Åke Edwardson - Sail of Stone

“Not with Mama?” she said, giggling.

“Not yet,” he said, laughing too.

“Is it a nice hotel?” said Elsa.

“Very nice,” he said.

“I want to stay at a hotel too,” she said, but he didn’t hear any disappointment in her voice. It was only a statement.

“You’ll get to stay at lots of hotels, sweetie.”

“Promise!” she yelled.

Of course he promised. Up to a certain age, you could promise things, and perhaps sometimes later too, but at some point she would have to keep her own promises. Out there. On her own.

He knew that it would go quickly; he had the proof around him. Look at Bertil and his Moa. Winter had started working with Ringmar when Moa was about the same age as Elsa was now, a little older. It went quickly, the days rushed by like wild horses across the hills. Winter had had a word with Ringmar about the circus in Kortedala before he left. Bergenhem had told some story about IKEA. The truck was still there in the morning. Smart guys. They must have seen Bergenhem. Or else someone had called them in the truck. Aneta had had her suspicions about who.

Their room phone rang. Winter had just ended his conversation with Elsa.

“Call for Mr. Winter,” the receptionist said.

He heard Macdonald’s voice. “The trip went well?”

“Excellent.”

“Is the hotel okay?”

“It’s excellent, too. Where are you?”

“We got into town just a little while ago. Have you eaten lunch?”

“No.”

“May I treat you then? Right now? I suggest the Royal Highland Hotel. It’s right next to the train station. Go straight into the lobby and we’ll be sitting on the right in the bar. Sarah’s hair is black as sin and I’m wearing a kilt in the Macdonald clan tartan.”

“How am I supposed to recognize that?” said Winter.

He heard Macdonald’s laugh.

“Red and black,” said Macdonald.

“Will we have time, then?” said Winter.

“We’re meeting Craig in two hours,” said Macdonald. “He’s out on some job now.”

“Have you spoken to the daughter?” asked Winter.

“Today, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Yes. She’s going to be there too.”

“Any news about the autopsy?”

“Yes. There’s no poison in the body. And preparations have been under way so she can fly home with her father as soon as tonight.”

“So soon?”

“No reason for the body to stay here. And there’s a late-afternoon plane from London to Gothenburg this evening.”

“Okay. Is the Royal Highland up the main street, as in the one that goes right at the bridge?” asked Winter.

“Yes. You remember, I see.”

“Wasn’t it called the Station Hotel before?”

“That’s exactly right, too. Go up Bridge Street a few hundred yards and then take a left on Inglis and then you’ll see the station. How is Angela, by the way?”

“She’s excellent too. And Sarah?”

“She thinks it will be fun to meet Angela. I’ve told her so much about her.”

“You have?”

Macdonald laughed again and hung up.

The lobby of the Royal Highland was large and grand, which wasn’t surprising since the hotel had opened in 1854. The place had obviously been renovated recently, but everything still seemed to be a hundred fifty years old, from a century that had apparently been as showy as everything they could see in there. Angela let out a whistle, and Winter felt the same.

Macdonald got up from a table in the open cocktail bar to the right. He wasn’t wearing a kilt, but Winter recognized him anyway. He hadn’t changed that Winter could see. The same villainous, swarthy looks, the same long, bony body that seemed as strong as hemp. Macdonald raised his hand and said something to the woman who had also stood up, and then Winter saw that Macdonald’s ponytail was gone.

It was a pleasant lunch. Macdonald had suggested fish and chips in all seriousness, because it was the bar’s famous specialty, with tartar sauce.

“I’ve never eaten fish and chips,” said Angela.

“Jeez, then it’s about time,” said Macdonald.

“Some things are worth not trying,” Sarah Macdonald said, placing her hand on Angela’s arm, “and this may be one of them.”

Angela laughed. She thought she would get along well with Sarah Macdonald. Steve’s wife was taller than average and thin, but in a strong way like her husband. She looked like Steve, including her face, almost as though they were siblings. The two had met when he started working as a green constable in Inverness.

“I s’pose this is the time and place for my first fish and chips,” said Angela, in response to Sarah.

“One should try everything once, except incest and folk dancing,” Macdonald said, and he looked around and called the waiter and ordered food and drinks. Winter had declined a glass of malt whisky-later, later-but said yes to a pint of Scotch ale whose name he didn’t recognize.

The food was good. To be sure, it was only fish and chips, but this was the place.

It was a good reunion. Winter had missed Macdonald, and maybe Macdonald had felt the same. Angela had met him when he came over to Gothenburg during the resolution of a painful case he and Winter had worked on together, in Gothenburg and London. They had become close. They had supported each other emotionally, because it was a matter of keeping one’s head during the almost unmentionable incidents that they had not only been forced to witness, but also to be involved in. That was the worst part of their respective jobs on either side of the water: to be forced to witness and to be forced to be involved.

“What do you say?” he heard Sarah ask.

“Suits me fine,” Angela said, and turned to Winter: “Sarah has offered to show me the city.”

“Then perhaps I may treat you to dinner this evening?” asked Winter.

“You may,” said Macdonald.

“May I suggest the Italian restaurant in the Glenmoriston?” asked Winter.

“You may do that too,” said Macdonald, and Sarah nodded.

The sun was out again as they stood outside the hotel, but the sky was still veiled by low clouds. Angela and Sarah went to the left and Macdonald showed Winter toward the station building.

“We can walk through it and out the other side, to the car rental place,” he said.

They walked through the departure hall, which was smaller than Winter remembered. He had sat here for an hour or two, waiting for his departure for Edinburgh via Perth. The train had gone straight over the Highlands, with a certain amount of effort, and he still remembered the odd landscape. It had been like an ocean floor a thousand meters above the sea. And it had suddenly become very cold in the train car. He still remembered some of the towns up there, not so far from here, Aviemore, Kingussie, Newtonmore, and Dalwhinnie at the northern point of Loch Ericht, Lake Eric you could say. There was a decent malt whisky from the distillery in Dalwhinnie, but he wasn’t sure that Macdonald would agree with him.

They walked past the tracks and out on Strothers Lane and directly onto Railway Terrace. Winter could see the Budget sign and the shining rental cars in the parking lot behind the office.

“Not a trace,” said the man behind the counter, who said his name was Frank Cameron, and he got up and followed them out. “It’s damn strange.” He had been the one who helped Axel Osvald.

“Customers must have their cars stolen sometimes, right?” asked Macdonald. Winter thought that Macdonald’s Scots accent became stronger when he spoke with this man, whose accent was quite strongly pronounced.

“Yes, yes, but the car is just gone now. In other cases we always find them. Or the cop… police find them sooner or later. Often sooner.” He looked around and pointed at a metallic green three-door Toyota Corolla, which a younger man was in the process of washing in the courtyard. “It was the twin of that one, this year’s model, same color.”