The Last Refuge (30 page)

What I wanted to do, of course, was to go to Karis’s studio. To bang on her door, demand attention, throw stones at her bedroom window, shout and scream. I wouldn’t do that though. Hard as it was, I’d decided she had to come to me. There had been enough opportunities that she hadn’t taken. If she thought me guilty then so be it. I could hardly blame her for that, given my own doubts.

As I stood and pondered my next move, male voices came at me from round the corner, getting closer. One loud and angry, the other calmer and more dispassionate. Both were insistent in their own way. They weren’t arguing, not quite, but the louder of the two was definitely heated.

Then, amid the tangle of words that I couldn’t understand, came one that I knew very well. My own name. Twice I heard ‘Callum’ rasped out by the louder voice. Then again, this time in the other’s clipped accent.

I stepped towards where the voices were coming from, realizing that the pair had stopped walking and were in animated discussion once more. As I turned the corner, I saw them just a few yards away, facing each other, unaware that I was there. One tall, hands on hips, one short and gesticulating furiously.

The tall, athletic type, in the sharpest of sharp steel-grey suits, topped by close-cropped blond hair, was Inspector Nymann. The other was much shorter and wider, thick legs supporting a bulky frame. I could only see him from behind, but his identity dawned on me like a spider crawling over my skin. My abiding memory was of him being picked up from the quay, wiping away the trail of fish guts that I’d stuffed in his mouth.

It was Nymann who noticed me first, seeing me approach over Toki Rønne’s head. The shorter man saw the inspector’s gaze shift and followed it, turning to look at me over his shoulder. Both watched me approach, the hateful scowl of one counterbalanced by the detached stare of the other.

Toki turned fully in order to face me down, but Nymann stepped forward, his arm held up before him like a traffic cop.

‘Do not come any closer, Mr Callum. I would regard it as intimidation of a witness.’

‘You’re kidding me, right? I get instructed to attend this station and then when I leave you tell me I can’t walk down the path to get out?’

Nymann pulled himself up to his full height and offered a well-practised sneer. ‘You may walk down the path, of course. But you may not approach this man. Do you understand?’

Toki was clearly enjoying the exchange, his mouth twisting up at the side in some representation of a smile.

‘No, I don’t understand,’ I told Nymann, my patience worn thin. ‘Tell me how I can walk that way without approaching him, given that that is where he is standing. And maybe you can tell me what you think he is a witness to.’

The Dane looked as if I’d questioned the likelihood of the sun coming up in the morning. ‘He is a witness to your character. And you will walk down that side of the path. We will stand on this side until you have gone by. That is clear.’

I shook my head at Nymann’s words and moved infinitesimally to my right, a deference that seemed to satisfy the officer’s smug superiority. I walked up to and then by them, at which point Nymann nodded emphatically and turned.

He led the way into the station with a clinical sweep of his arm, striding forward with Toki in his wake. I watched the pair of them going down the path until my former colleague swung on his low axis and turned to face me, walking backwards towards the cop shop.

An evil, crooked grin spread over his face, a light sparking in his dark eyes. Without missing a step, he sucked in the twisted smile and spat heavily onto the ground in my direction. A fat fist came up and a forefinger jabbed menacingly towards me before he turned again, just in time for Nymann to hold the station door open for him.

Chapter 46

For a couple of hours, I sought solace in booze in the Manhattan. It wasn’t Torshavn’s best bar, but that was why it suited me. It was dark and quiet, with corners to skulk in alone and undisturbed. Their beer was good and their whisky relatively cheap. No one bothered me, other than the odd stare, and I was left to drink and think.

I stopped just short of maudlin drunk and a few glasses shy of recklessly smashed. Just hammered enough to smooth off some of the edges and blunt a handful of memories. It couldn’t wipe them out, no amount of booze could do that. Instead, it fuelled the desire to do something about them. I could still smell the blood on my hands from the shack door, and I knew what I wanted to do about it. It was time to get home and get ready.

