The Killing Bay

by Chris Ould

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Chris Ould

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Faroese Pronunciation

  Prelude

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Chris Ould and available from Titan Books

  The Blood Strand

  The Fire Pit (February 2018)

  The Killing Bay

  Print edition ISBN: 9781783297061

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781783297078

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: February 2017

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

  © 2017 Chris Ould

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  For me mam,

  At last, and with love

  FAROESE PRONUNCIATION

  THE FAROESE LANGUAGE IS RELATED TO OLD NORSE AND Icelandic and is spoken by fewer than eighty thousand people worldwide. Its grammar is complicated and many words are pronounced far differently to the way they appear to an English-speaker. As a general rule ø is a “uh” sound; v is pronounced as w; j as a y, and the Ð or ð is usually silent, so Fríða would be pronounced Free-a. Hjalti is pronounced “Yalti”.

  The word grind (pronounced “grinned”) is Faroese for a school of pilot whales, but is also used generically to refer to the whale drive and associated activities.

  PRELUDE

  HE WORKED ON HIS KNEES NOW, AS IF PRAYING. DARKNESS and rain; darkness and pain – from his back, from his fingers, from all over. Sweating and hot, working blind: as good as blind. The yellow light from the torch was so feeble it lit only the grass a hand’s length in front of it.

  The rocks were heavy: rough basalt, flecked with green. Abrading his fingers and nails as he scrabbled them free then heaved them aside. It was harder now that he had reached the lowermost stones. Over years – decades – they had grown into the earth; or the earth had grown into them, unwilling to give them up. He should have brought tools. But he had only a torch and the vodka.

  Coming here in darkness had been instinctive. Something held silent and hidden this long couldn’t be exposed in the light. It still demanded the ritual of secrecy, even in its uncovering. He needed the darkness and the vodka to cover his fear.

  Another stone broke free. He rocked back with the shock of its release and let it fall to the side and roll down the slope. He panted, half sobbing. How much more could there be? How much more could he do? He was weak, he knew that. Weak-willed and weak of body – more now than ever. It was only his fear that kept him going. Fear was all he had left.

  For a minute, then longer, he didn’t have the strength to raise his chin from his chest. He felt sick and hollow: a shell, eaten up from the inside. Eaten up, eaten away.

  How much more?

  He reached for the torch; brought it up, shook it, and was rewarded, he thought, by a faintly brighter light.

  Thrusting it forward he played the glow over the rocks, into a hollow, tried to make sense of the shadows it made.

  And then he recoiled with an exclamation of shock. Fumbled the torch, dropped it; felt his heart racing. Smooth roundness, mottled with dirt. Not rock. Bone.

  She was there.

  * * *

  At the grave there was stillness and nothing to see within the circle of family black. The pastor’s voice fluctuated on the wind, but he was twenty yards away and even if the sound had carried clearly all I’d have understood was the tone.

  On the far side of Skálafjørður patches of sunlight came and went, daubing and shifting over the distant hillsides. My eye was drawn by the movement, following the light as it picked out the scattered dots of houses in a place I couldn’t name; then drawn again by the distant movement of a car on the shoreline road, glinting. It was that kind of day: one of the bright ones when the rain has passed and you can have a fresh start.

  Before I’d left England I’d said that I wouldn’t come here to stand by a graveside. It hadn’t been my intention, but there again I was pretty sure that dying hadn’t been Signar Ravnsfjall’s intention either – not if he’d been aware enough to think about it after his penultimate stroke.

  Even if intention and result are two different things, I’d stayed true to my word: I was not by the graveside. That was for family. He’d been my father in name only – not even that – and to remain at this distance seemed about right.

  And then the breeze shifted and it was all done. Signar Ravnsfjall was in the ground and beside the grave the mourners were released from their stillness. I cast a last look and then moved away.

  * * *

  The church at Glyvrar stood above a slope that ran down to the waters of the fjord, choppy and restless. The building wasn’t one of the traditional Faroese churches, with tarred clapboard walls and grass on the roof. Instead it had the look of architectural thinking – solid white walls, with a square tower and steep-angled roofs nested together. The car park beside it put me in mind of an out-of-town shopping centre. It was full now. The great and the good had turned out in force to send Signar Ravnsfjall on his way.

  My half-brother Magnus Ravnsfjall found me about ten minutes later as I stood by the car. It must have taken some determination to do that, given the number of people still clustered round the church. They were in no hurry to leave until news and views had been passed and chewed over: it’s the Faroese way. No hurry at all.

  I watched Magnus exchange a few words with a cluster of smartly dressed men near the gates of the churchyard, but he clearly didn’t want to linger. After nods and a few words he moved on.

