The Last Refuge (11 page)

I turned back to the bearded guy, seeing him advance on me through the crowd. He clearly had something he wanted to say, but I knew I didn’t want to hear it. I scraped back my own chair and was on my feet instantly, heading straight towards him, head down. When I was a couple of feet away, I looked up and saw that he’d made his mind up about who I was. I knew I had to change that.

I raised my head questioningly, gesticulating as best as I could to demand why the hell he was looking at me.

‘
Helvitis spassari!
’

I spat the only Faroese swear words I knew at him as ferociously as my poor Torshavn accent would allow. ‘Fucking moron!’ The guy wouldn’t have understood even if he was sober, and there was no way he’d see past the accent in his condition. Confusion crawled all over his face, but his mouth opened to speak.

I jammed my left foot down violently onto his right, trapping it mid stride, and slammed my shoulder into his bearded chin, feeling a satisfying crunch as my flesh and bone hammered into his face. He recoiled from the impact but could go nowhere as my foot held his tight and he fell straight back until his head rattled off the floor of the Natur. He wasn’t out cold but he clearly didn’t know if it was Torshavn or Thursday.

It had all happened in the blink of a drunk’s eye and I was as sure as I could be that no one had seen me do it. I stood above him, gesturing with my hands as if it was all his fault and I’d no idea what he’d been doing.

‘
Spassari!
’ I repeated, this time for the benefit of his friends, shaking my head at the idiot on the ground.

‘Jesus, Malky. What the hell you up to, big man? Sorry, mate, sorry. He’s had a few. No harm done, eh?’

Two of the other fishermen tried to pick Malky up while two others held their hands up, first in apology and then with inebriated offers of handshakes. With my head down looking at Malky, I accepted their hands and eased past them with a shrug of my shoulders.

One of the Scots opened the door for me and I strode past them onto the street, dragging in lungfuls of air and looking to the sky. I pulled my collar up and started to walk up Áarvegur, without daring to look over my shoulder. The reds and the blacks were slowly slipping from my mind, but my breathing still juddered.

Then to my right, I became aware of a pair of eyes staring at me from the throng inside the bar. Despite myself, I let my head swing round as I walked, and saw her, Karis, standing by the window and studying me carefully. When she had looked at me moments before, she had been curious, maybe confused at the way I was acting. Now, she was interested.

Chapter 16

I woke slowly on Sunday, hung-over and unsettled, finding that I’d slept right through into the afternoon. Not that it was a night of sleep. There were hours spent staring at the ceiling and hours more punctuated by dreams of whales and hunts and sex and blood and Karis. Finally, exhausted by the daylight and dreaming, I fell fast asleep at the time I should have been getting up.

At last awake, I was disorientated at first, unsure whether it was the middle of the night or the middle of the day, and uncertain what was bothering me most about what had happened the night before. I knew I was charged with blood, and couldn’t shake off the restlessness that brought.

Pushing myself to my feet, I headed for the shower, eager to feel clean. The plastic handle turned in my hand and a trickle of water began to make its way from the shower head. Then nothing. I reached up and shook the head, forcing a couple of drops to fall. I turned the handle off then on again. Nothing. Bloody thing. Again I turned it off and on, but it wasn’t for playing.

My rudimentary plumbing skills only extended to finding the stopcock and making sure it was turned on, and it was. I checked the sink and got no water from the taps. I tried to flush the toilet but it wouldn’t.

There was nothing for it but to talk to Hojgaard. Martin would know what to do. Slamming the door closed behind me, I stomped off towards his house, and fifteen minutes later, he was rooting around in the undergrowth near the shack.

‘The pipe comes in along here.’ He was crouching, feeling with his hands in the grass that covered the narrow ditch. ‘Some of it is underground and some is not. It is not the most modern system and sometimes someone will stand on it. It goes all the way along here . . .’

He traced a path in the grass with his hands, moving sideways as they felt where he couldn’t see. He stepped a yard to his right away from the shack, then another. Then he moved back on himself, dropping to his hands and knees and pulling the grass back.

I saw the look of confusion spread across Hojgaard’s face. His eyebrows furrowed and his mouth tightened. He came up from the ditch holding a lump of rock that was big enough that it took two hands to clasp it. He turned to me, offering it up, as if needing another pair of eyes to see it and make it true.

