The Merman (19 page)

‘There's a load of cigarette cartons in there by the showers,' I said. ‘Danish brands.'

Tommy didn't answer.

‘Your brother moved them here from the hut, didn't he, after I was in there? They had a boat full of fags when they came back from
Anholt. That's why they didn't get rid of him out there at sea. They didn't have time. They were in a hurry to get back home.'

‘Forget you saw them, Nella.'

Tommy was right, I thought. The less I knew about things that were none of my business, the better.

I took a fresh gauze pad out of the medicine case and dampened it in the water. Carefully, I dabbed away the pus around the creature's eyes. It still had its eyes shut, was still drifting in and out of the fever, until we noticed a sort of increase in its concentration, how it kind of focused its senses.

It was like someone had flicked on a light switch; within an instant it was totally awake. Very calmly it fixed its gaze on us, one at a time, as if it wanted to imprint our faces in its memory. Its large dark eyes were filled with a sort of wonder. More clearly than before he asked if we could help him, back to the place where he belonged. To the world that was his, which he missed and feared he would never get to see again. To the sea... but not the sea as a word, because that's not how it worked. We just understood, without words, and we had begun to get used to it now, to this language that was not a language but rather a mystery. Then the connection was broken again, or however you want to put it, when the dog's barking got louder outside, and a vehicle pulled into the yard.

Just by the door to the feed preparation room was a staircase leading up to an open walkway. We hid there, crouching down behind the railings.

There were voices out in the yard. The dog was still barking. Strangely enough, I didn't feel particularly scared. We'd managed to switch off the lights and tidy up after ourselves. We stashed the medicine case far back in a cupboard.

‘What do we do now?' Tommy whispered.

‘We wait. It's probably one of the mink workers who left something behind. They'll leave again soon. It's Saturday, overtime and all that.'

The room looked like an old black-and-white photograph with
the lights off and just the light from the window openings coming in. I thought I could hear the creature moving, incredibly slowly from within its delirium, but the door to the space was shut and I couldn't see him from where we sat. Then there was the sound of another vehicle pulling into the yard, car doors opening and closing, and the dog's barking that kept getting more ferocious until someone yelled and it stopped.

There were people on the ground floor now, in the storage room it seemed like. They were talking down there, and someone gave a laugh. Then it was quiet again.

For a long while, nothing happened. All we could hear was a faint murmur of men's voices, and then the dog that was duty-bound to bark when it thought things had been quiet for too long.

Just when I'd started to think they were going to leave, some footsteps suddenly approached. The fluorescent lights were switched on. It felt like we were hovering above a big stage where the spotlights had just been lit and a performance was about to begin at any moment.

Two men came in through the door, wearing puffa jackets. One of them was smoking.

Then there was another, Tommy's eldest brother. And behind him, Dad and Leif.

I slumped down behind the railings. I didn't understand any of this.

‘Wait here! And put out that bloody fag. There's half a million's worth of furs in here.'

Tommy's brother disappeared into the corridor. The others stayed there, looking around idly until he returned with armfuls of cigarette cartons.

‘How many do you need?' he asked, turning to Dad.

‘As many as I can get. Fifty. A hundred?'

‘I can't believe the last lot you had are already gone.'

‘Lots of chain-smoking mates, innit? And no other income at the moment.'

Dad smiled his usual smile which could mean anything at all:
that he was in a good mood or absolutely furious.

‘Customs have really been going after people all autumn,' Tommy's brother continued. ‘Just so you know what's going on. A few weeks back they were going over every single boat that came into Glommen harbour. I just want to be sure I can trust people.'

‘It's sound. I've got other people who sell them, and I'm not so damn stupid I'd let on that I got the goods off you.'

Tommy's brother looked sceptically at him.

‘Who've you got selling for you?'

‘Some lads who need a bit of extra cash. Go-getter types who don't ask questions.'