  I’d bummed a cigarette from one of the same men a few minutes earlier, but now I trod it out and went forward to meet my half-brother. And for a moment it struck me as odd that he could still have such a resemblance to the man they’d just buried, as if Signar’s death should have lessened the physical similarity between father and son. It hadn’t though, and I guessed that Magnus had probably inherited the mantle of Sign
ar’s business concerns, to go with his genes.

  “Will you come with us now to the house?” Magnus asked when he stopped in front of me. “It will be only family and close friends. My mother doesn’t want more, but she would like to meet you.”

  I shook my head. “Nei, men takk fyri. I don’t think it’s the best day for introductions, do you? Besides, if Kristian’s there…”

  Whatever Sofia Ravnsfjall’s reasons for wanting to meet me, I couldn’t see Kristian being thrilled by my presence. He was my half-brother, too, but I knew him much better and because of that I doubted he’d want me around. His wounds would still be too raw.

  Magnus understood what I meant, but for a moment he seemed undecided, as if still under some imperative. In the end, though, he nodded. “Perhaps in a day or two, then. You’re not leaving yet?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Okay.” It seemed to satisfy him. “There are also some details from our father’s testament – the will – that we should discuss.”

  I couldn’t guess what sort of details those could be. “Sure, if you need to,” I said. “Give me a call.”

  “Thank you.” He said it as if I’d granted a favour. Then, for a moment, he was distracted by the view across the sound.

  “It’s a good place to be, isn’t it?” he said.

  Better if you were above ground, instead of below it. But I didn’t say that. He’d lost his father and I knew they’d been close.

  “Yeah, a good spot,” I said.

  He drew himself back to the moment. “Okay then,” he said. “I will call you. Thank you for coming.”

  We shook hands and he moved back towards the church passing Fríða, my cousin and, for the last week, also the provider of a roof over my head. She knew where I’d be and didn’t have to search. Today was the first time I’d seen her wearing a skirt and heels – all formal black – and they suited her. With her blonde hair up in some kind of knot she looked effortlessly stylish and when she arrived at my side she put her arm lightly through mine.

  “Will you come to the house?” she asked. “My father will take us.”

  I liked Jens Sólsker, her father, but I shook my head. “Magnus just asked, but I don’t think so.”

  She assessed that for a moment, then said, “Okay, I understand. You had better take the car then. My father will give me a lift later.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeh, of course.” Ever the pragmatist. She held out the keys and looked at me as if assessing the damage, or lack of it. “You’ll be okay?”

  I nodded. “I’ll go for a walk,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said, then she gave me a small hug before extracting her arm. “Safe home, then.”

  “You, too.”

  * * *

  A little before nine and still a couple of hours from the end of the late shift, Officer Annika Mortensen passed the multi-coloured lights in the Norðoyatunnilin – the grotto, as she always thought of it. Red, green and blue floodlights shone up the rock walls and across the roof of the road tunnel to mark the deepest point under the sea, halfway between Eysturoy and Borðoy.

  Annika was heading for Klaksvík to meet up with Heri Kalsø for a coffee and hotdog at the Magn petrol station: hardly the most glamorous of locations, but convenient enough. A bit like their relationship, she thought, and then immediately chastised herself. It was an unkind assessment, especially because she knew it wasn’t one Heri would share.

  There was little traffic in the tunnel and Annika kept her speed at a steady eighty up the incline, half listening to an REM song on the radio. Then the tunnel ended and she emerged into the night. Up ahead she saw three or four cars on the shoulder of the opposite lane, just past the first curve of the road. A couple of people were looking into a car that was pressed up against the embankment just beyond the junction with Mækjuvegur.

  Annika assessed the situation, then slowed. She let an oncoming car go past, then switched on the blue roof bar lights and crossed the carriageway, pulling up in front of the first car; a VW Polo with its nearside front tyre down in the mud. Beside it a man in a Föroyar Bjór bomber jacket had opened the driver’s door and was leaning inside; an older man was peering over his shoulder.

  “Hey,” Annika said as she approached. “What’s happened?”

  “Don’t know,” the older man said. “I was following him about fifty metres behind and he just drove off the road.”

  “How fast was he going?”

  “Not very. About forty maybe. I had to slow down.”

  The man in the Föroyar Bjór jacket stood away from the door now to let Annika see. She moved forward and bent down to the driver, but the smell of alcohol and unwashed body told her as much as his lolling head. He was well into his sixties, greying hair down over his collar and a face grizzled with a grey beard where it wasn’t streaked with dirt.

  “Hey, hey, can you hear me?” she asked, putting a hand on the shoulder of the man’s greasy tweed jacket. “Are you okay?”

  No response. His clothes were muddy and wet, especially the knees of his trousers, Annika noticed, and there was a bottle of vodka on the passenger seat, uncapped and empty.

