The Killing Bay

by Chris Ould

  “Would you like coffee?” she asked. “Please, sit.”

  I took the chair she indicated at the end of the counter – well used and smelling vaguely of must – but declined the coffee, telling her where I’d been for the last hour while she’d been busy.

  She laughed. “When the cruise ships come in the people are as if they were just set free from prison. They want to see and buy everything as soon as possible before they have to go back. It’s like a race.”

  “Good for business, though,” I said.

  “Ja, as long as they pay. If you don’t watch them they steal, too. They think it doesn’t count if they don’t live here. So, I have my mother to watch also.”

  The surreal image of the old lady rising from her blankets to tackle pilfering tourists made me wonder if she was joking, but she seemed quite serious as she pulled up a low, padded stool and sat down to face me. Coffee mug cupped in both hands, she leaned forward slightly, as if to be sure I was really there. She had rings on every finger, I noticed.

  “So, you’re Jan,” she said again. “The last time I saw you… How old were you? Two years or three, maybe?” She shook her head a little.

  “Probably,” I said.

  “Is this the first time you have come back?”

  I nodded. I didn’t think there was any need to go into the fact that I’d been back once before, when I was seventeen and intent only on confronting Signar.

  “My father died so I came for the funeral,” I said, again going for the easiest option.

  “Ja, my mother tells me,” Eileen said sombrely. “I am sorry to hear it.”

  “Thank you. Anyway while I was here I thought I’d try to find out something more about Lýdia – about what she was like when she was growing up, that sort of thing. I don’t know very much about that and I’ve always wondered, you know?”

  Maybe I was laying it on a bit thick, but on the other hand it was basically true. Rói Eysturberg had told me too much and too little not to take it further if I could.

  Eileen Skoradal took the explanation at face value, though. “Of course,” she said. “It would be a natural thing to do, I think.”

  “So what do you remember most about her?” I asked.

  She sipped her coffee and composed herself in the way people do when they’re delving into memory, seeming to wade through the undergrowth of recollection until she found something to latch on to.

  We were going back more than fifty years, to her childhood, she told me. That was when she had first got to know Lýdia, when they were at school together on Suðuroy. They came from different ends of the same village: Vágur in the south of the island. The difference perhaps was more that her father was a manager in the Kommuna and Lýdia’s father worked the fishing boats: white collar and blue. It made no difference to their friendship, though, and according to Eileen’s account they were best friends from infant school right through to their teens.

  “She always had a great – a fantastic – imagination, you know? For making up games and pretending to be princesses and rich ladies. And she would always be drawing in er… books with clean pages.”

  “Sketchbooks?”

  “Ja, sketchbooks. She was very good. Pictures of people in dresses – the fashion – that we found in magazines. That sort of thing. She liked to look at photographs of film stars or pop singers and to draw them.”

  Not so hot on her schoolwork, though, apparently. Lýdia was usually in trouble for not working hard enough, although the teachers all knew she could if she wanted to. That was what annoyed them, Eileen said: the fact that Lýdia could have done well but chose not to. She wasn’t interested in what she was supposed to learn, only in what interested her.

  For ten minutes or so Eileen Skoradal strolled around in the past, describing what life was like for kids growing up in the Faroes back then. Very different to now; isn’t it always? More basic, but somehow purer, she thought. They never felt the lack, she said as she told me about birthday parties and adventures or incidents and mishaps as children, and of teenage indecision about the future and what it might be like outside the Faroes in the barely-glimpsed wider world.

  By and large Eileen’s description of Lýdia fitted with what Sofia Ravnsfjall had said yesterday, though this time it was told from the perspective of a friend rather than that of the woman who had succeeded Lýdia as Signar’s wife. Boiled down, it seemed that Lýdia had been bright and lively but she’d had a rebellious streak: a nonconformist, but not one of whom the Nonconformist, church-going Faroese at the time would have approved much, I suspected.

