The Killing Bay

by Chris Ould

  “I didn’t… I didn’t tell you the truth. The other day. About Erla.”

  Annika frowned. “How do you mean?”

  “I saw her,” Veerle Koning said. “She… she came back to the house. Please, can you come here? I don’t know when the others will be back. I need to talk to you.”

  There was a catch in her voice, as if she was short of air.

  “Okay, of course,” Annika said, turning to spot Officer Rosa Olsen beyond the plate glass of the shop window. “You’re at the house now – Fjalsgøta 82?”

  “Yeh. Yes.”

  “Okay, don’t worry, I’m on my way. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  * * *

  “This is my colleague Rosa,” Annika said as Veerle held the door open and let them in to the hall. As before she used English with the young Dutch woman. She glanced towards the back of the house. “Are you on your own?”

  Veerle nodded. “Yes, all the others are… they went out.” She looked as if she’d been crying and there were dark circles under her eyes.

  “Okay,” Annika said, taking off her dripping coat. “Let’s go and sit down, eh? Then we can talk.”

  Veerle led them through to the sitting room. The two officers sat on the sofa and after a moment’s hesitation Veerle perched on the edge of an armchair. “On the phone you said you didn’t tell us everything before – about Erla,” Annika said, trying to keep her tone engaging. “What did you mean by that?”

  For a second Veerle seemed uncertain. She cast a quick glance at Rosa Olsen, as if debating whether to speak in her presence, but then she looked back to Annika and said, “Lukas didn’t want me to tell you. He said it would just make trouble, but I did see Erla again. She came back to the house in the late afternoon.”

  “Why would it have made trouble to tell us that?” Annika asked, keeping her tone neutral so Veerle wouldn’t feel she was being reproached.

  “Because—” Veerle broke off and swallowed, then tried again. “Because Erla had found out something, and Lukas knew from what she said.”

  “Found out what?”

  Veerle hung her head, as if coming this far had exhausted her. She said nothing.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” Annika said. “What had Erla found out?”

  “About Lukas.”

  For a moment longer Veerle remained still, then – without making eye contact – she stood up and turned away from the two officers. She reached round to grip the bottom edge of her sweater and shirt, and in an effort that obviously caused her discomfort, she pulled up the clothing so that Annika and Rosa could see her back.

  Veerle’s pale skin was almost invisible under the mottled yellow, green and purple of bruises, some clearly older than others. Just below her ribs on her left-hand side the skin was still red from recent blows.

  “Did Lukas do that?” Annika asked.

  “Yes,” Veerle said, barely more than a whisper. Then she lowered her clothes and when she turned to face Annika and Rosa again her cheeks were wet with tears.

  “I didn’t know what to do,” Veerle said. “Erla knew, but I couldn’t— I’m afraid now.”

  Annika stood up and took the three steps to Veerle before she had even thought about it. She took her in her arms and felt Veerle sag.

  “It’s okay, you don’t have to be afraid of him any more,” Annika said. “We’ll sort him out, don’t worry.”

  Veerle shook her head against Annika’s fleece. “No, no, it’s not that,” she said, her voice slightly muffled. “Ja – yes it is that. But I’m also afraid of what they will— what they’re going to do now.”

  “Now? What do you mean?”

  Veerle pulled back from Annika, enough to wipe a sleeve across her face. She made an effort to compose herself. “It’s all of them from here,” she said. “And others. They are going to do something big tonight. Something—” She struggled to find the right words. “Something that everyone will look at, you know? That’s where they have gone.”

  “You mean the Alliance are going to do something?” Rosa asked.

  “Neen, it’s not AWCA. It’s just Lukas, Peter, Marie… Some others, too. I don’t know. Lukas said— He said they will open people’s eyes – to make them look.”

  The phrase sounded ominous in its simplicity. Perhaps just a product of being translated from Dutch to English, but even so Annika could see the worry on Veerle’s face.

  “Do you know where Lukas and the others are now?” she asked after a moment.

