Devil's Fjord, page 17
‘I was a teacher for a while. The first-aid officer for my school. I know when a cut needs attention. Inga. Inga.’
She shrank behind the statue and for the first time it occurred to Elsebeth that perhaps this woman was weak and frightened and vulnerable, and disguised all this with a mask of aggression and false strength.
‘I never asked you here. You should go.’
Instead Elsebeth folded her arms and stood her ground.
‘On the contrary. You summoned me by leaving a nasty message for my husband. I will not leave until you’ve promised that won’t happen again. And I’ve seen to that cut.’
Tears. A glistening line that ran from her wide, sad eyes and began to trickle down her cheeks.
‘I never asked …’ she whispered.
‘So you said.’
Close above the roof a sea bird shrieked. Somewhere beyond the bay, miles away in Sørvágur, Tristan was doing God knows what. A child lay on a morgue table in Tórshavn. A funeral was being planned by faceless men in an undertaker’s office, perhaps watching a weeping Alba Mikkelsen, asking how she might find the krónur to pay. While Benjamin stayed lost in the hills and blackfish gathered along the coast, tempting the likes of the Gantings back to sea if only Baldur’s boat was fit for the sortie. Yet here, in Inga Dam’s remote studio, it was as if all the world outside was but a dream, a story in someone else’s head. That was why the woman buried herself in this place. Perhaps the people and the places beyond its pale blue walls held some terror for her Elsebeth Haraldsen couldn’t begin to imagine.
‘I am going into your kitchen,’ she announced. ‘I assume you keep a first-aid kit there. If you would care to follow then I will deal with that wound, then hear you promise to leave my husband alone. After which I will happily get myself out of your hair so you can go back to taking out your fury on that lump of stone …’
‘Not anger. Do not call it anger!’ Inga Dam screamed at her with such heat Elsebeth stepped back in shock and wondered what she’d said.
Inga Dam’s kitchen was like the rest of the place: bright and colourful, a little eccentric and marked by the untidiness one found in the homes of people who lived alone. Next to a small table with a dirty plate that bore a few uneaten salad leaves there was a gas stove with a cylinder by it. On the shelves and tables stood an array of candles and a few electric lamps. The place clearly had no power. However else Inga Dam lived when she was away from Vágar, this solitary hut was the hideaway of a hermit.
By the small and rather grubby sink there was a white box with a red cross on it. The seal was still on. The thing must have been years old. Inside were bandages, plasters, a tube of antiseptic cream.
Like a naughty child summoned by a cross teacher Inga Dam came in, held out her hand, stifled her cries as Elsebeth washed the wound clean with water from a large bottle by the window, then dried it carefully, applied some cream and wrapped it in a bandage.
‘If I were you,’ she said, ‘I’d get that looked at by a doctor. The hospital in Tórshavn. It’s quite deep.’
‘I will live,’ Inga Dam said very slowly.
There was something new in her eyes and it wasn’t the hurt Elsebeth expected.
‘I’m sorry if that was painful.’
‘It was nothing.’
Of course it wasn’t, you silly woman, Elsebeth thought. But perhaps there was a bigger hurt somewhere, one so large it covered such a local pain.
‘Now. Can I be sure you’ll leave my husband alone? We’ve trouble enough …’
‘You think they won’t go for the blackfish?’
Never a straight answer from this one.
‘Baldur Ganting’s boat’s been damaged, I gather. It hit the rocks when they picked up that dead boy. I think they were all lucky to get out alive from that. His son-in-law, the lads’ father—’
‘Silas Mikkelsen. I know him. I know more about that crew than you ever will.’
Doubtless true, Elsebeth thought. But how much of that knowledge would you share?
‘The father’s in hospital, badly hurt. So I think they won’t be fishing for a while. My husband …’
There was a photograph above the canister of gas, taped to the wall, crooked. That seemed a little clumsy.
Elsebeth looked at it and felt cold all of a sudden.
