Åke Edwardson - Sail of Stone

“Flown the coop,” said Halders.

A car drove by slowly down on the street, behind them. Aneta turned around. The windows were tinted and the sun was at such an angle that the driver was only a silhouette. Halders had also turned around.

“Visitors?” said Halders.

“Can’t you go down and check?” she said.

“Scared?”

“I don’t like this,” she said.

She watched Fredrik walk down to the street. He stood next to the gate, authoritatively, as though he demanded that those in question drive by again, just as slowly.

The car returned. She thought she recognized it. Halders stepped out onto the sidewalk. The car sped up and drove away, to the south. Halders had not raised his hand. He wasn’t wearing a uniform. He was in plainclothes, as he had once put it. With emphasis on plain, Winter had retorted. Now she saw him dig out a notebook and write something.

He came back.

“I didn’t see a face, but I have the license plate number. Do you want me to call it in?”

“Yes, why not.”

“Now?”

Aneta didn’t answer.

“Now?” Halders repeated.

“Did you see that curtain move?” she said.

“Where? Nope.”

“The window in the gable. The curtain moved.”

“Did you ring the bell again?”

“Yes.”

“Then the girl has probably woken up,” said Halders.

“She should have woken up before,” said Aneta.

Halders went over to the window. He had to dodge the tall weeds that were growing under some spruce trees that stood close to the house. It must be very dark in that room, no matter the weather or season. It could be any season at all in there.

“I don’t see anything,” said Halders with a voice that was audible from where she stood. It was probably audible all the way down to the street.

“There was someone there,” she said.

Halders knocked on the window. That must also have been audible from a distance. He knocked again.

He came back.

“We can’t break in, you know,” he said.

Aneta called the number again from her cell phone. They didn’t hear any ringing from inside.

“Maybe it’s off the hook,” said Halders. “Have you tried her cell?”

“Yes.”

“She probably turned it off.”

“Something really shady is going on here,” said Aneta.

Halders looked at her. He had a new expression on his face now, or a different one.

“Have you met Anette Lindsten?” he asked.

“Barely. Three seconds.”

“Do you have a picture of her?”

“No. But I’ve seen a picture of her. One that was a few years old.”

She thought about the younger Anette. The ice pop in her hand. A child in the background was on the way into a store.

“So you don’t know what she looks like now?” asked Halders.

“No…”

“How will you recognize her, then? When you meet her?”

“It seems as though it’s never going to happen anyway.”

“If some girl opens this door and introduces herself as Anette, you won’t know if it is.”

“Quit it, Fredrik. That happened to me once already, and that’s enough.”

“Yeah, yeah, it just occurred to me.”

They heard noises behind them. A car drove onto the property.

Winter was dealing with Axel Osvald’s missing person bulletin. He conveyed the information he had received from Johanna Osvald. He had photographs of a man he had never met.

When Winter had met the man’s daughter, that one summer, the father was out at sea, maybe halfway to or from Scotland.

He had met Erik Osvald then, but he hadn’t seen him as a fisherman. But he was one then, too, a fisherman, a young fisherman.

“Maybe Osvald met someone up in the Highlands and chose to go underground,” said Ringmar, who was standing at the window.

“Go underground in the Highlands?” said Winter. “Wouldn’t that be easier in the Lowlands?”

“I will never again use a sloppy and careless phrase in this building,” said Ringmar. “No linguistic clichés from me ever again.”

“Thanks, Bertil.”

“But what do you think? That it could have been something he chose to do?”

“I don’t think he’s the type. And that’s not why he went over there.”

“Why-exactly-did he go?”

“To search for his father.”

“But it wasn’t the first time.”

“Something new had come up,” said Winter.

“The mysterious message.”

“Is it mysterious?”

Ringmar went over to the desk. They were in Winter’s office. He picked up a copy and read:

THINGS ARE NOT WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE.

JOHN OSVALD IS NOT WHAT HE SEEMS TO BE.

“Well,” said Ringmar.

“Is it mysterious?” Winter repeated.

“If nothing else, it’s mystifying,” said Ringmar.

“Enough to go over there?”

“Well…”

“You are clear and direct, Bertil. I like that.”

“There’s something tautological about this message that bothers me,” said Ringmar, looking up. “It says roughly the same thing twice.”

Winter nodded and waited.

“Things are not what they look like. That is: John is not what he seems to be. Or is considered to be. Or thought to be.” Ringmar looked up. “What is he thought to be? Dead, right? Drowned.”

“No one knows. If he drowned, that is.”

“Is that what this tells us? That he didn’t drown. That he’s been dead since the war, but that it didn’t happen by drowning?”

“How did it happen, then?” said Winter.

They had hit their stride now, with their inner dialogues turned up to an audible level. Sometimes it led to results. You never knew.

“A crime,” said Ringmar.

“He was murdered?”

“Maybe. Or died from negligence. An accident.”

“But someone knows?”

“Yes.”

“Who wrote a letter?”

“Doesn’t have to be the same person who had something to do with his disappearance. His death.”

“Things are not what they seem to be,” Winter repeated.

“If that’s how it should be interpreted,” said Ringmar. “Maybe we can’t see all the shades of meaning.”

“Then we need someone who has English as their native language,” said Winter.

“There is someone,” said Ringmar. “Your friend Macdonald.”

“He’s not an Englishman,” said Winter, “he’s a Scot.”

“Even better. The letter came from Scotland.”

Winter read the sentences again.

“It doesn’t necessarily only have to do with John Osvald,” he said. “The first line might have nothing to do with John Osvald.”

“Develop that thought.”

“It could be about those around him. His history. The people he surrounded himself with, then and now.”

“His relatives,” said Ringmar. “His children and grandchildren.”

“His children or grandchildren aren’t what they seem to be?”

Ringmar shrugged his shoulders.

Winter read the sentences for the seventeenth time that day.

“The question is what all of this means,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“The letter itself. Why it was sent. And why now? Why more than sixty years after John Osvald disappeared?”

They heard Sigge Lindsten’s voice before the car stopped. They heard his steps on the gravel. Aneta Djanali thought she saw the curtain move again. Fredrik had said it was the wind, that the window was drafty.

“Well, no one’s here right now,” said Lindsten.

That was a strange comment, thought Aneta.

“I thought you all would be here when we came,” she said.

“I had to run an errand.” He gestured with his hand. “The veterinarian had to look at Zack.”

“Anything serious?”

“They didn’t know. They admitted the dog, anyway. I guess we’ll see.”