Åke Edwardson - Sail of Stone

When he had seen their car over there an hour ago or so, he knew that they were there again. That they would come out here to him.

And he waited.

It must have been the telephone. He didn’t think she’d said anything; she wouldn’t dare. Was it possible to find out something like that? The telephone? Tracing, it was called. It was probably possible.

He didn’t intend to answer any questions.

This was his beach, his city, his house, his life.

Don’t answer, don’t say anything.

He could scare them, scare them. This wasn’t where it was supposed to end. They couldn’t do anything to him.

There was no one left who could say anything.

They had stopped ten feet from the old man. He turned around, toward them.

“John Osvald?” Winter asked.

The man looked through them as though they were invisible. He seemed to fix his eyes on something behind them, maybe his house. Or the viaduct.

“We only want to know if you’re John Osvald,” Winter said in Swedish.

The man didn’t answer, continued to look with his misty gaze.

“Are you John Osvald?”

“Who are you?” said the man. In Swedish.

“I’m from home,” Winter said. “I come with a message from home.”

The marked car drove through the little grove of trees toward the sea. Halders saw the sea. His colleague Jonsson hadn’t been able to contact Aneta. Halders had tried himself. No reply. Now he saw that there was no reception.

They cut across the beach and saw the house that had to be the Lindstens’. He saw the car that he knew was Aneta’s. He didn’t see any other vehicles.

He saw a woman on her knees next to the car. He recognized her. It was Susanne Marke.

He saw a man fifty feet out, bent over the water. He recognized him. He watched Hans Forsblad dive suddenly and start to swim away. Halders saw Forsblad’s shoes kick the water.

He saw Aneta at the edge of the water. She was standing still.

The old man hadn’t said anything more, hadn’t moved. Everything was still. There were no birds, no fish, no people, nothing in between. They were alone in this northern world.

“What happened to your son?” said Winter, who had taken a step closer. “What happened to your son, Axel?”

The old man’s gaze slowly became clear. It made him appear younger.

He was wearing a cap with a narrow brim. His face was sharp. He had a thick, knitted sweater under a tweed jacket. He was tall when he wasn’t bent over. Winter saw a blue spot on one cheek.

There was a bulge in one of his jacket pockets.

“What happened to Axel?” said Winter.

“He washed himself,” said John Osvald.

“What do you mean?”

“He washed away the sins. He wanted to do it. I couldn’t do it.”

“He wasn’t wearing any clothes,” said Winter.

“Only someone who God loves can do that,” said Osvald. Winter thought the old man’s gaze seemed to cloud again. “Whatever happens, good things will come to a man who loves God.”

“Sins,” Winter said. “What sins are you talking about?”

“My sins,” said John Osvald.

“What sins are those?” Winter asked.

Osvald didn’t answer.

“Does it have to do with what happened during the war?” Winter asked.

Osvald stared at Winter, or perhaps at something else. His gaze was clear again.

“Comes a time,” he said.

“Sorry?” said Winter.

“There comes a time,” said Osvald, who spoke Scottish English.

“A time for what?” said Macdonald, who was now standing next to Winter.

No answer.

“A time for what?” Macdonald repeated.

“A time to tell,” said Osvald. He gestured with his arm, his hand. Winter looked at his jacket pocket again. It was…

“To tell what?” Macdonald asked.

He took a step closer.

“Stay away from me!” Osvald yelled.

“To tell what?” Macdonald repeated.

“Take it easy, Steve,” said Winter.

Winter looked at Osvald’s jacket pocket. He looked at Macdonald. He opened his mouth again to warn-

“Tell me what there is to tell,” said Macdonald, who could almost reach Osvald now.

“ Nooooo! ” Osvald suddenly yelled, and he pulled a pistol out of his jacket pocket and shot it. Winter had time to register the Luger with his eyes, and he heard the bullet pass between himself and Macdonald. Winter was already moving to the side, a reflex. He didn’t have a weapon. Macdonald didn’t have a weapon. Winter heard another shot, and another; he didn’t hear any bullets, but he saw Macdonald, ahead and to the side, get hit in the throat, he saw the blood start to spurt like a fountain, a gurgling sound from Macdonald, an open wound in Macdonald’s shoulder where the other bullet must have exited, a slow movement as Macdonald began to fall, the taste of sand in his mouth, of horrid fucking sand that filled Winter’s face, the image of the earth spinning around and around and becoming a blue clump of sea and sky, and then suddenly the sound of footsteps passing him but from the other direction, and through the haze of sand he saw Erik Osvald’s profile, and he heard a scream up ahead, and another from a direction he couldn’t determine, and he thought about how he had lured Macdonald into this, that he was responsible and no one else, that he would have to face Sarah and see her face, and she would have to face the children, the twins, and he pawed the sand out of his face and hurled himself up and forward and screamed and screamed, screamed like a madman.

When everything was over, Winter could look back. When everything was said and done, he saw that everything meant something else. Everything came undone.

Identity is a loan, a role, a mask. We cross the border between truth and lies and the light thickens into dark.

O, never

Shall sun that morrow see!

Your face, my thane, is as a book where men

May read strange matters. To beguile the time,

Look like the time…

Winter had read Macbeth late in the evening, a paperback he’d found in the little book and stationery shop next to the entrance of the hospital in Elgin where Macdonald had received care for his gunshot wounds. In two or three days he would be transported to Raigmore Hospital in Inverness, but that was too risky now. But he would survive.

You could have said that Macdonald had been lucky, if that expression could be used in this situation. But it wasn’t luck. It was something linked to everything that had happened, everything that had come to a head on the beach in Cullen.

It was John Osvald’s daughter who had called the police even before the shots were fired. John Osvald’s daughter.

Her name was Anna Johnson, and she had seen them walk toward her father on the beach. She had stood at the window with the view of half the beach, and it was enough for her to see her father, and then the men who approached him, and Macdonald, who got too close.

She had come rushing across the sand at the same time the ambulance screamed up from between the cliffs.

It had been nearby when the call came, on its way west from Macduff.

It took Macdonald to the nearest emergency room, twelve miles to the west on A96.

Macdonald’s blood had been black in the sand. The large spot had looked like a stone. Suddenly there was a shallow wave, as the sea rose, and the blood had been washed away.

John Osvald hadn’t moved.

They still had to talk to him. He was mute now.

He was sitting in the jail in Inverness. Chief Inspector Craig still hadn’t spoken with him.

His grandson had been motionless on the beach, crushed. Winter had tried to talk to Erik Osvald even while Macdonald was still lying injured in the sand. Erik had bent over him. Winter didn’t know whether Macdonald was dead. He had felt his heart pounding like the hammer at the shipyard at Buckie. He hadn’t tried to talk to Erik, he had screamed, kept screaming as the sound of the shots was still echoing over Cullen; Winter had screamed his question to Erik Osvald, the usual old damned question: Why?