The Last Refuge (31 page)

Shocked at the sight of it, I stagger back, the jacket falling closed again and the heart disappearing from view. But there’s something else. More red. I can see it in the jacket pocket. Crouching down, I can see inside as it opens in front of me. There’s a knife, a
grindaknivur
. It is in grey like everything else, and the blade and handle are daubed in red. Blood. Bright red blood. I can see that the blood is still dripping from the blade. Seeping into my pocket, then my trousers and into my skin. It seeps red then merges into the greyness of everything else and disappears.

As I watch, the sleeping me moves, stretches and wakes, sitting up stupidly and looking around. Gulls and kittiwakes appear and swoop round my head, screeching, wings flapping, trying to peck at my eyes. The me on the slabs is too sleepy to notice, and I have to step in, waving my arms wildly, but one of the gulls still manages a savage nip at the right eye of the other me, scooping out the eyeball and gulping it down in a single bite. A trail of blood leaks from the grey socket and runs red down the leaden cheek, but the dozy, woozy, disorientated me doesn’t even notice.

Up. The other me is on his feet and staggering into the street. I run round myself and shoo the other me to the left. My own guardian angel, shouting and screaming to go left, to go home. I stagger left then forward, taking wild lunging strides, one to the right for every two to the left.

On the hill now. I am pushing at myself from behind, palms on the back of the other me and shoving him up the slope. I am heavy and it’s a struggle. The hill has never been so steep. Looking around as I push, I see grey heads peeping out at us from doorways and windows, familiar faces that I can’t quite recognize. They are all looking at the staggering me. More than that, they are staring at the blood on the knife that can be seen through the transparent grey of the jacket pocket. The blood is running down the leg of the other me now and leaving a spatter behind us as we walk and push and walk up the hill.

When I turn and look back, I see the blood has become a river of red running behind us down the colourless slope, ruby red washing over a hill of slate. So much blood that it cannot all have come from such a little knife. It has come from me. I am not pushing myself any more, I am pushing a corpse. My own.

At the top of the hill, on the path to the shack, I see the spot marked by the triangle of small stones. I let my body drop lifelessly to the ground and take the knife from my pocket. My fingers are long and sharp like talons and I use them to dig a hole big enough to take the knife and hide it away from the world.

But suddenly the little hole is bigger, man-sized, like a tunnel. Or a grave. I drop the knife inside but have to listen for it to hit the bottom. I hear it whistle through the air, becoming quieter and softer, until nothingness, and then finally I hear it hit rocks, miles below.

I look at my corpse and know what I must do. Pulling it by the legs and then the arms, I drag the body across the earth until it is positioned by the edge of the hole. With a swing of my leg, I boot it into the hole and it falls, falls, falls until it crashes onto the bottom of oblivion.

A last look around to make sure that no one is watching, then I jump in feet first, till I am completely inside, swallowed up and on my way down. I pass through the middle of nowhere, hurtling towards the end of somewhere. I know I can hide under here forever, no one will find me, no one will even think of looking for me down here. I fall and fall and there is no end to my falling.

When I woke it was because I had landed, and the shock of it forced my eyes open and my body to sit upright from the waist. I was soaked in a film of sweat, breathing hard, and could still feel the chill on my skin from the fall into and through the earth.

Some realization dawned with the day, and my head snapped to the right. The side of the bed next to me was empty but for a rumpling of the sheets. I looked around but there were no clothes on the floor where they had been dropped in a heap the night before. Karis had gone, left while I slept, and I could only wonder whether she had ever been there in the first place.

Maybe it was for the best. I glanced at my watch and saw that it was nearly time that I should be up anyway. If she had still been there, it would be more difficult for me to get out and do what I had to do.

Chapter 47

One of the few things I knew about my target was where he lived. A red-walled, turfed-roof house just off Hoyviksvegur, no more than a ten-minute walk from the port. Knowing where he lived, I also knew the route he took when he left home in the morning. And I knew when.

