The Last Refuge (41 page)

Her visit to her father also presented me with the opportunity I needed. To break into her flat.

When I left her, I drove north to the whaling station to check on Nils Dam and to feed and water him. He was weak and bad-tempered and yet somehow accepting of his situation. He had become conditioned, beaten yet still needy, so that he was easily malleable.

From Við Áir, I drove back into Torshavn, again parking where I could get a good view of Karis’s flat without being seen. I was there half an hour before she had said she would be leaving. I needed to make sure she had gone.

I sat, thinking and fretting, the car’s clock inching forward. This wasn’t something I felt comfortable with, far from it. But I was still going to do it.

Karis emerged from the front door right on cue, looking pensive and tired. She headed off on foot, huddled up against the wind and the world.

I didn’t move. Not until the clock crawled on for another five minutes. I couldn’t take the risk that she’d have forgotten something or simply change her mind.

I’d never broken into anywhere before. Not even in my rough-and-ready youth, when plenty of the other kids were wide enough to have done their share of thieving. I was stupid enough to be quick with my fists and roam in packs with the other wasters, but I’d never stooped to breaking and entering. That didn’t mean I didn’t know how to do it.

When the five minutes had passed, I stepped out of the car and quickly across to her door. I had to open it as quickly and unobtrusively as if I had a key. Any neighbours who happened to be watching would probably have seen me come and go often enough not to think anything of it, as long as I wasn’t at the door too long. I slipped the thin piece of plastic into the lock, jiggling it into position, desperately trying to get it behind the bolt, as I’d seen others do. It wasn’t as easy as it had looked.
Come on.
I was forcing it, panicking over the time it was taking, which inevitably made it take longer. There. Was that it? Shit. Again. The bolt sprung, I turned the handle and was in.

The door closed behind me and I climbed the stairs into the flat itself. I didn’t know how many times I’d been in there, but this was different. This was wrong. For the first time, I was aware of the sound of my feet and what I touched. I could hear my own breathing.

I moved between things. I attempted the kind of catlike movements where obstructions are elegantly, effortlessly avoided and glided past untouched – the way I had watched Karis negotiate the room, walking a ninja’s path between the canvasses, painting materials and other equipment. In Karis’s absence it was a different space. In a sense it was more hers, more intimately and personally her own.

It was trespassing in her studio that was the greatest betrayal of trust. This was her inner sanctum, the place where she bared her soul. Sneaking in there like a thief, like the tearaways in the housing scheme where I grew up – every bit as bad as them and yet worse. I knew she didn’t like me inspecting whatever she was currently working on, that she didn’t like her work to be viewed until she herself was happy with it.

The easel near the window was covered with a piece of sacking, hiding it from the world, or at least from me. Shamelessly, I lifted the covering and saw my own face looking back at me. The last time I’d caught a glimpse of this painting I’d seen a brooding visage, the features mapped out and partly filled in, with only my eyes waiting to be painted. They’d been done now.

I could see the paint was still wet there. Presumably this was what she had done this afternoon after I’d left. My eyes: the windows to the soul that she hadn’t previously been sure enough about to fill in. Now she had finished me, judged me, at last. The eyes that stared back were kind, trustworthy and reliable. In her generosity of spirit – or her gratitude that I wasn’t going to tell anyone what she had done – she had lent my eyes a compassion that my current actions were giving the lie to.

I eased the sacking back over the portrait, two protruding pieces of wood keeping it off the still-drying oils, hiding the hypocrisy represented by that face. Better that it was covered and unseen.

On the wall beside it, I found two canvasses that I’d never seen before. Two abstract works that were very different from her usual style. Both were violently scored in reds and blacks, vicious brushstrokes that made me think of war. Or murder. There was a face visible in each one, eyes screaming through the colours, faces either drenched in blood or burning in hell. Both paintings disturbed me immensely.

Karis had an old sideboard against the wall, a faded and battered piece of furniture that was more functional than decorative. I knew its drawers were stuffed with tubes of oil, colour charts, swathes of material and photographs that she’d taken round the islands, as well as old letters and new bills and anything else that had nowhere to go. It was this sideboard that I wanted.