‘The pipe is broken here. With . . . with this.’ Martin managed to balance the rock in one hand and thrust the other back down, wiping it across the ground and holding it up again, brown with mud, as if to prove his point.

I stepped over to where he crouched, kneeling down into the ditch with him, seeing the severed pipe as he held the grass at bay. It had been hacked open by the force of the rock, water spilling into the earth.

Martin was shaking his head, his face a study in indignant concentration. He weighed the rock in his hands and mimicked it crashing down onto the pipe.

‘What happened here, Martin?’

He frowned, pursing his lips unhappily. ‘It is possible that someone stepped onto the rock and forced it onto the pipe. It is possible.’

I nodded. ‘And it is possible that they didn’t feel the rock breaking the pipe. Or hear it. And it is possible that if they did then they didn’t know who to report it to. It’s such a big place, after all.’

Hojgaard shrugged. ‘We have many tourists in Torshavn. They walk the hills but they do not know where they walk or who lives here.’

‘Yeah.’ I let the sound of doubt fill my words. ‘So many tourists. So many places they could walk.’

Martin stood up, throwing the rock into the grass. ‘Come. You can have a shower in our house. I will fix the pipe.’

He turned away, his back denying me further questions, and headed towards the path and down the hill.

He was right, of course. The pipe could have been broken accidentally. But I doubted it.

Chapter 17

The next week proved long and frustrating. Work wasn’t enough to occupy either my body or my mind and I was left prowling my cage with excess energy. I constantly replayed my dreams through open eyes. Whales and hunts and sex and blood. It was enough to drive me crazy and I had to fight the temptation to go down into town and act on it.

I managed partly because I couldn’t be sure if the Scots fishermen were still in Torshavn but also because I was worried about the nature of my attraction to Karis. Much as I’d tried to kid myself, since seeing her look back at me through the window, I knew we were drawn to each other in a way I could not quite understand. By the following Saturday, I was ready to explode and could resist her no longer.

I hit Cafe Natur just after ten, thinking that would have given time for people to have arrived and the place to heat up. I was wrong. There were only a handful of people inside and Karis wasn’t among them. As I fretted over a pint of Rinkusteinur, I filled my time by willing more customers to come through the door, but precious few did. Giving in, I pushed the empty glass back across the bar and nodded a farewell to Oli.

I climbed through the narrow alley of Rektaragøta towards the white cathedral on the hill and the western port beyond it. Crossing the road past the striking statue of Nólsoyar Páll with its massive seabirds flying over the hero’s head, I saw the bizarre frontage of Sirkús ahead of me.

The building sat on an oddly angled corner with the entrance at its centre, the walls painted in sand yellow, then aquamarine blue to shoulder height, then sky blue above. Either side of the entrance and at each corner, a tall painted palm tree grew from the yellow ‘beach’ painted below. Above the entrance hung the bar’s name in block yellow capitals outlined in red, each letter traced in white light bulbs. Three young bearded guys stood outside, smoking and joking in the night air.

The place got even more eclectic when you climbed the narrow wooden stairs to the bar on the first floor. The vibe was Seventies blending into Eighties, with a detour via psychedelia. It was dark and moody but with fairy lights draped along the junction of wall and ceiling, hanging just above some remarkable tree-print wallpaper. The perimeter was lined with small, round tables and guarded by a mixed collection of wooden chairs upholstered in everything from zebra print and Mondrian squares to floral abominations straight out of your granny’s catalogue. Blondie’s ‘Heart of Glass’ was blasting out from the speakers.

There were eight people sat in three groups, all in their early twenties and clearly nearer the beginning of their night rather than the end. I got an Okkara and took a table on my own, but soon found myself in a conversation with two of the guys nearest to me. The Faroese tendency to chat to strangers still surprised me, although I was reluctantly warming to it. We talked football and rain and Scotland. The temptation was to ask if they knew Karis Lisberg and if they’d seen her that night, but I managed to resist. I had my one drink and left; there was more of Torshavn to search.

