Sail of Stone (3 page)

The girl shook her head.

“Who’s seen her?”

“Do you mean out of our colleagues?” the officer asked.

Aneta nodded.

“Do you mean met her?”

Aneta nodded again.

“No one, as far as I know.”

“No one?”

“She hasn’t let anyone in.”

“But someone has called five times and reported that she’s been assaulted?”

“Yes.”

“Anyone who identified themselves?”

“Uh, a few times. A neighbor.” The girl turned toward her. “The woman we spoke to.”

“I know.”

Aneta drove past the factories in Gamlestaden. The inner city came nearer. The first houses in Bagaregården became visible. They were built for a different civilization. Beautiful buildings, for just one family, or two, and you could walk around the building and enjoy the fact that you lived there and had the money necessary for it to be Saturday all week long. She wondered suddenly if there was a Saturday Street in the area they had left behind them. Maybe not, maybe the city planners stopped at Tuesday, or at Monday, Monday Street. That’s where that line was drawn. Monday all week.

“This can’t continue,” said Aneta.

“What are you thinking about?”

“What am I thinking about? I’m thinking that it could be time for a crime scene investigation.”

“Can we do that?”

“Don’t you know the Police Act?” Aneta asked, quickly turning her head toward her young colleague, who looked like she’d been caught out, like she’d flunked a test.

“It falls under public prosecution,” said Aneta in a milder voice. “If I suspect that someone has been assaulted I can go in and investigate the situation.”

“Are you going to do it, then?”

“Go into the Lindstens’ home? It might be time for that.”

“She says that she lives alone now.”

“But the man comes to visit?”

The officer shrugged her shoulders.

“She hasn’t said anything about it herself,” she said.

“But the neighbors?”

“One of them says that she’s seen him.”

“And no children?” asked Aneta. “They don’t have any children?”

“No.”

“We’ll have to look him up.” That bastard, she thought.

“That bastard …,” she mumbled.

“What did you say?”

“The man,” said Aneta, and she could feel that she was smiling when she turned toward the young officer again.

It was evening when Aneta opened the door to the house and smelled the familiar odor in the stairwell. Her house, or her apartment building, to be exact, or even more exactly: the building she lived in. But it felt like her own house. She enjoyed living in this old patrician house on Sveagatan. It was centrally located. She could walk to almost anything. She could choose not to walk. And change her mind again.

The elevator lugged itself up. She liked that too. She liked opening the door and picking up the mail from the wooden floor. She liked dropping her coat where she stood, kicking off her shoes, seeing the big old shell that she’d always kept on a bureau, seeing the African mask that hung over it, walking in her socks to the kitchen, heating the water in the kettle, making tea, or sometimes having a beer, sometimes a glass of wine. Liked it.

She liked the solitude.

Sometimes she was afraid because she felt this way.

You shouldn’t be alone. That’s what others thought. There’s something wrong when you’re alone. No one chooses solitude. Solitude is a punishment. A sentence.

No. She wasn’t serving any sentence. She liked sitting here and deciding to do whatever she wanted whenever she wanted.

She was sitting on a kitchen stool now, of her own free will; the kettle worked itself up to a climax. She was just about to get up to make tea when the telephone rang.

“Yes?”

“What are you doing?”

The question was asked by Fredrik Halders, a colleague, an intense
colleague. Not as much anymore, but still really very intense compared to almost everyone else.

Two years ago he had lost his ex-wife when she was hit and killed by a drunk driver.

She’s not even still here as an ex, Halders had said for a while afterward, as though he were only half conscious.

They had been working together when it happened, she and Fredrik, and they started seeing each other. She had gotten to know his children. Hannes and Magda. They had begun to accept her presence in their home, truly accept it.

She liked Fredrik, his character. Their preliminary banter had developed into something else.

She was also afraid of all this. Where would it lead? Did she want to know? Did she dare not to try to find out?

She heard Fredrik’s voice on the phone:

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing. Just got in the door.”

