The Last Refuge (43 page)

The blond hair above the slender frame was unmistakeable. He was in the middle of the whalers yet not with them. He didn’t hold the rope or carry a hook, instead he was armed with something else, which he held close in front of him.

My legs were moving before I realized it. Towards Gotteri. Towards the ocean and the whales. The cold shock of water chilled my legs then my groin and my waist. I was in amongst the swell of sea and man and whales and boats. I was part of it, living it.

The froth of whipped water rose up at me as the whales fought for their lives, soaking me and those around me. Men had crossed between Gotteri and I. Only his head was in view, and then it too was gone amid the tumult. In front of me and to my left, a flinty-eyed whaler with short dark hair was leading with the rope, up to his chest in water and his hook raised at shoulder height.

As I watched, he grimaced, steadied himself, and brought the hook down on the great writhing figure that blackened the water in front of him. The rounded end of the
sóknarongul
struck violently but deftly into the whale’s blowhole, where it stuck fast.

The reason for the line fastened to the hook became suddenly apparent. With the gaff lodged in the whale’s skull, the men began dragging it to the shore, where its fate would be sealed. I watched open-mouthed as the slick dark shape slid through the foam towards the sand. In seconds, the whale was beached and a knife produced, a glinting reminder of the little
grindaknivur
that had stabbed Aron Dam. It sliced through the air, then through the spinal cord of the beast. Its killer’s hand sawed back and forth, blood surging from the whale and coating every finger that held the knife.

The blood poured out. A fountain of red that erupted. A geyser of life gushing out like an uncapped oil well. I could not take my eyes off it, seeing the same almost darkly comic gash carved into its flesh, its blubber and meat exposed. I turned and saw another whale being cut, then another. One by one, they were being hooked and sliced. Knives flashing and blood streaming out. The sea was dark red around me, a blood-red sea thick with bodies, both human and mammal. In seconds, the sea had turned from its dark-blue blackness to a gory soup of fresh blood. When the tide brought waves, their angled flanks resembled a marbled cut of steak.

The sea of blood and the slaughter all around me was making my head spin and taking me back to places I didn’t want to be. I saw Liam Dornan’s body sliced by the knives of his killers, saw his raw open wounds where they made his blood flow. I could smell it, smell him, smell his death. It surged into my nostrils, filling them, choking them, sickening them. All of my senses were overloaded. The taste of death in my mouth and the sound of it assaulting my ears.

I couldn’t move, lost in the mayhem and memories. Maybe that’s why I didn’t react until it was too late. Perhaps I didn’t recognize the hook for what it was until it had rapped my skull violently then wrapped itself round my throat. I was choking and falling into unconsciousness and into the ocean, and yet still I was not aware of what had been done to me.

The last thing I saw before I slipped underwater was the blue of the sky. It spun pale and languid overhead, only a patch of flimsy cloud spoiling the view. I saw that vision for just a second, before my eyes blurred and everything was wet and red.

Chapter 66

There comes a moment in the wrestle for life when the distinction between opposing sides is blurred to the point of blindness. Did I start this fight or did he? Am I on top or being forced back down? Am I winning or losing? Have I won or already lost? My blood or his blood?

I can see the blood, taste it, smell it. I can feel it lick my skin and hear its rush in my ears. Blood means life but it also means death. My senses are suffocated, drowning in shades of red. All I can do is fight.

Would-be killer and would-be victim, rolling and grappling; life fighting death fighting life.

If he doesn’t die, I can’t live. If I die, he has won.

The blood’s in my nostrils now, not just the scent of it but the liquid reality of it. My bones ache and my lungs burn. Life and living is on the line.

I feel a tiredness that I know I can’t afford. He thrashes at me, sending pain surging through my body. It rings in my wrists and my chest, my knees. Then three violent knocks in quick succession against my ankles, an orchestra of pain, all my joints singing from the same hymn sheet.

I’m losing. I’m lost.

When consciousness came it was immediate and uncomfortable. I could barely see through the fog of red, and the pain in my head was unbearable. My ears were filled with the surreal echo-chamber sounds of underwater, the booming thrashing of giant bodies and the pitiful wails that they let loose.