  “No, I don’t know,” Veerle said. “They didn’t tell me.”

  “Have you heard them mentioning names or places maybe,” Annika asked. “Have they talked about anyone you didn’t know, or perhaps an unusual place?”

  “No, I don’t think so. They never talked about anything like that – except the garage, maybe.”

  “The garage? You mean a petrol station?”

  Veerle shook her head. “No. It’s a— I don’t know what else to call it. It’s an old building. We stopped there one time maybe a week ago – when I was with Lukas. I thought it was closed – I mean, not in business – but he told me to wait in the car while he went inside. There was a door at the back and he went there like he knew where to go. Like he’d been there before.”

  “Did he say why he was there?”

  “No, he just said it was to see someone.” She hesitated. “I didn’t ask more.”

  Annika nodded. She knew why Veerle hadn’t asked. Questions brought beatings.

  “Was there a name or a sign outside this place?” Annika said. She tried to sound conversational, to keep things unpressured.

  “A sign, yeh. I don’t know what it said. It was in Faroese, but there was a picture of a big autoband—” She searched for the word in English. “For the wheel on a car: a tyre? Yeh, tyre.”

  “It sounds like Gregersen’s old place on Falkavegur,” Rosa said. “It’s been empty for a couple of years.”

  “Yeh,” Annika said, then looked back to Veerle. “Do you think they could have gone there now?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Okay,” Annika said. “Why don’t you sit down for a minute? I just need to talk with Rosa.”

  In the hall Annika and Rosa spoke Faroese again.

  “What do you think?” Annika asked.

  “About her story? Sure, I believe it. From those bruises… Yeh.”

  “What about the rest of it – this thing the others are up to?”

  Rosa shrugged. “There’s no way to tell, is there? It sounded a bit far-fetched. What sort of thing could they be planning anyway?”

  “Not a demonstration, not at this time of night and in this weather.” She shifted. “Listen, can you stay here with Veerle? I’m going to go and have a look at the garage.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to take her back to the station first? Then we can tell Hans and see what he thinks.” Hans Lassen was duty inspector.

  Annika checked her watch, then shook her head. “It’ll be faster just to go and look. If nobody’s there then Hans can decide what to do – who to tell…”

  “And if there is someone there?”

  “I’ll call it in.” Annika took her coat from the hook and put it on. “I’ll probably be back in fifteen minutes. Okay?”

  47

  I WAS PRETTY SURE HENTZE WOULD BE PROMPT AND HE WAS, pulling up on the narrow street outside the restaurant almost exactly on time. The rain hadn’t stopped so I made a dash down the steps and across to his car, but even that short distance was enough to get me soaked all over again. “You picked a good night for it,” I said, dropping into the passenger seat.

  “Yeh, I think so,” he said without any irony. “I thought we would go to Hotel Føroyar. Have you been there before?”

  “No. Isn’t it a bit classy?”

  “For you, maybe. Perhaps we’ll stay in the bar.” He gave me a look to say he was joking, then put the car into gear and pulled away.

  I let him negotiate the si
de streets as I adjusted the seat belt, but once we were on the ring road I said, “So do you want to ask me about Boas Justesen now, or wait till we’ve got a drink?”

  “No, I can ask now and get it out of the way,” he said. “It’s only one question: how did he seem to be when you saw him?”

  “Annoyed,” I said with a shrug. “He didn’t want to talk to me. That was about it. He’d been drinking.”

  “He wasn’t depressed?”

  “Not that I could tell. Why?”

  “I think he may have committed suicide at the Múli house. It isn’t sure yet but that’s how it seems.”

  He might have been about to say more but then his phone rang. It was clipped to a holder on the dashboard and when it chimed he looked at the screen, then back at the road before swiping it to answer.

  “Hey, Annika.”

  From the background noise behind Annika’s voice I guessed she was also on speakerphone, perhaps driving. More than that I didn’t get because she was speaking Faroese. I did pick up Erla Sivertsen’s name, though, and a few seconds after that Hentze flicked the indicator and turned off the ring road, pulling in to a side street.

