Sail of Stone (40 page)

“I have a question,” he said, shifting his weight on the seat as Macdonald took a hard right onto the narrow main road. “How many times did you call your dad at the bed and breakfast place here in Inverness? Glen Islay?”

“Uh, two, I think. Two.”

“Try to remember.”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“First think of how many times,” said Winter.

“Two.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” A second of silence. “Completely sure.”

“Axel got three calls,” said Winter. “At least according to the woman who runs the place. Three calls and it was a woman every time.”

T
hese streets. The first time he was here. The bus from the sea had been late and he had walked south from the station and it was night, one of the warm ones.

He had turned around several times but no one had been following him.

He was someone else.

The street looked like it had then. It smelled like it had then, a smell that had been heavy not long ago.

Was it the same room? It was the same view. Guest rooms changed places. People came and went. Wars came and went. There was a picture of Jesus on the wall, and there had been that time too, the first time. He had fallen to his knees and tried to say something to Jesus. He hadn’t gotten an answer. He knew why.

Jesus!

The woman had looked at him, studied him. He had handed over his letter.

It was time.

Jesus had answered. No. It was someone else.

He wandered back and forth across the bridges. Waited. He tried to listen, to wait again. At a pub in a nice hotel he had looked at his hands when the bartender looked at them.

He had looked as though he knew. His hands around the rope.

Around the neck.

He received his ale and watched it clear up.

The sea had been crazy that night, it had been c-r-a-z-y. They had all been crazy. Crazy.

It wasn’t just the money. Or the women.

Or God.

On the last night he took the bus to the southern point of the sea.

He wandered up in the mountains.

He found a place that could be a peaceful place. If the wind were right. If the light would just disappear.

In the evening he waited. Someone had lit a bonfire on the beach. He saw the faces like flecks. Someone was banging on a guitar, a ragged sound that floated out on the water. He thought he saw a movement out there.

At night he cried. He tried to write a new letter, in the old language. He tried to sort his memories into different piles, far away from one another. Before it became day, he planned to take out some of those damn piles and throw them on the fire and let them burn up. He heard his thoughts, the strong words he’d never articulated but was thinking now.

Words were nothing compared to actions. Words could hurt, but not like
that,
never like
that.

There was one memory he kept at bay.

He had said that it didn’t concern him: This doesn’t have to do with you.

It was a good day.

Stay on land, he had said. Stay here.

I don’t want to. Why should I do that?

Stay.

No.

Stay.

But …

You’re not going on board.
You’re not going on board. You’re not coming along.

It hadn’t ended up that way.

The car was green like the algae he’d held in his hand three days earlier.

Jesus! Take me away from here!

W
inter saw the lake for the first time at Lochend. It looked like a fjord; the mountains were high on the other side of the water, which was black and white, in layers.

“How’s it going with the monster?” Winter asked. He thought he saw a movement on the surface of the water, a waving movement. He pointed.

“Nessie?” Macdonald followed his gaze. “She stays away.”

“Does she exist?”

“Naturally,” said Macdonald.

“You have to say that,” said Winter. “The tourist industry here rises and falls on the monster.” He saw road signs that announced the Loch Ness Monster Exhibition in Drumnadrochit three miles down the road. The water to the left was still black and white.

“It’s not that simple,” said Macdonald.

“What do you mean by that?”

Macdonald didn’t answer. He looked serious.

Winter let out a laugh.

“Come
on,
Steve.”

Macdonald looked out across the lake, which was wider here.

“There are places,” he said.

“What kind of places? Places where you can
see
?”

Macdonald nodded slightly.

“Do you know something no one else knows?”

“Maybe,” Macdonald said.

“But you don’t want to reveal it?”

“Certain secrets must remain secret,” said Macdonald.

“The first rule of the chief inspector,” said Winter.

“Nessie hasn’t been accused of anything, as far as I know,” said Macdonald.

Winter looked at him, turning around in his seat.

“You like the monster, don’t you, Steve. You really believe this.”