I’d read years before of the theory that when people lie, their eyes move up and to the right. Psychologists say it is a subconscious indication that they are inventing something, attempting a deception, reaching for the part of the brain that facilitates lying. Whether it was true, I had no idea.

But I did know that, earlier, when I’d asked Karis where something was, her eyes shifted. They had moved, if only fleetingly, to the right. I knew she had lied and I had a good idea where the truth lay.

I pulled the drawers out one by one and carefully worked my way through brushes, drawing pads, small tubs of primer, pastel pencils and tubes of oil in every colour under the sun. I pushed aside bundles of charcoal, water-colour blocks, frames and soaps.

I’d promised her that I wouldn’t tell anyone that she had killed Aron. I hadn’t yet broken that vow, but I had no doubt that I was breaking the spirit of it. The same went for our relationship. Maybe not so much breaking it as taking a wrecking ball to it and smashing it into a million pieces.

There, at the back of one of the drawers, under a piece of linen canvas, sat a plastic sandwich bag, the kind that presses together at the top to seal. Inside was the
grindaknivur
, the little blood-stained knife that she had told me she’d thrown into the sea off the western port while the swell was high. The knife she said could be anywhere.

I held it up in front of the window, the soft light streaming through glass and plastic, making a ruby-red stain shimmer on the blade. Such a small knife. The blood took me back, to bad places and times, to things I should have done and to things I shouldn’t. I still wasn’t sure which category my next action would fall into.

Chapter 63

When I’d called Nicoline the next morning and said that I wanted to meet, she suggested the dark interior of the Manhattan, the bar that never sleeps.

Our lunchtime rendezvous was still two hours away and so I had time to drive over to the whaling station to check on Nils. I had to finish all of this soon.

As the Peugeot bumped its way along the track, the now-familiar sight of the fading red buildings loomed into view up ahead. I parked out of sight, the building nearest the slipway shielding the car from the road. I stood for a moment, pondering what a sight it must have been to watch the whales be winched up the sloping ramp from the sea. The lingering, stale stench of blubber made it an easy leap for the imagination.

I eased open the heavy old door to the middle building, something comforting, now, about the door’s harsh groan, and stepped inside, with water, fruit and sandwiches in hand. The gloom and the rancid smell of old oil greeted me as usual, my feet ringing across the solid floor. But as I took in the room, the pulleys, the drums, the cogs, the oars, the boxes, there was no sign of Nils. The shelves of the old freezer were visible, exposed by his absence. Stupidly, my eyes searched the rest of the room, as if I’d secured him somewhere else by mistake.

The food and water tumbled from my hands, landing on the floor in a clatter. I charged around the room, looking behind every possible hiding place, pulling back cans and ropes, throwing aside old lifebelts. At the freezer, I saw the shackles that had held Nils lying on the ground. I grabbed the door and hauled it open, running blindly outside.

I hadn’t been there since the evening before, so he might have twelve hours or more head-start on me. I ran from building to building, the main sheds and the smaller outhouses, down to the shore, across the slipway and beyond. I retraced my steps up the track to the road and across the fields. There was no sign of him.

Then in a panic I thought about the car. The keys were in my pocket, but perhaps he’d managed to circle round behind me and would be able to hotwire it. I ran, breathing hard now, but the Peugeot stood where it had been, and no Nils in sight. I fired the keys and locked it.

This time I stalked round the site more slowly, but the outcome was the same. Nils Dam, however he had done it, had escaped.

If he’d got out the night before then he could have crawled into Hvalvik by now. I couldn’t be sure how steady on his legs he would be. I’d supported him during the brief bouts of exercise I’d allowed him, but he could easily have been faking his weakness. And even if he’d only got to the main road he could have thumbed a lift into Torshavn. But if he’d done that, then surely Tunheim or Nymann would have been after me by now.

