The Last Refuge (20 page)

‘Have I been arrested?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Then I can go?’

‘If you wish. Do you wish to go or do you wish to help the police?’

‘I think you need to arrest me so that this seventy-two-hours period can begin. Or I will leave.’

The two cops looked at each other wearily. There was the merest shrug of the shoulders from one to the other. It was Kielstrup who spoke for the first time.

‘Andrew John Callum, I am arresting you in connection with the murder of Aron Dam in the area of Tinganes in Torshavn, Faroe Islands. You have the right to remain silent and you have the right to legal counsel. Do you wish such representation?’

‘I do.’

‘It will be arranged for you, unless you have a lawyer you wish to call.’

‘I don’t.’

‘It will be arranged for you. You have the right to medical assistance and to a telephone call. We have the right to make that call for you. Do you wish to make a call?’

I hesitated, pondering the offer just long enough to realize that there was probably no one that I could usefully call. I was probably, to all intents and purposes, alone on these islands again.

‘No.’

‘Are you willing to continue this interview while legal counsel is arranged for you?’ ‘No.’

Elin Samuelsen was in her early forties with a mop of blonde hair that kissed her shoulders, and a funky pair of round amber spectacles atop her nose. She wore a loose-fitting light-brown jacket over a darker brown top and a full figure. A plain gold pendant hung round her neck. Despite flat shoes, she was a good five foot eight or nine. A handsome woman rather than pretty, earnest and anxious in equal measure.

She shuffled through the papers in front of her, puffing out her cheeks in a manner that didn’t exactly fill me with confidence. She went through the few printed sheets she’d been given and stopped to shake her head a few times.

‘Okay, Mr Callum.’ She looked up at last. ‘Is there anything you want to tell me or ask me?’

‘Have you ever handled a murder case before?’

She laughed, as much out of surprise, I suspected, as nervousness.

‘No. Of course not.’

‘But you are a criminal lawyer?’

‘Yes. I graduated from the University of Copenhagen in 1998. I have been in practice in Torshavn since 2000. Do you wish to see my diplomas?’

‘What kind of cases do you normally handle?’

It was her turn to sigh. ‘Drunk drivers. Assaults. Domestic disputes. This isn’t Chicago, Mr Callum.’

‘You’re telling me.’ I was tired. Weeks of sleep deprivation leapt upon me mob-handed and I could hardly think straight. My mind was riddled with doubt and I was on the verge of panic. ‘You’re the best they could offer me?’

I didn’t mean it to sound as harsh as it did, but there was no taking it back.

Samuelsen’s head lowered slightly and I saw some steel as she looked back at me over the top of her glasses. ‘Is it because I am a woman, Mr Callum?’

‘No. Not at all. It’s because you have no experience of this kind of case.’

She sighed wearily. ‘I am the duty solicitor. I
am
the best they could offer you. And they could call in every public defendant in Torshavn and you still wouldn’t have one who had experience of a murder trial.’

‘I’m sorry. It’s just . . .’

‘It doesn’t matter. I understand. Do you have an alibi for the time Aron Dam was killed?’

‘No.’

‘I see. Okay, this is not good, but it does not matter. They must prove that you did it. Can they do that?’

I hesitated, not knowing, trying to distinguish between possibility, probability and what I merely wanted the truth to be.

‘I hope not.’

The lawyer looked back at me for a while before her eyes closed. ‘Okay. I hope not, too.’

‘Miss Samuelsen, what are the chances of them charging me with murder?’

‘I don’t know. I have no idea. It depends what else they have and what they might yet come up with. We have to go see what they have to say. I know their forensic is still at the scene. It may all depend on that.’

‘Why are you in the Faroe Islands?’ This, a short time later from Inspector Nymann, came loaded with a sneer that sounded as if he was asking himself the same question.

‘I came here to live.’

‘Why?’

I shrugged. ‘I wanted a new start. Somewhere . . . quiet.’

Nymann and Kielstrup exchanged quick glances. It was quiet all right, their looks said, backwater quiet.

‘You were a schoolteacher in Scotland.’ Nymann was looking at the screen of the laptop in front of him. ‘Why did you give that up?’

