The Last Refuge (18 page)

Dam waved a dismissive arm across himself. ‘You talk. I don’t listen. I want him to go. And I am going to make him go. He just sits there and you fight for him. He is not a man.’

I saw the flame light in Karis’s eyes and she was readying herself to argue with Aron, but she didn’t get the chance. I swept out my left leg and whipped Dam’s feet away from under him. He crashed to the floor with a thud that made the entire bar turn and look. Karis’s mouth fell open and her stare turned on me.

Dam struggled to his feet, helped by one of the other customers, who he pushed away ungratefully. His cheeks burned red and the embarrassment made him even angrier. He took a stumble back then moved hurriedly towards our table again. I slipped from my seat, letting him fall into the vacant space, grabbing his arm and twisting it violently behind his back.

Dam yelped then grunted furiously. I twisted the arm further, increasing the angle and feeling the tendons stretch and the bones protest. I was ready to break it. He tried to push back, using his greater size and weight, but every time he moved I bent the arm more.

‘Stop it!’ Karis was talking to me rather than to him. ‘Stop it!’ I didn’t.

Her eyes squeezed shut momentarily in anger and frustration then opened again as she put her head down beside his.

‘Aron, I told you what I would do. I meant it and I will do it. So help my father’s God.’

Dam grimaced and I made him whine a little more. He nodded. Then, as I hadn’t stopped, he nodded quicker and harder.

I let him go and he stood up before slumping against the wall, nursing his arm as best he could.

‘Go.’ It was all she said, and he left, head down, everyone in the pub watching his humiliating departure.

I was back in my chair before the door hit his backside. I lifted the glass of schnapps, closed my eyes and emptied it down my throat, the fire and spices warming me yet somehow cooling my rage.

When I opened my eyes again, I saw Karis was sat as far back in her seat as she could. A single tear was working its way down her cheek. Her hands gripped the table in front of her, her knuckles glowing white. I struggled to read the look on her face, seeing confusion, but even as I watched, it turned to anger.

‘I told you. I told you to leave it to me. Why did you do that?’

‘I couldn’t . . .’

‘No. Don’t talk. There is nothing you can say . . . You think violence is the answer? You are as bad as he is.’

She raised her hand and I saw a flash of glass before the remains of her akvavit splashed into my face, stinging my eyes. By the time I had wiped it away, all I saw was the door slamming closed behind her and her shadow disappearing down the street.

I sat for a while, bemused by what I’d done wrong and by her reaction. I’d fought my own battle. I’d bested the beast. Shit, the schnapps was really working on me. Not enough, though, and I now had a problem that could only be solved with more of it.

I managed to get to the bar and ordered another. A double. The problem with akvavit, I now knew, was that it didn’t last very long. As my anger and confusion grew, I worked it back quicker and quicker.

It was all Aron Dam’s fault. He’d brought me back to a place I didn’t want to be. A place I’d already tried to get away from. Karis hadn’t helped either. I did it for her and she’d thrown it back in my face. How could she treat me like him?

I threw the last of the akvavit inside me and wiped my hand across my mouth. Pushing my chair back, I got to my feet and pointed myself in the direction of the exit. Faces whirled around me, all looking at me. I waved an arm, dismissing them, not properly recognizing them. Door. I needed to go out the door.

I fell through it onto the street and suddenly knew where I was going. Knew what I was going to do.

Chapter 26

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.

I woke somewhere mid fight. A fight I was losing. Suddenly awake, with no idea where I was or when, eyes snapping open in fright. The covers of the bed I lay in were in disarray and my body a tangled, aching mess of limbs. Hojgaard’s shack. That’s where I was. Morning. The morning after the night before.

My head throbbed and my throat was sandpaper dry. Massaging my temples, I stumbled out of bed in search of water. There were a few inches in a bottle and I eased that down my neck before refilling it from the tap and falling back onto the bed.

Something else was missing. A scratchy memory tugging at my consciousness. Another awakening that seemed like a bizarre dream. The slate fish slabs on Undir Bryggjubakka.

