by Chris Ould
17
IN VESTMANNA I PARKED CLOSE TO THE EAST HARBOUR AND walked back along the road a short way. Rói Eysturberg’s house wasn’t hard to pick out: black and angular with a stand of spindly trees beside it. Their presence was unusual enough to draw your attention in the treeless Faroese landscape and beyond a small painted gate I made my way uphill along a path as far as a hjallur shed. The door was latched open and just inside Rói Eysturberg was standing at a wooden bench filleting a cod. He was in his mid-sixties, a peaked cap on his head, sleeves rolled back over bony brown forearms, and he sliced up the fish with the skill you only acquire from decades of practice.
“Góðan morgun,” I said, watching his knife flick.
“Hey.” Said flatly without looking up until he’d finished, then he tossed the filleted remains of the fish into a plastic tub.
“Good catch?” I asked.
“Some, ja. Not all.” He turned a fillet round on the bench. “See there?”
I stepped closer and with the tip of the knife he pointed to small, brownish threads in the white flesh.
“Those are worms to spoil the meat,” Eysturberg said. “They come from the kópur—” He shook his head in irritation as he tried to find the correct word in English. “Sea animals. Black.”
For a moment I searched for something that might fit. “Seals?”
“Ja. Seals. The seals have the worms and they shit them out in the water. Then the cod eat the shit. It goes round, yeh?” He made a face. “People think the seals are lovely, but they don’t know about the worms, eh?”
It sounded like a metaphor for something but I wasn’t sure if that was his intention. It was hard to be sure of anything with Eysturberg, which may have been the way he liked it.
He cut round the infestation on the fillet, tossed the bad flesh aside and put the rest into a bucket. Then he took the last fish from a crate and started the process again.
“So, you have more questions about Signar Ravnsfjall, is that it?” He glanced at me for a second between cuts. “I heard that he had died. I’m sorry about that.”
I knew he meant sorry for my loss, rather than sorry in his own right. As far as I’d been able to tell when we met before, he had no particular like or dislike of Signar.
“Actually I wanted to ask about something else,” I said. “I remembered you mentioned that you knew my mother, Lýdia, when you lived on Suðuroy.”
“Ja?” Half-statement, half-question.
“I wondered if you could tell me about her.”
Another cut. “I don’t know what there is to say. I didn’t know her so well.”
“She didn’t stand out for any reason?”
He shrugged. “It’s a long time ago.” He started to clear the remains of the filleted cod. There were no worms in this one and once he had the parts sorted he began cleaning up.
I knew from our previous meeting that he liked to fence – to trade back and forth – so it was up to me to make a case for why he should tell me what he knew – if there was anything to tell.
I leaned on the doorjamb, then said, “I went to see Sofia Ravnsfjall yesterday. I asked her about Lýdia and, amongst other things, she said that when Lýdia was living on Suðuroy with Signar she tried to commit suicide.”
Eysturberg was rinsing his hands and his knife in a bucket. “Ja?” The same half-statement, half-question; still flat.
“After that she was sent to Denmark for treatment at a place called Ørsted,” I went on. “A mental hospital. That was in September 1973. She was there for about a month before coming home.”
In poker they call it going all in. It was pretty much everything I knew, but I wanted to show him that I knew too much to be fobbed off with generalities. Either he could tell me something more or he couldn’t, and either he was willing to or he wasn’t.
He said nothing; not while he finished cleaning his hands, not while he dried them on a grubby blue towel and then took a fleece from a nail by the door. He stepped outside and took a pace, then turned back to me and gestured to the bench outside.
“You can sit,” he said. “I will be back in a few minutes.” Then he walked up the path towards the house.
He was gone for five minutes and I sat on the bench, forced not to slouch by the narrowness of the seat and the vertical side of the shed. Whether by accident or design there was a gap in the trees which let the sunlight through, unbroken, and it felt unusually warm there; sheltered from the breeze and against the black wood. It would have been a good place to close your eyes and doze, but oddly I had a feeling that if I did that I would lose something. Or that I’d wake up and find the world had turned to winter while I was gone. So instead I listened to the sporadic drip of the tap inside the shed and let my gaze wander over the garden until Eysturberg came back down the path.
He gave no clue as to what he’d been doing. Maybe explaining to his wife who I was, what I wanted to know. Maybe not, too. He was wearing his fleece rather than carrying it now, and when I stood up he gestured that I should go with him. He didn’t break stride or speak until he’d opened the gate and gone through and I’d latched it behind us.
“Where is your car?” he asked, glancing along the road.
“At the tourist information centre.”
“Okay, we’ll go there.”
Some people will talk more freely when sitting still, others need movement. With Eysturberg I suspected it was simply a way of controlling the situation. If I wanted what he might have I had to go at his pace, and where he led.
“Your mother’s sister, she’s still alive?” He asked it casually, but not quite casually enough to persuade me that it was just a passing enquiry.
“Ketty? Yeah, she’s well.”
“She’s the one who looks after you in England, after Lýdia died?”
I nodded. “She adopted me – her and her husband.”
“How old were you?”