There were hands round my neck and holding me under. The world was upside down, and screamed with strange sounds that, though muffled, still managed to be huge and frightening. I kicked and thrashed but I achieved nothing.

My attacker punched me in the neck and the ache of it surged through me, an electric shock or a lightning strike. Not a punch, couldn’t have been a punch. My skin stung and my blood pulsed.

Through the blood-red gloom I saw the black shadows of the whales as they fought for their own survival. They twisted and turned and I tried to do the same, spinning my body in a frantic effort to free myself. I threw back my elbows one by one, but the sea cushioned the blow and I was no more than a nuisance to my assailant, barely slowing him down. I tried to scream or shout but all I did was swallow water, sending bubbles of lost oxygen into the sea.

I managed to get an arm behind me. Reaching. Grabbing. There was another punch to my neck and the sea grew thicker with blood around me. I was getting weaker, had to act quickly. My free hand groped feverishly until I found a body part. An ankle. I grasped it, dug in my nails to little effect. Giving it every bit of strength I had left, I wrapped my hand around it and pulled. I felt the foot slide.

The grip on my neck was released and I felt the body behind me move back and away. I was free of the grip that held me, but my respite was short as the foot returned, stamping on me and forcing out air that I couldn’t afford to lose. I tried to tumble turn and get my head out of the water, my senses somersaulting with my body. But I saw something glint below and then above me, only just turning my head in time to avoid the knife as it stabbed down on me. I had nowhere to go, desperately trying to see where it was coming from. Then I felt a hand grab my hair, locking my head where my attacker wanted it. Where it could be attacked.

I looked through the veil of whale blood, seeing the sky beyond the surface. The knife was coming down again, plunging at my skull. Then, from the side, something huge and dark closing in fast. It was like a black truck careering off a road and coming straight at me at full speed. I felt its force and went spinning, slipping through the water and into a fresh darkness of my own.

I felt my cheek come to rest on the sand and felt the rough grains scratch my skin. My mind was shutting down, spiralling with me to the bottom of the sea. Blackness enveloping me. Memories gone.

Something squeezed hard round my middle and I spewed water and coughed for air. I was standing. Well, sort of. I was upright. Blurred blue sky above me. An above-water world around me, albeit out of focus.

My head was heavy and I let it slump, staring down at the bloody sea that swam around me. It pitched in red swells, heaving and sinking. I managed to lift my head again and saw that I was being held up by two strangers, one on either side.

The first man wasn’t looking at me but at the sight around him. He had a thick head of dark, greying hair and a salt-and-pepper beard. A broad streak of blood clung to his cheek and his mouth hung open in slack-jawed contemplation. The hand that wasn’t holding me up was drenched in blood and held a knife; even his gold wedding band was painted in red.

On the other side was a younger man, fair-haired, with rouge-spattered cheeks. He was staring at me incredulously, his mouth opening and closing, but I couldn’t take in what he was saying. He tried again, and it trickled through my sodden brain that he was speaking a language I didn’t understand.

They continued to hold me, dazed and hurting, keeping me from dropping back into the sea. I knew, now, that that was where I’d been. A whale. A whale had saved me. No doubt more by accident than design, but it had saved my life when it crashed into me and probably my attacker too. I swung my head round the scene but there was nothing alive down there. My saviour was now a carcass, his blood swimming round my waist.

‘Mr Callum. Mr Callum.’

My two supporters spun me round to face the voice, and I saw Broddi Tunheim striding through the sea towards me, his face ashen.

‘My God, man. I thought you were dead.’

I tried a smile but my head hurt. ‘Me too.’

I was sitting on a grassy bank above the beach, my head coming slowly back into focus. Tunheim crouched next to me. His spectacles were bothering him; he fidgeted with them with one hand, as he helped me drink from a bottle of water with the other.

