The Killing Bay

by Chris Ould

“Oh? You have been seen wearing it and Veerle says that it is.”

  Drescher’s expression hardened. “She is a liar. I don’t know it. Where is it from?”

  “It was found in a hiding place,” Remi allowed. “Not such a good one, which is bad luck for you. However, with DNA tests I think we can prove it is yours, and also that the blood we have seen on the sleeve comes from Erla Sivertsen. Do you have anything to say about that? Do you wish to deny it, or will you say, perhaps, that you killed Erla Sivertsen for your cause?”

  For a couple of seconds Drescher seemed undecided, but then his stance hardened. “Fuck you, policeman. You think to talk about murder will weaken our fight against you? Nein. I will not talk to a whale killer – any of you.”

  Remi Syderbø was unmoved. “Very well, that is your right,” he said. “And in that case we will leave you to the Danes – for the moment, at least.”

  He gestured to Dánjal, who stopped the audio recorder on his phone and put it away. Remi stood up and crossed the room to rap on the door.

  “By the way,” he said, turning back to Drescher. “We are not all whale killers here; just as not all of your organisation are woman killers either. Out of all of us only you, eh?”

  * * *

  I was eating breakfast when Tove Hald called the next morning.

  “I think I can find an address for Rasmus Matzen,” she said.

  It took me a second to work out who she was talking about until I remembered the Colony commune. “A current address?” I asked.

  “Ja, I hope so. Four years ago there was a TV documentary made about the commune societies and a man called Rasmus Matzen was interviewed at his home in Denmark. The documentary doesn’t give the address, but it says that he now lives near Nakskov on the island of Lolland, so I think it would not be too hard to find him. Would you like me to try to locate his address?”

  “Sure,” I said. “If it’s not stopping you doing anything else. Where are you?”

  “In Copenhagen.”

  “Don’t you have better things to do, like studying?”

  “Other things, sure, but not better. This is interesting to me. I will see what I can find from the local registrations and phonebook, then I will email you. And also with a link to YouTube so you can watch the documentary, although it’s only in Danish.”

  “Okay,” I said. “If you’re sure.”

  “It will be the same rate of pay, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, then. Bei.”

  A little while later Hentze called. “I think you should come out to Múli,” he said.

  * * *

  I drove down the rough track with the windscreen wipers intermittently flicking to clear the light, misty rain. There were swathes of sunshine in the distance, though, and for the last quarter-mile I could see the fire-ruined house on the higher side of the track. The stone gables still gave it the impression of wholeness until I got closer and saw that the rest of the structure was virtually gone.

  There was a lonely-looking cop sitting in a patrol car beside the road, but apart from glancing up to see who I was, he did nothing. So I drove on, past the burned-out house, to stop behind Hentze’s car and get out.

  For a moment I couldn’t locate him, but he must have been watching because there was a shrill, two-note whistle and I saw him with an arm raised a hundred yards away down the hill by the circular stone wall of a sheepfold. I waved back and started that way.

  I followed the line of a shallow ditch down the slope, one of several that divided the areas of hay-cut grass into patches, and Hentze came a few paces up the hill to meet me. He looked less strained and better rested than he had yesterday: more the man of measure I’d come to expect.

  “Hey,” I said, coming to a halt. “I thought they’d have put you back on the murder case today.”

  He shook his head. “Not yet. Maybe later. Finn has been released this morning.”

  “He’s in the clear?”

  “Yeh, I think so. Veerle Koning confirms that the coat we found at Stóratjørn last night belongs to Lukas Drescher. It has blood on the sleeve so when we have it tested…”

  I nodded. “Your man Jessen came through then.”

  “Not my man, but yeh, I would say so. Of course, it will still take some time to get everything in order, but I think we will manage it.”

  He seemed satisfied in his understated way: as close to pleased as he’d get, so I didn’t push it any further.

  “So what’s going on here, then?” I asked.

  “It’s something I thought you should see because you’re interested in this place,” he said. “It’s this way.”

  He gestured and turned to lead the way to the sheepfold, a dry stone enclosure of rough rocks, about chest-high and perhaps twelve feet across. There was a narrow entrance framed by two slabs of rock, which faced away from the sea.

  “A man and his wife from Norðdepil came to look at the burned house this morning,” Hentze said as we went. “To be curious. You know how it is. Then, when they have seen enough of the house, they take a walk and find this.”

  We’d come to a plastic sheet now, laid out on the ground a couple of yards from the sheepfold. Beside it there was an aluminium flight case – a forensic kit – and a camera, but that wasn’t what Hentze was showing me. Laid out on top of the plastic there was a human skull and a long bone, plus several smaller bones, which could have been from a hand.

  Hentze took a pair of surgical gloves from his pocket and handed them to me. “See what you think.”

  I put on the gloves, then squatted down to get a closer look at the skull. It was relatively light in my hands; adult-sized and missing its lower jaw. The bone was mottled with brown stains from age and exposure to damp earth, which still filled the eye sockets and nasal cavities, but there was less dirt on the cranium, as if it had been given a cursory clean. I turned it. There was no sign of trauma or fracture and after I’d looked for the nuchal crest at its base and then at the ridge above the eyes I said, “I think it’s a female.”

  Hentze didn’t reply so I upended it to look at the teeth. They were all still in place and three at the back showed grey amalgam fillings.

  “You’ve seen the fillings?” I asked.

  “Yeh. So it’s – she – is not ancient, not from hundreds of years.”

  “I wouldn’t think so.” I placed the skull back on the plastic and straightened up. “Where was it?” I asked. “Just out in the open?”

