Devil's Fjord, page 22
Out of the fog one of the animals bleated and that only made him worse, so close to tears they both felt as sorry to witness it as the man did for his state.
‘But today of all days!’ Haraldsen cried.
‘I can kill one now. Get her hanging. The rest … give me a day or two. You’ll get meat all winter and I can bag the offal for your freezer.’
‘Baldur …’
The man looked caught between tears and rage. He wasn’t going to go.
Elsebeth dragged her husband to the side of the cottage. They didn’t talk long. There didn’t seem many choices, or any way of persuading a distraught and determined man like Baldur Ganting away from his intentions.
When they came back Haraldsen said, ‘You may take all four beasts. We don’t much like mutton anyway …’
‘I am not here begging for your charity, district sheriff!’ Ganting roared. Somewhere close by a bird fluttered away, terrified by his anger. ‘What kind of man do you think I am? To take what isn’t mine—’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Elsebeth muttered. ‘In that case take all four and sell whatever you don’t need. Meat, offal, the lot. Then give us our share.’
He blinked, as if trying to work that out.
‘Does that satisfy your pride, now?’ Elsebeth added.
‘You won’t want anything for the winter?’
‘No,’ Haraldsen told him. ‘That won’t be necessary.’
Ganting took off his fisherman’s hat and scratched his grey head.
‘Well, so be it. I will get you a fair price in Sørvágur. Not from that bitch Thomsen.’
Elsebeth groaned.
‘The price we’ll leave to you.’
‘Now …’ The knives clashed again in the fog. ‘You are city folk and probably will not wish to be hearing this. I gather they’re putting what flowers they can find in the church. If you would care to see it. Perhaps help. Else—’
‘You’re sure you want to do this now?’ Haraldsen asked.
He frowned, like the country man he was, assessing the effort a familiar task would take.
‘I will be back in time to change into my mourning clothes. Well so. You …’ He grimaced. ‘Tórshavn folk are never good around blood. Come back here after we lay little Jónas in the ground. The rest I will deal with as the days go by.’
‘A moment,’ Elsebeth said quietly and walked off.
He knew where she’d gone and so, Haraldsen suspected, did Ganting, a man who was not insensitive, just dulled and hardened by the life he’d come to lead.
She was leaning on the shed as he joined her. The doomed animals had come to stare at them, expecting food as usual.
‘I should never have bought the creatures,’ Haraldsen said, winding his arm through hers. ‘Ridiculous idea.’
‘It was all a part of our fantasy, Tristan.’
‘Well, we leave Ganting to it. If we don’t get a penny back from those animals I won’t mind.’
She unhooked her arm from his and shuddered.
‘Just don’t ask me to set foot in that shed again, please. Perhaps we should put on our funeral clothes and see if Dorotea Thomsen has some flowers.’
They went inside and changed then, into loose dark country gear, the best mourning wear they could find. The fog was slowly clearing. A few minutes on they heard a sound drifting through the damp and cloudy day and Elsebeth and Tristan Haraldsen found themselves drawn together, arms round each other just like teenage lovers back outside the dance in Tórshavn. A scream it sounded like, back from home. One so real and sharp for all the world it might have been a child.
Højgaard left the hearse, its drivers, the contents in the shiny coffin in the back, stuck in the mist by the church to wait on the mourners. The ambulance crew pushed Silas Mikkelsen into the nave where he could stew in his wheelchair for an hour or more. Only then did he take the winding path across the sheep field to the manse.
The weather suited his mood and, he felt, his purpose. A black fake leather briefcase swung at the end of his right arm as he walked the damp grass, whistling an old tune.
The door was open. He marched straight in. No one on the ground floor. He’d little desire to see upstairs so he hammered on the thin wood walls until there were footsteps down the stairs.
Ryberg was dressed for the occasion: all black, clerical shirt, a dog collar, his beard neatly trimmed.
‘Do you enjoy funerals?’ Højgaard wondered.
‘It’s not a question of enjoyment. It’s work.’
‘You get paid a little extra?’