  “Did you stay friends after you left school and she married Signar?” I asked. “Did you still see her?”

  Eileen nodded but she seemed more tentative than before. No one had expected Lýdia to marry Signar, she told me: much less to have a baby. As far as anyone was aware – even Eileen – Lýdia and Signar barely knew each other, so it was a surprise all round. But these things happen, she said with a shrug, and when they did Lýdia moved to Øravík to live, and after I was born, of course she was busy with looking after me and running the home.

  I sensed something in that. “Didn’t she like it?” I said. She had been only eighteen or nineteen, after all.

  Eileen hesitated to pick her words. “I think it was harder than she expected,” she said diplomatically. “It was a different life, you know? Sometimes she would say that she never saw anyone that she knew any more, or say that Signar was a long time away on the boat.”

  “Did she seem unhappy or depressed by it all?” I asked, thinking back to Rói Eysturberg’s account of the suicide attempt.

  “Yeh, yeh, a little sometimes,” Eileen said. “But I didn’t see her for some time because I was in Denmark to study jewellery-making for a year. She wrote to me a few times at the start and in the letters she seemed always happy. Sometimes I remember she would put a picture with the letter, but there weren’t so many later.” She shifted a little on the stool. “After she went away with you I hoped she would write to me to say where she was and what you were doing, but she never did.”

  I nodded to acknowledge her disappointment, then said: “Before she left I was told that she spent time at a place called the Colony, at Múli. Do you know anything about it?”

  Eileen hesitated and straightened up slightly. “A little.”

  “It was some sort of commune, is that right?”

  “Ja, something like that.”

  “Did you ever go there?”

  “Maybe two times.” Said in a way to deny any real knowledge.

  “With Lýdia?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t remember. Perhaps.”

  I didn’t press it. Instead I said, “So what did they do there?”

  Eileen shifted again. She was clearly on the edge of her comfort zone and would have liked to shut this down, but didn’t quite feel able to do it.

  “It was… it was people who wanted to be er… self-sufficient,” she said in the end. “To live differently, with the farming to grow what they need. In the summer people went to visit and help or just to have a holiday. Some lived in tents or little huts.”

  “People from the Faroes?”

  She shook her head. “No, not so much from here. From Denmark and Europe, I think.”

  “Young people – hippies?”

  “Yeh, some were hippies I guess you would say. All kinds.”

  “Was anyone in charge?”

  “No, it was a commune,” she said. “So everyone should be equal.”

  “It must have been someone’s idea, though. Do you know who started it up?”

  Again she shook her head. “Perhaps… I don’t know. Maybe Rasmus Matzen. He was the oldest, I think. From Denmark.” She stood up. “It was all years ago and they were not there long, so…”

  As she let it trail off she moved to pick up a cloth from the counter and started to clean a brass box, as if it was something urgent she’d forgotten to do.

  “So tell me what you do
now,” she said then; no way to disguise the shift in topic, except by not making eye contact, which she didn’t.

  “Oh, I’m on leave from my job at the moment,” I said. “So it was a good excuse to finally come here.” Perhaps better not to use the words police or homicide.

  “And do you feel at home here?”

  Now that she was sure we’d shifted away from the subject of the Colony, she appeared to feel secure enough to look up from the box she was polishing.

  “No,” I admitted. “Sometimes it feels very foreign, very strange: like nowhere else I could have gone.”

  Which was the truth. If I was truly, at heart, a Faroese then a large part of me was missing. That was how it felt. Or just possibly that I was missing something that anyone truly Faroese would have known.

  I spent another five minutes with Eileen, for the sake of politeness and just to see if she would come back to anything I’d asked earlier of her own volition. She didn’t, though. Instead she talked about Vágur again, saying that one day she and her mother would go back to live there.

  “I was only supposed to have the shop for six months and I’ve been here for two years,” she told me.