It was the harbour in Djevulsfjord. A sunny day. Whitening skeletons lay on the beach, gulls frozen in the air above them. Baldur Ganting was there, Silas Mikkelsen, a few locals Elsebeth recognized but didn’t know by name. From their exhausted faces and the bloody detritus on the strand it was clear a grind had just happened. Clear too what the figure apart from the fishermen, a tall, burly man with a grey beard and a lined and forbidding face was doing. He had a clipboard in his hands and a book that Elsebeth recognized. It was the manual on fishing rules that Tórshavn had given Tristan when he got the job.
‘You knew this fellow?’ Inga Dam asked in a low and broken voice.
‘No. He must be—’
‘Kristian Djurhuus. The district sheriff before. You know what happened to him?’
She didn’t and it occurred to her at that moment she ought to. Tristan’s offer of the job had come out of the blue. He’d never expressed any interest in fishing at all. In truth it was probably the last thing he ought to be doing with his enforced retirement.
‘We never—’
‘A good man. A Dane at heart. He came to hate all that shit and nonsense when I opened his eyes. The blood and the killings. He saw those demons for what they are. If …’
Inga Dam stopped. The tears were in full flood now. Finally Elsebeth realized and wanted to kick herself for being so slow.
‘It wasn’t anger,’ she said. ‘It was grief. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. I just want my Tristan left alone.’
Inga Dam wiped her eyes and nose with her sleeve and that sent blood that had strayed from the wound spreading across the marble dust along her arm. A very artistic, painterly effect, Elsebeth thought.
‘One summer I had him, my Kristian. One beautiful summer. He came to see the world the way I did in the end. No one ever did before. No one ever will now.’
‘I’m sorry …’
The woman left the kitchen without another word. Elsebeth looked at the photo on the wall again, the men there, some known by name, some by their faces only. One, she realized from the clippings Tristan had shown her, was the late Kaspar Ganting, perhaps snapped not long before his death. Another next to him, about the same age, tall, muscular, smiling unlike the others, was a complete stranger.
When Inga Dam came back she was carrying two crash helmets and set of keys.
‘Put this on,’ she ordered, throwing a helmet right at her. ‘There’s something you need to see.’
With that she walked out and not long after Elsebeth heard the sound of the bike coming to life.
Not knowing quite why, she got out her phone and took a photo of the faces on the wall. Perhaps it would come in useful. Or simply drag them into the darkness ever more quickly.
‘Are you coming, woman?’ Inga Dam yelled from beyond the door.
‘It seems so,’ Elsebeth replied, then followed her outside.
FOURTEEN
Alba Mikkelsen could think of one thing only: finding her Benji. No one else seemed much bothered. The two policemen who’d stopped by to say hello when she was down by the harbour looked as if they couldn’t wait to pack it in. They even came in ordinary shoes. Couldn’t set foot outside the lines of paths that ran around Árnafjall into all the tough bracken and gorse that dotted the hills, around the caves and all the places a lad like Benji might hide.
On her own, old leather boots so worn she could feel the blisters growing and the blood starting to run through her broken skin, she’d trudged those tracks herself, hour after hour, behind the cottage of the district sheriff, over the narrow tunnel, poking her head into that thing’s black mouth as well. Her mother was right. The bus for Tórshavn had gone. There’d be one more in the afternoon.
Not that she’d take it. Not with Benji missing. Poor Benji. Thick Benji. A confused lad two years older than his brother but with half the brain. Though Jónas had too much of that about him if she were honest. He was always up to tricks, most of which she never latched onto. Or if she did it was too late. Him and Kaspar had made a terrible pair, taunting, teasing, nicking, rummaging through people’s vegetable plots and sheep flocks trying to cause trouble. Her brother had kind of adopted the lad from the moment he could get persuaded into mischief. Wasn’t hard. Silas had never seemed much interested in the boys unless they were biddable, easy, willing to go along with everything he wanted. And Jónas was never going to be that kind of kid. After last summer she’d thought Kaspar’s absence might calm him down. It did too. But only for a little while. When the warm weather came back and he could spend most of the day outdoors, bunking off school, heading off to the fells whenever he felt like it, the old Jónas was back. Not that she ever really knew where he went, especially of late.
