Åke Edwardson - Sail of Stone

Sail of Stone is rivetingas hard and bleak as the Swedish coast in winter.

Jeff Lindsay, creator of the Dexter series

A brother and sister believe that their father has gone missing. They think he may have traveled in search of his father, who was presumed lost decades ago in World War II. Meanwhile, there are reports that a woman is being abused, but she cant be found and her family wont tell the police where she is. Two missing people and two very different families combine in this dynamic and suspenseful mystery by the Swedish master ke Edwardson.

Gothenburgs Chief Inspector Erik Winter travels to Scotland in search of the missing man, aided there by an old friend from Scotland Yard. Back in Gothenburg, A fro-Swedish detective Aneta Djanali discovers how badly someone doesnt want her to find the missing woman when she herself is threatened. Sail of Stone is a brilliantly perceptive character study, acutely observed and skillfully written with an unerring sense of pace.

A tough, smart police procedural. Edwardson is a masterful stor yteller. This is crime writing at its most exciting, with great atmosphere and superb characters.

The Globe & Mail (Toronto) on Never End

Sure to appeal to Stieg Larsson fans eager for more noir Scandinavian crime fiction.

Library Journal on The Shadow Woman

ANDERS DEROS

ke Edwardson is a three-time winner of the Swedish Crime Writers award for best crime novel. A former journalist, press officer at the United Nations in the Middle East, and lecturer at the University of Gothenburg, he lives in Gothenburg, Sweden, where his mysteries are set.

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COVER DESIGN BY BARBARA DEWILDE

ALSO BY KE EDWARDSON

THE CHIEF INSPECTOR ERIK WINTER NOVELS:

The Shadow Woman

Death Angels

Frozen Tracks

Never End

Sun and Shadow

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2012 by ke Edwardson

English translation 2012 by Rachel Willson-Broyles

Originally published in Sweden in 2002 by Norstedts Frlag in the Swedish language as the title Segel av sten.

Published by arrangement with Norstedts Frlag.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Paperbacks Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Simon & Schuster trade paperback edition March 2012

SIMON & SCHUSTER PAPERBACKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Designed by Akasha Archer

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Edwardson, ke, date.

[ Segel av sten. English]

Sail of stone / ke Edwardson; translated by Rachel Willson-Broyles.1st Simon & Schuster trade pbk. ed.

p. cm.

Summary: In Sail of Stone Chief Inspector Erik Winter and one of his female detectives find themselves separately pursuing two unusual missing-person cases. Sail of Stone is an outstanding psychological thriller, a character study of great depth and skill, by internationally bestselling author ke Edwardson.Provided by publisher.

I. Willson-Broyles, Rachel. II. Title.

PT9876.15.D93S4413 2012

839.73'74dc23 2011028497

ISBN 978-1-4516-0850-2

ISBN 978-1-4516-0854-0 (ebook)

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I n the harbor the ebb had put the boats ashore. They lay crooked, stems pointing at the steps in the wall.

Pointing at him.

He saw the bellies of the boats shining in the twilight. The sun was curving behind the cape to the west. The gulls cried under a low sky; the light thickened into darkness. The birds were pushed toward the surface of the water by the sky, which was stretched like a sail over the horizon.

Everything was pushed toward the sea. Pushed toward the sea, pushed down under the surface, pushed

Jesus, he thought.

Jesus save my soul! Jesus save my soul.

So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

He heard sounds behind him, footsteps on stone on the path back to the church, which seemed to be carved out of the mountain, pounded out of stone by a hammer, like everything else here under the sail of the sky. He looked up again. The sky had the same tint of stone as everything else around him. A sail of stone. Everything was stone. The sea was stone.

Here I have a pilots thumb,

Wrecked as homeward he did come.

The people moved behind him, on the way to a moment of peace in the Methodist church. He didnt turn around. He knew that they were looking at him; he felt their eyes on the back of his neck. It didnt hurt; they werent that sort of eyes. He knew that he could depend on the people here. They werent his friends, but they werent his enemies either. He was allowed to move about in their world, and he had done so for a long time; so long, actually, that he had become something more than them, he had become like a part of the stone, the cliffs, the walls, the steps, the houses, the breakwaters, the sky, the sea, the roads. The ships. The trawlers.

The ones that lay here.

The ones that lay buried under the waves that moved in all those rolling quarries between the continents.

Jesus. Jesus!

He turned around. The footsteps had quieted and disappeared into the church, which was shut, closed up. The few streetlights down here were lit, and their only effect was to intensify the darkness too soon. The light thickens into darkness with time. He thought that thought as he began to walk. A darkness, before it was time. Every late afternoon. Before time and after time. I am living this life in after time. Way after time. I am alive. I am someone else, someone new. That other someone was a loan, a role, a mask like this one. You cross a line and become someone else and leave your old self behind.