  Had I been to Vágur? she asked. Did I know the house where Lýdia had grown up? When I said that I didn’t she wrote down the address. Perhaps I should go. It was a nice house; not large, but always cosy. She said it with a kind of reminiscent look, as if she was remembering the place and time fondly, as well as Lýdia and their friendship.

  I took the address and when I stood up ready to leave she suddenly seemed to be taken with an impulse and thrust the box she’d been polishing towards me. It was the size of a tobacco tin and looked old; the hinged lid embossed with a swirling design around a blank space clearly intended for an engraved name or initials.

  “For memory of Lýdia,” she said. “Please. I’d like you to have it.”

  “Takk,” I said. “Stora takk fyri. It was good to meet you.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m glad that you came.”

  I liked Eileen Skoradal despite the fact that she hadn’t wanted to tell me everything she could have, and I was glad that I hadn’t pushed her so far that she’d have shut down and not given me the box. I must have been feeling sentimental.

  22

  “HOW GOOD IS THE DESCRIPTION OF THIS MAN ERLA MET?” Remi Syderbø asked when Hentze had finished telling him about his conversation with Jákup Homrum.

  “Not very,” Hentze admitted. “Medium height, middle-aged, darkish hair, city clothes.”

  “Not Finn Sólsker then.”

  Hentze hadn’t intended to point this out, knowing Remi was sharp enough to see it for himself.

  “I wouldn’t say so.”

  “But it’s a description to fit a few hundred others,” Remi said.

  “Yeh,” Hentze allowed. “Except that the tenant at Erla’s apartment saw someone similar near the flat about a week ago.”

  Remi frowned. “Doing what?”

  “Nothing. He said he was on the wrong floor.”

  “So maybe he was.” Remi shook his head. “Without a better description I don’t see how we could link those two things. It could be entirely coincidental.”

  “Yeh,” Hentze agreed. “But I still have the impression that Erla’s meeting with the man at Kaldbak wasn’t an accident.”

  Remi thought it over for a moment, but in the end wasn’t moved. “Well, mark it up on the timeline by all means,” he said. “But I’d view it as a side issue. I don’t think it should take up any of our time.” His cellphone started to ring. “Okay?”

  “Okay,” Hentze said, though he allowed a degree of reluctance to colour it.

  Remi nodded and answered his phone.

  * * *

  It was odd, Dánjal Michelsen thought. For people who obviously saw themselves as rebels against conformity, they all adopted a very uniform appearance: black jeans and heavy-metal tee shirts, piercings and tattoos, dreadlocks and/or ropey beards. And that was just the women, he added as a mental punch line, together with a rim shot.

  But despite the easy caricature, Dánjal Michelsen’s personal opinion of the Alliance protesters was not so black-and-white. He thought they might have a valid argument about there being no need to continue the grind in this day and age, what with the mercury and chemicals in the meat and blubber. So he might have been persuaded to at least declare himself ambivalent towards the grind if it wasn’t for the way the Alliance presented it.

  It was their attitude of moral superiority and their refusal to properly engage with the people they were bad-mouthing that got Dánjal’s back up. It was just as one commentator had said recently: you can’t have a meaningful debate with evangelists because at some point they always fall back on the unreasonable but unassailable point that they know they are right and you are wrong. They believe and you don’t: they are the chosen and you are not. End of discussion.

  So it was without any great relish that Dánjal followed Lukas Drescher – with tattoos, piercings and beard – through to the sitting room of Fjalsgøta 82 and was told that, yes, Veerle Koning was here; if Dánjal waited, the pallid German would go and find her.

  Dánjal chose to remain standing, surveying the untidy room, until Drescher returned with Veerle Koning. They were followed by a man in his thirties who introduced himself in Danish as Peter Jessen.

  Although Dánjal had anticipated speaking with Veerle alone, both Drescher and Jessen appeared determined to stay. And, since Drescher said that he lived there too, Dánjal decided not to make a point of asking them to leave. It didn’t matter. In fact it was probably more useful to speak to as many residents as possible. All the same, he started by addressing Veerle when he finally sat down in the armchair across from her.

