The Last Refuge
Authors: Craig Robertson
Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Crime, #Crime Fiction
THE LAST REFUGE
During his 20-year career in Glasgow with a Scottish Sunday newspaper, Craig Robertson interviewed three recent Prime Ministers, attended major stories including 9/11, Dunblane, the Omagh bombing and the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. He was pilloried on breakfast television, beat Oprah Winfrey to a major scoop, spent time on Death Row in the USA and dispensed polio drops in the backstreets of India. His debut novel,
Random
, was shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger and was a
Sunday Times
bestseller.
Also by Craig Robertson:
Witness the Dead
Cold Grave
Snapshot
Random
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2014
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © Craig Robertson, 2014
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.
The right of Craig Robertson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
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222 Gray’s Inn Road
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Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney
Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
HB ISBN: 978-1-47112-773-1
TPB ISBN: 978-1-47112-774-8
EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-47112-776-2
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Typeset by M Rules
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
To Alexandra Sokoloff
Nogle stukke med lange spyd,
Og andre med knive skare;
Inver mand gjorde sin dont med fryd,
Slet ingen ænsede fare.
Some were stabbing with long spears,
And others were cutting with knives;
Everyman joyously performed his task,
Nobody noticed danger.
— ‘Grindevisen’ (Faroese whaling ballad)
Contents
Chapter 1
There comes a moment in the wrestle for life when the distinction between opposing sides is blurred to the point of blindness. Did I start this fight or did he? Am I on top or being forced back down? Am I winning or losing? Have I won or already lost? My blood or his blood?
I can see the blood, taste it, smell it. I can feel it lick my skin and hear its rush in my ears. Blood means life but it also means death. My senses are suffocated, drowning in shades of red. All I can do is fight.
Would-be killer and would-be victim, rolling and grappling; life fighting death fighting life.
If he doesn’t die, I can’t live. If I die, he has won.
The blood’s in my nostrils now, not just the scent of it but the liquid reality of it. My bones ache and my lungs burn. Life and living is on the line.
I feel a tiredness that I know I can’t afford. He thrashes at me, sending pain surging through my body. It rings in my wrists and my chest, my knees. Then three violent knocks in quick succession against my ankles, an orchestra of pain, all my joints singing from the same hymn sheet.
I’m losing. I’m lost.
My eyes snapped open, seeing the world through a bloodshot veil. They slid closed again, reluctant to see whatever the orange half-light had to offer. The final, familiar chords of a tune were still playing in the back of my mind, but out of reach.
I moved a hand beneath me, groping blindly for clues. Wet. Smooth, wet and cold. Whatever I was lying on was as hard, as sleek and as unforgiving as marble. It explained the brutal ache in my joints and the throbbing in my back. But they were nothing compared to the pain echoing through my skull.
I tentatively moved one leg then the other, trying to shift from the foetal curl I was locked in, my muscles protesting loudly at the call to action. My right eye edged open again and I saw that it rested half an inch above a pillow of dark grey stone, my cheek flat to its rain-dappled surface.
So cold. At the realization of the raw chill, a shiver squirmed through my body and didn’t stop until it rattled my teeth. My bones were as cold as my limbs were stiff. Every little movement was slow and painful. I withdrew back into my curl, huddling against myself, hoping for warmth and salvation. Neither came.
I lay there, cold and disorientated on my unknown bed of stone, drifting back towards sleep. A voice deep inside told me I had to move.
My head was so heavy and the world spun as I lifted it. My brain tumbled inside my skull like a ship cut loose from its moorings in a storm.
I managed to push myself up onto my elbows and looked around, my surroundings a blur. It was almost dark, or at least what passed for dark here. Still dark, or newly dark? I couldn’t be sure. What light there was glowed amber from up above. Shop fronts and vaguely familiar facades slowly came into focus. It was the colours of them that made some sense: red, then mustard yellow; white, then pale blue. I was on Torshavn’s western harbour, at Undir Bryggjubakka.
The smells of the sea – salt and seaweed and a faint whiff of oil – came to me on the breeze of that knowledge and I slowly turned to see it lapping blackly behind me, white boats bobbing and oblivious to whatever plight I faced.
I looked below me, a realization slowly dawning. My black stone bed was one of four great slabs on the harbour where the fishing catch was laid out daily. Slate beds for fish and shellfish. Not for drunks.