For all I knew, he had got halfway across one of the surrounding fields – or the fjord – and no further. He could be lying there dead or dying, but there was no way I could comb every inch of it trying to find him. Nor did I have the time. I had to get out of there and back into town.

With a final despairing look around, I unlocked the car again, jumped in and drove off.

I decided to make a better job of parking the car this time, secreting it up a side street off Stoffalág. It meant a longer walk back but it was more discreet. I had no idea if the cops would be looking for it, but if they were there was no sense in making it easy for them.

It made the hike over to the Manhattan a nervous one, looking over my shoulder and seeing suspicion in every passing face. If I was going to get picked up for imprisoning Nils then I would be in deep shit, but if the object in my jacket pocket were to be discovered then the depth of the shit would be unfathomable.

Of course, in going to meet Nicoline, I may well have been walking straight into their hands and giving them everything they wanted, but I had to bluff that out and hope for the best. There was no other way.

Climbing the steps to the pub, the black-and-green livery in my face, I took one deep breath and pushed through the doors. Nicoline was where I expected her to be, in the same corner that we had sat in before. She was alone.

There was an orange juice parked in front of her and I pointed at it. ‘Do you want another one of those?’

‘No. I am good with this. Thanks.’

At the bar, I fretted over the temptation to have beer. Or something stronger. The words orange juice were eventually forced out through gritted teeth.

‘You look nervous.’ Nicoline was studying me carefully as I slid into the seat opposite her.

‘Do I have reason to be?’ I knew it sounded defensive and probably paranoid, but I reckoned I had cause.

She leaned forward, chin on her hands, to get a better look at me. ‘That depends, I guess. Does being chief suspect in a murder investigation make you nervous?’

‘It does today. Don’t piss me about, Nicoline. Please. Is there anything else that I should know about?’

Her brows knotted, she was clearly confused, and I allowed myself to breathe a bit easier. ‘Not that I know of. You tell me. Is there anything else
I
need to know?’

I hesitated. I trusted her up to a point, but her job was her job.

‘Yes, maybe. But I’m not going to tell you what it is. You might know soon enough, but for now I’m saying nothing. There’s no point in trying to change my mind. Anyway, I have something better for you.’

That interested her. I could see her hoping that it would be what she suspected it was. She was on edge, desperate to know if I could deliver on my promise.

‘Well? Tell me. For God’s sake.’

‘We are alone here, right?’

‘What? What’s wrong with you? Of course we are alone. I am putting myself at risk here, too.’

I looked round, like a drug dealer making a scan of the premises before handing over his gear. My eyes didn’t leave hers as I reached into my pocket and produced the object that had been burning a hole there, its plastic bag hot to the touch. I lifted it above the table edge and placed it in front of her.

The blade glinted under the strip lighting and the blood-streak gleamed. Nicoline’s eyes lit up, too.

‘That’s it?’ She reached over the table towards the bag, but I placed my hand above it before she could get there. ‘Did your parents never teach you it is rude to grab?’

She sat back, a rueful smile playing on her lips.

‘I just need to be sure we understand each other,’ I said. ‘And that we are both giving something here.’

‘Okay, tell me.’

‘You can’t say where you got this from. Say it was left anonymously. Say you found it. Say the tooth fairy left it under your pillow. I don’t care. But it wasn’t from me. Okay?’

‘Okay. But I need to know more about it. For a start, will your prints or DNA be on here?’

‘Yes. My prints probably will be.’

‘That makes things difficult. For both of us, but especially for you. You do realize that?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Okay. So who else’s prints will I find on here?’

I shrugged.

‘You don’t know or you won’t tell me?’

‘Which would you rather hear? That should be enough for you to work with. And it’s all I will give you. But in return, I want the name of Nymann’s witness. The person who is going to testify against me.’

‘Let me look at it. Oh come on, let me see.’

I took my hand away and Nicoline reached over and picked the bag up, the tips of her fingers gripping its sealed edge. She held it up to the light, turning it this way and that, occasionally frowning, sometimes nodding.