All these thoughts and doubts and worries, along with their accompanying nagging guilt, ran through her head as she rambled across the mountain, right up to the bare southern fells, then back to the puffin hides on the Lundi Cliffs. There she’d stopped and stared at the black semicircle of strand on Selkie Bay and the snag-toothed rocks below. White horses were breaking on the Skerries with the tide. There was a pod of whales not far off beyond their needle points and her father would be cursing like mad he wasn’t in a position to chase them.
Standing there, breathless on the cliffs, she realized she was next to the very puffin hide they said the lads had been hiding in. Just a pile of stones, God knows how old, a place to bury yourself away from the flocks of birds that gathered on the cliffs each summer, and flew into the fleyging nets so easily, in such great numbers.
‘What were you up to?’ Alba whispered to herself, then ducked down through the low stone door and walked inside. It was dark and damp in there, and the smell she knew already. The stink of cigarettes so rank it was as if someone had been there lighting a fag not long before. Someone had been pissing here too. Just the kind of thing Jónas would do. Only two weeks before she’d caught him taking a leak on George Thomsen’s rhubarb patch behind the big house and the boy had run away laughing, so quickly, vanished for a whole night, waiting till she got worried so that when he finally came back she didn’t even whack him round the ear.
‘Stupid, stupid …’
She raced outside – there was nothing to be learned in that vile little hole – and stood on the clifftop wondering whether to howl with rage or grief or just let all that bile inside spew out of her.
Staring at the Skerries and the black fins breaking surface there, thinking about the strange sequence of events two days before, the beast came and rose inside her, like one of those monsters from the myths they used to recount at school.
Alba Mikkelsen walked forward and stood on the cliff edge, staring down at the craggy rocks so far below. The waves crashed on them, taking away her dead son’s blood and guts for all she knew. The ocean ran and ran, forever to the grey horizon, uncaring, uninterested, like everything else in the little world of Djevulsfjord.
And so she screamed and yelled and howled and spat every word they hated, the nastiest ones she knew. Screeched at herself, at Jónas, Silas, her dad, at the green fells, the filthy puffin hide with its stink of piss and tobacco, at the day, the sky, the sea and, more than anything, the ragged line of houses back by the harbour, a prison from which she’d escaped briefly just the once, and that didn’t turn out well at all.
‘My boys! You took my boys! I fucking hate you all!’
Gasping for breath, tears stinging her eyes she edged her toes over the tip until half her feet balanced over nothing, wondering if the rocks below were calling for her. It would be so easy. One last step out into the cold and salty air. A few seconds, then a swift and brutal end to all the agony.
She’d have done it too. But Benji was still out there. And whatever he’d done to his brother he surely had his reasons.
‘Too easy,’ Alba Mikkelsen said and trudged back to the path.
She walked to the village, slowly, step by painful step, looking all round her, wondering if she might see a figure in the hills, hiding in the caves maybe, frightened, needing his mum. But there was no sign of a soul out on the Árnafjall fells. No one in the tunnel by the district sheriff’s cottage either even though she stood in the black mouth and hollered out his name over and over until her throat hurt.
Exhausted, lost for what else to do, she went back to the shack, kicked open the door, kicked off her boots, sat down, put her head in her hands, decided not to weep because there wasn’t the time, the opportunity, the strength. The blood was coming through the holes in her threadbare socks. A couple of blisters were rising and those she’d have to pop.
One low curse she uttered and then a voice came out of the darkness by the boys’ bunk beds.
‘Some way to talk that is, Alba Ganting.’
‘Mikkelsen,’ she snapped back. ‘Mikkelsen. I’m married. That hasn’t changed, as far as I remember. And this is my home. You don’t just walk in—’
‘No. This place is mine.’
Dorotea Thomsen came out of the gloom and stood in front of her. George, the weak-willed husband, was trailing in her wake. He at least looked a bit shame-faced.
‘This isn’t the moment, love,’ he said. ‘The poor woman—’
‘Yes. Poor,’ Dorotea cut in. ‘Living off our charity.’
‘You said you’d give me some time!’
