The Last Refuge (6 page)

I knew I was drowning in guilt, scarred by my memories. But until now I’d been a tree falling in a forest with no one to hear the sounds I made. Now Martin had heard them, his family too. The look on his face told me they did not make for pleasant listening.

Lips pursed and eyes opened wide, I shrugged, trying to convey my confusion. Hojgaard didn’t buy it.

‘You were screaming. Shouting and screaming. Foul words. Some words I didn’t hear before. You were afraid. But you were also saying violent things. What happened?’

I ran a hand through my damp hair. ‘I don’t know. A nightmare.’

‘More than that, I would say. I have never heard anything like it. I thought you were being attacked. Or were attacking someone.’

‘Just a nightmare.’

Hojgaard’s eyes fixed on me, his jaw now clenched.

‘At work, I asked you if you needed to get away from Scotland. I ask you that question again.’

‘Martin . . . I . . . I don’t know what you heard.’

‘Perhaps not. But you know what you were dreaming about.’

‘No . . . well, some of it. It was like I . . . was fighting.’

He stared before finally nodding. ‘A fight, yes. And more. Some words you shouted a lot. “Kill” was one of them. You shouted “kill” many times. And “murder”. Is there someone you want to kill?’

I shook my head vigorously. ‘No. Of course not. Martin, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake your family.’

‘But you did. And you scared them. Rannva is in tears.’

‘I am so sorry.’

Hojgaard dropped into a chair by the door, his head falling into his hands. At length, he sat up and looked at me.

‘This cannot be. I cannot have this in my home. You must understand, Callum. You frightened my daughter. And my wife too.’

I began to speak but he held up a hand to signal that I should stop and listen.

‘You are a troubled man. I can see that. I do not know what your troubles are but I cannot have them here. Rannva doesn’t speak English yet. That is a good thing. There were words said that I wouldn’t want her to understand. You must go before she learns.’

I could only nod, my head full of more questions than answers.

‘You can keep your job,’ Hojgaard continued. ‘I will not judge you by your dreams. But I will watch you. I will have no trouble at work either. If you bring trouble, you will bring shame on me.’

‘I won’t be any trouble. I promise.’

‘I promise you that too. You must move out tomorrow. We have a place that you can move into. It isn’t much, but you can have it for the same rent. It is further up the hill and on its own.’ He paused and looked at me, genuine concern in his eyes. ‘If you scream there, no one will hear you.’

‘What did I shout, Martin? What else?’

Hojgaard shook his head with a firmness of certainty. ‘No. I will not repeat them. They are between you and God.’

Chapter 8

The Hojgaard place in the hills turned out to be little more than a shack. It backed into the hillside itself, a jutting piece of overhang forming a natural turfed roof and supported by wooden beams. The black-tarred walls and white windows made a bleak statement against the browns and greens of the hill. An intruder, despite the native crown of grass.

Inside it was basic. Basic as in rudimentary. As in primitive. In Scotland it would have passed for a bothy – a simple shelter, usually in remote areas and usually left unlocked for anyone to use. There was one small room, an ancient cooker in the corner, with a toilet off it and a shower that looked temperamental at best. The bed was bereft of covers and sagged depressingly in the middle. Cobwebs battled for wall space with dust, and the room was stagnant with the odour of dead air.

Martin Hojgaard, decent man that he was, shrugged apologetically as he gave me the grand tour. Silja stayed close to his side, eyeing me warily, the previous night’s drama clearly still fresh in her memory.

‘Don’t worry. It is fine,’ I assured her husband. ‘I’m grateful.’ And I meant it.

Silja said something to him in her lilting Faroese, waving her arm and pointing here and there. Martin nodded and explained. ‘Silja will fix it up. When you return from work tonight it will be better.’

I dropped my bags and turned the key in a lock that wouldn’t stand up to any determined effort to break it. I shook hands with my hosts then got into the back of Martin’s Citroën and we headed for the fish farm.

That evening, the sun having worked its way across the sky, traversing Torshavn’s broad panorama, I returned to my new abode. Silja had indeed worked wonders.