The steep walk back up Dalavegur did me good, burning off some of the booze and working my body. I kept up a good pace, asking questions of my calves as I marched up the hill. I was getting hotter, breathing more heavily, but liking it. A film of sweat formed on my forehead and I felt as if I was trying to burn everything out of my system: alcohol, guilt, blood, everything. I went faster until the heat came to my knees and Achilles tendons, spreading into my thighs and lungs.

At the top of the hill, the shack in sight through the soft, fading light, I finally relented and eased up. I stood still and panted, eyes closed. When I opened them again, I saw a shadow in the eaves of the shack. Something, no, someone, sitting or kneeling there.

I didn’t move. I stood, swallowing my racing breath. I had been seen by whoever it was, no doubt about that. My first thought was of the person who had painted my door in blood, and I instinctively balled my hands into fists.

I began to move quickly again, straight towards the shack and the shadow. I had gone three or four paces when the figure moved, stepping out of the shade to meet me.

Karis! I didn’t know whether to go quicker or slow down. As I got nearer I could see tears streaming down her face. She broke into a run and I joined her, taking her in my arms. Her head sunk into my chest and she grabbed me tight. Her head still hadn’t come back up when she began tugging at me, steering me inside.

She only let go when she began to pull my clothes off, dragging my shirt over my head and unbuckling my belt, pushing away my feeble attempts at resistance. Not a word had passed between us and I was being pushed back onto the bed naked, Karis standing above me and peeling off her own clothes. Rational thought called to me but I was beyond reach; other faces were banished to locked rooms in my mind. Nicoline Munk, Aron and Nils Dam, Esm undur Lisberg; all shut away where I couldn’t see them.

She straddled me, grabbing me with her right hand and guiding me inside her. We were instantly one and yet separate. Karis arched her back and rode me, setting a pace and a rhythm and forcing me to keep up. There was an urgency, a sense of need about her, something extra driving her on. I let her go, rising to meet her and running with her, feeling the need and embracing it.

Her hands were grasping her head through her hair, sometimes shielding her face from me, sometimes facing the ceiling as her back arced away. Other times, I saw her eyes were screwed shut and her face clenched in a grimace. She rose and sank on me, faster and harder. There was no sense of prolonging or indulging in what we were sharing. Instead it was insistent, burning, demanding. She was pushing me beyond control, over an edge of no return. When she saw me arch my back in near defeat, she moved in a blur that carried us both over the brink and into the bottomless chasm beyond.

She fell on top of me, her head on my chest, and I could feel her heart hammering against me. Then little snuffling noises began to escape from her, the sound of sobbing. I tried to lift her head up so I could see her face, but she kept it clamped against my flesh. I got the message and left her to cry softly, not asking why. Instead I just held her, one hand on her head and the other on the small of her back. My skin was damp with her tears.

The light fell further, the sun dipping until only the absence of complete darkness coated the skyline. I reached to the floor where the bedcovers had landed and pulled them over us to keep off the chill. She snuggled closer, silent now but for the occasional sniffle. After a while, I moved to stretch towards the lamp, but her hand came up and caught me. ‘No. Leave it. Please.’

So we lay together in the half-light, naked and quiet, until Karis spoke again.

‘They say your name is Andrew.’

‘It’s my full name. I prefer John.’ It sounded fake and hollow because it was.

‘John, I need . . .’

I’d expected the question, the one I’d waited for since the first moment I set eyes on her that night – but it didn’t come.

‘No, I . . . never mind.’ She sounded tired and frazzled, she sounded small and scared. ‘I cannot deal with this. It is too much. I shouldn’t be here.’

‘I’m glad you are.’

‘Because I fucked you?’

She meant it as a joke, but it came across as nervy, almost hysterical. Having sex with her suddenly seemed completely the wrong thing to have done.

‘No, not that at all. Because I haven’t seen you since the night it happened. I thought you might have come to the jail, but maybe I’m glad you didn’t.’

Her head clamped tighter to my chest.

‘I missed you. But I could not come to see you. It has been . . . difficult. I cannot sleep. I cannot paint. I know that everyone thinks it is my fault. That I am to blame for Aron’s death. I know everyone thinks that.’

Again I tried to gently lift her head to see her face, but she refused to budge.