‘A little. I say the words. I watch the box go in the earth. Then …’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Comfort the bereaved if I can.’
‘I expect there will be much comforting to be done. Alba Mikkelsen’s a pretty little thing in a damaged kind of way.’
The priest was staring at the case.
‘I trust that’s for me.’
‘I trust you’ll earn it.’
The man in the dog collar glowered at him.
‘We are set on this course, man. No turning back. For either of us. But I require my—’
Before he could say another word Højgaard came right up to him and felt his beard, quite roughly.
‘Oh my God. Is that perfume I smell? You do have plans for later.’
‘Only the ones we agreed.’
‘This must come off before you flee.’
He placed the case on the table and flipped it open. Then took out a Danish passport. It was in the name of Emil Holm. Age forty-eight. Ryberg stared at the photo and said, ‘How the hell did you get hold of that?’
‘I’m police here. Did you forget?’
It was Ryberg’s ID photo from six years before, when he was still in Denmark, a mugshot from the files in Helsingør. Clean-shaven, guilty.
‘I’m an inquisitive soul, Lars. I know all about your little problems there. Why they dispatched you to the ends of the Lutheran earth. Women.’ He shook his head. ‘Always women. Though not willing ones or so they said. At least you never went near boys.’ He hesitated. ‘Or did you? I doubt the police found out everything. Did your superiors in the church put a halt to things?’
‘We should not be having this conversation.’
‘Boys,’ he repeated. ‘That would be interesting. No? Still …’ He slapped the passport on the table. ‘Your secret will be safe until you’re gone. Bury the lad. Do what the hell you like afterwards. It’ll never come back to haunt you. Here we are.’
There was a plane ticket in the name of Holm. Direct from Sørvágur to Copenhagen that evening. Then a night service to Bangkok.
‘Thailand, Lars. Or should I say Emil. You can take your pick of partner there. And this …’ An envelope full of brightly-coloured bank notes. ‘Fifty thousand Thai baht. As good as ten thousand of our krónur. That should you see started. Of course when it runs out—’ he gripped the man’s arm very tightly – ‘you’re on your own. You do understand that, don’t you? No coming back. Not ever.’
‘As if I would,’ Ryberg grumbled then grabbed the passport, the money and the ticket, then the case.
‘Not this,’ Højgaard told him and snatched the briefcase back. ‘This is mine.’
‘No traces home to you then!’
Silence between them until Højgaard said, ‘I’m still waiting.’
‘For what?’
‘Why … a word of thanks. What else? You wanted out of here. I’ve made it possible.’
‘For your own reasons! Not mine!’
‘For our mutual benefit. How long will this damned service last?’
The flight was at eight. There was time for everything.
‘I’ll have the child buried and the lot of them out of the graveyard by four.’
‘Good.’ He relaxed his grip on Ryberg’s arm. ‘After which you must … console the mother. Here. The two of you, alone. Don’t take too long about it, will you?’
The priest hesitated.
‘Is that … is she really necessary?’
Højgaard squinted at him.
‘What?’
‘If that family of hers ever found me …’
Højgaard grabbed him by the collar.
‘They won’t. You’ll be gone. Of course it’s necessary. If it wasn’t I wouldn’t be asking. Don’t pretend you’ve acquired a conscience now. It’s too late and I for one will never believe it. Besides … you know you want to.’ A wink. ‘It won’t be the first time, will it? Such stories from Helsingør. No wonder they dispatched you to this hole.’
Ryberg kept quiet.
‘A man of God will keep his word,’ Højgaard added. ‘After the service you will see to Alba Mikkelsen. Shave off that beard. Take your things. Drive yourself to the airport. Climb on that plane. No one will stop you. No one in Copenhagen will think you’re anything but a middle-aged lecher called Emil Holm travelling to the fleshpots of the East for a little entertainment. Which won’t be so far wrong, will it?’ He held out his gloved hand. ‘Farewell then. I’m sure you’ll be too busy with the church and everything for us to talk again.’