The canopy above the slab had kept me reasonably dry. Maybe that’s why it had seemed like a good idea at the time. I couldn’t stay here now, though – too cold, and the fishermen might be due to arrive. I had to move.
I edged forward, inch by aching inch, until my shoes dangled over the side of the slab. I pushed myself to my feet and immediately wished I hadn’t, oxygen surging and balance gone. I half-sat, half-fell back onto the stone, my hands reaching up to massage my temples. I pushed again and staggered onto the empty street, veering left, more because of a homing instinct rather than any real sense of direction or purpose. I walked, head low, arms out, weaving my way up Torsgøta, turning my head away from the disapproving glower of the cathedral high to my right, and climbed towards the hills.
The wind had picked up from nowhere and was taunting my ears, whistling cold round them, but helping to keep me on the right side of sleep. The pavements were black wet beneath my feet, the road even steeper than normal, and it made for hard work. I took a stumbling turn left and just minutes later another freezing gust came at me off the sea, making me shiver and forcing me to abandon the use of my hands as balancing aids, driving them into my jacket pockets in search of warmth.
‘Shit!’
A sharp pain flashed through my right hand and I tore both of them back out of the pockets as if I’d been electrocuted. Underneath the streetlight, I could see that my right palm was stung with blood.
Cautiously, I reached back into the pocket and emerged with a short, stubby knife. Even in my muddle-headed state, I knew what it was, this wooden-handled dagger with its thick blade. Every adult male on the islands had one. It was a
grindaknivur
. A knife for cutting whale meat at the dinner table.
Except this one had been used for something else. Its blade was coated with blood. Blood that was too dry to have come from the cut to my hand.
I patted myself randomly: hands, arms, head, stomach. I pulled up my shirt, examined the visible flesh. There was no blood and no cut other than the one I’d just made. The blood on the blade wasn’t mine.
I stared at the knife, wishing it away. Wishing I could remember where it had come from. What it had been used for.
The street, Dalavegur, seemed more exposed than it had moments before. Standing there with a bloodied knife in my hands, I could only wonder how many curtains were twitching at the sound of footsteps in the middle of the night.
I slipped the
grindaknivur
back in my jacket pocket, turned up my collar, bowed my head and walked on, hoping I was no more than a ghost, unheard and unseen.
The little knife weighed a tonne, though, dragging my pocket down with doubt. Hard as I tried, I could remember almost nothing. Drinks in the Cafe Natur. Then waking up on the fish slab in the rain. Little but blackness in between.
She’d
been there, I remembered that much. Laughter. Drinks. Maybe an argument. Then nothingness.
Across the intersection and up a narrow path, the houses were further apart now, the lush green of the hills carved into generous sections by the coloured timber frames of traditional homes. The wind hurled itself at my unsteady figure, spinning me and forcing me to turn and look at Torshavn laid out below me, its odd shapes pushing through the mist. Roofs of turf and rainbow hues, the cathedral spire and swathes of green. All tumbling down towards the sea. Always to the sea.
I don’t know whether I was driven by instinct or guilt but I took a few steps off the path and knelt down, the blood flowing to my heavy head and making me think I might throw up or pass out. I grabbed the sharpest stone I could find and began digging at the earth, howking out dirt until there was a hole big enough to contain the little knife.
I pulled my shirt free of my waistband and used the bottom of it to wipe the handle of the
grindaknivur
before dropping it into the newly dug hole. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes. I kicked the dirt back over the knife, filling the hole and stamping it down. Picking up three similarly sized stones, I used them to both mark and conceal the hole. With a final look around, I pushed on up the path to the shack that passed for my home.
It was three hours later, when I’d somehow managed to rouse myself from my brief second sleep and get myself in to work, that I heard. Everyone was talking about it. No doubt the entire islands were.
The stabbing.
The murder.
Chapter 2
Three months earlier.
I was blown into the Faroe Islands on the June wind. Picked up by a squall that dumped me on the first bit of dry land that held fast between the sea and the sky. Due north of where I started. Both zero and 360 degrees north of the place I’d left behind.
It was 435 miles straight up from Glasgow, 415 west of Norway and 400 south of Iceland. It could have been the definition of the middle of nowhere. It could have been anywhere. Just as long as it wasn’t where I’d come from.
Emerging from the front door of the tiny airport, I stood and looked. And saw nothing. It wasn’t just that the concrete concourse was enveloped in mist and drizzle, it was that there was virtually nothing to be seen.