“Nearly five.”
He thought about that for a couple of steps, then said, “Before – when you asked about your father – it’s because of the case with the men, Gramm and Mohr. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. And that is all done now, as I hear. So now what is this?”
It was a good question: blunt, to the heart. What did I want?
I said, “I want to know what Lýdia was like; who she was. I’d like to know why she left here with me. I’d like to know what was going on in her head.”
I looked to see whether he had understood this. It seemed that he had – at least the gist of it – because he gave me a nod.
“So who has said that I would know about your mother?”
“No one,” I told him. “But if she’d tried to kill herself while she was living on Suðuroy I thought the police might have been involved and you’re the only person I know who was there at the time. But if there’s anyone else who could tell me…”
He considered, then shook his head, apparently satisfied. “The man – the police officer – who found her is dead. Maybe twenty years now. His name was Brimnes. We called him ‘old uncle’ because he had white hair and a big moustache. He had been a police officer on the island as long as we could remember, the young ones of us.”
“But you know what happened as well?”
“Yeh. Yeh, I remember. I hadn’t been to so many events – incidents – like that before, so…” He gave me an appraising look. “So you want to know?”
I nodded.
“Well, if I remember how it was, there was a telephone call to Brimnes at the police station. It is from a woman in Øravík. She has been looking after you for the afternoon because your mother has asked her, but now she has brought you back to the house and there is no reply at the door. Inside she can hear the radio and the lights are on, but the door is locked, which is not usual. So Brimnes calls me along and we go to see what is happening.”
He glanced at me to make sure I was paying attention. “When we arrived at the house there are maybe six peo
ple there – the neighbours. You are a police officer so you know how it goes. They come to be looking, so Brimnes does not waste time. He tells everyone to stand away and kicks the door so it breaks. Then he goes inside and I’m to stay where I am to stop the others coming in. Two minutes later Brimnes is out again and tells us there has been an accident and to call for an ambulance.
“It takes maybe fifteen minutes, I don’t remember, but when the ambulance people arrive your mother is taken to the hospital unconscious. Brimnes tells everyone to go home and for the woman you were with to take you to her home until your father arrives. Then he goes back inside.”
He cast a look at me to see how I was following this; I sensed there was more so I kept quiet.
“I was still young in the job,” Eysturberg said then. “So I liked to push my nose in – to see what is going on, you know? So after it is all quiet and I am still at the door I think I will be curious. I go inside to find Old Uncle in the bedroom and I see him with a paper sack where he’s putting in bottles for pills and other things. I think it’s for evidence, but when he sees me Brimnes says, ‘You don’t know about this, understand? You don’t know it was here.’ Then he takes the sack away and I don’t see it again. We close up the house and that is that.”
We crossed the road, cutting a corner and walking over a section of gravel for a while.
“So Brimnes wanted to cover it up?” I asked. “I mean the fact that it was a suicide attempt – is that what you’re saying?”
“Ja.”
“Why?”
“Because it is nobody’s business,” Eysturberg said flatly, as if I should already know. “And because in those days…” He frowned as he tried to find the right phrase. “That sort of thing is to have a mark, do you know what I mean?”
“It was something to be ashamed of?”
“Ja, like that. Of course sometimes it cannot be helped that people know about it, but Brimnes would not encourage it. If someone has gone off a cliff it is an accident while they are trying to catch birds; or with a shotgun, it’s an accident in cleaning. And if there is a goodbye letter maybe he shows it only to the husband or wife, or maybe it just disappears.”
“Did Lýdia leave a letter – a note?”
Eysturberg shook his head. “I didn’t see one, but it could have been in the bag Brimnes took away.”
“So if no one wanted to say it was a suicide attempt, how was it explained afterwards?” I asked. “What was the story?”
He shrugged. “Only that she had collapsed – fainted, yes? – and struck her head. She was required to stay in the hospital for a few days and then she was taken to Denmark. It was arranged between her doctor and your father, I think.”
“Did Signar take her to Denmark?”
Eysturberg shook his head. “I don’t know, but I would think so.”
“And where was he when it happened?”
“I’m not sure. At sea, fishing, I think. Maybe somebody uses the radio to tell him, I don’t know, but he isn’t back at the house until evening.”
Like all stories – all accounts trawled out of memory – I could see gaps and inconsistencies, but after forty years I hadn’t expected anything different. If Eysturberg had told me he hardly remembered the incident, or not at all, I wouldn’t have been surprised. Some things do stick, though. I could give chapter and verse on the first suicide I attended; the first dead kid I saw. Those things cling, and sometimes not for the reason you’d think.
We’d walked on a little way and Eysturberg had the look of someone who’d said as much as he cared to, but still hadn’t quite left his own memory alone.
“Can I ask you something else?” I said.
“Can I stop you?” The forbearance seemed a little out of character for him but I didn’t waste it.
“Did people think Lýdia was strange in any way?” I said. “I mean the way she behaved in normal life.”