I sat and held my head, trying to separate dream from alcohol from memory. Leaving the Natur. Falling into the night. Then waking . . . not here. There. I woke there first. Didn’t I?

It seemed so ridiculous that I couldn’t be sure.

Looking down, I saw the cut on my hand. I stared at it, willing it to explain, desperate to know. An attempt to drown my hangover in the shower didn’t work, and growing anxiety dressed me with shaky hands, so that I had to clench them into fists to stop it. I dreaded having to speak, practising a few words aloud and hearing them woolly and slurred.

When Martin’s car came into view, I took a deep breath and then expelled it again, hoping to get rid of the fumes that must have been lingering on my tongue. I fell unsteadily and uneasily into the back seat, a silent wave to Samal, Petur and to Hojgaard. I feigned tiredness, although it didn’t require much acting, and closed my eyes, my head against the window. Maybe I slept, maybe I didn’t, but all the time my brain was thinking, ‘I’m drunk. Don’t let them see that I’m drunk.’

I opened my eyes on bends and turns, seeing waterfalls cascading down the hills into now-familiar fjords. The morning was misty, the low cloud hanging over the fells like the ghost of the previous day’s weather. Sheep looked up lazily at our passing, but some stared right at me, their gimlet eyes warning me off. I fell back into my faux sleep, praying that my act was winning over my audience and that conversation would prove unnecessary.

At last I felt the car come to a stop and woke to feel the side of my head wet with condensation from the window and my forehead damp with sweat. Stepping warily out of the car, I saw the other three were well down the path towards the factory and followed slowly and deliberately in their wake.

My fat head hung low as I walked, and I had to force myself to push it up into something resembling a normal position. Martin was a smart guy and I had to wonder if I had fooled him this far. My fetid breath in the small space of the car. Surely he’d noticed.

Inside the factory there was a wall of chatter that assaulted my ears as soon I entered. An ironic thought of gossiping fishwives came to mind as I saw what seemed to be the entire remaining staff standing around talking in one large group.

Hojgaard spoke up at the sight of them, and although it was in Faroese, I had no doubt by his tone that he was asking what the hell they were doing standing there rather than getting to work.

Five or six of them seemed to answer at once, pupils eager to impress and please the teacher. I heard the name Torshavn. Other words tumbled over each other. I saw Samal’s mouth drop open in disbelief. Petur’s did the same but as if in slow motion. Hojgaard’s hand came up, demanding attention, and his words that followed were firm, calling for quiet and demanding that one person speak. A fat guy named Gudmar did the talking. I followed none of it – except two words. A name.

Petur turned to me, his face blanched.

‘They say there was a killing in Torshavn last night. A murder. It is all over the radio, but we didn’t have it turned on. They thought we would know.’

My gullet closed over. My head shrank in on itself. Discharged memories nudged me awake. Words forced themselves through the keyhole that was my throat.

‘Who was it? Do they know? Who . . . who was murdered?’

It was Hojgaard who answered, his eyes set hard and fixed on me.

‘It was Aron Dam. Someone stabbed him to death.’

Chapter 27

Hojgaard’s words pierced my guts. Aron Dam’s name made my heart stop and my brain freeze. My mouth hung open and my limbs were locked.

With my head stuttering, wondering, arguing with itself, I fell onto a bench, my back glad to have the wall to hold it up. I reached for my work gear, struggling to put it on but glad to have an excuse for not looking up at the others.

Hojgaard had put everyone to work, breaking up the gossip-mongers as best he could. It wasn’t easy: the Faroes weren’t a place where things like this happened. Glasgow might have a couple of murders over a quiet weekend. The Faroe Islands had had one in the last twenty-five years. Until now.

He didn’t say anything to me but I could feel his eyes on me and sense him putting things together in his head and wondering. Just as I was. I strained to remember what had happened between drinking with Karis and waking up outside. Pieces began to drop into place, blurred fragments of memory. Aron. A fight in Cafe Natur. The awakening on the fish slabs that I was now sure I didn’t dream.

I got to my feet and made for my work station, legs carrying me there on autopilot. Remembering. The knife in my pocket. The blood on the blade. Burying it on the hillside. So close to the shack. What the hell had I done?