The bed still sagged and the shower appeared as temperamental as before, but the shack sparkled. The cobwebs and the dust might never have been there, and in their place were three vases stuffed full of vibrant flowers in pinks and purples, sweet peas from the Hojgaard garden. The bed was dressed in fresh white linen and a small pile of fluffy towels perched neatly upon it. There was even a chocolate placed on the pillow as if this were some five-star hotel. Three paintings now hung on the walls, one of Jesus on the cross, of course, and two scenes of Torshavn. The air was heavy with the fragrance of the flowers and . . . something else . . . Silja opened the oven door of the newly clean cooker and produced a steaming dish of stew that looked and smelled delicious.

‘Silja! Thank you. I don’t know what to say.’

The look on my face must have been enough, as Silja beamed happily and nodded, tapping the casserole dish to suggest I eat it while it was hot. She left me to it and I sat on the bed, wondering how it had come to this, me sitting alone in a shack in the hills, miles from home, but thankful for the chance to shut the door on the world and have somewhere to rest my head.

Chapter 9

I am underwater. I’m in deep, my hands carving their way through the dark, letting me twist this way and that, flipping somersaults effortlessly, diving and rising as I please.

I can feel the cool of the water against my face as I push through it. The water is dense and I can feel the weight of it against me. It’s pleasurable though. Soothing. Reassuring. I kick and pull with my arms and I surge forward, powering through the water.

There’s a shape up ahead. Somehow I know what it is even before I can make it out. I kick again, but no matter how hard I push, I get no nearer. The water’s getting darker too. And thicker.

It’s Liam Dornan who’s swimming ahead of me. I know it’s him. That’s when I know I must be dreaming. Is he trying to swim away from me? Or is he leading me somewhere?

There are other shapes around. Moving through the water faster than me, faster than Liam. They’re dark, darker than the water. But I look again and I’m as dark as they are. I’m cutting through the water easily, eating it up, born to it.

Liam is looking back now, seeing the sharks descend on him. Part of me wants to shout out and warn him. But I can’t. Can’t shout underwater. Can’t open my mouth.

He’s panicking, kicking faster and losing oxygen. There’s blood trailing from his heels and it’s that that’s making the water so dark and thick. We’re all swimming in it. Me and the other sharks.

Liam is surrounded now. We are encircling him, waiting for the right moment, knowing that he is getting more and more tired, knowing that he is losing energy and blood and any chance of a way out.

I can see the fear in his eyes. We all can. We can smell the fear as well as the blood. It enflames us. We want to kill. Kill. Kill.

One of my shark brothers swoops first, tearing at a leg, shearing flesh. Then another follows, gripping and biting an arm clean off. There’s more blood. The sea all red now, rippled with the boy’s blood, and yet I can see clearly as we pounce, one after the other and then all at once, ripping him to shreds. Even when he’s in pieces, even though he’s deep below the sea and swimming in his own blood, even then he manages to scream.

It’s the screaming that wakes me up.

The times of sunrise and sunset in Torshavn are little more than a technicality. The tables tell you that in mid June, the sun will set at 11.22 p.m. and rise again at 3.36 a.m. This ignores the fact that it will not be dark in between those times for any more than an hour, and even then it will be a poor excuse for darkness. It also ignores the fact that the sun often appears over a horizon that is obscured by cloud or mist. Or rain. Or all three. Sunrise, sunset, who can tell the difference? The Faroes in summer is the land of eternal sunshine, except the shining part is far from guaranteed. But the light, the light that fights sleep and guards against slumber, it is always there. I think in those first few weeks in Torshavn I managed maybe a couple of hours sleep a night. My eyes and my mind were forced into stumbling false dawns by the damnable glow that wouldn’t go away. Night was no more than a blink of the sun’s eye and darkness was found only under the covers or behind eyelids clamped shut. Daylight stretched for days on end and it chewed at me, eating me up. I found myself listless and struggling to concentrate, bingeing on coffee and food, while wearing the telltale signs of puffy eyes and sallow skin.

Consoling locals were quick to point out that the summer doesn’t last forever, but for me it was hell while it did. Once June and July slip away, it accelerates downhill towards winter. The day is three hours shorter at the end of August than at its beginning. Like a summer’s night, summer itself is a blink that is easy to miss. Gone before you know it.