  “When you talked to my colleague, Annika, yesterday you said that Erla left the house at about three o’clock on Saturday and that she didn’t come back,” Dánjal said. “Do you remember that?”

  Veerle nodded. “Yes. It was after we’d eaten lunch.”

  “Well, the thing is, we now think Erla must have come back here at some point because she copied some photos she’d taken on Saturday afternoon on to her laptop.”

  Veerle frowned, as if this couldn’t be right. “I don’t know. I didn’t see her.”

  “Were you here all the time?” Dánjal asked. “You didn’t go out at all that afternoon, even just for a short time?”

  “No,” Veerle said, shaking her head. “Not until the evening.” As if for confirmation she cast a quick glance at Lukas Drescher who was sitting on the arm of the sofa.

  “You told Annika you went out at between half past seven and eight?”

  “Yes.”

  From his position leaning on the arm of the sofa, the man called Peter Jessen shifted. “Are you accusing us of something, is that what this is about?” he said. “Because it sounds to me as if you’re trying to make up even more bullshit against us, just because you don’t like the fact that we’re here.”

  “Listen—” Dánjal began, but Jessen was warming to his indignation.

  “You know we have the right to be here and protest, don’t you?” Jessen said, in Danish now. “Even your Prime Minister and Chief of Police have said that. Of course, that doesn’t stop you arresting people for no reason as soon as we do protest. Your whole system is corrupt. You say one thing for the cameras and the press and then operate like a Nazi state as soon as you think no one’s watching.”

  “Listen, Herre Jessen, is it?”

  “Yeh. So?”

  Dánjal held on to his temper. “So, this has nothing to do with protests or the whales. That is completely separate. What I’m investigating is the death of Erla Sivertsen.”

  “Yeh, I know that’s what you say,” Jessen told him drily. “But we all know it would be much better for the police to blame it on one of us and not on one of your own people. Forget that they are the ones who commit mass murder every time a pod of whales comes near. Because Erla was
from AWCA, let’s blame it on them.”

  Dánjal made an effort to keep any irritation out of his voice. These protesters had one-track minds, that was their problem. “As I said, no one is blaming or accusing anyone – yet,” he said, flat and unimpressed. “So, if you’ll let me ask my questions, I’ll be gone. I’m sure that would suit us both.”

  Jessen gave him a pointedly unconvinced look but said no more and Dánjal turned back to Veerle Koning, speaking in English again. “Just so I’m sure; you’re certain that you didn’t see Erla again before you went out for the evening? It’s okay if you forgot to tell us in your previous statement. Things were very upset, I understand that.”

  “No.” Veerle shook her head, clearly pained by the apparent problem it caused. “I was here all the time.”

  “Listen,” Lukas Drescher said, cutting in to take Dánjal’s attention. “Veerle was here, I was here – some of the time anyway – and we were together. But even if Erla had come back we might not have heard. Some of the time we had music on in our room.”

  “You were in your room together – you and Veerle?” Dánjal asked.

  “Yeh, that’s what I said.”

  “And the music was loud?”

  “Sure. Loud enough.”

  “Enough for what?”

  “Shit.” Lukas shook his head. “You want me to draw you a picture? For sex, right? So the whole house doesn’t listen, you know?”

  Veerle shifted, a little embarrassed.

  “But if there was no one else here…” Dánjal queried.

  “Jesus!” Now Drescher was exasperated. “People come and go, yeh? Like, who knows when. In and out. So if you want a bit of privacy you play the music and they know you are there and what you are doing. Have you never shared a house with other people?”

  Dánjal ignored the sarcasm. “So what you’re saying is that while you were in your room with the music playing, it’s possible that Erla came back to the house, then left again and you wouldn’t know. Is that correct?”