that?” He took a step forward.

“Stand still!” shouted Aneta. Her weapon was in her hand, her arm straight out in front of her. No. But she was on her way there.

“Are you crazy?” he said.

He was close to her; he towered up over her like a shadow that was bigger than the shadow of the law, which was no longer visible. The only thing that was visible was the damned pistol she had been forced to draw. Or hadn’t been forced. She hoped that he wouldn’t see that it was trembling in her hand.

She waited for his next step. God, make me disappear. I don’t want to shoot this man. I don’t have time for that kind of investigation. He doesn’t have time. The health care system doesn’t have time. Only the funeral industry has time, eternal time.

She had him in her sight.

He sat on the floor, just collapsed.

He cried.

It was a loud noise, the same one she had heard through the door a moment ago. He lifted his head. They were real tears. His face was naked, his hair was like an ill-fitting wig, she could see now that he was wearing a suit that seemed expensive, of a label that managed to look more fashionable when it was wrinkled.

He blew his nose with the handkerchief that had been sticking out of his breast pocket. He’s not even missing that, she thought.

“You don’t know how it feels,” he said. “You don’t know what it’s like.”

Aneta had lowered her SIG Sauer but hadn’t replaced it in her holster.

“What?” she said.

“Being shut out of your own apartment,” he said, sniffling, “from your own home.”

“I heard that you haven’t lived here for a long time,” she said.

“Who said that?”

She didn’t answer.

“It’s them,” he said, focusing his gaze on the door behind her. “They’re the ones that said it. But they don’t know anything.”

“Who is they?” she asked.

“Surely you know,” he said.

She put away her weapon. He followed her movement with his gaze.

“So I’m not under arrest anymore?” he said.

“Get up,” she said.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” he repeated.

Now he got up, swaying.

“May I leave?”

“How did you get in?” she asked.

He held up a key.

“The locks have been changed,” she said.

“That’s why I have this,” he said, waving the key in his hand. The tears were gone now.

“How did you get hold of it?” she asked.

“You must be able to figure that out,” he said. He had suddenly grown, straightened out.

He was someone else now.

This is too weird, she thought. I can see him changing before my eyes.

“She lent it to me, of course,” he said. “May I go now?”

He turned around and walked into the room and immediately came back with a briefcase that looked expensive, expensive like the suit he was wearing.

“I needed this,” he said.

“Give me the key,” she said.

“She let me borrow it,” he said, with a childishly defiant voice. He made a disappointed face. This man is a raving lunatic, she thought. Dangerous, he’s very dangerous.

He looked at her furtively. Now he was smiling. He threw the keys across the room at her. She let them land on the floor next to her. She wasn’t totally nuts.

He put the briefcase under his arm.

“May I go now? I have some work to take care of.” He held up the briefcase. “That’s why I came here. I need it to take care of my work.”

Go, just go, she thought. She moved, stood by the wall.

“Nice to run into you,” he said; he bowed and walked out through the door and she stood still and heard him mumble something to himself as the elevator creaked its way up, and then he went in and it clattered away and she could feel the sweat on her back now, and between her breasts, in her groin, her hands. She knew that she had been close to something awful. She knew that she never wanted to be alone in a room again with that man.

Suddenly she understood the woman, Anette Lindsten, at the same time as she understood less than ever. She understood the silence. And the running away. She didn’t understand anything else.

She locked the apartment door after her.

When she came out, the sky had grown lighter and opened up in different shades of brown. The rows of houses looked like they were ready to take off, like spaceships of stone, and sail away through the leathery sky, to a better world.

A routine set in, unrelenting in its indifference to people’s misfortunes. What else could have happened, he thought as he sat at his desk. This desk, worn down by papers and by photographs heavy with blood. Yes. Heavy with blood.

Worn down by elbows, thoughts, murmurs, outbursts, interruptions. Break-ins. Once someone had broken into his office. The thief had lowered himself down from the jail and gotten in through the open window and stolen the Panasonic and was nabbed out in the corridor, of course. But what a thing to happen! Winter had tipped his hat. The guy is in on suspicion of theft and he breaks out of the unbreakable and immediately breaks in again and commits another theft! In the police building! Touché! He had long been a role model in the mire of gangsters in the southeast side of the city, where even the sun kept its distance.