Yet back then, the interminable dog days of June and early July stretched out beyond my endurance. The window of my new home faced the sea as almost every other did in Torshavn. The sea was east and so was the arrival of the sun, visible or not. It got so that I was awake waiting for it, like the condemned man waiting for the dawn. Yet for me, the dawn itself was the penance, not the executioner’s axe or the hangman’s noose. Either of those would have been sweet relief.

This day, a day that had barely begun, I watched the first straw of sun edge its way into the left-hand corner of the window frame and I knew I was done for. It was a little after 3.30 in what was laughingly called morning, and nothing approaching darkness had found its way into my room.

The sunbeam inched left to right, taunting as it travelled. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it. It was so visibly the source of my torture. The one bloody thing I didn’t want to see, and I couldn’t stop looking at it. Day after never-ending day of being awake. Tormented just as much by a lack of sleep as what happened when I managed to achieve it.

The truth was I wasn’t sure which kept me awake more. The constant light or the prospect of the nightmares that inevitably awaited me. The sun was my rescuer as much as my tormentor.

I kicked the blanket off the bed and dropped my legs over the side, determined not to be a prisoner to daylight. I pulled on shorts, a T-shirt and running shoes and locked the shack behind me. At the front door, the hill spilling forward before me, I was arrested by the sight of the phenomenon that plagued me.

The glowing orb was rising above the peak of the neighbouring island of Nolsoy, its rays tumbling down that island’s slopes and turning them into fields of gold. Above, rolling cirrus clouds burned as if fresh from heaven’s oven, and the sky was backlit in a blue that went on forever. The sea was a silver swell and Torshavn’s rainbow homes reflected the glory from above.

The sunrise was a lover that you couldn’t live with and couldn’t live without. I turned my back on her and ran into the hills, determined to exhaust myself.

Chapter 10

It was a Tuesday evening and I’d sought out what passed for a sports bar in Torshavn, with the idea of getting out of the rain and watching Wimbledon with a beer or two for company.

I wandered up the steep, narrow incline of Grims Kambansgøta to where The Irish Pub sat. It was effectively two pubs in one: the mock wood panelling, couthy signs and manufactured alcoves of the theme bar upstairs, while downstairs was the Glitnir, a different beast altogether, and my destination of choice.

It did seem an utterly unsuitable place to be watching something as healthy and outdoorsy as tennis. It was dark and gloomy, a claustrophobic underground lair better suited to snooker or ritual torture. The room was lined with television screens including a vast flat-screen that filled the main wall to the left of the bar.

The walls themselves were draped with huge flags in the livery of Manchester United. The bar was clearly a meeting place for Faroese fans of the English football club. The reds and blacks and images of red devils did nothing to undermine the impression of an altar of sacrifice.

However, for all that it was dark and enclosed, the Glitnir was perfect for its real purpose. Not the monotonous rallies of men knocking balls over a net, but drinking. For the patrons, the tennis was a pretext, an excuse given to either their partners or themselves for congregating in the shadows and easing beer down their throats. Not that I was judgemental of any of that, far from it.

It was the barman there who explained the place’s name to me.
Glitnir
meant ‘splendour’ or ‘shining’ in old Norse. It was the hall of Forseti, the Norse god of law and justice, and the seat of justice among gods and men. It had pillars of gold and was roofed with silver. The modern-day version had pillars of televisions and was roofed by an Irish bar. I applauded the owner’s sense of irony.

The patrons sat almost exclusively round the fringes of the room rather than at any of the tables in the centre, a fact I only realized once I’d taken my own place in the middle. The others, my fellow drinkers and tennis fans, had their backs securely to the walls, like one of those centrifugal-force rides that you get at a funfair. No matter how fast the room spun, they’d never fall off into the middle.

They sat in ad hoc groups of two or three, dropping in and out of each other’s company with each visit to the bar to replenish their glasses. At some point – beer three, I think it was – I noticed that one pair of eyes in the half-light was concentrating on me rather than a television screen or the bottom of a pint. I ignored it, but when I turned back minutes later, I was still being watched by the same person.