“You don’t feel like a movie tonight, do you?” Before she could answer he continued: “Larrinder’s daughter wants to earn some extra money babysitting. She called me herself. He asked me today and I told him to have her call.” Bo Larrinder was a relatively new colleague in the criminal investigation department. “And she called right away!”

“A new world is opening for you, Fredrik.”

“It is, isn’t it? And it leads to Svea.”

The Svea cinema. A hundred yards away. She looked at her feet. They looked flattened, as though they had been pressed under an iron. She saw her teacup waiting on the kitchen counter. In her mind’s eye she saw her bed and a book. She saw herself falling asleep, probably soon.

“Fredrik. I’m not up to it tonight. I’m exhausted.”

“It’s the last chance,” he said.

“Tonight? Is tonight the last showing?”

“Yes.”

“You’re lying.”

“Yes.”

“Tomorrow night.
Bien.
I’m already mentally preparing myself so it will work to go out tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“It’s okay, right?”

“Of course it’s okay. What the fu—What do you think? What were you doing this afternoon, by the way?”

“Possible wife beater in Kortedala.”

“They’re the worst. Did you get him?”

“No.”

“No report?”

“Not from the wife. Not from the neighbor, either, it turned out. But it was the fifth time.”

“How does she look?” Halders asked. “Is it really bad?”

“You mean injuries? I haven’t met her. I tried.”

“I guess you’ll have to go in, then.”

“I thought about it as I was driving away. I went back and forth about it.”

“Do you want company?”

“Yes.”

“Tomorrow?” said Halders.

“No time tomorrow. I have those café burglaries in Högsbo.”

“Say the word and I’m ready.”

“Thanks, Fredrik.”

“Now get some good rest and mentally prepare yourself for tomorrow, babe.”

“
Bonsoir,
Fredrik.”

She hung up the phone with a smile. She made tea. She went into the living room and put on a CD. She sat on the sofa and felt her feet begin to recover their shape. She listened to Ali Farka Touré’s blown-apart desert blues and thought about a country south of Touré’s Mali deserts.

She got up and changed the CD, to Burkina Faso’s own great musician Gabin Dabiré: his
Kontômé
from 1998. Her music. Her country. Not like the country she had been born in and lived in. But her country.

Kontômé was the idol found in every Burkinian home. She had hers in the hall, above the bureau. The icon represented the spirits of the ancestors, who were the guiding light for the family and for the entire society.

The light, she thought. Kontômé lights the path. We thank Kontômé for what we are and what we have, now and in the future. And Kontômé helps us when fate unfolds on that path.

Yes. She believed in it. It was in her blood. That was as it should be.

Aneta Djanali had been born at Östra Hospital in Gothenburg to parents from Upper Volta. The country’s name had changed to Burkina Faso in 1984, but it was still the same impoverished country, filled with wind, like the music she listened to, steppes that became deserts, water that didn’t exist.

It was a vulnerable country.

Dry Volta. Impoverished Volta. Sick Volta. Violent Volta. Dangerous Volta.

Her parents came to Sweden in the sixties, a few years after the country’s independence, fleeing persecution.

Her father had been in prison for a short time. He could just as easily have been executed. Just as easily. Sometimes it was only a question of luck.

The former French colony inherited terror and murderers from the Frenchmen who had murdered there since the end of the nineteenth century. Now the Frenchmen were gone, but their language remained. The people were African but out of their mouths came words in French, the official language.

She had learned French as a child, in Gothenburg. She was the only child in the Djanali family. When she wasn’t little anymore, when she had been with the police for a long time, her parents chose to return to their hometown, Ouagadougou, the capital.

For Aneta, it was an obvious choice to stay in the country she was born in, and she understood why Mother and Father wanted to return to the country
they
were born in, before it was too late.

It was almost too late. Her mother had come back with two months to spare. She had been buried in the hard, burned red earth at the northern fringes of the city. During the funeral, Aneta had watched the desert press in from all directions, millions of square miles in size. She had thought about how there were sixteen million people living in this desolate country, and how that wasn’t so many more than in desolate Sweden. Here they were black, incredibly black. Their clothes were white, incredibly white.