She wasn’t in either The Irish Pub, nor in its downstairs neighbour Glitnir, where Tummas Barthel had watched me from the darkness. Nor could I find her in Cleopatra or the Manhattan, although neither bar seemed quite her kind of place. With heavy heart and thickening head, I moved on to Bar 11 then Hvonn, each place busier than the one before as the night grew older.

Out on the street again, I walked up Myinugøta with the imposing countenance of the cathedral high on my right. I had performed my loop of the town centre and was faced with the choice of another circuit or going home. Home, I decided. She was not supposed to be found. Not by me, at least.

I heard the arguing from the car on the other side of the road long before I saw who was in it. The voices were raised and the tone combative. I couldn’t make out much more than the odd word, but it was enough to pique my interest. That, and the fact that one of the accents was unmistakably familiar.

Drawing level with the car on the other side of the road, I saw Serge Gotteri in the passenger seat and next to him Nils Dam. Both men were gesturing furiously, a swirl of arms amid angry expressions. Dam’s finger was jabbing at the Frenchman, accusatory stabs that were parried by Gotteri’s dismissive wave. I heard the word ‘no’ quite often. Definitive, uncompromising nos, followed by more fevered argument.

I fell back into the shadow of a shop front, a reluctant spy, but with a spy’s unwillingness to be caught. I wondered if the two men were going to actually fight. I couldn’t see Gotteri’s eyes but Dam’s were bulging and it would have been no surprise if he’d swung a punch or launched into a headbutt.

Gotteri suddenly hammered his hand into the dashboard and the thud easily carried across the street. I heard Nils Dam laugh, a scornful snigger that so enraged the Frenchman that he battered his fist into the moulded plastic a second time.

More heated words were exchanged, the volume increasing. ‘You promised me!’ Gotteri ranted. ‘You said you would do it.’

I didn’t catch all of Dam’s reply but I made out the end of it: ‘. . . so you will have to wait.’

Gotteri swore, opened the door and began to scramble out of the car. I took two steps back and retreated into the darkened doorway of the shop behind me. He probably wouldn’t have seen me anyway as he slammed the door and stormed down the street towards the harbour. He’d taken no more than a couple of steps when Nils Dam crashed his foot down onto the accelerator, the engine roared and he sped up the hill with a squeal of tyres.

I waited until Gotteri had turned right at the foot of the hill and disappeared out of sight along Torsgøta before I stepped back out onto the street. I had no idea what business my new friend had with Nils Dam but it didn’t seem to be going well. My mind drifted back to Gotteri’s intervention in the Natur when the brothers seemed intent on starting a fight with me. There had seemed to be no trouble between him and the younger Dam then. I wanted to know what had changed.

Still, the memory of the Cafe Natur and Karis storming out after Aron’s arrival reminded me of the purpose of my walk round Torshavn’s streets and pubs. My intention to go home was dismissed, and in a triumph of alcohol-fuelled hope over experience, I decided to make for the Natur again. In a few minutes, like a one-legged drunk going round in circles, I was back where I’d started the evening. Except this time, Karis was there.

She and three other girls were at a table just behind the area where the band would be playing. I saw the pork-pie hat before I saw the rest of her. Below it, she was smiling widely at her friends, her eyes alive and shining. I pushed my way to the bar and wondered what the hell I was going to do now.

My dilemma was solved before I got the chance to order. I felt a tap on my shoulder and looked round to see her smiling up at me.

‘Hi,’ she chirped. ‘How are you, Mr Scotsman?’

‘I’m good. Um . . . how are you?’

‘Still crazy.’ She grinned at me beguilingly. ‘Listen, I’m sorry about last time. I was a total bitch. It wasn’t your fault and I shouldn’t have bitten you. Give me another chance? Let me get you a drink.’

‘No, I’ll get it. What do you want?’

‘Vodka would be good. With Coke.’

‘Okay.’ I nodded. ‘I’ll bring it over.’

She returned to her friends and I signalled to the barmaid. ‘A vodka and Coke, please. Plus just a Coke with ice.’ I’d had plenty to drink already and needed to cool it.

I took the drinks over to be met by four expectant faces. Like Karis, the other girls were all young, pretty, arty and effortlessly stylish.

‘Girls, this is John. John, this is Marisa, Petra and Elisabet. Come, we’re going to sit up the back.’