The police would be tracing Dam’s last movements, asking around town and finding out where he’d been. It wouldn’t take them long, not in a place the size of Torshavn. He was a regular in the Natur: they’d probably already talked to the staff. The fight was bound to be mentioned.
I
was bound to be mentioned.

My hands trembled as I stood on the production line. Not from the alcohol, as earlier. From fear. Some of it fear about what might happen, but more, much more, about what might already have taken place. Fear of not knowing.

My hands were useless, betraying me. Clumsy, fat-fingered traitors. They let fish slip, they squeezed too hard. And there, on the palm of my right hand was the fresh cut where the
grindaknivur
had pierced it. An atheist’s stigmata. A wound that might lead to my own crucifixion.

The morning dragged, minutes seeming like hours, the hands of the clock on the wall held back by my guilt and paranoia. Perhaps everyone wasn’t looking at me, perhaps it just felt that way. I remembered Karis being angry at me. In my mind’s eye I could see her glaring at me, but I couldn’t hear the words.

When lunchtime came, I was glad to get out of the suffocating grip of the factory and burst outside, fetching lungfuls of air. It was drizzly and cold but I didn’t care. I made for my favoured spot facing out to the ocean and the sea stacks and sat down on the damp grass, mindless of the moisture soaking into me.

I had no appetite but tore into large bites of the sandwich that Petur had given me, eager to fill the void in my stomach. The bread turned into acid, burning me as it dropped inside me and causing my guts to cramp in protest. I ripped the last sandwich into chunks and hurled them into the air, where they were snapped up by greedy and grateful kittiwakes.

To my left, Risen og Kellingin were continuing their hopeless duel with the ocean, the waves relentlessly working away at the colossal stacks, dissolving the basalt, grain by grain. Maybe they should just give in, I thought. Fall into the sea and at least make one final splash rather than meekly fading away until no one remembers you were even there.

Behind me there was a crunch of tyre on gravel and I spun my neck to see a white Mondeo with a blue light spanning the width of its roof and
Politi
written on the side in block lettering. Seconds later a green Toyota pulled up beside it.

Two men in blue shirts and jackets got out of the marked car, one of them large and bulky, the other shorter and stockier. Another man emerged from the Toyota, his back to me and the collar of his long brown coat already turned to the rain below a crop of blond hair. I watched breathlessly as the uniformed men waited for him and they went together into the factory.

My heart beating faster, I turned back to the ocean to see that Risen og Kellingin were slipping from view, the mist and rain eating them from above just as the waves were from below. I knew they were losing their battle, I just couldn’t see it.

It was an ashen-faced Martin Hojgaard who emerged from the factory with the police officers behind him. The fair-haired man in the brown raincoat stayed at the door beside Martin while the two uniformed officers moved towards me along the path. I stood as they approached and they quickened their step, perhaps thinking that I was going to make a run for it. But where could I have gone, even if I’d wanted to?

‘John Callum?’ the large cop asked, even though he clearly knew who I was.

‘Yes.’

‘Come with us, please. We are taking you back to Torshavn.’

The shorter cop produced handcuffs but I shook my head at the sight of them. ‘You won’t need those. I won’t be any trouble.’

The officer pushed them towards me anyway and I shrugged, my resistance crumbling. I let them tighten the cuffs round my wrists and heard the click as they locked. The bigger guy took my arm firmly but gently and led me back along the path.

The man in the raincoat wore wire-rimmed glasses that he removed and dabbed at with a handkerchief to fight the drizzle. He pushed them back onto his nose when I was a few feet away and regarded me keenly.

‘Mr Callum, I am Inspector Broddi Tunheim of Torshavn Police. Enjoying the view there? The stacks are beautiful, are they not? I don’t get up this way often enough. My wife always says I should get out of town more, but I don’t really get the chance. Today, I do. Mr Callum, did you kill Aron Dam?’

The sound of his name slapped my face, stunned me. I wanted to tell this man that I didn’t know. Tell him that I might have done. Could have done. But that I just didn’t know.

‘No.’

I was lying. If I knew it, he probably did too.