What else was on that laptop? That is what I was supposed to wonder. And their strategy was working.

‘I’d had enough. And I couldn’t teach here. I don’t speak Faroese.’

‘So you choose to work in a
fish farm
?’ Nymann’s voice dripped with exaggerated disbelief.

‘Yes.’

‘How strange. And you have met a girl here.’ He made a show of looking at what was in front of him. ‘A Karis Lisberg. An artist.’

‘Yes.’

‘She is your girlfriend?’

‘I think so, yes. Things might have changed.’

‘Why is that?’

‘We had an argument. You probably know that.’

‘Never mind what I know and what I don’t know. Just answer my questions.’

‘I don’t have to answer your questions. I have the right to silence.’

Elin Samuelsen put her hand on my arm. ‘It is in your interest, I think, to cooperate where possible. But, Inspector, my client is correct. His rights include the right to silence.’

Nymann regarded her contemptuously and manufactured a fake smile. ‘Of course. Why might things have changed, Mr Callum?’

I sighed, shaking my head slowly. ‘As I’ve just said, we had an argument. You will have to ask her.’

‘Oh, we will, Mr Callum. We will. But you tell me, what was the argument about?’

‘You know what it was about. I was in Cafe Natur last night with Karis. We drank. A lot. Aron Dam came in. There was a fight and she was angry.’

‘And she left? What did you do then?’

If only I knew. If only he knew how hard I had tried to remember. But then, I did remember some of it.

‘I drank some more. Then I left the bar too.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘Home.’

It was a big fat lie to two men trained to spot big fat lies. The Danes just looked at each other, then at me, waiting for it to choke me. Even my own lawyer looked as if she didn’t believe it. I didn’t know what the police knew and that meant they had every advantage. They even had the advantage, though they were surely unaware of it, that I myself didn’t know what I’d done or where I’d been.

‘Straight home?’ Nymann finally asked, a sneer playing on his lips.

‘I think so, yes. I was drunk.’ A half-lie this time.

Nymann made a note. ‘We shall investigate that. Do you have a history of violence, Mr Callum?’

Here it was. The thing I couldn’t run from. But I still had to lie. ‘No.’

‘Are you sure?’ He let his eyes drift to the laptop. Maybe it was just a blank screen and he was pulling my strings.

‘Yes. I’m sure.’

‘I see.’ He made another note then gazed at me again. Inspector Nymann seemed to have taken an interrogation course where they majored in the benefits of the strong and silent stare.

‘What time did you leave the bar?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘What time did you get home?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Who did you meet or speak to in between those two times?’

‘I don’t know.’

Nymann turned to Kielstrup and they both shook their heads as if nothing could be done.

‘How well did you know the deceased, Aron Dam?’

‘I didn’t know him. I had met him a few times. Briefly.’

‘Last night when you fought with him?’

‘And twice before. We weren’t on speaking terms. He was hostile to me.’

‘Because of your relationship with Karis Lisberg?’

‘I think so, yes.’

‘Hm. You have a cut on the palm of your hand, Mr Callum. How did that happen?’

The cut began to sing at the mention of its name, the skin pinching and throbbing. I was wishing I’d closed my hand over.

‘I cut it on a knife. At the fish farm.’

‘I see. Did you report this? To your supervisor, perhaps?’

‘No. I didn’t. It was only a small cut.’

‘I see. It will be reported now. To our crime-scene investigator. Now . . .’ Nymann picked up the brown envelope with something of a flourish, looking inside, even though he clearly knew perfectly well what was in there.

One by one, he took several A4-sized photographs from the envelope and carefully placed each one in front of me in turn: face down, like a magician laying down playing cards. One by one, he turned them over. It was a nasty trick.

Aron Dam was barely recognizable. His face and chest were drenched in blood: a dark, red, sticky mess. You could make out the open mouth that made a silent scream, if only because of the flashes of white teeth that shone through the red. And his eyes. Wide open. Terrified.

There was a gaping hole where his throat should have been. That was where the blood was thickest and darkest. Successive photographs showed his neck in grisly close-up. It had been brutally and carelessly ripped open. This wasn’t the clinical work of a surgeon’s scalpel; it was the artless savagery of a frenzied attack. Whoever and whatever was responsible had done it again and again.