‘Ja. But that was on the house. Now there’s the funeral to be paid for. Your father’s boat wants mending. All those debts keep mounting.’
‘Jesus fucking Christ woman!’
Alba was on her feet, waving her bony fist. You didn’t swear in Djevulsfjord. Not like that. Did lots of things that were worse from time to time. But never cursed bad out loud.
‘No call for such language,’ George Thomsen chided her. ‘No call for that at all.’
‘What do you want? What do you want?’
Dorotea squinted at her.
‘To help you. That’s what we always do. Help those less fortunate than us.’
‘Who are mostly less fortunate because of you.’
‘George,’ Dorotea said, ‘I don’t think I want to hear any more of this. Tell Alba Ganting—’
‘Mikkelsen!’
‘Your man’s gone,’ Dorotea yelled, waving a fist at her. ‘Don’t you get that? He don’t want you. No one does.’
‘My boy!’
Silence, then the woman just laughed in her face.
‘Your dad’s got big bills coming to get his boat back in the water. Can’t do that without us—’
‘You bastard, George Thomsen,’ Alba yelled at him. ‘You said you wouldn’t tell her.’
‘Didn’t …’ he mumbled.
‘Didn’t need to.’ Dorotea had that look she loved. Triumphant. ‘I know what’s happening in Djevulsfjord. I know everything. Don’t you get it? While you lot struggle to get by we keep the wheels a-turning. Come up with money and goods when you’re hard up. Nothing goes through this place without me seeing it. Nothing goes out either.’
‘We should leave the girl,’ he said. ‘Now’s not the time.’
‘Best she knows where she stands.’ Dorotea threw a piece of paper on the table. ‘This is a fresh contract, Alba. You don’t need to read it. I know you’re not so good at that …’
‘I can read! I’m not a moron.’
‘It’s legal,’ George Thomsen told her. ‘Even I can’t understand all the stuff in there. Lawyer drew it up for her.’
‘Legal … I got my boy’s funeral tomorrow.’
Dorotea brandished the paper.
‘If I pay for it. And the priest. And the hospital bills on Silas. If not you’re going to have to go begging to the social people in Tórshavn and God knows when or if they’ll help you out. Either way you’re screwed. Question is who you want screwing you. Someone local who knows the kind of woman you are and doesn’t mind putting up with it. Or some distant bastard in a council office who’s only going to hear the worst. Maybe lock you up too like that son of yours. Don’t think it’ll be together either.’
Alba’s voice was failing, and so was her strength.
‘I’m not what you think …’
Another laugh then, hard and guttural.
‘Aren’t you? Sign this. I’ll pay for everything. I’ll let you stay here. I can get your father’s boat back in the water in a day or two if I want. If I don’t I can’t see him having a penny income all winter. Can you?’
The paper. The damned paper was waving in her hands.
‘What does it say?’
‘It says you work for me. Doing what I tell you. Cleaning. Mucking out the sheep when we want it. In the kitchen. Full time. Hours flexible. Whatever I want them to be.’
Tears, they kept begging to come and she was determined the woman wasn’t going to see that.
‘You mean like I’m your slave?’
‘Employee,’ George Thomsen insisted. ‘It’s just that she puts money in one envelope for you. Then takes it out with another.’
‘And I never get to leave?’
Dorotea Thomsen shook her head.
‘Djevulsfjord’s your home. Why would you want to do that? Where could you go?’
She chuckled and the way her heavy jowls moved reminded Alba of the pig her father had kept once and slaughtered bloodily on a wooden frame in the back garden for winter.
‘Let’s face it. You tried running once before, didn’t you?’ Dorotea declared. ‘Look how that turned out.’
‘I will not be your slave,’ she said, knowing now the tears wouldn’t come.
‘You are already,’ the woman announced. ‘Like the rest of this hole. It’s just that you’re too stupid to know.’ A nod of her head. ‘Never mind. George. Watch. You’re the witness.’
There was a pen tucked into the pocket of her floppy purple cardigan. She took it out, popped the top, bent down and signed the contract. Then showed Alba the name there: her own.
