Sail of Stone (38 page)

“That’s good,” said Macdonald.

“If that was him, he didn’t say anything,” said Cameron, “if he’s the one I … well, hardly remember, he was quiet as an Orkneyman and that doesn’t do much for the memory.”

“Maybe that’s why you remember him,” said Macdonald.

“But I don’t remember him, I’ve said.”

Macdonald nodded as if to say “What’s that got to do with it?” and asked for copies of the contract.

“Your friend from the police has them.”

“Craig?”

“Yes, maybe that’s his name. A stuck-up Englishman.”

“That’s Craig,” said Macdonald. “I’m sure he’s told you to sound the alarm if the car shows up.”

“How would that happen?” said Cameron. “The fellow who rented it is dead, right? He can’t drive it here. Is whoever stole it supposed to drive it here?”

“Someone might find it,” said Macdonald.

“It would probably be the police, in that case,” said Cameron. “But I doubt it.” He let out a laugh that was mostly a snort.

“Well, that’s all for now,” said Macdonald. He turned to Winter. “Wasn’t your wife going to rent a car this afternoon?”

“Yes, right,” said Winter.

Cameron’s face changed. His eyes became soft and merry.

“You know the place, lads!”

They said good-bye and continued along Railway Terrace toward the police station, which was only a few hundred yards away.

“Cameron!” said Macdonald, and it mostly sounded like a snort.

“What?” said Winter.

“Cameron is a strange clan,” said Macdonald. “They’re from up in northern Argyll, in the isolated central Highlands, and that’s where they belong.”

Winter smiled. Macdonald stopped and turned to him.

“You saw that character, right? He was a perfect example of a Cameron, perfect. Did you see his nose? Do you know what the name Cameron means? In Gaelic it’s
Cam-shron
and it means ‘hawk nose.’”

“Are you racist, Steve?”

“Ha ha.”

“Do you know a lot about different clans?” asked Winter.

“Mostly about my own,” said Macdonald.

“You’ll have to tell me sometime. It’s interesting.”

“It’s mostly very sad stories,” said Macdonald.

A
n abandoned stroller lay upside down in the concrete stairway in the viaduct. It was yellow and blue. It immediately reminded Winter of an earlier case, still painfully in his memory. Macdonald turned it over without saying anything.

The wind on the bridge was harsh. Winter had a view over the city and the river and the mountains to the south. There was a closed-down bakery to the left down there. They walked a hundred yards along Longman Road and turned off at the police station, which looked relatively newly built, and for that reason stood out among the buildings around it.

They walked in under the bilingual sign: Inverness Command Area. Sgìre Comannd Inbhirnis. The office reminded Winter of the Police Palace at home, the same worn charm, the international brotherhood’s surly reception of a public in need. Some of them were sitting in there with the same expression as everywhere else. A mixture of helplessness and fear, of solitude in a world that wasn’t kind. A woman was standing at the counter and carrying on a conversation in something that must have been Gaelic; her voice was high and hollow like a cracked muffler, and the words seemed to rasp through the room. There was a notice on the other side of the wall:
Dèiligeadh leis a h-uile tachartas de ghiùlan mìshòisealta gu h-èifeachdach.
There was what Winter presumed was a translation next to it:
To effectively tackle all incidents of antisocial behavior.

A proud task for the international brotherhood, his and Steve’s. Put quote marks around “effectively.” But we try. At the same time, the damned society doesn’t want to stand still so we can get some order in the middle of everything that is antisocial, or has become antisocial.

Another poster was hanging on the wall in yellow and black: Going to the Hills? Let Us Know
Before
You Go.

Axel Osvald hadn’t followed this request. But he hadn’t climbed that high.

Jamie Craig came out from a door to the right of the glassed-in reception area. He looked like he sounded. Brutal. His cheeks were red and chapped, which might have been due to whisky or the Highland air or both. He greeted Macdonald with a professional handshake that lacked enthusiasm, and he pressed Winter’s hand quickly and firmly.

“Let’s go,” he said.

They walked through underground corridors. The lighting was weak and it cast shadows that might have been anything at all from the last hundred years. Winter thought of the gas works, which he’d seen from the bridge. Maybe there was a running hundred-year agreement between the police and the gas company.