Other shots showed the entire body and I recognized the location. Tinganes. Opposite the Prime Minister’s office. Dam was lying on the slipway that sloped through the dark arch into the ocean. With his head near the doorway and his body in the shadows, blood pooled around him and swam with the seawater that soaked the old paving slabs.

Dam’s body looked broken, twisted. His arms were helplessly wide at his side, one leg crookedly under the other. So much blood. More blood circled his head, suggesting his skull might have been cracked on the stone slipway.

If the images were intended to force recognition of the scene onto my face, the ruse failed. The only memory chords the photos struck were buried deep inside me. But if they were intended to produce a reaction then they achieved that. I felt sick.

Nymann continued his assault.

‘Why have you been calling yourself John since you arrived in the Faroes?’

‘It’s my name.’

‘It’s not really, though, is it? It’s your middle name.’

‘I prefer it.’

‘Really? Has it always been that way?’

I ignored him and he ignored my silence.

‘You told me that you had no history of violence, Mr Callum.’

‘My client has already answered that question, Inspector,’ Samuelsen intervened, but I could hear the wariness in her voice. I answered the question again, for emphasis.

‘That’s right.’

‘Is it, though? I have communications from our colleagues in the United Kingdom. You have no criminal record, Mr Callum.’

‘I know.’

‘And yet . . .’ Nymann paused and held my gaze before placing another A4 sheet on the table between us. His ace card.

‘You are linked with an incident. An extremely violent incident. Do you wish to tell me about that?’

‘No.’

‘You don’t? Okay, I shall tell you. Four young men, all under the age of twenty, were brutally attacked. All sustained life-threatening injuries and spent much time in hospital. One is not expected to walk again. You were the chief suspect for the attack on these young men. You,
Andrew
Callum.’

Suddenly I could hear nothing but the sound of the blood pounding in my ears. I said nothing but could see the lawyer’s mouth fall open helplessly.

‘The report says the incident had much publicity in Scotland,’ Nymann continued. ‘Is that why you left your own country to come here? Is that why you began using your middle name?’

‘I was investigated and cleared. There was no evidence against me.’ The words were sticking to the flypaper of my throat.

‘That is not what I asked you.’

‘I already told you why I came here. I came here for a fresh start. I wanted to live some—’

‘Somewhere quiet. Yes, I remember. It is not so quiet for you now, is it?’

I picked a spot on the far wall between the two detectives, far from the lawyer, and stared at it until my eyes slowly closed. I groped for words that would make sense of what he had in front of him. Words that would explain it all away and make it all better. Words that would convince me as much as them. The words couldn’t rise from the pit of my stomach where they lay drowning in acid that made me want to vomit.

Nymann continued. ‘This information, it at the very least suggests you are capable of the attack on Aron Dam. Do you agree?’

I did.

‘I repeat, I was investigated and cleared. There was no evidence against me.’

‘Inspector!’ Samuelsen’s voice had gone up an octave or two. ‘My client has told you twice that he was cleared of these charges. They have no relevance to this case.’

Nymann closed the laptop, the click final and resounding.

‘The interview is suspended for today. You will be taken to the Faroe Islands prison and held there while we further our investigation. Do you understand?’

Prison. The word hit me like a hammer, forcing my eyes open. I could manage only one question. A question that I wanted an answer to at least as much as they did.

‘Don’t you want to ask me if I killed him?’

‘No.’

Nymann sounded surprised that I should even ask such a question. ‘No, Mr Callum. I don’t expect you to tell the truth. We will find that out for ourselves.’

Chapter 30

Elin Samuelsen sat across the interview-room table from me, in the seat previously occupied by Nymann. She scribbled furiously on her papers, pausing occasionally to glance up fretfully at me. It didn’t seem to be an encouraging sign.

Eventually, she pushed a hand through her blonde hair, a hand that reached her crown then seemed to get stuck as she froze mid thought. ‘You didn’t think to tell me about the case in Scotland?’

I looked at her defiantly. She was supposed to be on my side. ‘You heard me tell him. I was investigated. Thoroughly. And I was cleared.’