  For a minute or so he continued to listen as Annika spoke. I caught a couple of other names, then Hentze cut in with a question and whatever Annika Mortensen’s reply was, it made Hentze pause. He glanced at me, then gave Annika what seemed to be instructions. The last thing he said was “Fimm minuttur. Bei.”

  He tapped the phone screen to ring off, then put the car back in gear.

  “Did you understand that?” he said as he hauled the steering wheel round to make a U-turn.

  I shook my head. “Too fast. Only something about Erla.”

  “Yeh.” He checked traffic at the junction, then accelerated quickly, back the way we’d just come, towards town. “One of the people Erla lived with, a girl called Veerle Koning, has called Annika to give her new information.”

  “About the killing?”

  “Maybe, yeh – but also about the other Alliance people in the house. Veerle says there is something being planned – some kind of protest action, maybe.”

  “And it’s happening now?”

  “Yeh, she thinks so. The people from the house have all left together, to meet others, she thinks.”

  “So where are we going?”

  “Annika is on her way to look at a place Veerle has told her about: an old garage on Falkavegur. She will be there in a couple of minutes; we will be there in five – unless I let you out here.”

  Despite the lashing rain he was doing about 90 kph so it wasn’t much of a question and I didn’t bother to answer. Instead I said, “Any idea what sort of thing they’re planning to do?”

  “Nei.” He shook his head. “All the Veerle girl knows is that it is ‘something that will make people look’.”

  Out of context it was a statement you could take any way you wanted – from an explicit threat to an empty piece of rhetoric.

  I said, “If it’s serious – I mean, if the Alliance really do have some kind of plan for direct action – it would explain why your spooks have been taking an interest.”

  “Yeh, I think so,” Hentze said flatly. He flicked the wipers on to double time. “That’s why we are going.”

  As we came off the ring road and took the first exit off the roundabout Hentze called Annika again. He was driving at less than forty now and scanning the buildings we passed. It wasn’t an area of the town I’d seen before: a mixture of light industrial and commercial buildings, some looking rundown, others newer and smarter. In the rain and the darkness it was hard to tell how far it extended but there was an air of unusual neglect in some of the cracked concrete frontages and worn brickwork we passed.

  Annika’s voice on the phone was low and slightly guarded, as if she was talking us in. We rounded a corner and Hentze let the car bump on to a concrete apron beside a brick wall. He turned off the ignition and the headlights.

  “Which building is it?” I asked.

  “There,” he pointed across the road at an angle. “The one with the tyre sign.”

  It was about a hundred yards away, hard to define through the rain on the windscreen, but cast partly in light by the lamps on a neighbouring building.

  Then there was a movement beside the car and the rear door opened in a gust of wind and rain. Annika Mortensen got in quickly and closed the door after her. She was soaking wet, without a coat or hat. I guessed she’d gone without to make herself less visible.

  “Hey,” she said. And then to me, “We do this again, eh?” She had to raise her voice over the sound of the rain on the roof.

  I gestured at Hentze. “He won’t leave me alone.”

  Hentze wasn’t in the mood for banter, though. He watched the garage for a moment longer, then twisted in his seat to look at Annika. “Have you seen anyone?” he asked.

  “Nei, no one. But there is a light on inside the building. From the back you can see it, not here. And there are also two cars there, both Skodas.”

  “Where’s your car?”

  “Back there, round the corner,” Annika said with a gesture. “I didn’t think it was a good idea to be seen.”

  “No, not so good.” Hentze considered for a second. “So all we know is that some Alliance people from Erla’s house have gone out together – maybe on a secret operation, maybe not; maybe here, maybe not.”

  Annika pushed her wet hair back and nodded. “Veerle says her boyfriend, Lukas Drescher, and others have been coming here. She doesn’t know why but she knows it’s not usual.”

  “So why is she telling you this now? Why not before?”