Her father mulled for a long time over whether the journey back had caused the death, at least indirectly.

She kept him company in the capital as long as he wished. She walked with big eyes through streets that she could have lived on her entire life, instead of returning to them as a stranger. Ouagadougou had as many citizens as Gothenburg.

She looked like everyone else here. She could communicate in French with the people—at least with those who had gone to school—and she could speak a little Moré with others, which she did sometimes.

She could keep walking, without attracting attention, all the way out to the city limits and to the desert, which assailed the city with its wind, the harmattan. She could feel it when she sat in her father’s house.

She heard the wind, the Swedish wind. It sounded rounder and softer, and colder. But it wasn’t cold out. It was
brittsommar.

Right. She got up and went to the bookshelf along the far wall and got out the Swedish Academy dictionary. She looked up the word:

A period of beautiful and warm weather in the fall—named after Saint Birgitta’s Day on October 7.

She didn’t know much about the holy, but she suspected this was true for most Swedes, white or black. October seventh. That was a while from now. Did that mean it would get warmer?

She smiled and put back the thick volume. She went to the bathroom and undressed and ran a hot bath. She slowly lowered herself into the water. It was very quiet in the apartment. She heard the telephone ring out there, and she heard the machine pick up. She didn’t hear a voice, only a pleasant murmur. She closed her eyes and felt her body float in the hot water. She thought of a hot wind, and of the luxury of running a bath. She didn’t want to think about that, but now she did. She thought away the water, the luxury.

She saw a face for a few seconds, a woman. A door that opened and closed. A dusky light. Eyes that shone and disappeared. The eyes were afraid.

She kept her eyes closed and saw water, as though she were swimming underwater and was carried along by the current, the wind of the sea.

W
inter biked west on Vasagatan, for the thousandth time or more. He needed to oil the chain. He needed to put air in the front tire.

Along the boulevard, the cafés were open. He had read somewhere that this street had more cafés than any other in Sweden. And likely northern Europe. That particular expression was often used in comparisons. He had thought about that sometimes, as he did now. Where did the boundary of northern Europe run? Through Münster? Antwerp? Warsaw? He smiled at the thought. Maybe through Gothenburg.

But there
were
a lot of places. Thousands of people were sitting in the outdoor seating areas.

Winter tromped across Heden. He thought of the sea and the sky, suspended like a sail over the bay where he might live his life. A new life, a different one. Yes. Maybe it was time. A new era in his life.

They had talked about it in the car while Elsa slept in the backseat. The sun had been on its way elsewhere. Angela had driven with one hand behind his neck for a little while.

“Isn’t it dangerous to drive like that?” he had asked.

“Don’t ask me. You’re the policeman.”

“Are we doing the right thing?” he asked.

She understood what he meant.

“We haven’t done anything yet,” she had answered.

“It
is
only a plot of land,” he said.

“Yes, Erik,” she said. “You don’t need to be worried about anything more.”

“We
do
have a nice flat,” he said.

“It’s a nice bay,” she said.

“Yes,” he had answered, “it’s nice, too.”

“It’s wonderful,” she had said.

The police station greeted him with a full embrace. The façade was as welcoming as always. The entryway smelled the same as usual. It doesn’t matter how many times they remodel it, he thought, nodding at the woman at the reception desk, who nodded toward him but also farther, past him. She opened the security window.

“There’s someone waiting for you,” she said with a gesture.

He turned around and saw the woman who was sitting on one of the vinyl sofas. She started to get up. He saw her profile reflected in the glass case where the police command had placed caps and helmets from police forces all over the world. As proof of the global friendship among police. There were also a few batons, as though to hit home the friendship message. He had said those exact words to Ringmar one time as they walked by, when the case was new, and Ringmar had said that he thought the Italian pith helmet was the nicest. It’s from Abyssinia, Winter said, you can bet your life on it. Perfect protection from the sun while they killed all the blacks.