Like everything else in the Faroes, his routine was ruled by the sea, by the turning of the moon and the tide. People were slaves to it, just as it was a provider for them – but the sea’s demands were greater than those that were made upon it. The sea’s very predictability was to be my target’s enemy.

I stood in the shadows of a morning gloom, hours stolen back from the waning summer, unseen by the sleeping and the unwary, confident that I wouldn’t have long to wait.

The first footstep was enough to alert me and send adrenalin crashing through my body. It was so early that it was unlikely to belong to anyone else.

His footsteps were lazy; unrushed and laboured. He was coming and in no hurry. I held my breath. Last chance to change my mind. I didn’t take it.

He passed me, oblivious to my presence, and I let him walk on a full stride so that he wouldn’t catch sight of me in the periphery of his vision. I stepped out, quickly and quietly, and brought the wrench down onto his head. The groan that seeped from his mouth as his knees collapsed beneath him was no louder than air escaping from a balloon, but my hand was over his mouth to make sure no one heard. The same hand allowed me to pull him back into the lair of my shadows, while I waited to make sure no one had seen what had happened.

He was limp below me, a crumpled bag of sleeping bones, completely unconscious. I stood, breathing hard now, knowing there was no going back. Satisfied that my attack had gone unnoticed, I pulled my prey down the street and round the corner to where my hired car was parked, and threw him into the boot.

He stirred a couple of times as I tied his hands to the rusting pulley that hung overhead, its rope brown with age. It wasn’t enough to wake him, though, and he’d fallen deep again before I placed the balaclava backwards on his head, shutting out the little light that the room offered. He dangled there, his clothing wet and dirty, both from where he’d fallen to the ground when I’d hit him and the dirty floor that I’d hauled him across once I’d got us both inside. Everything was in place, it was time to wake him up.

The water that came from the old tap was as rusty brown as it was freezing cold. I watched it swirl round the cobwebbed bucket and couldn’t guess the last time it had been poured. I threw it all over him.

The scream was short-circuited as it caught in his throat. I guessed that the shock of the water had crashed into the pain in his head and the dread created by his blindness. He twisted and turned, seeking light where there was none, not for him.

His feet only barely touched the ground and he was forced to grope towards the greasy floor with his toes to maintain balance. The cry in his own language when it came was an attempt at defiance, a roar of rage but with a foundation of fear.

I walked away as quietly as I could and picked up the second bucket of water that I’d loosed from the tap. He was still shouting as I threw its contents over him, drenching his head and upper body.

This time he screamed fully. A shrill yell that reverberated round the old metal in the room and bounced back upon him. He paused, head cocked, as he tried to decipher the cause of the echo. I had no way of knowing if he’d ever been inside this place but it seemed unlikely. From what I’d learned, it had been abandoned for years.

‘Who are you? Tell me.’ The shout was much less defiant this time, the bravado all but gone. It was almost pleading. But not quite.

He could hear the water running this time and obviously knew what was coming. He braced himself, his head turned away. The noise that he gave up when the water hit was muffled, his pain swallowed back down, but I could hear him shiver.

If he’d listened carefully enough, he’d have known that I’d refilled both buckets. The scream when the second one hit him suggested he hadn’t. Now his teeth chattered and there was the hint of a sob behind the wool of the balaclava.

‘Please. Stop.’

I said nothing but retreated to the other side of the room, where there was a heavy metal drum half-full of wood, its base pooleddark with engine oil. I dragged it to within six feet of him and made a point of dropping it heavily to the floor, its clanging echoing round the room.

His head snapped to the side, doubtless wondering what made the noise. And why.

I let him think on it for a bit before I drew the box of matches from my pocket, taking one out and striking it. It sparked and hissed, large in the silence, until it faded to a whimper and died.

‘Who are you? Why are you doing this?’

I struck another match and let it drop into the drum. The oil spat immediately and burst into flames that bit into the wood above it. I had made fire.

The contents of the oil drum barked noisily and the smell of burning wood snaked slowly into the fetid air of the room, mixing with the corrosion and grease and decay.

