Sail of Stone (42 page)

“No idea,” said Lindsten.

“It was you!” said Halders.

“Why, that’s a surprise,” said Lindsten.

“And one more thing,” said Halders. “The truck had stolen license plates.”

“How do you know that?”

“Sorry?”

“Maybe it was the truck that was stolen?” said Lindsten.

“And the plates weren’t stolen?” Halders quickly looked to the side, at Aneta. “Is that what you mean?”

“It was just a thought,” Lindsten said, shrugging. “Who were they, then?”

“Who?” asked Halders.

“The guys in the truck,” said Lindsten.

“Who said there was more than one?” said Halders.

“I was there, wasn’t I?” Lindsten smiled a smile that had to be called sly, thought Aneta. “And I
was
there. And I remember that a truck was parked outside the door when I came out, and I told them that they couldn’t park there, and then they asked directions to somewhere and then they left.” He inhaled through his nose twice. “I don’t know if your witness heard what we said, but if he did then he can confirm that.”

“They were waiting for you,” Halders said.

Lindsten made a gesture that might have expressed resignation to dealing with the feeble-minded person across from him.

“I’m going to tell you one more thing,” said Halders.

“Why should I listen to all of this?” said Lindsten.

“In one of the warehouses on Hisingen we found what we believe is the entirety of Anette’s belongings from the apartment in Kortedala,” said Halders. “We have checked the lists from the record carefully. We have been there. And there are a few framed photos.”

“That’s good news,” said Lindsten. “Is that why I’m here? To identify the things, or whatever it’s called?”

“Most of the stuff in that warehouse was all helter-skelter, but Anette’s things were placed very neatly on their own behind separate screens. Everything was very neat when it came to your daughter’s belongings.”

“I’m thankful for that,” said Lindsten.

“Why do you think that was?” asked Halders.

“No idea,” Lindsten answered. “I’m just glad that her things might have turned up.”

Lindsten went on his way to Brantingsmotet in a marked car. Aneta and Halders followed.

Lindsten recognized the things as Anette’s.

He signed some papers.

They waved good-bye out on the pavement.

Inside it was like a hangar with odds and ends and furniture and kitchen appliances and the devil and his grandma.

“There’s more than I expected,” said Aneta.

“There are more warehouses like this one,” said Halders.

“My God.”

“What is it that I’m not getting here?” said Halders.

“And me,” said Aneta.

“Lindsten’s daughter is subjected to threats and suspected assault by her husband. The neighbors report it. She doesn’t want to file a report, which is all too tragically familiar. She flees to her home. Her apartment is cleaned out under the supervision of Detective Inspector Aneta Djanal—”

“Please,” Aneta interrupted.

“—Djanali, and that very apartment is then sublet to Moa Ringmar of all people, and she moves in and moves out quick as fuck when she learns about the history of the place. At the same time, Gothenburg’s
Finest are working on a large operation to crack a gigantic theft ring with an IKEA-class warehouse on Hisingen, and a truck leaves from there, maybe on a mission, maybe not, and it drives straight to Anette’s apartment but before anyone goes into the building Sigge Lindsten comes out and calls it off.”

“What is it he calls off?” said Aneta.

“That’s my question, too,” said Halders. “One guess is that they were going to clean out the apartment again. But the guys in the truck didn’t know it was already empty. Eventually someone tells Lindsten that they’re on their way there and he shows up and explains the situation and the thieves take off again.”

“He could have just called,” said Aneta.

“Maybe he didn’t dare.”

“Was he already so suspicious? Of us?”

“He’s not dumb,” said Halders. “And he probably didn’t think Bergenhem was tailing the truck.”

“So Lindsten rents to people who are then robbed of all they own.”

“Yes.”

“Why not,” said Aneta.

“That is what we were thinking when we brought him in just now, isn’t it?”

“And others are doing the same thing?”

“Yes, or they have good contacts among the landlords.”

“Mmhmm.”

“Then of course there’s the question of why, in that case, he stole his own daughter’s belongings.”