The whales were in my eyeline, row upon row of them turning grey as they dried out, no longer the gleaming black, vital creatures that had surged through the ocean towards death. I let my eye settle on one, imagining it to have been the individual that saved my life. Its head nearly severed, wearing its macabre smile, waiting to be sliced up

At the water’s edge, a couple of dozen boats nestled on the blood-red sea, with the same number again moored further out. Below us the beach thronged with people, a sated, patient queue snaking the length of the sand and then back again, every inch of it five or six people wide. There were people as far as I could see, all charged with the euphoric sense of survival that comes from having bested nature.

‘They have to queue to get their share of the whale meat,’ Tunheim explained, as he eased the water from my lips. ‘They all get the same. The officers down there make sure of it.’

At the head of what I saw now were separate queues, men wearing hi-vis jackets were taking down names, clipboards in hand. The town would eat well and long.

‘Did you see who did this to you?’

I shook my head and wished I hadn’t. A paramedic had treated the wounds to my neck but I’d refused to go to hospital. Seeing how stubborn I was, Tunheim shooed the man away after he’d done his work.

‘No. I was attacked from behind me. No one saw it happening?’

‘No. Not amongst all that. If he held you underwater and was stabbing at you, everyone would just have assumed he was cutting at a whale. I suspect it all happened fast. No one saw. Those in the water only have eyes for the kill. Those on the land only have eyes for the killers.’

‘Yeah, well there was one killer extra.’

Tunheim nodded gravely. ‘And that is one too many. So tell me, did you see anyone on the beach before the
grind
began? Anyone who might have had a reason to do this to you?’

I hesitated, seeing again the faces on the sand. Nils. Gotteri. Toki. I shrugged.

‘Most of the men of Torshavn were there. There were lots of them I knew.’

‘That is not what I asked you. Did you see anyone who might have wanted to kill you? You must tell me.’

My definition of ‘must’ didn’t match Tunheim’s.

‘There was a guy that I worked beside at the fish farm at Eiði. Toki Rønne. We’ve had a couple of run-ins. I guess he’d have reason to hurt me.’

‘Okay. I know of him and yes, he is a violent man.’ Tunheim held my gaze. ‘Anyone else?’

I shrugged again. ‘There were so many people. I can’t be sure.’

The inspector shook his head in obvious disappointment, and when he took off his spectacles again and began to wipe them clean I had a sense of foreboding.

‘Oh dear. I am worried about you Mr Callum.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘I think the attack on you must have affected your memory. It is the only thing that can explain why you don’t remember seeing Serge Gotteri on the beach. I would have thought he was the one person you would have been sure to have seen.’

‘I . . . Yes, maybe. I must have forgotten. All the excitement of nearly being murdered.’

‘Yes. That would do it, I’m sure. But in any case, Gotteri was not the one who tried to kill you. Just the opposite.’

Not for the first time, Tunheim seemed to know more than I did. My confusion caused the words to stumble out of me.

‘What? What do you mean, Broddi?’

Tunheim spread his arms wide. ‘He saved your life. It was him that pulled you out of the sea.’

My head spun anew, this time at the news. ‘Are you sure? Maybe he just made it look like that after trying to drown me and stab me. If he thought he was going to get caught?’

‘Not according to the men who were holding you up. They told me Gotteri was in the sea, shouting. He hauled you out of the water and then the others came to help him. They say Gotteri saved your life.

‘Where is he now?’

‘No one knows. He has left. He did not want to hang around, it seems. So, tell me, Mr Callum. If not him, who do you think tried to kill you? And was it the same person who killed Aron Dam?’

My head came up and I returned his gaze, but I said nothing.

‘Come on. I know you know much more than you are telling me. But this has gone too far and it must stop now. It must be over. Help me make it over.’

I sighed. ‘I don’t know who it was.’

‘No. That is correct. You had your back to the person. But you have a very good idea who is responsible for all that has happened. And so do I. If we have the same person in mind then I think it is time to visit them, don’t you?’

I closed my eyes and wished my life away. I remembered being at the bottom of the ocean, twisting and turning for my life, seeing the glint of metal above and below, and the knife coming flashing towards me.

‘Yes. Yes, Broddi. I do. Come on. I take it you know the way.’