Sail of Stone by Åke Edwardson Page B

her furtively. Now he was smiling. He threw the keys across the room at her. She let them land on the floor next to her. She wasn’t totally nuts.
    He put the briefcase under his arm.
    “May I go now? I have some work to take care of.” He held up the briefcase. “That’s why I came here. I need it to take care of my work.”
    Go, just go, she thought. She moved, stood by the wall.
    “Nice to run into you,” he said; he bowed and walked out through the door and she stood still and heard him mumble something to himself as the elevator creaked its way up, and then he went in and it clattered away and she could feel the sweat on her back now, and between her breasts,in her groin, her hands. She knew that she had been close to something awful. She knew that she never wanted to be alone in a room again with that man.
    Suddenly she understood the woman, Anette Lindsten, at the same time as she understood less than ever. She understood the silence. And the running away. She didn’t understand anything else.
    She locked the apartment door after her.
    When she came out, the sky had grown lighter and opened up in different shades of brown. The rows of houses looked like they were ready to take off, like spaceships of stone, and sail away through the leathery sky, to a better world.
    A routine set in, unrelenting in its indifference to people’s misfortunes. What else could have happened, he thought as he sat at his desk. This desk, worn down by papers and by photographs heavy with blood. Yes. Heavy with blood.
    Worn down by elbows, thoughts, murmurs, outbursts, interruptions. Break-ins. Once someone had broken into his office. The thief had lowered himself down from the jail and gotten in through the open window and stolen the Panasonic and was nabbed out in the corridor, of course. But what a thing to happen! Winter had tipped his hat. The guy is in on suspicion of theft and he breaks out of the unbreakable and immediately breaks in again and commits another theft! In the police building! Touché! He had long been a role model in the mire of gangsters in the southeast side of the city, where even the sun kept its distance.
    Southeast. He thought of southeastern London, below Brixton. Croydon. And above: Bermondsey, Charlton, shady districts southeast of the river. Millwall, the soccer team that God forgot. We are Millwall, no one likes us.
    His colleague who investigated murders there. And who had solved all but one, and that failure always left him without peace.
    They had accompanied each other down into the abyss, back then, on those streets, and later here, too, in Gothenburg. Winter hadn’t gotten over it, never would. He was still human, in the middle of all the routines. No, on the contrary: The routines helped him to retain his humanity.
    He looked at the clock and picked up the phone and dialed the number.
    “Yeah, hello?”
    “Steve? It’s Erik Winter here.”
    “Well, well.”
    “How’s it going?”
    “Going, going, gone. Counting the days to my retirement.”
    “Come on. You’re still a young man,” said Winter.
    “That’s just wishful thinking, man.”
    Winter smiled. Macdonald was referring to Winter’s age, which was exactly the same as the Scottish inspector’s.
    “Do you know that song, oh thou Erik the rock ’n’ roll wizard?”
    “What song?”
    “It’s been a long, long, long time.”
    “Sure. It’s by Steve Macdonald and the Bad News.”
    “It’s George Harrison. Heard the name?”
    Macdonald was quiet for a second.
    “When members of the Beatles leave the world, the world is not the same,” he then said.
    “I think I can understand,” said Winter.
    “Did you feel that way about Coltrane? Or Miles Davis?”
    “In some way. And then again, not. If I understand what you’re feeling.”
    “Shall we leave that topic?” said Macdonald.
    “I met someone from the past,” said Winter.
    “I’m listening.”
    Winter described his conversation with Johanna Osvald.
    “Might be