Åke Edwardson - Sail of Stone

The Grampian Police had their headquarters on Finlayson Street, North Aberdeenshire Sub-Division. The street was in the northern outskirts, where strong winds blew in all directions. The sky was blue and the houses gray. There was a chill in the air. The house directly across from the police station was called Thule Villa. Winter thought of Prince Valiant on the crooked sign above the closed-down gas station in Dallas.

They were met by Sergeant Steve Nicoll, a skinny young detective with a determined expression. He didn’t know Macdonald but he knew of him. Macdonald had called the week before. Nicoll had done what he could.

“There’s not much about those blokes,” he said. “They kept to themselves.”

“What happened after the trawler disappeared?” Macdonald asked. “With the two Swedes who stayed behind?”

“They were here during the investigation of the shipwreck, at first, and then they just disappeared.”

Winter nodded.

“They showed up in Sweden, I assume.”

Winter nodded again.

“There are suspicions that they were involved in smuggling,” said Macdonald.

“Are there?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s not impossible.”

“What kind of goods could it have been?” asked Winter.

“Hmm… I guess everything was worth smuggling during the war.”

“What was the hardest?” Winter asked. What was worth disappearing for, he thought. Committing serious crimes for. Possibly dying for. “Was there anything that was taboo?” he asked.

“Possibly weapons,” said Nicoll. “Depending on where they came from and who they went to.”

“The resistance movement?” asked Winter.

“There were several,” answered Macdonald.

Nicoll nodded.

“There were those who hated the English more than they hated the Germans,” said Macdonald.

They were standing out on the stairs. The wind tore at the leaves above the open field between the row houses. There were two marked cars outside the station. There was a notice in the stairwell behind them: WE WILL DO OUR BEST.

“How many of you are there here?” asked Macdonald.

“Thirty men,” said Nicoll. “The CID is in Aberdeen.”

“How many detectives?”

“Twelve. The chief inspector is in Peterhead.” Nicoll waved a greeting to two young policewomen who passed them going up the stairs. Both had blond hair. They each cast a glance at Macdonald and Winter. Nicoll smiled. “Both of those gals are unmarried,” he said.

“Unlike us,” said Macdonald.

“So?”

“What’s the biggest thing you work with here?” asked Winter. “The biggest problem?”

“The usual old stuff in new forms,” Nicoll said. “Smuggling. Now it’s heroin.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Unknown ten years ago, familiar now.”

“It’s like at home in Gothenburg,” said Winter.

“It’s like everywhere,” said Nicoll. There was clear resignation in his voice. It was something you only showed to your colleagues, and seldom even then.

Macdonald scratched his head.

“Where would you have hidden if you wanted to disappear for good during the war?” he asked.

Sergeant Nicoll squinted at the sun, which hung above Thule Villa and felt surprisingly strong. Winter felt for his sunglasses in his jacket pocket.

“There are several places along the coast,” said Nicoll. “Fishing villages, smuggling villages where everyone learned to mind their own business and not ask questions. And sometimes to tolerate strangers.”

“Name a place,” said Macdonald.

Winter put on his black sunglasses. Nicoll and Macdonald got darker skin.

“Pennan,” Nicoll said, jerking his head to the left. “I would have chosen Pennan.”

Winter and Macdonald drove via the B9031, which was smaller and close to the sea, through Sandhaven and Rosehearty, strongholds of smuggling with medieval skylines.

The road down to the villages was marked with a barely visible sign. Here there were open spaces and steep slopes down to the sea. The road curved with a thirty-five-degree grade. It was like driving on a roller-coaster.

Pennan was a row of small, white-plastered stone houses next to the quay, two hundred yards long at most. The harbor was small and protected by broad breakwaters. The wind was strong over Pennan Bay. The water was tossed up toward the houses, which lay in shadow under the red cliffs that hung like half a threat. The beach was full of stones. A black log of driftwood sat halfway up the beach.

They had parked outside a house with a dolphin on the wall: Dolphin Cottage, number ten.

“Do you remember the film?” asked Macdonald.

“Yes,” said Winter, “and I actually thought of it not so long ago.”

“Do you recognize the village, then?”

“I think so…”

“The houses are still here,” said Macdonald. “But the film is an illusion. Or a bluff, if you prefer. A good example of how it’s possible to lie with pictures.”

“Is it? How so?”

“Well, you see this little rocky beach,” Macdonald said, nodding toward it. “But in the film, Burt Lancaster wandered around on a rather impressive beach, and it was deserted.”

“Yes.”

“So they put the houses here in Pennan together with a beach in Morar,” Macdonald said. “It’s on the North Sea, just south of Mallaig. A ferry goes from there across to Armadale on Skye.”

“Aha. That’s your ancestors’ neighborhood.”

“Yes.” Macdonald locked the car with the remote and started to walk. “They edited Pennan and Morar together.” He whipped his hand around in the air. “An illusion.”

“I remember that recluse in the film,” said Winter. “He lived in some shack on the beach.”

“Maybe we’ll find him here,” said Macdonald.

“I remember the inn, too, and the innkeeper.”

“It’s still here,” said Macdonald.

They were standing outside Pennan Inn. Temporarily closed due to bad weather.

“We could have stayed overnight here,” said Macdonald. He looked up at the sky. It was starting to grow dark.

Winter turned around.

“I recognize that telephone booth,” he said, nodding at the red kiosk on the other side of the strip of road.

“I’ve never been here,” said Macdonald.

A woman came out of one of the houses, seventy yards away. She walked toward them and greeted them as she passed. She was wearing a kerchief but was no older than they were. A few cars were parked beside theirs.

“Excuse me,” said Macdonald.

“On a very clear day you can see Orkney,” the woman had said.

“How about the northern lights?” Winter had asked.

“Oh, you’ve seen the film.” It was a statement, for the most part. “You’ve come to see it for yourselves?”

“We’re not here for that reason,” Macdonald had said.

She had taken them to the next-to-last house in the row. Everything was closed and shut up as they walked along the quay.

In 1900, three hundred people had lived here, she had said. Now twenty people lived in Pennan permanently.

They walked past a construction site. Winter thought of Dallas.

“The first new construction in a hundred years!” said the woman.

They stood in front of a cottage. She knocked hard three times.

“Her hearing is bad.”

After the fifth knock of her knuckles, there was rustling behind the heavy door, which still had its red base color.

“Mrs. Watt?” said the woman.

The door creaked open. The face of an older woman became visible. She had small, sharp eyes.

“Aye?”

“Mrs. Watt, these gentlemen would like to ask you a couple of questions.”

They climbed back uphill in the car. The dolphin house they’d parked in front of had been the inn in Local Hero. In the summer, dolphins played out in the water of Moray Firth.