  Annika considered, then pinched the man’s earlobe, hard, between her thumb and index fingernail.

  It did the trick. The old man roused with a snort and a swatting motion from his hands, as if trying to fend off a fly.

  “Wha— Where’s this? I don… Where?”

  “Talk to me, please.” Annika’s tone was insistent. “Are you hurt?”

  For a moment the man tried to focus. “She… she wa’ dead… I need to… Not me to…”

  He trailed off into incomprehensible mumbling and his head lolled again. Annika frowned. As drunk as a halibut, as her gran used to say. Not an ambulance job though. She straightened up from the car.

  “He’s pissed again, right?” the man in the Föroyar Bjór jacket said.

  “Again? Do you know him?”

  “Sure, that’s old Boas,” the man said. “Boas Justesen. He lives near my sister in Fuglafjørður. He took to the bottle when he lost his job in the 1980s – hasn’t put it down since.”

  The name seemed vaguely familiar to Annika, which wasn’t saying a lot: it was harder not to know people around here. Something about his wife dying? Maybe. It didn’t matter.

  “Will you give me a hand to move him?” she asked the man. “Just as far as my car.”

  By the time Annika had secured Boas Justesen’s car, turning off the lights and locking the doors, the man himself was slumped across the back seat of her patrol car snoring. There was also a powerful smell of urine. Annika opened her window and switched on the fan.

  There was no point driving Justesen to Tórshavn to be charged: he was too drunk. Instead Annika called the station and arranged to take him directly to the holding cells in Klaksvík; something she would have had to do anyway now that Tórshavn’s own cells had been closed. Even arrestees from the capital ended up being driven the seventy-five kilometres to Klaksvík for holding. It made no sense and wasted everyone’s time, but there it was. At least this time she was only five minutes away.

  * * *

  When Annika drew up in the parking lot outside the station Heri Kalsø was waiting. He’d heard her call to control and was pleased to have the opportunity to come and lend a hand, manhandling Boas Justesen out of the car and as far as the cells.

  Ever since the incident at Kollafjørður when Sámal Mohr had been decapitated, Annika seemed to have put aside the fact that she had ever been mad with Heri; at least, she hadn’t mentioned it again, and it had been more than a week since the incident. Heri wasn’t sure if this was because of the way he’d reacted at the accident scene – by taking over and getting Annika away – or whether Annika’s forgiveness would have come anyway. He wasn’t foolish enough to ask, though. The burnt child fears the fire, and he’d learned his lesson. No, things were back to normal, and it was better to leave it at that. He’d even started
to think again about asking Annika to move in with him. It fell short of a proposal of marriage, but that might be too much, he’d decided. The first thing was to gauge her reaction. They’d been together for over a year. Time for a change of gear, surely.

  * * *

  Once Boas Justesen had been booked and deposited in a cell Annika decided to put off cleaning the back of her car until they’d had coffee and something to eat. They took Heri’s car for the short drive to the Magn station and Annika sat in the passenger seat.

  “I’ve applied to join CID,” she said as Heri negotiated the parking lot to the road. The words just came out. She had no why. Perhaps because it was dark.

  “Yeh? That’s great,” Heri said, glancing at her. “You should. You’ll do well at it, especially if Hjalti takes you under his wing. Which he will.”

  Annika shook her head. “I don’t mean here: I’ve applied to Copenhagen.”

  “Copenhagen? Why?”

  “Because they have a wider variety of cases. That’s what I want, so I can see which area really interests me. I’ve been thinking about the homicide squad.”

  “You just worked on a homicide case: Tummas Gramm.”

  “Yeh, I know,” Annika acknowledged. “But how long till the next one comes along here?” She sensed Heri stiffen in his seat but he didn’t reply, instead turning the car on to Biskupsstøð gøta.

  “I’m not saying I want to stay there for good,” Annika went on, filling the silence. “I think two or three years to get experience, then it might be good to come back.”

  “Sure, yeh,” Heri said. “That makes sense.”

  “So you’d be okay with it?”

  “Sure, of course. It’s not like it’s so far away, is it?” Heri flicked the indicator and turned in at the petrol station. “An hour and a half on the plane. That’s only the same as driving out to Viðareiði.”

  “Yeh, well that’s true,” Annika said. “When you put it like that.”

  1

  Friday/fríggjadagur

  “JAN?”

  It came after the knock on the back door. Fríða’s voice.

  “Hey. Koma í,” I called.

  A moment or two later she came into the sitting room. I’d known she hadn’t gone to the clinic because her car was still parked outside, but I’d assumed she was working from home so I’d left her alone instead of crossing the six feet between the guest house where I was staying and the main house. She was wearing jeans and trainers beneath a chunky-knit sweater, her reading glasses pushed back into her hair.