‘Farewell,’ Ryberg muttered and clutched at the money and tickets.
The fog seemed a touch thinner when Højgaard went outside. All the same he made sure to go and see the two ambulance men sipping from their flasks of coffee, the attendants with the hearse, everyone around. To let them know he’d spoken to the priest who was, it seemed, as upset as everyone at the sad ceremony to come.
EIGHTEEN
The shop had one bouquet of flowers left, roses and lilies imported from Africa, Dorotea Thomsen said. Which was why they were so expensive even though the petals were starting to wilt and the white of the lilies betrayed a tinge of rust.
‘Don’t sell many flowers. Even when there’s funerals. The thieves from the undertakers usually grab that business.’
Elsebeth had walked in silence all the way. He knew what she was thinking about: the sheep in the slaughterhouse and Baldur Ganting working there with his knife.
You cannot come and live here if you don’t have the guts to kill a thing from time to time.
A truth that had never occurred to them when they first drove through the Árnafjall tunnel in the Ace Capri, believing they were emerging into some kind of paradise, a place to spend their final years of leisure walking the hills, watching the waves break upon the Skerries as the dwindling Djevulsfjord fleet plied the sea.
‘We’ll take them.’ Haraldsen took out his wallet. ‘You’ll be closing the shop for the service, I imagine.’
‘Of course,’ she said as if the question was idiotic. ‘No business during a funeral now, is there?’
Elsebeth scowled and shot him a look.
‘I imagine not,’ he replied.
‘But I’ll open the doors for an hour this evening in case anyone wants something. We have beer in specially. We don’t do wakes, not like you know in Tórshavn. It’s for the family.’ She shook her large head. ‘If you can call the Gantings that.’
Elsebeth grasped the bouquet and walked outside. What remained of the mist was now a shade of white tinged with watercolour blue. The light in Djevulsfjord was like that. It changed almost hourly sometimes, even when the sky was obscured entirely. One’s view of the place was entirely subjective, dependent upon perspective, the time, the season.
She went and sat on a bench by the harbour. The hulls and cabins of the small fleet bobbed up and down in front of them, white and blue, marooned by the weather and events. Ganting’s Alberta was covered in tarpaulins, shattered timber planks poking out of the fabric. It looked much like an injured patient waiting on assistance in a hospital corridor after a crash.
‘That boy lost on those fells must be terrified,’ Elsebeth said eventually.
‘Perhaps. Or perhaps not.’
‘Tristan …’
‘Love. If there’s one thing we’ve learned here it’s that we’ve learned very little at all. These people don’t live like any we’ve ever known. The boys, the men, they head off into the hills with their fleyging nets, hunting chicks and God knows what else. You heard. They stay out there day and night sometimes.’
She turned and stared at him and he knew he was being judged.
‘In weather like this? When his own brother’s being buried?’
‘And how would he know of that?’
‘Because …’ She pointed to her eyes. ‘He has these. They all do. It’s in their faces. We look at this place and see one thing. They peer at it and see another. Somewhere we never go. I think … I think Benjamin Mikkelsen’s up there somewhere. Stealing into our garden for his eggs. Hanging round that tunnel. He’s watching us and wondering when he might dare come home.’ She hesitated. ‘If he dares come home. Here.’
She thrust the bouquet of flowers into his hands. Petals were falling off them already. A gull squawked unseen. The boats creaked as they rose and fell upon the tide. Elsebeth looked him over and straightened the collar of his wax country jacket. It was dark green, the closest they had to black, and matched hers naturally since they always shared the same taste in clothes.
‘Look at us,’ she said. ‘We’re hardly dressed for the occasion.’
‘Well. We didn’t come here expecting to be attending a funeral.’
She faffed around with his collar again.
‘If you’d rather not go, Elsebeth …?’
‘I will not miss this occasion for all the world,’ she said very quickly. ‘Nor shall you. We owe Jónas Ganting that. Besides …’
Elsebeth got to her feet, and the noise of her movement sent a couple of birds cackling into the mist.
‘Who knows what we may see?’
