The Last Refuge (17 page)

I slumped back into my seat and said nothing more.

When I stepped out of Hojgaard’s car at the entrance to the fish farm, I instinctively turned to my left to look out towards Risen og Kellingin, a daily ritual intended to prevent me from taking my surroundings for granted. The stacks weren’t to be seen, having been swallowed up by the mist, but there was still a comfort in knowing they were out there.

Samal and Petur and I entered the changing area and found it busy with men and women ready to start their shifts, most of them already in their coloured waterproofs and coveralls. Something about them bothered me, though; as if they had been waiting for us to arrive.

I ignored it as best I could and made for my locker. Petur was just a few feet away, his storage area adjacent to mine. Even as I took the key from my pocket, I caught the first whiff of it. Petur caught up moments later and his face screwed up in disgust. He opened his locker door and the stench fully hit us; at the same time I picked up on stifled giggles coming from behind, the strange behaviour of our colleagues when we had arrived becoming clear.

The inside of Petur’s locker was a foot deep in fish entrails and heads, a disgusting soup of blood and innards that spilled out onto his feet. His waterproofs and overalls, hanging up inside, were all streaked in guts and running red with blood. The stink was overwhelming.

Petur took a step back, as much out of surprise as from the smell, his face reddening in anger and humiliation. The movement caused those standing around us to burst out laughing and that in turn caused my own temper to flare. I whirled round accusingly to face the others; it was clear they’d known what was inside. Some of them had the decency to look embarrassed or to turn away, others couldn’t contain their enjoyment. Only one person stared back without laughing; instead he had a smirk plastered all over his face. Toki Rønne.

This bad-tempered bully had been a pain since I’d started working in the factory. He’d thrown his weight about, quite literally, barging past anyone unfortunate enough to be in his way. Always sour-natured and aggressive, he had continued to hold some sort of grudge against me and much of the rest of the workforce, particularly those he thought he could get away with tormenting . Now I saw that I’d let his behaviour pass without reply for too long.

He stood there; thick legs planted wide, his brawny arms crossed in front of him, sneering at Petur, daring me to say something in his defence. I’d had enough. I moved towards Toki, any sense of discretion or appeasement gone. A few of the others saw the look on my face and the room was suddenly emptied of laughter. A couple of them tried to walk across my path to stop me but I brushed them aside. Samal and Petur tried in vain to hold me back.

‘Callum, do not do it,’ Petur urged, his arms grabbing at mine. ‘It is what he is wanting. He is very strong. And bad. Do not do this. Not for me. Please.’

‘No way. I’ve had enough of him.’

I was through them, only Toki in front of me, his arms now by his sides. He was a good few inches shorter than me but probably weighed a couple of stones more. He was squat and muscular like a weightlifter. It wouldn’t stop me.

I was only a yard or two from him when he grinned like a wolf and held a massive hand up to stop me and spoke in a low growl.

‘Nei. Uttanum!’

He gestured behind himself with a violent jab of his thumb. Outside. It was a familiar invitation to anyone brought up in Glasgow, and probably a challenge universally understood. Toki wasn’t stupid enough to fight me on the company’s premises, something that would most likely lead to dismissal. Instead he had goaded me into going exactly where he wanted. And into precisely the sort of situation I’d been trying to avoid.

No one messed with Toki, that was the word I’d picked up very soon after starting at the fish farm. He was not only bad-tempered and aggressive, he was violent. Samal had told me how another worker, a quiet man named Atli, had been the relentless victim of Toki’s taunting, until he eventually snapped and told him where to go, in no uncertain terms. Toki had said nothing, but a short time later he and Atli had been alone in the freezer and when Atli came out his arm was broken in two places. He insisted to everyone that he had trapped it in the door, and left the factory the next day, never to return. Petur was every bit as quiet and placid as Atli. He wouldn’t fight his own battles.

I followed in the thug’s footsteps towards the tall warehouse doors that led to the dockside. I knew there would be no one out there at this time of the day. It would be me and him and whatever he could use as a weapon. If he even needed one. Toki passed through the thick white strips of PVC curtain into the open air, with me just a few feet behind.