‘You can't have young kids working for you, Jonas, what do you think would happen if the police nabbed them?'

‘They won't squeal. They'd just laugh at the rozzers. They know their rights.'

‘I'll let you buy fifty cartons, no more. My stock's starting to get low and I've got too many orders. We'll have to go back out in the boat again soon.'

I now saw that the guy who came in first was Jens, the one who'd been there when they brought up the trawl net outside Anholt. At a sign from Tommy's brother, he went to fetch more cartons of cigarettes.

It was quiet again. Dad took his wallet out of his back pocket and started counting out banknotes.

‘How's your brother doing?' he asked.

‘No better. That fucking sea monster broke his arm. Twisted it so the bone looked like a bit of spiral pasta on the X-ray.'

‘Can I have another look at him?'

‘You starting to fancy animals, Jonas?'

The others laughed, but there was, like, no joy in their laughter. Or maybe that's just how it seemed to me up there, crouching on the platform above them, nearly in shock that my dad knew something about this.

‘I'm just intrigued. I've never seen anything like it.'

Tommy's brother took the banknotes and put them in his inside pocket.

‘Do you want to see him now?' he asked. ‘I can't guarantee he'll be awake. He's ill, it seems. Refuses to eat. We don't even need to tranquillise him any more. I don't think he's got long to live.'

The double doors to the chiller room were wide open. They had switched on the lights inside. The men were standing in a semicircle around him. One of them prodded him with their foot. His tail fin moved slightly. There was some laughter. Dad's hoarse voice sort of rose above the others, like a voice in a choir. Tommy's brother, who was grinning with chewing tobacco in between his teeth. They were talking downstairs, but it was impossible to make out what they were saying. Renewed laughter blended in among the murmurs, such that you could nearly feel their excitement.

The fear had returned, like an old friend who didn't want to leave me in the lurch. I wasn't afraid for my own sake, but for the creature down there.

The men were standing close by him. Between their bodies I could see him moving, now awake, panic-stricken. There was a strange sound, panting in fear and confusion. The bloke who had come in with Jens stepped back slightly, leaving a gap where I could see the creature's face. It was like seeing my brother in the woods when they were feeding him grass and leaves. Or other times when they rubbed snow in his face or shoved his head in the toilet and flushed it. The creature's eyes were wide open, he was turning his head this way and that, opening his mouth wide as if he wanted to scream or was having trouble breathing. The men were laughing louder now; somebody prodded him with their foot again, gently at first and then a bit harder. I could see Dad down there, doing that weird thing with his mouth, the way he bared his teeth in a grimace. And then the creature on the tiled floor: the merman... twice as big as the others, but now defenceless. There was a crashing sound of something breaking. It was bleeding from fresh wounds on its body,
water was mixing with blood on the floor: they'd done something bad to him but I couldn't tell what. My view was obscured all the time by bodies moving round and round in the room, like a strange dance. Then I saw Jens, who was holding a broken bottle. I realised that was the sound I'd heard: glass being shattered.

Slowly, as if everything was happening underwater, he bent over and struck with the bottle like a fencer or a villain in a movie knife fight, and stuck the shards into the creature's flesh. It flinched silently in pain. Tommy's breathing quickened next to me, and then I heard a howl. But only when I felt Tommy's hand over my mouth did I realise it had come from me – I was the one who screamed. Nobody heard anything down there; they were shouting just as loudly themselves, roaring and surging back and forth in the room as if they were a single entity. Jens had started kicking him. Like I'd seen Gerard kicking the caretaker's head in the common room. He swung with his leg and struck the creature full in the face. The wound in his mouth split open again, and more blood flowed across the floor. Then the silent screams that we could only hear inside our heads, and maybe it was those screams that were making them kick and hit even harder, all together now; their feet and fists seeming to strike him in a rhythm.