When they came up, the light was blinding and electric. Johanna Osvald was waiting in a room.

Winter gave her a hug. She greeted Macdonald. They stood in the middle of the room.

“I’m … we’re leaving in a few hours,” she said.

“I know,” said Winter.

“You wanted to see him?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” said Winter, but he knew; he knew something he couldn’t explain, even to himself.

“But it was a natural death,” said Johanna with doubt in her voice: I do not accept death as natural. Not this one.

Axel Osvald looked like he was sleeping. Winter sat at his head for two minutes and then got up. Osvald’s hair was brushed back, and there was a weak shadow of stubble on his cheeks. Winter couldn’t tell whether he’d been unshaven or recently shaven when he died. The beard continued to grow on dead men, and the nails too. It was natural.

Macdonald and Johanna and Craig waited in the bare room.

“Let’s go,” said Craig.

They returned through the same corridor. Johanna’s hair looked like gold. Winter thought he smelled gas. It was cold down there, colder since he’d seen the body. He felt goose bumps on his upper arms. These
passages must have existed when the buildings above had been different, in another time. They had been saved as a reminder.

They came up into a new light that blinded their eyes. Craig showed them into his office, which was a glass cage in the middle of an office landscape. He could see all of his subordinates, but they could also see him. Winter couldn’t have stood being there for ten minutes, but Craig moved about as though he could see out but no one could see in, the way it was in rooms they had used before for witness lineups. But the other way around.

Craig showed them to three chairs that had been put there for this purpose. He sat behind his desk, which was clear of papers, pens, stands, baskets, ashtrays, everything. The top of the desk gleamed, as though Craig devoted all his time to polishing it. Winter met Macdonald’s glance. One of
those.
The telephone stood on a little side table. Behind Craig people were working to effectively tackle all incidents of antisocial behavior. Winter could see this through the glass. Men and women in and out of uniform were moving back and forth, telephones were picked up and put down, computer screens flickered at random. Winter saw two officers come in wearing bulletproof vests and helmets, with machine guns strapped on. A man who looked southern European and dismal was sitting next to one of the desks closest to Craig’s glass wall, and he seemed to be staring at the back of Craig’s neck.

“I believe we’ve done all we can here,” Craig said, scratching that neck.

“We appreciate it,” said Winter.

Johanna Osvald nodded. She had been very quiet during the hike through the corridors, as though she were already sitting on the plane with her father in a coffin among all the Samsonite suitcases in the belly of the plane.

“There’s still that car,” said Craig.

“We met the rental guy,” said Winter. “Cameron.”

“Nice fellow,” Craig said with a thin smile.

“Stolen cars usually turn up right quick,” Macdonald said.

Craig seemed to stiffen, just barely.

“That’s why I’m bringing it up,” he said, and he got up and walked to a filing cabinet and opened it.

He came back with a piece of paper and sat down and put on a pair of reading glasses.

“Between April and July this year we had one hundred twelve auto thefts in the greater city and all but one of the cars showed up,” he said. “We also caught forty-six car thieves in the act.” He looked up. “It was peak season.”

“Admirable,” said Macdonald.

“Which part is admirable?”

Craig smiled; perhaps there was an ironic wrinkle in one corner of his mouth.

“Your statistics.”

“We’re the best in all of Scotland,” he said.

“This car,” said Winter, “that it didn’t come back. That indicates a crime, of course. Maybe a violent crime.”

“Yes,” said Craig, “that’s exactly why I’m bringing it up. But of course it’s not necessarily connected to the death.” He looked at Johanna, who was looking at something else through the window walls. “He could have gotten rid of the car somewhere else.”

“Is that likely?” said Winter.

“No.”

“Someone could have given him a ride in a different car to Fort Augustus,” said Macdonald.

“In that case we’re really talking about a crime here,” said Craig.

“But remember, no marks on the body,” Winter said with a glance at Johanna, who didn’t seem to be there. As though she didn’t want to hear this.

“It was a heart attack,” said Craig. “His heart packed it in. The question is why.”

