Åke Edwardson - Sail of Stone

They had gone twenty hours west, two hundred nautical miles. Mondays.

They set the trawl. They fastened well. To pipe was an art. It was gone now.

They dragged the trawl. It ran one hundred fathoms deep.

He had missed that. He had always missed it.

They pulled up the trawl by hand. He missed that too. In rough seas it could wash over. Missed it. Speed set at three knots. The last pull, the last time they lifted the trawl for the night. They cast the anchor and were still. Lit the stern lights.

On Fridays they went to the fishing harbor with the boxes. Two hundred boxes. He knew how to shovel ice.

Bertil had stood in the cabin. Egon had run the machinery. Arne had taken care of the tools.

He and Frans had done all the other scut work. They were the youngest. They had rushed back and forth across the deck, slipping, hauling, lifting, undoing knots, and watching the fish run down into the bin. They had cleaned. Their hands had been red and cold.

They had had to prepare food. The youngest prepared the food on board.

They had gone to sleep too late and been woken too early.

Trawl haul!

Their work continued.

Later he would be at the helm himself.

They fished in the dark.

They fished all night.

They continued westward.

God!

He had sung in the Mission congregation.

Almost half the people on the island had been members of the congregation.

There was always a Bible on board.

It had been good to have someone to turn to out there.

His own father had said that no matter what happens, good things will come to a man who loves God.

Angela had made a decision in her sleep. If it worked out with Elsa. If it wasn’t for too many days.

“But I can always come home early,” she said. ‘’Different plans and all that stuff we talked about.”

“I’ll call Lotta,” said Winter.

“Don’t forget Siv.”

Wonder of wonders. Siv Winter decided within half a minute to come home and stay in Gothenburg while they were gone. She would stay with Lotta, who would take a “time-out” from the hospital.

“Everyone else is taking a time-out all of a sudden, so why not me?”

Steve Macdonald was also taking a time-out. Winter called him during the morning.

“My dad isn’t feeling well, so I have to take a trip up there anyway.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“He’ll be okay.”

“Angela is coming along. But she wants to speak with Sarah a little bit first.”

“Sarah said the same thing.”

“I met a survivor yesterday,” Winter said, and described the conversation, or whatever it was, with Arne Algotsson.

“He said something that I think was Cullen sink. Cullen is a city or a village, according to the map,” said Winter. “Cullen sink or something like that.”

“Cullen skink, ” Macdonald said, letting out a laugh. “I don’t believe this!”

“What is it?”

“Cullen skink is a local specialty, a soup made of smoked haddock, potatoes, onion, I think, and milk.”

“I see.”

“So this senile old man was sitting there talking about that soup,” said Macdonald.

“It must have made a strong impression on him,” said Winter.

“Smoked haddock tends to have that effect,” said Macdonald.

“A strange combination of ingredients in that soup,” said Winter.

“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” said Macdonald.

“So he had a connection to Cullen,” said Winter.

“Or the soup,” said Macdonald. “They have it all over Scotland.”

“Okay.”

“Unfortunately,” said Macdonald. Winter heard his smile across the line from south London. “Just like the smell of smoked or fried haddock. Why do you think I fled to London?”

“But London’s called the Smoke, isn’t it?”

“It’s a different smell,” said Macdonald, without clarifying further.

“Algotsson also talked about a coastal city that might be Buckie,” said Winter. “Do you know it?”

“We’re practically talking about my hometown, here,” said Macdonald. “Buckie? It’s a classic fishing harbor. The biggest one up there during the war, I think, and for a while after.”

“He mentioned Buckie,” said Winter, “or at least it sounded like it.”

“Didn’t the chief inspector record the conversation?” said Macdonald.

“You weren’t there,” said Winter. “And I wasn’t a chief inspector at the moment.”

“Buckie,” said Macdonald. “The Cluny Hotel is something special; the Victorians would be proud. There’s a particular hotel in Cullen, too. It’s well known up there, but I don’t remember what it’s called.”

Bergenhem was hunting for stolen goods. It was a large operation, with people from all over the city. He crossed the no-man’s-land north of Brantingsmotet. Ångpannegatan, Turbingatan. There weren’t many tips, but some of them seemed worth checking out. It was always a calculation. No one did anything for the sake of mankind. There was always a reason. Sometimes it had to do with revenge, sometimes jealousy, sometimes calculated favors and return favors, sometimes disappointment, sometimes arrogance, sometimes pure mistakes. It was like in other parts of this so-called society. The underworld wasn’t different from the regular world. Everything had a price.

A gasoline barrel was burning in a deserted roundabout. Some distance away, a few old men were hunching over their lunches, liquor. Bergenhem was playing Led Zep and looking for the address. Robert Plant was howling at heaven about the stairway up there. Bergenhem turned up the volume during the break. He could see Plant’s corkscrew curls. He had seen Zep in Copenhagen, that hair all over the stage. Jimmy Page seemed to be using his guitar as a crutch. He had been high as the sky. They could play. Bonham would die soon, but he beat his drums to pieces and got new ones onto the stage. Jeez.

Bergenhem found his way in another roundabout and drove up to the warehouse and turned off the motor. He looked around and dialed the number to operation command, which was in Kvillebäcken for some reason. Maybe it was the McDonald’s at Backaplan that attracted them there.

“I’m outside now,” he said.

“Where’s your colleague?” crackled the communication radio.

“There’s no colleague here. Where is he supposed to be?”

“He was supposed to wait.”

“Then he probably got tired,” said Bergenhem, and he saw a small truck drive up to one of the loading docks and stop and stand with its motor running.

“A vehicle,” he said into the microphone, “a truck with a canvas cover. Looks like it’s privately owned.”

“What are they doing?”

“I don’t see anyone. It’s idling. In front of dock D.”

“Do they see you?”

“If the driver turns his head one hundred eighty degrees, yes.”

“Your colleague is supposed to be standing there,” scratched the voice. “Right there.”

“Good thing he wasn’t, then,” said Bergenhem. He saw the cloud of smoke from the tailpipe before the truck shot off. “Now it’s taking off!”

“Fuck.”

“Should I stay here or follow it?”

It crackled again, suddenly loud, like rusty metal against a rough stone.

“He’s disappearing,” said Bergenhem.

“Tail him.”

Bergenhem rolled out of the area where the warehouse stood in an angular semicircle, trying to surround rusty containers that were piled on one another like building blocks.

“There could be people in there, in the warehouse,” he said into the microphone.

“We’re on our way,” said the voice.

Aneta Djanali was having a few words with Ringmar.