I couldn't watch any longer. I covered my eyes with my hands, the way I used to in front of the TV when I was frightened of something in a movie. And now there was a different noise. The creature filled its chest with air and let out a huge cry of agony. It was unlike any sound I'd ever heard before, a sort of bellow, like from a dying bull, I thought, and toneless, like a deaf person who can't hear their own voice. Tommy's hand ran down my back. I must have passed out, because when I came round again the men had gone.

Far away through the tunnel of sound I could hear them. The dog had started barking again. Vehicles started up and drove off. The doors to the chiller room stood open. The creature was moving slightly on the floor, its tail fin waving slowly back and forth but secured by the chain. Blood was flowing across the floor, diluted with water to a pink sap that vanished down the floor drain.

A
van was badly parked on the edge of the pavement when got home. Next to it was a motorbike I didn't recognise. The living room window was open. There was music playing at full blast – it sounded like The Rolling Stones, Dad's favourite band. I could barely remember how I'd got there or managed to pass the time after our trip to the mink farm. It was as if I'd got a puncture in my body, a tiny hole from which my strength was slowly seeping out. My thoughts kept going back to what I had seen. I couldn't comprehend where all that hate came from, the desire to harm him. He was totally defenceless. But maybe that's exactly what attracted them. The knowledge that there wouldn't be any consequences. It was like he didn't exist, a creature like him... a merman... couldn't exist.

I left my bike by the garage door and continued round to the back. The lights were on in my brother's room. I picked up a bit of gravel and chucked it at the window. He came over straight away, as if he'd been waiting for a signal.

‘Where've you been?' he asked as soon as he got the window open.

‘Just doing some stuff. Everything okay in there?'

‘They're in the living room. I've locked myself in here. You coming in?'

‘I don't fancy meeting a load of bastards. How many of them are there?'

‘I dunno. Three, maybe four? Please... I don't want to be on my own here.'

I couldn't refuse him when he sounded like that. As if there was no hope, no matter how hard he searched. He waved to me as I went
round the corner of the house. I saw the relief in his face, how every single muscle sort of relaxed at the thought that I was home.

Robert opened his door straight away when I knocked, and as soon as I was inside his room he locked us both in.

‘It's great you're home,' he said. ‘Did they notice you?'

‘No. Has anything happened?'

‘Nothing in particular. They've just been partying downstairs.'

‘No fighting?'

‘A little drunken arguing. But then they all made up again. They were even dancing. At least it sounded like it.'

As if it were normal, I thought. As if what was going on down there was what life was about.

‘Is Mum there too?'

‘I think so. I didn't feel like going to find out.'

As a Rolling Stones song faded out and the drunken blathering got louder in the background, I looked around the room, at the desk with schoolbooks and the jar of pens and the rubber, the wardrobe with a big hole in the door that Dad had kicked through one drunken night, the Michael Jackson posters from a music magazine I'd given him so he'd have something to put on his walls. Last summer he'd still had toys around in here, things I'd found or shoplifted for him. But they had been put away now, and the room looked bare.

‘You've emptied this place out,' I said.

‘I just tidied up a bit.'

‘Everything you own?'

‘Most of it was crap anyway. And stuff I'd outgrown. I'll be thirteen soon.'

I couldn't help smiling.

‘Big lad... how long have you been sitting in here?'

‘Since they started down there this afternoon. Where've you been?'

‘With Tommy.'

He was scratching between his fingers. His skin had cracked again. If I didn't remind him, he would forget about his eczema.
And I'd had other things to do recently. It felt like someone was twisting a knife in me when I thought like that, that I was letting him down.

‘Has something happened, Nella? You're acting really strange.' ‘Do you think so?'

‘And you're hardly ever home.'

That thin veil of terror in his eyes. Nothing could happen to me. Nothing about me could change; he couldn't handle it.

‘And you never say what you're up to.'

‘There's nothing to worry about. Relax, Robert.'

‘So it's nothing to do with Gerard, then? Or has something else happened?'