Devil's Fjord, page 8
‘Miss Olsen. She’s looking for them.’
Haraldsen stayed at the stern, hands firmly clasping the steel rail. The two fishermen were quiet in the boathouse. Concerned, Haraldsen believed. The weather was changing, quickly as it sometimes did anywhere in the Faroes. The storm clouds out to sea were now larger and seemed not too far away. The anvil shape had acquired a menacing blackness to it. From time to time they could feel and hear the grumble of distant thunder, like rocks moving around the heavy, leaden sky.
The Alberta sailed the coast, from close to Djevulsfjord’s harbour, round the small, steep-sided rocky bay of Freyja’s Pool, on to the black beach of Selkie.
From time to time Silas Mikkelsen would mutter something dark about missing another grind for this seemingly ill-fated venture. The pod of pilot whales was tantalizingly close at times. Haraldsen no longer needed the assistance of the experienced men around him to see them. The black fins of the creatures broke the thrashing waves so close to the boat that he felt he might reach out and touch one.
Then the pod was gone and Ganting turned the boat once more. Away from Selkie, back towards Djevulsfjord. There was no point in wasting time and fuel. The boys were somewhere else. Hopefully skulking somewhere on the slopes of Árnafjall, fearful of the beating they might get once they came home.
Towards Freyja’s Pool they sailed. Haraldsen thought of what they’d heard from the gossiping Dorotea Thomsen that morning. That the previous year Baldur Ganting had recovered the body of his own son from this spot. Looking at it as they hove past he wondered how. And in this strange, almost hypnotic state that was beginning to grip him a memory came back. One of the stories they told at school, a Faroes myth.
Freyja was the Norse goddess of extremes. Of sex and love, of war and death. He dimly recalled reading once, in a book about Faroese mythology, that she was reputed to have come to Vágar and bathed naked in the tiny bay, surrounded by its sharp rocks and steep cliffs, believing that no mortal would see her.
In the way of ancient fables she was, of course, wrong. A young man from what must once have been Selkie was out hunting puffins with his nets, invisible to the goddess tucked away in his rock hide. Seeing the beautiful, immortal woman fly down into the pool, disrobe, and reveal her loveliness, he could only creep to the cliff edge, look down and stare.
The sight of her, the legend said, was enough to fill any man with lust and wonder. But Freyja had a guardian, a wild boar, Hildisvíni, loyal, strong and brave. In battle she would ride him, dispatching enemies with her sword while his sharp white tusks dealt with others.
As the local fisherman gazed at the beautiful goddess with a growing passion from the cliffs above the pool, Hildisvíni noticed and came a-creeping up behind.
One moment the hapless boy was stricken with a heated sense of desire the like of which he’d never known. The next he heard the snuffling of the beast behind him, then turned only to be skewered by its rapier tusks and tossed like autumn wheat, over the rock edge down to the water where his corpse crashed, a sacrifice to the goddess below.
So furious was Freyja at being spied upon by an ordinary mortal that, still naked, she leapt astride Hildisvíni and the pair of them flew furiously into the air. Over the village in Selkie Bay the boar opened his fearsome mouth and, like a dragon, roared flames on every man, woman and child there, burning everything, flesh and bone, wattle and daub huts, wooden fishing boats, to ashes.
That, the story said, was why the sand of Selkie Bay remained black as coal, and no sane soul had lived there for as long as anyone could remember.
He wondered why the story had stuck with him. Perhaps because of the curious notion of a pig that could spit fire.
Ganting’s loud, coarse voice broke the reverie.
‘Are you with us, man?’ the skipper demanded. ‘Or simply dreaming?’
Before he could answer the boat bucked and rolled with fresh violence on the growing swell. Then, a good thirty metres from the cruel sharp rocks at the pool mouth, it lurched forward and the little cove was gone from sight.
Freyja, the boy and Hildisvíni was a cruel story, Haraldsen thought, as so many myths were. But Baldur Ganting’s own flesh and blood had perished in this self-same spot, for reasons that seemed odd and obscure. That was a genuine tragedy, not the product of an ancient, over-active imagination.