Southeast. He thought of southeastern London, below Brixton. Croydon. And above: Bermondsey, Charlton, shady districts southeast of the river. Millwall, the soccer team that God forgot. We are Millwall, no one likes us.

His colleague who investigated murders there. And who had solved all but one, and that failure always left him without peace.

They had accompanied each other down into the abyss, back then, on those streets, and later here, too, in Gothenburg. Winter hadn’t gotten over it, never would. He was still human, in the middle of all the routines. No, on the contrary: The routines helped him to retain his humanity.

He looked at the clock and picked up the phone and dialed the number.

“Yeah, hello?”

“Steve? It’s Erik Winter here.”

“Well, well.”

“How’s it going?”

“Going, going, gone. Counting the days to my retirement.”

“Come on. You’re still a young man,” said Winter.

“That’s just wishful thinking, man.”

Winter smiled. Macdonald was referring to Winter’s age, which was exactly the same as the Scottish inspector’s.

“Do you know that song, oh thou Erik the rock ’n’ roll wizard?”

“What song?”

“It’s been a long, long, long time.”

“Sure. It’s by Steve Macdonald and the Bad News.”

“It’s George Harrison. Heard the name?”

Macdonald was quiet for a second.

“When members of the Beatles leave the world, the world is not the same,” he then said.

“I think I can understand,” said Winter.

“Did you feel that way about Coltrane? Or Miles Davis?”

“In some way. And then again, not. If I understand what you’re feeling.”

“Shall we leave that topic?” said Macdonald.

“I met someone from the past,” said Winter.

“I’m listening.”

Winter described his conversation with Johanna Osvald.

“Might be time to put out a missing person alert soon,” said Macdonald.

“I’ll talk about it with her again,” said Winter.

“If the dad doesn’t turn up soon, maybe I can ask around a little,” said Macdonald.

Winter knew that Steve was from a little town a short way from Inverness. He didn’t remember the name right now.

“Did you work in Inverness, Steve?”

“Yes. I was even a detective inspector. I moved there from the police station in Forres, which was the nearest big city.”

“Where was that, again?”

“Home? A little Wild West hole of a town, called Dallas.”

Winter laughed.

“It’s true,” said Macdonald. “Dallas, the mother of big Dallas in big Texas. And my Dallas consists of one street and a row of houses on either side and that’s all, except for the two farms on the southern slope, one of which is ours.”

Right. Winter knew that Macdonald was a farmer’s son.

“My brother still works on the farm,” said Macdonald.

“Are your parents still living?”

“Yes.”

Winter was quiet.

“I also have a sister, and she actually lives in Inverness now,” said Macdonald.

“I didn’t know that,” said Winter.

“I didn’t either, six months ago,” said Macdonald. “Eilidh lived down here in the Smoke, up on the regular-people side of Hampstead, but something happened between her and her husband so she headed back, and within twenty-four hours or something she had established herself at a new office up there.”

“New office?”

“Eilidh is a lawyer. Everything but criminal law. Now she runs a little office with another woman of the same age. Macduff and Macdonald, Solicitors. They’ve made the whole farm in Dallas proud.”

“Prouder than they are of you?”

“Jesus, Erik, no one has ever thought of me with pride.”

“That’s good,” said Winter.

“But Eilidh is a Scottish dame worth admiration.”

“How old is she?” asked Winter.

“Why?” asked Macdonald, and Winter thought he heard a smile.

“I was asking out of politeness,” said Winter.

“Thirty-seven,” said Macdonald. “Five years younger than you and me.”

“Mmhmm.”

“And ten times more beautiful than you and me.”

“I’d call that beautiful,” said Winter.

“But I don’t think she’ll be much help with this,” said Macdonald.

“Depending on what happens, is it okay if I call again and ask you to check around with your colleagues up there?” asked Winter.

“Of course.”

“Good.”

“Maybe I should run up and check it out myself,” said Macdonald.

“Sorry?”

“Nah, I was just thinking out loud. But it would be nice to have a change of scenery. What do you say? Shall we plan to meet in Inverness and solve a new mystery together?”

Winter laughed.

“What mystery?”

Four days later he would not be laughing at Macdonald’s joke because it would no longer be a joke. The joke would become a mystery.