Aneta thought. She thought about her short encounter with Anette Lindsten, about Hans Forsblad, about his sister, who seemed as nuts as her brother. About Sigge Lindsten, about Mrs. Lindsten, about all those people, all of whom seemed extremely dangerous, no, not dangerous, peculiar, evasive, like shadows who got tangled in their lies. They disintegrated, became something else, someone else. She saw Anette’s face again. The broken cheekbone that had healed but didn’t look like it once had, and never would. Her eyes. A nervous hand up in her hair. A life that in some ways was over.

“A warning,” said Aneta.

“He wanted to warn his daughter?” said Halders.

“A warning,” said Aneta, nodding to herself. She looked up at Halders. “Or a punishment.”

“Punishment? Punishment for what?”

“I don’t know if I dare to think about it,” said Aneta. She closed her eyes and opened them again. “It has something to do with Forsblad. And his sister.” She grabbed the arm of Halders’s jacket. “It has to do with them. But not how we think.”

Halders had the sense to keep quiet.

“It’s not like we think,” she repeated. “They’re playing some game. Or keeping quiet about something they don’t want us to know. Or they’re just scared. One of them, or some of them, are scared.”

“Like I just said,” said Halders. “What is it that I’m not getting here?”

Maybe we shouldn’t know, she thought, suddenly and intensely. We shouldn’t know! Maybe we should let it go, like a hot coal. Maybe Fredrik was right when he said that a long time ago. Maybe it’s dangerous, really dangerous, for us, for me.

For me.

“So she’s done something to her father that he has to punish her for?” Halders scraped his hand across the back of his head. “He steals the furniture?” Halders looked at Aneta. “Of course, it could also be as simple as that the warehouse out on Hisingen is a perfect storage facility for her things for the time being. Lindsten had the manpower and the vehicle, and Anette wanted out of the apartment fast, so Dad sent his thieves there to get the whole lot and then they drove to the warehouse and stacked it up nice and neat. Think of how it’s arranged all by itself, behind screens. Most of the other stuff is all helter-skelter out there.”

“Does Anette know about it, do you think? The warehouse? And the stolen goods? The trafficking?”

“No idea,” said Halders. “But surely she wonders where her things are.”

“If she knows, maybe it’s yet another reason to keep quiet,” said Aneta. “She doesn’t dare to do anything else.”

That evening she ran a hot bath. The sound of the water rushed through the entire apartment. She walked to the bathroom and dropped her clothes behind her. She had always left her clothes everywhere, and her mother had picked them up after her.

Now Fredrik picked them up.

“Jesus Christ,” he sometimes said when pieces of clothing were lying from the door to the bathroom.

It was the first time he followed her the whole way.

She had dragged him down into the half-full bathtub before he had had time to take off a damn thing.

That had been good.

She threw her panties into the hamper next to the washing machine and climbed carefully into the hot water and turned off the faucet. She sank very slowly down into the water, one inch, two, three, and so forth.

She lay with her chin underwater. There was foam everywhere. The water started to cool, but she intended to keep lying there. It was quiet in the apartment. No steps up above that was rare. No banging from the elevator door out in the stairwell; that was rare too. No sounds of traffic; it wasn’t audible from here. She heard only the familiar sounds of her own home, the refrigerator in the kitchen, the freezer, some other hum; she’d never really figured out what it was but she’d accepted it long ago, the faucet that dripped slooowly behind her neck, some sigh that could have been from the electronics that were scattered here and there in modern homes.

She heard a sound.

She didn’t recognize it.

Macdonald led the way north on High Street. They passed many shops and cafés. Here there were neighborhood services for the locals; we crushed those long ago in Sweden, thought Winter. This place might be poorer, but not in that way.

Macdonald stopped at one of the dark stone houses. A sign hung above the door: The
Forres Gazette
—Forres, Elgin, Nairn.

They went in. They were expected.

“Awful long time, no see, Steve,” said the man who came up to them. He gave Macdonald a punch on the back.

Macdonald clipped him back and introduced Winter, who quickly extended his hand for safety’s sake.

“Duncan Mackay,” said the man, who looked older but was the same age as Macdonald, who had told Winter about his classmate in the car.