As they approached the Skerries the sea calmed a little thanks to the influence of the fjord.
‘What next?’ Haraldsen asked.
‘Next we moor and join the men in the hills,’ Mikkelsen replied. ‘This weather will do for us if we don’t get ashore soon.’
Ganting himself remained silent. Lost in his own gloomy thoughts.
‘Tell me what you wish of me. I’ll do it. I still feel somewhat—’
‘You’re not responsible,’ Ganting interrupted with a swift brusqueness. ‘Kindly cease saying that, man.’
‘Ja, but—’
‘But nothing,’ the fisherman went on. ‘This is our business, not yours. We will deal with it as we always do. I’ll dock the boat. Go find that wife of yours. Think about what you’re going to do with the sheep. When you want them slaughtering and salting for the winter, let me know. I’ll do it by way of thanks for allowing us the grind since you took none of the skinn.’
There it was again, Haraldsen thought. These men could divide their world into two separate parts without a second thought. In the first a couple of boys were missing. In the other, the daily round of life, of meat and death and labour, went on regardless. This was, he accepted, reasonable. Sensible even. It was also quite beyond him.
The sharp needles of the Skerries went past, the Alberta rolling only gently now. The small harbour loomed. Though no mariner, he could tell the tide was coming in from the way the lively waves were lapping at the shore.
Thirty metres from the wall Baldur Ganting’s phone went. He passed the wheel to Mikkelsen who edged the boat towards the quay.
It was a short conversation with a single question from Ganting. Then without a word he returned to the wheelhouse, grabbed control from his son-in-law, fired up the boat’s engine and turned it round full into the heaving waves, towards the black storm clouds on the horizon.
Haraldsen found himself forced to the port side and had to hang on hard to stay in the boat at all.
‘What is it?’ he asked when he’d got his breath back.
‘The police. They seen ’em,’ Ganting said, eyes on the dark line ahead. ‘They seen ’em good and proper somewhere above Freyja’s Pool.’
Silas Mikkelsen stayed silent. Haraldsen made his way to the wheelhouse.
‘So why are we heading out to sea?’ he asked.
Ganting glared at him and said not a word. Then he notched up the engine further. The nose of the boat rose and bucked on the roll of waves ahead as they started back the way they came.
Steep, steep, the cliffs were steep. Coarse grass and dying late-summer flowers. Sheep shit in brown desiccated lumps that stuck to your shoes if you let them.
Jónas led. Benjamin followed, ankles hurting from the incline, bare legs caught by spiky mountain vegetation.
He didn’t whine too much. No point, he thought. He was the older one. It wouldn’t have been right. The phone had rung. The magic phone, or so Jónas seemed to think, summoning them to something his brother didn’t care to explain.
Somewhere their Mam sat, worrying. Crying probably. She did that a lot when she thought no one could see. Benjamin might have been the stupid one. People told him that often enough. But he noticed her weeping even if others, his younger brother especially, didn’t.
They turned a low knoll clothed in arctic willow. Benjamin snapped a leaf or two and chewed the bitter leaves. Grandma Eydna said they cured toothache. He didn’t know about that. But they didn’t taste nice.
The boy spat them out. His brother turned and glared at him.
‘What stupid thing you doing now, goat?’
‘Both goats now, ain’t we? Clambering up and down the mountain like this.’
You don’t answer back.
How many times had Jónas said that, hard bony fists bunched, threatening to break his nose? Benjamin was bigger, stronger. But Jónas was quick and fearless, and that counted for so much more.
His brother stopped, came straight up, raised his knuckles in Benjamin’s face.
‘Screw with me now, goat, and I’ll kill you. Rid the world of your useless carcass. That I promise. Got business in these hills. Understand me. Ja?’
High on Árnafjall. No one to see. Anything could happen here. It was only the presence of their mam that kept him in check back home in the cramped, damp quarters of the little shed by the quay.
‘What we doing here?’ Benjamin whispered.
His brother laughed.
‘You? You’re following me like always. Useless piece of shit. Go on. Walk down that hill. Go home on your own. See if I care …’
‘Mam—’
‘Mam said don’t go out on those hills alone.’