The heat took longer to come, and was nowhere near making its way over to the man, who was squirming and shivering, with his arms still locked above his head. He could hear the fire, though, and couldn’t miss it for what it was.

I stood still and silent long enough for him to take it in, and to debate whether fire was a good thing for him or not. He was probably still thinking about it when I kicked him hard in the shin. The yelp was equal measures of surprise, pain and self-pity.

I reached up and pulled the balaclava from his head, feeling him shrink from me, his eyes finally blinking at the available light. Once focused, they opened wide at me. I got the impression that he wasn’t entirely surprised at who he saw standing in front of him. It didn’t help his fear, though. I was pretty sure it made things worse.

‘Why?’ It was a whimper in English.

‘Come on, Nils. You know why. You must do.’

Aron Dam’s brother shook his head fervently. ‘No. No, I do not. Let me go. Let me down from here.’

I noticed how pale and raw his hands were now, swollen red above the wrists, but chalk white below, where the blood had drained south. I didn’t answer him but picked up one of the old plastic buckets and walked slowly to the rusting tap.

It turned noisily, lack of use cranking up the volume, the screech echoing off the oil cans, wheels, bolts, pipes, buckets, doors and other rusted objects that the place was packed with. I let the water run slower than before, seeing the fear in Nils’s eyes as it filled inch by inch.

When the bucket was full, I picked it up and sat it quietly a couple of feet from the metal can and the crackling fire within, before walking back over to Dam. I stood toe to toe with him, my face inches from his.

‘You do know why. Don’t you?’

He shook his head, less forcefully than before. I laughed in his face.

‘Which do you want, Nils? The bucket of water or the bucket of warmth? Tell me what I want to know and I will bring the fire near to you. If you don’t . . .’

He screwed his eyes shut, thinking hard and trying not to look at the buckets. When his eyes slowly peeled open again he was defeated.

‘The blood on your door. It was me.’

I stared back expressionless. ‘Go on.’

‘I got sheep blood and threw it over your door.’

‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

‘I did it because you killed my brother.’ The words were spat out this time, coated in large dollops of anger and defiance. ‘You fucking killed my brother!’

I turned my back on him, not wanting him to see my face screwed up in doubt. Yes, I was more and more sure; probably as sure as I could be. But still . . .

I turned round and faced him again.

‘I didn’t kill your brother. But you know more about this than you are saying. I know that you know enough to help me prove I didn’t kill him. And you will tell me.’

‘Fuck you!’

‘You know what Aron was doing. The burst water pipe. The dead sheep by my door. The dead raven in my house. And you know why.’

I had to hope he couldn’t hear the doubt in my voice. That he couldn’t detect the layer of certainty I was trying to coat it with.

He hesitated, words clogging his throat. Now I knew he had what I wanted. I just didn’t know if he would give it to me.

‘I said
fuck you
. I tell you nothing.’

He meant it. I shrugged at him, as if there was nothing else I could do. Turning away, I picked up the water bucket and slowly advanced on him. As I pulled it back, I paused to give him a final chance. He didn’t take it and I launched the cold water over his face and down over his body. He gasped and began shaking, his head slumping on this chest.

‘Are you going to tell me?’ I grabbed his soaking hair and pulled his head up so he had to face me. Inside, I was begging him to tell me, to stop me from going further.

‘No.’

I picked up two blocks of wood, one in each hand, and walked to the oil drum, which was flaming strongly now. Placing a block of wood on each side, I lifted the drum and placed it within a few feet of him.

‘There should be enough heat in that to stop you from freezing to death overnight. Probably. I’ll find out when I come back tonight. Do you know where you are?’

Dam’s eyes narrowed as he looked around him, nervously flitting from sealed rusty drums and tall canisters to ancient spanner boxes and tarnished piping.

‘No.’

‘You’re in the old whaling station at Við Áir near Hvalvik. It’s been closed for thirty years, so I’m told. And no one will be anywhere near here all day. Feel free to scream as much as you want.’