“She has always existed,” Macdonald said with an innocent expression, and Winter couldn’t tell what was serious and what was some kind of subtle joke. “Nessie is part of my youth.” He turned to Winter. “I’ll show you something another time.”

“Why not now?” Winter asked.

“Wrong season.” He looked out over the water. “Maybe the wrong season.”

Winter saw the monster center emerge just before the city limits of Drumnadrochit. No passerby could avoid it. The water was still visible to the left. Far to the south where the lake ended and turned into the river Oich, Axel Osvald had met his death, possibly in a confused state. Most likely. What was it? Was there something evil down there, beyond exhibits and the idiotic tourist industry and legends of monsters and medieval ruins that stood like mangled sand castles around Loch Ness? Did it exist? Had Axel Osvald met it? What had he met, whom? Why here? Why right here?

“I’m thirsty,” Macdonald said, turning off and parking outside Hunter’s Bar and Restaurant, which was right across from the exhibition.

“Have you seen the exhibit?” asked Winter.

“I don’t need to,” said Macdonald.

“Now you’ve hinted so much that soon I will insist that we make a serious attempt to solve the monster mystery,” Winter said. He got out of the car. “We’ll be world famous.”

“I don’t want to be famous,” Macdonald said. “I just want to be rich.” He got out and locked the car with the remote. “Like you.”

“And I just want to be famous,” said Winter.

They went into the bar. A movie poster was hanging on the wall, an ad for a ten-year-old Hollywood production about the monster myth, with Ted Danson in the lead role. Winter didn’t feel disappointed that he hadn’t seen it.

Macdonald ordered two pints of Scotch ale.

Winter took out his pack of Corps and lit one of the cigarillos.

“So you haven’t given up that crap yet,” said Macdonald. “I thought you’d quit.”

“Soon,” Winter said, pulling in the pleasant smoke and letting it out again as discreetly as he could.

Fort Augustus was two rows of houses in a U-turn, gas stations, pubs. It smelled like fried fat and gas and maybe rotting seaweed in the parking lot in front of Morag’s Lodge.

Macdonald read from a piece of paper. They walked down the street to Poacher’s and went in. The air was thick with smoke from the late-afternoon drinkers. The volume was loud.

The manager showed them to a room behind the bar. His face was gray from way too many years in the poisoned air. Perhaps he had never been closer to the sea than this.

“Funny geezer,” said the man, an Englishman whose name was Ball. “Didn’t seem to know what he was doing, or why.”

“Apparently he was asking questions,” Macdonald said.

“Apparently,” said Ball. “But in any case I couldn’t answer them, because I didn’t understand what he said.”

“No words at all you remember?”

“Nix.”

“Was he agitated?”

“No, he was … confused, but on the other hand that’s nothing strange in here,” Ball said, smiling, “and people become agitated rather often when they’ve drunk their wallet empty and aren’t allowed more credit.”

“How would you care to describe him, then?” Winter asked.

Ball looked at him.

“Are you a Swede too, like him?”

They knew that Ball knew that the dead man was a Swede.

“Yes,” said Winter.

“I can barely hear it,” said Ball.

“What was he like?” Macdonald repeated.

“Well, since you asked, he seemed … spooked. Scared. Wacky somehow, and, well, scared.” Ball made a movement with his head. “Like this, you know, it was like he was looking around for someone who was after him. He acted like he was being followed or something.”

“Did you see anyone?”

“What, following him?”

“Yes,” Macdonald said.

“Nah.”

“When he left the pub, then?”

“Nah. I suppose I watched him go, because he seemed strange, but then he shut the door behind him and that was that.”

“So he didn’t say a single word in English?” Winter asked.

“Nah.”

“Did you talk to anyone else who talked to him?” Winter asked.

“Only old Macdonald down at the Old Pier,” said Ball. “It seems the Dane was staying there, from what I hear.”

“Sorry?” said Macdonald.

“The Dane had a room there, right?”

“The Swede,” said Winter.

“Yeah, yeah, what the hell difference is there? Anyway, he definitely had a room there.”

“Not that we know of,” said Macdonald, looking at Winter.

