Free Sail of Stone by Åke Edwardson Page B

doubt in the man’s face. He sneaked a look at the ID, which she still held in her hand.
    “Is that a real badge?” he said with a tone that said “Are you a real police officer?”
    “Is her father home?” said Aneta. “Sigge Lindsten? Is he in the house?”
    “ I’m Sigge Lindsten, for God’s sake,” said the stranger in the door. “ I’m her dad!”
    She saw the other face in front of her, the other Lindsten dad who had worked calmly in Aneta’s apartment, removing everything that was there. The dad, the nice and collected one. And the brother, the dismissive brother.
    “Pe … Peter,” said Aneta, the feeling of dizziness more and more marked.
    “What? Who are you raving about now?” said the man.
    “Peter Lindsten. Her brother. Anette’s brother.”
    “Anette doesn’t have a brother, dammit!” said the man.
    Bertil Ringmar was hanging around the window, gazing out at the river, Fattighusån. The buildings on the other side were new, private residences for the privileged. The poorhouse for which the stream was named was gone now. They’re gone all over now, he thought. The houses are gone but the poor are still here.
    “Don’t you get depressed, looking out over Fattighusån every day?” he said, turning to Winter, who was sitting at his desk doing nothing.
    “I do.”
    “Do something about it, then.”
    Winter let out a laugh.
    “That’s the point,” he said.
    “It’s the point for you to be depressed?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why?”
    “Then everything is so much easier when you leave here.”
    “Is that why you leave so often?”
    “Yes.”
    “Mmhmm.”
    “I have thought about it,” said Winter, “about this damn office.”
    “What have you thought?”
    “That I don’t want to be here anymore. Sit here anymore.”
    “You don’t?”
    “I’m going to set up an office in the town.”
    “Are you?”
    “In a café. Or a bar.”
    “Your office in a bar?”
    “Yes.”
    “Interrogations in a bar?”
    “Yes.”
    “That’s brilliant.”
    “Isn’t it?”
    “Have you talked to Birgersson?”
    “Do I have to?”
    Ringmar smiled. Birgersson was a chief inspector and the chief of the homicide department. Winter was a chief inspector and deputy chief. Ringmar was only a chief inspector, and that was enough for him. He knew that nothing worked without him anyway. Look at Winter. Look at him! Sitting on his chair and doing absolutely nothing, and it would stay that way if Ringmar weren’t there. If, for example, he didn’t keep this conversation going.
    Look at this room. There was a sink in one corner, where Winter could shave if he was restless. There was a map of Gothenburg on one wall. There were some mysterious circles and lines from past investigations. There were lots of lines. Winter—and he himself—had redrawnthe map of the city. Their map showed the criminal Gothenburg. That city stretched in many directions, to unfamiliar points. No such points existed in the official map of Gothenburg.
    Winter was sitting in a chair that was entirely too comfortable, too new. He had recently rewallpapered the office. He had put in new bookshelves, different lamps from the ones that shone the way for other colleagues in other rooms in this beautiful building. He had lugged in his own little furniture arrangement.
    It was time to get out of here. A café. A bar.
    On the floor, a yard from Ringmar, stood the eternal Panasonic and the eternal tenor sax wailing atonal blues. Coltrane? No. Something else, from our time. It was good. Depressingly good.
    “What is it?” said Ringmar, nodding toward the portable stereo.
    “Michael Brecker,” said Winter. “And not just him. Pat Metheny, Jack DeJohnette, Dave Holland, Joey Calderazzo, McCoy Tyner, Don Alias.”
    “Alias? What’s his real name?”
    Winter laughed again and lit a Corps. The thin cigarillo made a bobbing motion in his mouth.
    “You listed a whole investigation squad,” said Ringmar.
    “If you want to look at it that