“You don’t have more information about his acting confused in town?” asked Macdonald.

“It wasn’t that conspicuous,” said Craig. “He walked around a little and maybe asked a few questions that no one understood and talked to maybe three or four people.”

“Do you know who might have been the last one?” asked Winter.

“Who
might
have been, yes. But the times are a bit unclear, of course.” He scratched his neck again. “One of the most irritating parts of this job is people’s fuzzy perception of time.” Craig suddenly heaved himself forward. “Isn’t it? We can know with one hundred percent certainty that different witnesses met someone, say around lunchtime,
and one of those witnesses will swear that it was at midnight and the other at dawn!”

“What kind of time span are we looking at in the case of Axel Osvald?” asked Winter.

“A few hours,” said Craig. “Early afternoon.”

Winter nodded.

Craig looked at Johanna’s profile.

“He died the same night.”

“He got very excited,” Johanna said suddenly, catching everyone off guard.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Osvald?” said Craig.

“I’ve thought a lot about it.” She turned to them. “When that letter came, he didn’t seem very … astounded or whatever you’d call it, not as agitated as you might expect. But then, after a few days he suddenly became … well, agitated, and he called about a ticket up here and left that same afternoon, I think … no, it was the morning after.” She looked out at the office landscape again. “It was like something more had happened. Something different.”

“Did he get another letter?”

“Not that I saw.”

“But he could have?”

“Yes; I wasn’t home those two days. I was at school.” She looked at Winter. “I had the morning off when that first one … no, what am I saying, when that letter came, I saw it.”

“Was anyone else home then, Johanna?” asked Winter. “Anyone besides your dad?”

“Erik was home,” she said. “It was his week at home.”

“But he hasn’t said anything about another letter?”

“No.”

“No telephone call?”

“No.”

Winter didn’t say anything more. It was quiet in Craig’s cage of an office. He heard voices from the outside but couldn’t make out words. It could be Scots English or Gaelic, or Swedish.

“What do you think about your father acting confused?” Macdonald asked, straight to the point.

She just shook her head.

“Does it sound unlikely?” Macdonald continued.

“Yes,” she answered.

“But you said he was agitated …”

“Not that way,” said Johanna, “never that way. He has never had problems like that, I can tell you that for sure. He had both feet on the ground, as they say.”

On deck, thought Winter. Had both feet on deck. Maybe that was even safer. At the same time, he trusted in God above the earth.

“Something must have happened to him,” said Johanna. “Something awful must have happened.”

They drove over Ness Bridge in the car that Craig had loaned them, and they turned right onto Kenneth Street and then onto Ross Avenue, which was one of a hundred little streets lined with row houses of stone. They drove slowly and stopped in front of one of the houses. A sign was hanging on the wall between the door and the window: Glen Islay Bed and Breakfast.

“Glen Islay,” said Winter. “Sounds like a brand of whisky.”

“Bed and breakfast and whisky,” said Macdonald.

Winter looked around as they got out of the car.

“I’ve been here,” he said.

“Here? On this street?”

“Yes. I stayed at a B and B on this street.”

“Maybe this one,” Macdonald said.

Maybe, thought Winter as they stood in the cramped hallway, which also served as the lobby. Stairs led upward. It smelled like eggs and bacon and dampness, maybe mold. Burned bread. A rattle came from the pipes that ran on strange courses along the wallpaper, which could have been put up during Edwardian times. Everything was as it should be.

A telephone stood on a rickety table. An older woman stood next to it, one of those little old ladies who ran their guesthouses through the centuries.

“So Mr. Osvald drove away in a car, Mrs. McCann?” Macdonald asked.

“I’m absolutely cerrrrtain,” said Mrs. McCann. She looked quite positive. “And I’ave told the otherrr policemen exactly that.”

“Did he have visitors while he was staying here?”

“No.”

“Was he alone when he checked out?” Macdonald asked.

“Yes, of course. What do you mean, Officer?”

“No one was sitting in the car out there?”

“I couldn’t see. I didn’t go outside when he left.” She waved her hand toward the outer door, which had two windows that were covered by some sort of lace.