Djevulsfjord church was the largest building in the village and the least-frequented. Sundays apart, Lars Ryberg’s duties were confined to christenings and the occasional wedding and funeral. White timber exterior, white conical spire, a cross at the lintel, a smaller crucifix over the tiny raised altar at the nave. The place was unheated and little light streamed through the high narrow windows. The Haraldsens, as atheists, had never set foot inside nor seen any reason why they should.
Perhaps that was why heads turned as they arrived. Though only briefly. Djevulsfjord seemed more intent upon its own. The coffin was resting on a trestle covered in gleaming cloth. There was music but it came from tinny speakers and a CD that Ryberg kept for such occasions. The old organ that had sat at the side of the nave for fifty years no longer worked. Besides Djevulsfjord lacked a musician, and the funds of the Gantings were insufficient to bring in an organist and portable instrument from outside.
The Haraldsens shuffled into the shadowy interior behind a couple they recognized from the grind: a middle-aged man and his wife, whose names they didn’t know. Father Ryberg in his clerical robes nodded at everyone as they arrived. Dorotea Thomsen stood by his side retrieving any flowers people had brought and setting them in a loose arrangement by the font. Most bunches seemed local, straight from the gardens or the hills. A wreath on the coffin apart, the only bought-in blooms seemed to be their own.
There was this old platitude in the mystery books Elsebeth Haraldsen sometimes read: how the criminal always returned to the scene of the crime. But it was a cliché, she felt sure of that. The congregation here, strangers most of them, was so quiet, so serious, so devoted to the moment that it was impossible to believe anyone in the church might do a child harm.
Deliberately, she added, trying to think this through as they walked at a snail’s pace behind the other mourners.
Jónas had fallen from the heights of the Lundi Cliffs and was found with a grind dagger in his chest.
Benjamin had vanished afterwards and was, everyone seemed now to assume, the guilty party in his death. Even if it was some kind of accident. Blame would always be apportioned in a place like this. Perhaps it was when Kaspar Ganting died the year before. Perhaps – and she knew this thought was running through her husband’s head and that of the troubled policewoman she was beginning to like too – the missing Søren Olsen had a hand in that, since he was a man of violence however hard his sister fought to hide the fact.
Maybe Inga Dam’s lover, Kristian Djurhuus, uncovered all this and found, for some reason, his beliefs rejected. By Aksel Højgaard she imagined. Who else? And then …
Dorotea took the bouquet from her and placed it by the other bunches, petals streaming from the heads with every step she took.
Tristan wound his arm through hers and they sat down on a hard pew at the back, somewhere they could see the Gantings seated together to the left of the small coffin shining brightly under an electric lamp standard brought in for the occasion.
Alba was at the end of the row, nearest to the boy. As Elsebeth watched, heart ready to burst with pity and bewilderment, her skinny mother’s arm reached out and touched the polished wood, ran a finger down the grain, then returned to her lap.
Silas, the estranged husband, sat hunched in his wheelchair, head down across the aisle. Nothing appeared to pass between them, not a glance, a word. Yet they must have married here. Must have watched little Jónas baptized in the wooden font behind them, his brother two years older at the time, a quiet infant, Elsebeth guessed. Not bright. The whole village said.
‘Not his brother’s murderer either,’ she whispered under her breath.
Her husband raised an eyebrow and she fell silent again. Eyes on Alba, always Alba, trying to imagine what thoughts were running through the poor woman’s head.
The recorded organ struck up louder. A hymn she remembered from her childhood. The congregation, perhaps twenty people, little more, rose slowly to their feet.
The words still lingered in her memory from those Sunday morning visits to the chapel with her parents. They sang this when her mother went into the ground too, one year after her father.
Hear, Smith of the Heavens
God I call on thee,
To heal me …
Eyes still locked on Alba Mikkelsen, standing shakily next to the shiny coffin, she couldn’t sing. It was impossible. So Elsebeth did what came more easily. With the conscious rhythm of her breathing, slowly, deliberately, she began to weep.