As soon as I was outside, I took a step nearer Toki, who was still walking with his back to me, and crashed the sole of my foot into his calf with as much force as I could muster. I was playing by the rules I was brought up with. If your opponent is bigger and heavier than you, fight dirty.

Toki fell to the ground with a furious roar, bellowing at me as he spun and lay on his back. He swiped a bearlike arm at my legs but I sidestepped it, moved a couple of feet to my left and booted him in the groin as hard as I could. He screamed in equal quantities of rage and pain.

I stood over him, enjoying the sight of him squealing like a stuck pig.

‘I know you can speak English,’ I told him. ‘Now you have learned some Scottish too. You behave yourself from now on or you’ll learn some more. The hard way. Understand?’

I was falling to the ground before I knew it. The pain in my shin only registered after I was tumbling through the air. Toki had lashed out with his foot. It might as well have been a tree trunk. Two huge hands were at my neck, grabbing hold of my collar, pulling me up and then slamming me back down again, my shoulders and neck smacking into the harbour concrete, my head catching a glancing blow. He easily picked me up and threw me down again, knocking the wind out of me, following up with a punch to the stomach for good measure.

I was still dazed when Toki lifted me up, propelling me above his shoulders as if I was a barbell. He strode slowly but purposefully towards the quayside, his thick legs bearing the load. The bastard was going to throw me into the ocean.

I reached down with my right arm, straining every muscle to claw at his face. Toki felt my hand and increased his pace, determined to ditch me. I found his eyes and dug a finger into each, causing him to scream. He squeezed my neck and leg with the hands that held me but I dug my fingers in deeper. He tried to lift to throw but I pressed harder, clawing towards the back of his eye sockets.

With a defeated roar, his knees bent and he dropped me, letting me crash onto the dock. I was on my feet instantly, despite the pain echoing through my hip where I’d landed. Toki wiped at his eyes and hurled himself at me, half-blinded. I took a step to the side, letting him go by me and stamped down hard, but not too hard, on his fibula as he passed. Any firmer and I would have broken it. His face contorted and I followed up with an elbow to the side of his head that dropped him to his knees, the air going out of him like a deflated balloon.

There were white cartons of waste products on the quayside, the very containers of entrails, fish heads and guts from which Toki had filled Petur’s locker. I took a large handful of the stuff, the excess spilling from my grasp. Toki was still on his knees when I grabbed his throat in my left hand, forcing his mouth to open wide in protest. With my right hand, I rammed the mess of bloody heads, guts, coils and intestines down his throat.

Toki’s eyes popped, he tried to throw an arm at me but I simply squeezed his throat tighter and packed more of the entrails on top of those already there. How much further would I push it?

‘Enough,’ roared a voice behind me. ‘Stop, Callum.’

I didn’t relax my grip but looked over my shoulder to see Martin Hojgaard standing a few yards away, a crowd of workers behind him. Martin had the same look of anger and disbelief on his face that he’d worn on the night I woke his family with my nightmares.

The last of the fish guts dropped from my right hand onto the bloody patch of ground beneath Toki and my left released its grip on his throat. The man slumped forward and he caught himself on his hefty forearms just inches before he clattered onto the concrete.

Toki’s relief didn’t last long as Hojgaard strode over and thumped him on the back with the palm of his hand, causing him to cough up a heap of entrails. Martin followed it up with an angry stream of Faroese that saw an admonished Toki helped to his feet and led back inside.

‘I told him that I hit him because I did not want him to choke,’ Hojgaard explained, when only he and I were left standing outside. ‘It is only partly true. I also told him that he had been warned many times and that if it happened again he would have to go.’

Hojgaard looked round to make sure no one else was listening.

‘If it was anyone else but Toki you would be sacked. Immediately. He had that due to him, I think. The others said what he did to Petur. But this must be a warning to you. You understand?’

I nodded, wiping the slimy remains of fish guts against my jeans.

‘Good,’ Martin nodded back. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Not a word of this to Silja. She would not approve. But . . . what you did with the fish waste. Ha . . .’ Hojgaard shook his head in incredulity and laughed heartily. ‘I would have paid many krónur to have seen that. You could have sold tickets. Where did you learn to fight like that?’

I shrugged. Martin really didn’t want to know the answer.