He did a good impression of Benji’s voice when he wanted.
‘Shift, goat!’ Jónas bellowed and dragged him down the path.
He’d never liked the places they trapped the puffins. They’d always seemed like tombs from the days of the old people. Vikings and primitive folk who came before. Stone enclosures, rock upon rock, stinking of age and the piss of men and beasts, beer cans and dog ends on the floor, worse sometimes too, they stood at intervals along the Lundi Cliffs, staring out to sea.
Once – just once – he’d come hunting with their uncle Kaspar. This was early that bad summer when they were still a family, just. Arguments were rare and for the most part he felt they were happy. Jónas had been bullying him as far back as Benjamin could remember, always with the same sly and cunning trick. Wind him up then, when Benji lost his rag and started to yell and throw his fists about, one of two things happened. Either Jónas flew at him hard and vicious with his sharp and bony knuckles. Or he ran to the nearest grown-up, a parent, Mrs Blak the teacher, the priest, the district sheriff, and whined about how his big brother was a crazy creature, too dangerous to be let out of the house.
The folk of Vágar were there to cope with what life served them. Grandpa Ganting had told him that when he complained about the way Jónas got him into trouble and did far more by way of punching and kicking than Benjamin ever tried. You either took it, the old man said, or you stamped and kicked back. Which was not Benjamin’s way. He retaliated, never started the fight.
There’d been words exchanged from time to time though. The niggles and the sly, persistent blows would stop for a week or so. Then, when Grandpa Ganting and the rest of the men got tied up in a summer grind or winter slaughter, Jónas would come back at him with a vengeance.
That happened the day they killed the puffins. He remembered it clearly now as they bore down on the rocky shelter beneath the fading, late-afternoon sun.
The nets, the swift way the birds were snatched from the bright air. How they squeaked and squealed when their little necks were wrung. Kaspar swearing if one of them caught him with his beak.
And Jónas.
Madder than ever. Running round trying to get to the struggling bodies first, anxious to be the one that took their little lives.
Kaspar strangled them as easily as if he was plucking carrots out of the meagre patch behind the cottage. Not Jónas. There was a pleasure in it for him, a black glee Benjamin failed to understand and was determined not to share.
Not even when his uncle ordered him to kill one of the birds as if it was a test at school: do this sum, get it right, pat yourself on the back …
He was never good at sums either. Couldn’t bring himself to wring the terrified creature’s neck. Got punched hard by both of them for that.
As Jónas raced ahead of him, determined to be first to the narrow dark entrance of the shelter, Benjamin saw this day from the year before so lucidly in his mind’s eye it almost felt as if he was back there.
The memory made him shiver.
Jónas stopped by the entrance and waited for him to catch up.
Bony fist up, he snarled, ‘You stay here, goat. None of your business and never will be.’
Don’t be long, Benjamin thought but didn’t say. I want home. I want off these hills. A bath. Clean clothes. Some proper food again.
There was someone inside. Unseen. Hiding too. But Benjamin could hear the man, his low and grunty tones.
Nothing was going to get the boy through the black hole of a door into the darkness where they’d wrung the puffins’ necks.
Nothing at all.
SEVEN
A long ride it was, so hard in places she had no choice but to get off the bike and push the thing up the narrow brown path that led up to the Lundi Cliffs.
At the top, when the ground became more even, she’d made a breathless phone call to Aksel Højgaard. The man was on voicemail. Hanna uttered a short curse about senior officers, took a couple of lungfuls of clear mountain air, then got back on the saddle.
The boys were probably heading home after their brief adventure. There was no good reason for them to be around this part, so close to Selkie Bay with its black and empty beach.
Still she rode on, enjoying being alone for once. Her brother had vanished somewhere hereabouts. In the past few months Hanna had spent every spare waking hour searching around Selkie and the surrounding countryside looking for some small sign. A lost piece of clothing. A hat. A shoe.
All in vain.
The breeze was stiffening into a horizontal blast. Black clouds had edged in from the western horizon. There’d be no Northern Lights, no moon either. The sky was already too thickly-cloaked for that.
