Åke Edwardson - Sail of Stone

“We would like to discuss it with Hans Forsblad,” said Halders. “Listen, do you want to answer the question or not?”

“What was the question?”

Halders sighed again. But he remained calm. Aneta saw that the vein in his forehead was pulsing, but Susanne didn’t notice.

We have to stay in character. She does, too. It’s a question of who is best at staying in character.

“He stayed with me for a couple of days,” she said, looking around to indicate the direction. “But he isn’t here anymore.”

“When was that?” asked Halders.

“When was wh-”

“WHEN DID HE STAY with you?” asked Halders, smiling as he lowered his voice in the middle of the sentence.

“Uh… last week. Over the weekend.”

“What were you doing up in Krokslätt an hour and a half ago?” asked Halders.

“I don’t know-”

“What-were-you-doing-up-in-Krokslätt-an-hour-and-a-half-ago?” Halders asked again, a clearer question.

“I wasn’t there,” she said.

We know, we know, thought Aneta. Then you would have seen us, and you couldn’t have hidden that if you’re not an absolute psychopath, or a terminal Alzheimer’s patient.

“Your car was there,” said Halders.

“How… how do you know that?” she asked, looking surprised, but Aneta could also see that she knew something more.

“We were standing on a street in the peaceful neighborhood of Krokslätt, and your car slowly went by, a few yards from us, back and forth,” said Halders, holding out the notebook so she could see her own license plate number. She knows he wouldn’t have had time to write it down now, thought Aneta.

“I… was taking a drive,” she said.

“Careful!” said Halders.

“Uh… what…”

“Be careful what you say. Just tell it like it was.” He looked her in the eyes. “Like it is.”

She looked out at the water again. What the hell is this? thought Aneta. What have we landed in? Why is she protecting that jerk? Has he threatened her, too?

She tried to look for injuries to Susanne’s face, but she didn’t see any. She only saw an expression in her eyes that could have been fear, but mostly of Fredrik, or no, more like of his words, of the truth. She knows that you shouldn’t lie to the police; that’s never good. It’s hard to maintain lies, to keep to them. As hard as it is to keep promises.

“I loaned out the car,” she said, with her eyes fastened on one of the churches in Masthugget.

“To whom?”

She looked at Halders as though she were waiting for him to scream “Careful!” before she even opened her mouth.

“Hans needed to borrow the car to run an errand,” she said. “May I go in now?” She moved. “I’m actually in a bit of a hurry.” She started to look in her purse, as if for a key.

“Of course,” said Halders, stepping to the side as though he had been blocking all escape routes until just then. Which of course he had been. “Thanks for your help.”

They watched her walk to the building, which looked like a fortress, but a modern, pleasant one. There were boats in its moat.

“I love this job,” said Halders, and there was no irony in his voice.

They held the meeting in Ringmar’s office for a change of scenery. There was a dead plant in the window. Ringmar didn’t know what it was called.

“Time to bury that,” said Halders, pointing with his whole hand.

“Done,” said Ringmar. “It’s in dirt, isn’t it?”

“Funny, Bertil, funny.”

“So what do you want to do?” said Winter.

“Bring him in for questioning,” said Aneta.

“Fredrik?”

Halders ran his hand over his crew cut. He thought he looked younger now. His hair had started to thin out, and there was only one thing to do. He looked more dangerous; the whole department could probably agree on that. It was perfect for Halders. Younger and more dangerous.

“Well, I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting Franz Flattenführer,” he said.

“Does that mean that you would like to?” said Winter.

“I don’t know,” said Halders. “It certainly seems to be impossible to meet his wife, Agneta, and hear what she says.”

“Anette,” said Aneta.

“What Anette actually has to say,” Halders corrected himself. “I don’t know Hans Fritz, but I know the type. If he’s the type I know, questioning could make him really dangerous.”

“For whom?” asked Ringmar.

“For her, of course.”

“Her name is Lindsten,” said Aneta. “She never changed her name to any of the ones you give Forsblad.”

“Why do you do that, Fredrik?” asked Ringmar. “Why do you always do that?”

“What?”

“The names, like you got them out of a war novel by Sven Hassel.”

“Because this is a free job,” said Halders. “And I like Svein.”

Ringmar looked at Aneta.

“Let it go,” he said. “Let it go for a little while.”

“No,” said Aneta.

“What is your reasoning on this, Aneta?” asked Winter. He looks more curious than surprised, she thought.

“We ought to talk to him. I’m tired of all the damn cases where the men are left alone until it’s almost too late. And sometimes it is too late.”

“I want you to have a conversation with the woman,” said Winter. “Anette.”

“What do you think I’ve been trying to do for the last few days?” said Aneta.

“I’ve tried, too,” said Halders.

“Well, apparently she doesn’t want to talk to us,” said Ringmar.

“Have you tried, too?” said Halders.

“I meant ‘us’ in the sense of the police,” said Ringmar.

“She was inside that house, but she didn’t want anything to do with the police,” said Halders.

“It could have been the mother,” said Winter.

“No,” said Halders. “It was a younger woman.”

“Okay,” said Winter, “if you want to bring him in, be my guest.”

“Can’t you issue a restraining order while you’re at it?” asked Aneta.

“He can’t get near her anyway,” said Halders. “No one will answer the door.”

“What about the cabin by the sea?” said Aneta.

“Question him,” said Winter. “After that, maybe we won’t have a problem anymore.”

Winter went to his office and called Nueva Andalucía. He could see the white stone house before him while he waited for his mother to put down her shaker and pick up the phone. No, that was unfair. She had cut back since Dad died. Either that or the abyss, at the bottom of one last bottle of Lariós’s local gin.

He’d been down there when his father died, not in the abyss but at Hospital Costa del Sol, with Sierra Blanca outside, and above, and with his father, who took one last breath a day or two after the last conversation they’d had together in their lives; that last little while, which had been the first in many years.

The hours afterward had been the most difficult of his life up to then; the hardest, the sharpest, the meanest, the heaviest, heavy like blocks of stone.

His father lay in the mountain earth. From there you could see across the sea, all the way to Africa, which was a desert there on the other side.

He had thought that he would lose himself during the flight back home, fall, as though from the plane.

He had no nice memories of his flights to Costa del Sol, neither from the way home nor the way there.

His mother answered at last.

I’m melting,” said Siv Winter. “It’s ninety-three degrees here right now. It was over one hundred last week.”

“I know it’s trying and difficult,” said Erik Winter.

“Eh, I didn’t mean it like that, Erik.”

He smiled to himself. His mother had many merits, but she didn’t understand sarcasm. Maybe that’s a good quality, he thought. Too many people go about spreading sarcasm around for others to interpret. Oh, you didn’t mean it like that? Oh, no. Okay, I guess I’m not smart. I should have understood that you meant it the other way around.