Chapter 25

‘The thing about akvavit,’ Karis slurred, ‘is that . . .’ She caught sight of the grin on my face. ‘No, listen to me. The thing about akvavit is that we . . . what was I saying?’

We were in Cafe Natur, late Tuesday night, and the band was playing below us. Karis and I were at a table on the mezzanine, another couple sharing the space with us.

‘You were telling me about akvavit.’ I leaned forward and pressed my lips against hers. She had a new hat on, a leopard-skin bowler that only she could get away with, and the brim bumped against my forehead.

‘Yes, that’s right. The thing about akvavit . . . is that it is really strong,’ she giggled. ‘No. No. The thing is that the Faroese turned water into schnapps. You know that akvavit is schnapps, right?’

I sighed theatrically. ‘Yes, of course I know.’

‘Okay, good. Clever boy. In Faroes we drink more schnapps than anyone else in the whole world. It’s a tradition at parties. Schnapps for welcome, schnapps with dinner. Okay? But we didn’t make our own schnapps. We weren’t allowed, because the bloody government, the . . . nanny state . . . it said we couldn’t make alcohol above 5.8 per cent. It’s bollocks, right?’

Karis stopped mid rant and took a serious sip of her own akvavit, a single finger politely wiping away a stray drop from her pink lips.

‘So . . .’ she smiled sloppily, ‘the guy who makes this stuff wanted to have our own Faroese akvavit, so he sent Faroese water to Iceland to have it turned into schnapps. Much better than old Jesus turning water into wine, huh?’

‘Okay, but . . .’

‘I know,’ she slurred again. ‘I know what you’re going to say. I know. Why is it Faroese if it’s made in Iceland, right? It’s the water, stupid. It’s special. It has basalt in it. And salt because of the sea air. And then in Iceland they put angelica in it, which grows here, and cumin. It’s good, huh? This one . . .’ She tapped the glass as if we hadn’t been drinking it for an hour already. ‘This one is Havið and it is 50 per cent proof! It’s the strongest schnapps in the world.’

She smiled proudly and kissed the glass before kissing me with a noisy smack. Our heads lolled close together, just nuzzling without saying anything, the world’s strongest schnapps doing the talking for us. My head was starting to spin, the room with it, but I didn’t care, the past seemed far away.

‘I can’t drink this stuff all night,’ I told her. ‘My head can’t take it.’

She shoved her head right into mine. ‘Are you insulting my schnapps?’

‘No. I wouldn’t dare.’

‘That’s right. You wouldn’t.’ She gave a mock slap to my face but then held her hand there, stroking my skin. ‘I like you, Scotsman. Even if you are old and can’t keep up with me.’

I groaned and let my head slump forward, knowing she was teasing, and playing up to it. ‘It’s not because I’m old. It’s because I don’t get any sleep at night.’

She raised her eyebrows mischievously. ‘Are you complaining? Because if you are I can let you have more sleep, if you want.’

For a moment, I was thrown. Struck, as was often the case, with fear as to what she was hearing from me while I slept. But the playfulness in her eyes reassured me she was simply suggesting that more sleep would mean less sex.

‘Oh no.’ I grinned. ‘No, no, no. Sleep is overrated.’

‘You bet it is.’

I heard the voice coming from above us. It didn’t register at first, but then the tone of it worked its way into my consciousness like a knock on the door in the middle of the night.

‘Get up. I said get up.’

Karis and I looked at each other before we lifted our heads. She wore the same wary expression that I had seen in this same bar weeks earlier.

I looked up, knowing I would see Aron Dam standing there. He was right up against our table. Either he was swaying or the room was.

‘Get up,’ he repeated. Louder this time. Angrier.

‘Go away, Aron. Get out of here.’ Karis’s voice was part-pleading, part-ordering. I held his hard stare and didn’t let my eyes leave his. He wanted me to blink and I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

‘No. I am not going,’ he thundered. ‘I live here. He is going. Get up and get out. I told you to stay away from her. I warned you.’

I’d had enough. I smiled at him and he reached down to grab my arm, but I easily shrugged him off, causing him to take an unsteady step back.

Karis let her voice drop low and hissed at him. ‘Stop this, Aron. I told you. I told you what would happen if you kept doing this.’