A lone boat was out at sea. Ganting’s. It was a safe bet, she thought, that the new district sheriff would be on that. He seemed a persistent man.
She had his number too. It came with the job.
By the largest of the puffin hides she stopped and leaned the bike against the dry wall rocks. He answered on the third ring.
‘Haraldsen,’ he said politely over the roar of the engine and the thrashing of the angry waves.
‘Hanna Olsen. I imagine you are with Ganting on his boat.’
‘Ja. They say the boys are somewhere on the cliffs.’
‘The helicopter’s gone back to Sørvágur. I’m looking on my own from the Selkie side. Have you seen anything?’
‘I have a pair of binoculars. Let me look again.’
Somewhere in the background, over the roar of the ocean, she heard a curse.
‘I think I have you, Hanna. I saw you up there earlier. I thought you’d spotted something.’
‘I believed I had,’ she agreed. ‘But perhaps I was wrong. They may have seen sense and headed off for the village.’
‘All I see now is you. Nothing else. I’m sorry …’
A noise then. She walked round the circular hide, phone still to her ear, trying to make sense of it. Small feet rustling through stiff fell grass. Voices too. One young, one older, both raised though the sound was muffled since it came from within the hide and so she could barely hear.
‘Benjamin!’ she cried. ‘Jónas?’
No answer but there were people there. Two, three. It was hard to tell.
She looked at the black mouth to the hide and felt a sudden shiver of fear run through her.
‘Haraldsen,’ she said, looking out to sea again, ‘they’re here. Perhaps trying to avoid me. I don’t know. Get in touch with the search teams on the fjord side. Tell them what I’ve told you. You’ve no need to waste your time any more on the sea. I’ll bring the boys in—’
Silence then.
‘Haraldsen?’
On the lurching boat, arm firmly round the handrail, he watched in growing puzzlement.
There were shapes on the cliff, barely distinguishable from this distance.
‘Someone, Hanna. There’s someone near you—’
Then a heart-stopping moment. She vanished abruptly behind the rock hide, brought down, it seemed to him, by a blow from a shadowy figure mostly blocked from view by the stone wall.
Before he could speak again the Alberta bucked like a wild horse. He fumbled the phone into his oilskin pocket and clutched hard on the rail with both hands, fighting to stay on board. Ganting was screaming something from the cabin, inaudible over the roar of the storm. For a good three or four minutes they seemed lost in a maelstrom of wind and water, one so fierce Haraldsen found himself wondering, for the first time in his uneventful life, if the end had truly come. Then the vessel seemed to calm itself, found more peaceful water, and Ganting edged her round to face the cliffs again.
Through the old binoculars there was no sign of the stricken Hanna Olsen, or anyone else. He was wondering what to say or do about this when a small shape pitched out onto the gentle slope. There it could do nothing but roll helplessly down the hill, towards the ragged edge.
‘There’s a lad gone over,’ Haraldsen whispered and found himself clutching for his own life as the boat began to buck and bob on the wild ocean once again. ‘Ganting! Mikkelsen! Look!’
The child was tumbling head first down the cliffs, arms flailing, legs too, fluttering like an angel stripped of wings, plummeting to the unforgiving rocks below.
Imagination gave the boy a voice over the roaring ocean, one that could not possibly be real.
Nevertheless it was there, deafening in Tristan Haraldsen’s head: a terrified shriek, an angry, fearful scream.
Baldur Ganting was fighting the wheel once more, trying to steer into the narrow cover of Freyja’s Pool. They could see the child now. A rock ledge a good five metres above the thrashing waves had broken his fall.
‘He moves,’ Silas Mikkelsen cried, trying to stay upright in the prow. ‘I saw him, Baldur. The boy moves.’
‘You think?’ Ganting bellowed back and struggled to bring the vessel in closer.
Haraldsen edged his way along the handrail, towards the front. It was as if he no longer existed. These two men, well versed in the ways of the sea, were focussed on one thing alone: the crumpled shape on the rocks ahead of them. There was no other way to save the child but the boat. No helicopter could fly in this weather. No climber would be able to abseil down this treacherous cliff face in such conditions. It was their job alone and they knew it.