Aneta Djanali was in her own little world, a better world. She drank a glass of wine in silence. It was red wine. Burkina Faso ought to have been a good country for wine. The grapes were big and terribly sweet. There was nothing to grow in, but they grew anyway. Not many people drank wine in the partially Muslim Burkina Faso. Maybe that was why. No one could afford wine, either. Few had seen a bottle of wine. She had seen one at a hotel in Ouagadougou, carried to a fat and loud French family who were eating lamb and couscous with their sleeves rolled up. The waiter had carried the bottle as though it contained nitroglycerin.

Her father had been sitting across from her, and he had observed the Frenchman like an African who can see farther than the end of time. Her father was no longer a European, not a Swede; all of that was gone when he traveled back, never to return. He no longer practiced medicine. Aren’t you going to open a small practice? she had said. There are only three hundred doctors here. God knows you’re needed. Which one of them? he had answered, and she realized that it wasn’t a joke. She had realized so much about her father, and about her mother, when she returned. Her father’s gods had been many, and they still were. They waited out there in the light and the dark, during the horribly hot days and the dreadfully cold nights. He spoke with the gods, sometimes with the spirits, but the difference between gods and spirits seemed to be gratuitous.

Some spirits were strong and powerful, like a lion that kills.

Others were weaker, more diffuse, like the spirits of trees.

Everything we encounter has power, her father had said. A lion, a snake, lightning, a river. All of them can kill people, and therefore they must be inhabited by strong spirits.

The sea can kill people, she suddenly thought now. Why did she think of that? There was no sea around Burkina Faso.

Her father had spoken about language. The most important art form in Africa was the art of speaking. In each language there are more than one thousand sayings, he had said.

Dear God, she had thought on the Air France plane home, where do I come from? Where do I come from? Who am I?

What will I become?

She took another little sip of the wine, which was heavy, with a scent of oak and leather.

What will I become?

I am over thirty, and black as sin. There are other people like me in this white, innocent country. The people are white, and it’s white on the ground. Mom would have wanted to see me together with a nice black man. She did get to for a little while, but not as long as she wanted. Now none of that is interesting anymore.

She thought of the dinner in the hotel restaurant again, the last one she and Dad had had together. The colonial clatter in the big room. The sand that refused to leave, despite determined appeals from the staff and guests. The wind that came in through the openings in the gigantic wooden blinds in the ridiculously big windows; ridiculously big because they offered no protection.

The gods know that you are needed, Aneta, her father had said, and he had had a smile that only his daughter could see. Competent detectives are important in a modern country. Haven’t people had enough of police in this country? she’d asked. Those aren’t real police, he answered, and he knew everything about that while she knew nothing. Those aren’t good police. A proper society needs good police; then it will be a society that contains goodness.

Had he been joking? It hadn’t sounded like it. What did it mean? In recent years, even before he returned, his speech and thoughts had begun to resemble aphorisms and riddles, as though he could see something no one else could see, or remembered things that were no longer to be found in anyone else. She had found it fascinating, and frightening. Her mother had found it crazy. Or pretended that it was not worth listening to.

A proper society needs good police; then it will be a society that contains goodness. Suck on that, Aneta. Perhaps she would make a motion to the police conference suggesting that the sentence be engraved in gold or silver, maybe on their caps, even the ones on exhibit in the police building: a sentence everyone could rally around. Goodness. We all strived for it, and we caught those who didn’t in our arms and took them to a better place.

That’s what our duty here in this world amounts to. She took another sip of wine. It’s nothing to joke about, nothing to become cynical about. And still it looks silly as hell in print, and sounds even worse out loud. Goodness looks sillier than evil in print and out loud.

Evil is you and I. That’s what she thought now. It was a true thought, and it was her own.

At night she dreamed of doors that closed and never opened. She saw faces with one side that laughed while the other cried. Faces became icons. Someone spoke to her and said that she couldn’t trust anyone. Not even you? she asked, because she was feeling secure at that point in the dream.

Her father said to her that there were gods that no one knew about in the desert. How can they be gods, then? she asked. That shut him up for a second.

She flew over Kortedala on Air France and had a stopover in all the seasons without leaving the plane.

She flew in a castle that was also a house.

She dreamed all her thoughts and experiences from the past few days, and she understood everything as she dreamed, as though she were simultaneously devoting herself to dream analysis.

Then she dreamed something she didn’t understand, and her own scream woke her up.