Mackay’s hair was coal black and shoulder length. He had matching circles under his eyes. He guided them in behind a wooden counter.
They sat down on two chairs in front of Mackay’s desk, which contrasted almost comically with Chief Inspector Craig’s in Inverness. They could barely see the editor on the other side of the piles of paper. Even though he was standing.

“Coffee, beer, whisky?” asked Mackay. “Claret? Marijuana?”

Macdonald looked at Winter.

“No thanks,” Winter said, pointing at his pack of Corps, which he had taken out. “I have smokes.”

Mackay had a lit cigarette in his mouth.

Macdonald shook his head at Mackay.

“We just saw Lorraine,” he said when Mackay had sat down and rolled a bit to the side in his chair.

“Steve the Heartbreaker Macdonald,” said Mackay. “It took her some time.” He turned to Winter. “To get over it.”

“She told us about Robbie.”

“Yeah, shit.”

“No doubt he’s disappeared.”

“He’ll show up,” said Mackay. “Unfortunately.”

They sat in silence for a few seconds, as though to reflect upon the fate of humanity. The room lay half in shadow.

Mackay got up and searched through the top of the piles of paper. He held a paper up to the light from the window.

“I asked the local editors to look around, but no one has seen this Osvald guy,” said Mackay. “Axel Osvald, right? There was a bulletin that went out, too, and obviously we checked then too—a foreigner who dies in Moray—but nothing about the man.”

“Okay,” said Macdonald.

“Your colleagues over at the Ramnee haven’t seen or heard anything either,” said Mackay.

“I know. I called a few days ago.”

“Have you been there?”

“Not yet.”

Mackay read from his paper again.

“There’s just one thing …”

“Yes?”

“Billy in the editorial department in Elgin did a thing about the fish market’s new dismal numbers, and he interviewed people up in Buckie.
That was before the bulletin.” Mackay looked up. “Billy’s a little slow, but he’s good. But slow. Okay, he was talking to some of the old forgotten guys at the shipyard and he had parked the car on one of the little streets right across from there, and when he came back and he was going to drive home he saw a Corolla parked on the same street. It had been there when he arrived, too. Metallic green.”

“Did he get the number?”

“Hell no. Why should he have? He wasn’t even thinking about that then. He didn’t remember it until after the bulletin came out. No. Not then. It was when I called him yesterday. And actually, not even then. He called this morning and said that he’d seen the car.”

“Is he sure?”

“He’s pretty good with cars. And of course it appeared to be new, he could see that. A new car in Buckie … well, you don’t see that every day. At least not on those streets.”

H
e had made a journey he hadn’t planned on. It was a farewell. If you saw it on a map it looked like a circle, or at least part of a circle.

When had he last walked down Broad Street? Years or days or hours. A red sky. Down toward Onion Street and toward the harbor the sky was always red, always.

Four hundred boats per year!

Biggest whitefish port in Europe.

And out there, there were people he could have been close to. Maybe. No.

The smell. It was the sea, as it has always been, and then something more, which he hadn’t smelled then but did now: oil.

This city had changed after the oil. The trawlers were there, still a forest of masts, but people who walked the streets came because of the oil too.

The city had grown. The entrances were different, that was a sure sign of everything that had happened.

He stood on one of the western breakwaters. The trawlers here were largest. There was a blue one twenty yards away. He saw a man moving on the quarterdeck. He read the name on the trawler, which was made of steel.

That was something else, a hull of steel.

He heard a yell from the man down by the mess, a few words.

He lingered outside the Mission.

It was here.

The next-to-last night.

Meals 7:00–2:30, then and now. The Congregational church. Sick bed. Emergency facilities.

A notice that hadn’t existed then:

Zaphire
went down in October 1997, four lives.

Everyone knew almost everything here. There were exceptions. There was one.

He walked in but turned around in the outer room. He was pushed away by the memories, and by something else: A man looked up from the counter, an expression on his face.

He was on his way out, didn’t look around, he wasn’t invisible here, he was deaf to the voice behind his back, the shout.

Caley Fisheries was still there. The fish market. There was a new notice at the entrance. Prohibited: smoking, spitting, eating, drinking, breaking of boxes, unclean clothing, unclean footwear. A guide for life, too.