“Then it must have been a different Swede,” Ball said, smiling with teeth that were not Scandinavian. There was a certain degree of difference in the status of teeth in Scandinavia and Great Britain. “Old Man Macdonald talked about a Swede.”

“Not to the police,” said Steve Macdonald.

“Probably no one asked,” said Ball. “Old Man Macdonald doesn’t say anything if you don’t ask straight out.”

Macdonald asked Macdonald straight out. Yes. A Swede in “the older ages” had stayed at the Old Pier for a night. The guesthouse was on the north shore of the lake, north of Fort Augustus. The smell of water and overgrown stones was strong as they walked up the steps. Old Man Macdonald was in the older ages himself. He steadied himself with a cane. A fire was burning in the large room. It snapped like a pistol shot from wood that wasn’t completely dry.

“You should have let the police know,” said Macdonald.

“I never got around to it,” Macdonald said, scratching with his cane like a tic.

“What do you mean when you say he was old in general terms?” Macdonald asked.

“Over eighty for sure, but moved like a fifty-year-old or something,” said Old Man Macdonald. He could have been over eighty himself. There were black flecks on his face.

“What was his name?” Winter asked.

“I’ll have to look in the register,” said Old Man Macdonald.

They followed him to the reception desk.

He flipped back a few pages.

“John Johnson,” he said.

Yet another Johnson. Winter saw that Steve noticed.

“When did he stay here?” asked Winter.

John Johnson had rented the room the night before Axel Osvald had shown up in Fort Augustus and then wandered from there up into the mountains.

“When did he leave? Early? Late?”

“Probably morning.”

“What time?”

“Well … nine, I think.”

“What did you talk about?”

“When?”

“Whenever,” said Steve.

“He didn’t say a word,” Old Man Macdonald said.

“How did you know that he was Swedish, then?” Macdonald asked.

“He probably said something then,” said the old man.

“What?”

“Don’t remember.”

“Are you senile?” Macdonald asked.

“Do you want a beating, you damn cocky island fool?” Old Man Macdonald said, raising his cane.

“Calm down,” said Steve Macdonald.

The old man lowered his cane. Steve Macdonald smiled. The old man grinned. “Damn Mac,” he said.

“So what made you think he was Swedish?” asked Steve Macdonald.

“I knew some Swedes during the war,” Old Man Macdonald said. “Fishermen.”

“Yes?”

“Well, it was probably just something I thought. That the old man was Swedish. And his name. Johnson.”

They continued to ask questions for a little while, but the old man had become tired.

“Get in touch if you remember anything else, and thanks,” Steve Macdonald said, and gave the old man his phone numbers.

“If I remember to remember,” said the old man.

“You’re sharp as a knife,” Macdonald said.

They were standing outside again.

“How did he get here and how did he leave?” Winter asked.

“Car,” said the old man.

“Did you see it?”

“Green,” the old man said, waving his cane again, “about like the shrubs on the beach here in the winter.”

“Metallic,” said Steve Macdonald.

“Yes, it was some kind of strange glittering,” said the old man. “But don’t ask me about the model.” He spit suddenly. “The damn things all look the same to me nowadays.”

“Was it new?” asked Winter.

“The damn things all look new to me nowadays,” said Old Man Macdonald.

Steve Macdonald laughed.

“But there was someone else in the front seat when he drove out onto the road over there,” the old man said, lifting his cane to the east.

“A relative of yours?” Winter asked as they drove east. It was starting to get dark. The water in Loch Ness was more black than white now.

“Hell no,” said Macdonald. “That character probably belongs to Macdonald of Clanranald, up on the north islands.”

“What’s the difference?” asked Winter.

“Didn’t you see?”

“Besides age,” said Winter.

“My clan is originally from the western islands,” Macdonald said. “Macdonalds from Skye. Proud old clan.”

“How did you end up on the mainland?”

“My great-grandfather took the ferry over when he was very young,” Macdonald said drily, “and kept going a bit but stopped in Dallas. He really had no other choice but to leave. There was some agreement that went wrong with a MacLeod.” Macdonald turned his head. “That’s the other big clan on the islands.”