Åke Edwardson - Sail of Stone

“She isn’t here,” said the man.

The dog growled in agreement and turned and disappeared.

“But she moved home,” said Aneta.

“What? What do you mean? And who are you, by the way?”

She finally showed her ID and said her name.

“What do you want with her?” said the man, without looking at what she was holding in her hand.

Aneta felt something horrible inside, a feeling of dizziness.

She tried to see past the man into the hall, and she saw the dog waiting for her, or for some part of her. The monster was already licking its lips.

She felt the feeling again: a lost foothold. She made her voice stronger than it was.

“I would like to speak with her father.”

“What?”

The man looked truly surprised.

“Sigge. Lindsten,” said Aneta. “I would like to speak with him.”

She saw doubt in the man’s face. He sneaked a look at the ID, which she still held in her hand.

“Is that a real badge?” he said with a tone that said “Are you a real police officer?”

“Is her father home?” said Aneta. “Sigge Lindsten? Is he in the house?”

“ I’m Sigge Lindsten, for God’s sake,” said the stranger in the door. “ I’m her dad!”

She saw the other face in front of her, the other Lindsten dad who had worked calmly in Aneta’s apartment, removing everything that was there. The dad, the nice and collected one. And the brother, the dismissive brother.

“Pe… Peter,” said Aneta, the feeling of dizziness more and more marked.

“What? Who are you raving about now?” said the man.

“Peter Lindsten. Her brother. Anette’s brother.”

“Anette doesn’t have a brother, dammit!” said the man.

Bertil Ringmar was hanging around the window, gazing out at the river, Fattighusån. The buildings on the other side were new, private residences for the privileged. The poorhouse for which the stream was named was gone now. They’re gone all over now, he thought. The houses are gone but the poor are still here.

“Don’t you get depressed, looking out over Fattighusån every day?” he said, turning to Winter, who was sitting at his desk doing nothing.

“I do.”

“Do something about it, then.”

Winter let out a laugh.

“That’s the point,” he said.

“It’s the point for you to be depressed?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Then everything is so much easier when you leave here.”

“Is that why you leave so often?”

“Yes.”

“Mmhmm.”

“I have thought about it,” said Winter, “about this damn office.”

“What have you thought?”

“That I don’t want to be here anymore. Sit here anymore.”

“You don’t?”

“I’m going to set up an office in the town.”

“Are you?”

“In a café. Or a bar.”

“Your office in a bar?”

“Yes.”

“Interrogations in a bar?”

“Yes.”

“That’s brilliant.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Have you talked to Birgersson?”

“Do I have to?”

Ringmar smiled. Birgersson was a chief inspector and the chief of the homicide department. Winter was a chief inspector and deputy chief. Ringmar was only a chief inspector, and that was enough for him. He knew that nothing worked without him anyway. Look at Winter. Look at him! Sitting on his chair and doing absolutely nothing, and it would stay that way if Ringmar weren’t there. If, for example, he didn’t keep this conversation going.

Look at this room. There was a sink in one corner, where Winter could shave if he was restless. There was a map of Gothenburg on one wall. There were some mysterious circles and lines from past investigations. There were lots of lines. Winter-and he himself-had redrawn the map of the city. Their map showed the criminal Gothenburg. That city stretched in many directions, to unfamiliar points. No such points existed in the official map of Gothenburg.

Winter was sitting in a chair that was entirely too comfortable, too new. He had recently rewallpapered the office. He had put in new bookshelves, different lamps from the ones that shone the way for other colleagues in other rooms in this beautiful building. He had lugged in his own little furniture arrangement.

It was time to get out of here. A café. A bar.

On the floor, a yard from Ringmar, stood the eternal Panasonic and the eternal tenor sax wailing atonal blues. Coltrane? No. Something else, from our time. It was good. Depressingly good.

“What is it?” said Ringmar, nodding toward the portable stereo.

“Michael Brecker,” said Winter. “And not just him. Pat Metheny, Jack DeJohnette, Dave Holland, Joey Calderazzo, McCoy Tyner, Don Alias.”

“Alias? What’s his real name?”

Winter laughed again and lit a Corps. The thin cigarillo made a bobbing motion in his mouth.

“You listed a whole investigation squad,” said Ringmar.

“If you want to look at it that way.”

“May I borrow it?” said Ringmar.

Winter turned around in his chair and reached for the CD rack and took out a CD case and tossed it like a Frisbee to Ringmar, who caught it with an elegant motion. He saw a man’s back, clad in a black coat, wandering along a river. It said “Tales from the Hudson” at the bottom. Ringmar thought of the sluggish river behind him and thought of something else.

“The Hudson River,” he said.

Winter knew what he was thinking about.

“How is Martin?” asked Winter.

“Good.”

“Is he still in New York?”

“Yes.”

Ringmar’s son Martin worked as a chef at a good restaurant in Manhattan. Third Avenue. He had a complicated relationship with his father. Or maybe it was the other way around. Winter didn’t know, but he had his own idea of what had happened. He hadn’t asked, not about everything. And Ringmar had reestablished contact with his son. They spoke to each other, before it was too late. For Winter it had been too late, or almost too late. He had spoken with his father days before his death. Bengt Winter had died at Hospital Costa del Sol outside of Marbella and Winter had been there. It was the first time they’d seen each other in five or six years, and the first time they’d spoken to each other. It was a tragedy. Worth crying oneself to sleep over night after night.

“Have you thought about going over and visiting soon?” asked Winter.

“Thought about it.”

“Go, for fuck’s sake.”

Ringmar moved his head in time with the piano music that streamed through the room. He rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“They had some sort of catering job for a firm in the World Trade Center,” he said.

Winter didn’t answer, waited.

“Martin was there sometimes; he was in charge of getting the buffet set up or something.”

“When did he tell you that?” asked Winter.

“When do you think? After nine-eleven, of course. There was no reason to before.”

Winter nodded.

“But he wasn’t there that day.” Ringmar walked away from the window and sat on the chair on the other side of the desk. Winter took a drag. It sounded like the volume had been turned up, but the music had just changed tempo, become even more nervous. Desperate. Tales from New York. “Good God. He was supposed to have been there that day but that consulting firm or whatever the hell it was changed the reception to the next day.” Ringmar rasped out a rough sound, like half a laugh. “There was no reception the next day.”

“How did Martin react?”

“He’s thanking God, I think.”

“Mmhmm.”

“He’s started to visit the church next door,” said Ringmar, and Winter thought that his face brightened. “He says that he sits there without praying or anything. But that he feels peace there. And thankfulness, he says.”