‘I have been drinking since . . .’ she was starting to cry again, ‘since it happened. No sleep. Thinking about you. And Aron. And me. I am being selfish, but this is a small place. People look at me as if . . .’

I pulled her closer, tighter. ‘It’s not your fault.’

The noise she made sounded unconvinced. ‘Maybe. Everyone thinks it is. They are all talking about me as if it is. I know it. I know I should say fuck them, but I cannot stand that they think I am to blame for him being dead.’

‘Well . . . maybe some of them do think that. But it isn’t true. And what they think of me is worse. They think I killed him.’

I felt her shiver beneath me. The question was unspoken, but I was sure it was going through her head again:
Was it you? Was it
you?

Part of me wanted her to ask so that I could answer, even if all I was going to do was tell her what I thought she wanted to hear. Something that would make her less scared and stop her shaking. Something that would convince her that everything would be all right.

‘That night when . . .’ she choked back a sob, ‘. . . we were both very drunk. I do not even remember leaving the Natur. Not properly. Do you?’

‘Do you remember the fight with Aron? My fight with him, and you being angry at me?’

‘Yes.’ It sounded resentful. ‘I remember that, and I was told about it by others. You should not have done that. It looks bad. Very bad.’

‘He was threatening me.’ I knew my voice was raised, but I couldn’t help it. ‘He was trying to warn me to stay away from you and he’d . . . he’d done other things to get at me.’

Karis’s head came off my chest for the first time and she looked at me curiously, but she didn’t ask. Her eyes were milky red and strained. Her head didn’t so much go back onto me as collapse, hitting me with a thud.

‘It looks so bad.’ Her voice was muffled by my flesh, her lips pressed against my skin. ‘What do the police think? I know what happened in court, but what are they saying to you? What do they believe?’

My sigh was deep and marbled with thoughts of Nymann, Keilstrup and Munk, Tunheim and my lawyer Samuelsen, too. A cast of unbelievers.

‘They still think I did it. They will keep trying to prove that. I am not allowed to leave the Faroes and must report in to the police station every day. They don’t suspect anyone else. Just me.’

Karis pinched me, her nails digging into my skin, as if claiming me. ‘Just you? Why do they not think it could be anyone else?’

‘The fight, I guess. And I cannot prove where I was when he died. And have no alibi. They don’t know of anyone else who had a reason to do it.’

There was a gasp of sorts against my chest, an exhalation of something that I couldn’t read. The only thing that I could think of, whatever her actual intent, was that she really wanted to ask the question.
The
question.

‘What about evidence? Like from the scene where . . . where it happened? Surely they must have footprints or fingerprints or DNA or something?’

The question troubled me. ‘Do you want them to find something like that?’

‘No. Well, yes. Of course. To find who did it.’ She paused. ‘To find that it was not you.’

‘Yeah. I’d like that too.’

We fell into a silence that at some point must have become a sleep. I felt her go first. A stillness came over her and I was able to twist my head and see part of the side of her face, beautiful and calm, her lips full and just slightly parted. I stroked her hair and let my own head fall back, until I stared blindly at the ceiling through the gloom. My eyes closed and I drifted.

I am watching myself sleep. Standing over my own curled-up figure, an overgrown foetus, eyes closed and mouth half-open. I can walk all the way round myself and it’s fascinating to see me from all angles, see what other people would see.

It’s not a pretty sight. Dishevelled and unshaven. Obviously drunk. My long legs coiled under me, my big face bloated with alcohol. Face squashed against the fish slabs, which push it out of shape and make my mouth gape like a trout on a hook. I try to wake myself up by shouting, but either the standing me can’t be heard or the sleeping me can’t hear.

Everything is in black and white and I wonder if I’m starring in an old movie. My rumpled clothes are in shades of grey and my face is ashen, the pallor of a sixty-a-day smoker. I’d maybe think I was a statue, some grotesque piece of modern art, but for the occasional billowing of my grey cheeks and the faint rise and fall of my chest. I reach down and move my jacket where the movement is coming from and see that not everything is in monotone after all. I can see my heart beating red through my shirt, a glowing fist-sized beast pulsing with life.