  “No, over there, beside the sheep shelter.” He gestured to the structure where a second plastic sheet was laid out, and now that I looked closer I could see that part of the encircling wall had either fallen or been pulled down.

  “Have you got the rest of the body?”

  “Yeh, I think so.”

  I followed his lead across to the wall, which had been disturbed down to the level of the muddy, dark earth. It was obvious that someone had set about dismantling the wall because its stones lay scattered down the slope of the land where they’d rolled to a halt.

  Hentze moved forward and knelt on the plastic sheet by the base of the wall, then gestured me to come in beside him. I did so and he used a torch to illuminate a cavity under the remaining stones. Emerging from the earth I could see the end of another long bone – a humerus, given that there was also part of the scapula beside it – and perhaps part of a rib. Which meant that the body had been placed face down, probably in little more than a shallow trench.

  “You’ve seen people buried like this before, in England?” Hentze asked.

  I made a so-so gesture. “Similar, yeah.”

  “So can you say how long you think she has been here?”

  I shook my head. “Probably not less than ten years, but after that I’d be guessing. You’ll get a better idea if you can match her dental records.”

  “Yeh, if we can find them.”

  We extricated ourselves and stood up. If Hentze was disappointed he didn’t show it. “It can’t be a natural
death,” he said. “Not buried here, not face down in the earth. You agree, as a homicide expert?”

  “Well it’s suspicious at least.”

  He gave me a look, as if he thought I was being unnecessarily coy. “There is something else I found while I was waiting for you to get here,” he said, then stepped back to his forensic kit and held up a plastic evidence bag. “I found this in the grass of the ditch. Also some cigarette butts thrown away.”

  Inside the bag was an empty vodka bottle with no cap. It didn’t look as if it had been outside for very long.

  “I’ll send it for DNA and fingerprints,” Hentze said. “But I think if we find any they will belong to Boas Justesen: not just because he owns the land, but because of what else happened here.”

  “You mean the suicide and the fire?”

  He nodded. “Justesen knew he had only a short time to live and I think that changes a man: even one who drinks so much.”

  “So you think he dug up the body because he wanted to clear his conscience before he died?”

  “Yeh, I think that could be why.”

  I made a moue. “You’re making up stories,” I told him. “You don’t even know how long she’s been here.”

  “No, I have some idea.”

  He reached into his pocket and handed me a small Ziploc bag. Inside, still dirty from the earth, there were half a dozen cube-shaped plastic beads of different colours, all about quarter of an inch square.

  “They were in the earth by the bones,” Hentze said. “I only saw them because the light made a reflection, but I think they may be part of a bracelet. Look at the yellow one.”

  I turned the bag and pressed on the plastic to get a clearer view of the beads. I could see that the only yellow one had been impressed with some sort of letter or sign and when I turned the bag again I saw what it was: the circle and upside-down Y of the peace symbol.

  “Isn’t that the sort of thing that a hippy would wear?” Hentze said.

  “Maybe,” I said, then handed it back. “But in the sixties and seventies wearing something like that was probably as common as having a charity band now. It doesn’t mean she was from the commune, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Hentze knew that as well as I did, but even so he still wanted to make the link. “I think she was,” he said. “Otherwise it’s too messy: too many things together. But yeh, you are right. It’s still a story. We’ll see.”

  Without a forensic team there was nothing more we could do except cover the evidence, so I helped Hentze put a plastic sheet over the gravesite and secure it with stones. Then Hentze bagged up the skull and the bones.

  “I’m going back to England on Monday,” I told him. “After that I’m going to Denmark.”

  The last bit was something I’d only decided during the drive out here but I’d made up my mind.

  “Yeh? To do what?” Hentze asked.

  “Some research.”

  “About your mother?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. I think you should.”

  He picked up his flight case, but before we started back up the hill he turned to look down the slope of the fields to the sea. The rain had blown over now and the sun caught the metallic waters of Hvannasund in occasional flashes of brightness on the roll of the swell.

  “It’s a good place to be, eh?” Hentze said.

  I remembered Magnus saying much the same thing after they’d buried Signar. This time I said what I thought.

  “Better if you’re above ground, not below it.”

  Hentze nodded, just once, then cast a solemn glance back at the sheepfold. “Yeh, I think you are right. Above the ground is always best, I would say.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  BY AND LARGE THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE FAROES IS AS IT’S described in the book. However, I have used some licence with the descriptions of individual buildings and locations, some of which are transposed from other places. I should also point out that, as far as I know, there has never been a commune at Múli.

  The Faroe Islands are a small, close-knit community so I would like to emphasise that this is a work of fiction and that none of the characters or incidents portrayed here are based on real people or events.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I CONTINUE TO BE INDEBTED TO THE OFFICERS AND STAFF OF the Faroe Islands Police Department for all their assistance and help. For this book I am also particularly grateful to Svend Aage Ellefsen for his knowledge of commercial fishing, Ben Arabo of Atlantic Petroleum, Per Skov Christensen for his forensic expertise, and Dr Nick Leather for his medical advice. Needless to say, all errors are mine.

  As ever, I must also express my immense gratitude to Jens Jensen for his hospitality, endless patience and help with all these books, and this time for taking me on a “short walk” up the mountain to Stakkurin.

  Finally, and shamefully late, I have to say stora takk fyri to Emma Herdman who should take at least some of the blame for all this.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHRIS OULD IS THE AUTHOR OF THE BLOOD STRAND, THE FIRST book in the Faroes series – which Booklist declared “a winner for fans of both Scandinavian and British procedurals” – as well as two Young Adult crime novels. He is a BAFTA award-winning screenwriter who has worked on many TV shows including The Bill, Soldier Soldier, Casualty and Hornblower. He lives in Dorset.