He frowned, then shook his head. “Some people were jealous of her,” he said. “The women because she was pretty, the men because she would…” He searched for a word, but seemed not to find it. “Because she was not interested in them. She would go for a walk or a dance maybe, but she didn’t sit, stay still. You understand? Something would interest her, but then a different thing would be along and then that is what took her interest. But it was never with bad feeling,” he added, as if he wanted to be sure I didn’t get the wrong impression. “That was just how she was. People knew that.” He drew a breath, then seemed to shift focus. “She was too young to be married to Signar Ravnsfjall,” he said. “No one expects it. But I suppose because of the baby – you – she thought it was the best thing.”
“Did that change the way she was? I mean, did she change after she was married?”
He shook his head. “Nei, I don’t know. Everyone changes when they are married, don’t they?”
“I suppose so,” I acknowledged. “But I was told that she started going to something called the Colony, at Múli.”
He shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“But you know what it was?”
“Only from stories,” he said, and I could sense him closing down again, like he realised he’d left the door open too long.
“What sort of stories? What kind of place was it?”
He made a dry grunt, dismissive. “It was for hippies: foreigners. I have never been.”
Clearly it wasn’t something he was interested in talking about so I changed tack before the door finally closed. “What about Lýdia’s friends, people she knew?” I asked. “Is there anyone else I could talk to? So far you’re the only person who’s given me an honest impression of what Lýdia was really like, but if there are others…”
I’d chosen the word “honest” on purpose, hoping it would flatter him. Whether it did or not, I couldn’t tell, but he weighed up the request as we came round the corner of the harbour towards the information centre, then he seemed to decide.
“Eileen Skoradal is the only one I can think of,” he said. “She has a shop for old things in Tórshavn: Magnus Heinasonar gøta.”
“She was a friend of Lýdia’s?”
“Yeh.”
“Thanks. I’ll try to find her.”
He didn’t react to that but instead gestured to the information centre. “I am going for coffee and to meet some friends now, so I will say goodbye.”
“Okay. Stora takk fyri,” I said.
I knew that was it, so I held out my hand. After a second he shook it, then walked away.
18
“WHY DIDN’T YOU WAIT TO TELL ME FIRST?” REMI SYDERBØ asked.
“Because you were in a meeting and I didn’t think it should wait,” Hentze said matter-of-factly. He took another forkful of pasta salad from his Tupperware lunchbox and chewed on it with deliberation. He’d come to his own office to eat to avoid being drawn into conversation in the canteen.
Remi sighed but had clearly decided there was nothing to be done about it now. “Do you know how it’s going?” he asked.
“The interview?” Hentze shook his head.
Remi looked at his watch. Ári Niclasen had been interviewing Finn Sólsker in the second-floor office for nearly an hour. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll give it another ten minutes. If they haven’t taken a break by then I’ll interrupt it.”
He looked round then moved a chair and sat down. There wasn’t really enough space in Hentze’s office for anyone else. The spare chair was mainly for show.
“So tell me what you think,” Remi said. “Never mind about what’s confirmed and what’s not. Give me the picture.”
Hentze considered as he finished a mouthful of salad. Then he put down his fork and pushed the box away.
“I only know what I told Ári when I got back,” he said.
“Which was?”
“That Erla Sivertsen’s coat and hat – or two very much like hers – were in Finn’s boat shed. In addition, there’s a history between Erla and Finn; and on top of that the tena
nt at Erla’s flat thought she might have been seeing a married man.”
“Thought or knew?”
“Thought.”
“So you’ve added that up and it makes Finn a suspect?” Remi’s tone suggested that it was unlike Hentze to be quite so simplistic.
Hentze tipped his head, as if to acknowledge a fair point. “Yes, but also because Høgni Joensen gave me to understand that Erla had been to see Finn more often than he admitted to me last night.”
“And you didn’t consider putting these points to Finn yourself?” Remi asked.
“I considered it, yes, but I thought there was a conflict of interest,” Hentze said. “Finn and I have never been particularly close – no reason we should be, I suppose – but even so, I hardly think he’d react well if I asked whether he was being unfaithful to my daughter.”
As an answer it didn’t seem to entirely satisfy Remi, but he accepted it. “So what are you doing now?” he asked, motioning to the file on Hentze’s desk.
“Looking at those three burglaries in Klaksvík last week.”
“Are you serious? We have a major crime and you’re looking at a burglary?”
“Three.”
“You know what I mean,” Remi said, sounding slightly irritable now. “Leave the damn burglaries. I want you back on the murder. No one’s going to question your impartiality, even if Finn does turn out to—”
He broke off when Ári Niclasen tapped on the door and came in. His presence made the office seem even more cramped.
“Has Hjalti told you?” he asked Remi.
Remi nodded. “You’ve suspended the interview?”
“Yes, just. Do you want me to fill you in?”
The question was clearly whether Remi wanted him to speak in front of Hentze.
“Of course, go ahead,” Remi said.
Slightly uncomfortable, Ári Niclasen pushed the hank of hair back from his forehead. “Well, in short, he’s saying he has no idea how the hat and coat came to be in his boat shed. He says he didn’t put them there and that Erla Sivertsen hadn’t ever been in the shed.”