  “She’s scared,” Annika said. “Drescher beats her; I’ve seen the bruises. And he beat her tonight – maybe because she asks too many questions – so then, because she was afraid of what they will do next, she called me.”

  “Okay,” Hentze said. He looked back at the garage, assessing, and I knew what he was trying to work out: whether to go in to look and then deal with whatever he found, or to call out the cavalry and make a big deal out of something that might prove to be nothing.

  “Have you seen anyone – anyone else watching?” he asked.

  “Nei.” Annika frowned. “Who do you think would be watching?”

  “Security services.”

  He glanced out of the window, as if saying the words might summon them, then looked at me. “What do you think?”

  I shrugged. “If the spooks are here they’ll have seen us,” I said. “But if they didn’t do anything when Annika went to look at the place…”

  “Yeh – maybe they do nothing at all,” he said flatly. “Maybe that is their plan.” He turned to Annika. “How many entrances are there?”

  “To the garage? Only two. An ordinary door at the back and the big doors in front.”

  Hentze took a couple of seconds and then he shifted. “Okay, we’ll go and look. I’ve had enough of this nonsense.”

  We got out of the car into rain that was as heavy as any I’d known on the Faroes: hard, cold drops the size of coins. Hentze strode ahead and, as we passed the corner of the last building before moving into streetlight, I felt an instinctive prickling in the centre of my back. I wondered how far we’d be allowed to get if we were being observed by a security services team.

  Then I saw headlights, illuminating a wall down the side street we were all heading for. The lights shifted as the car they belonged to swung around and I felt Annika tug my arm. We stepped quickly back into the cover of the corner we’d just passed as the car swung into the side street, then came towards us before turning left on the road in front of the garage. There was no way to tell if we’d been seen, and if we had whether it meant anything to the car’s occupants. Two silhouettes were all I made out.

  Hentze already had his car keys in his hand and he passed them quickly to Annika. “Follow them,” he said. “Find out where they go.”

  Annika was good enough that she didn’t question or debate it. Instead
she started back to Hentze’s car at a run. “Can you go with her?” Hentze said to me. “I prefer it.”

  I hesitated for only a second, then took a leaf out of Annika’s book. “Okay,” I said. “Call for backup, all right?”

  “Yeh. Go.”

  I ran. By the time I got to the car Annika was already starting the engine. I pulled the passenger door open and got in beside her. She looked at me briefly, then banged the car into gear as the engine caught.

  “You get bored with your holiday?” she said. By then we were moving, thudding over potholes until we hit the tarmac.

  “Yeh, something like that.”

  She grinned. “This time maybe you stay conscious.”

  48

  WE HADN’T AROUSED ANY ALARM, THAT MUCH SEEMED CLEAR by the way the car ahead was being driven: cautiously, as if the driver was wary of the rain-wet roads. Annika had caught up with the car easily enough because it had stuck to the speed limit and even indicated its turns in good time.

  Within a couple of minutes we’d turned out of the industrial area and on to a better road, heading south towards the centre of Tórshavn. There was very little traffic and what there was the rain made anonymous. From a hundred yards back it was an easy tail and now that the initial urgency had subsided a little I glanced at Annika.

  “So, what’s the plan?” I asked.

  She pushed her sodden hair back from her face. “Just what Hjalti said: follow and see where they go – what they do. If it’s nothing…” She shrugged. “But if we find Lukas Drescher I will arrest him.”

  “For beating his girlfriend?”

  “Yeh.”

  “Okay, fair enough.”

  We were on a street I recognised now: Tórsgøta, downhill towards the Hotel Tórshavn on the corner and the harbour beyond that. Annika held our car back as the Skoda reached the junction and slowed. Its brakelights flashed for a moment, then it turned right and as soon as it did so Annika sped up again, as far as the junction, then braked and edged out enough to see the Skoda moving along the street parallel to the waterfront. By holding back I knew she was trying to make our continued presence less obvious, but when the Skoda passed a curve in the road and disappeared Annika pulled out quickly, spinning the steering wheel one-handed.