‘Oh?’
‘From a man.’
‘I see.’
‘Robert’s a couple of years older than me. Could have been my brother. Drop-dead gorgeous.’ She laughed and used both hands to pick up the teaspoon. ‘Uncle Arne is gay. Didn’t you notice that?’
‘Should I have?’
Now it was her turn to shrug. ‘Uncle Arne said you were someone who read body language and revealed what we didn’t want to share with others. Isn’t that so?’
‘No,’ I said, laughing. ‘Not at all.’
‘So what can you do, then?’
‘Conduct interviews and write reports,’ I answered, using my thumb and index finger to tip the empty coffee cup over on its side. My eyes glimpsed the dregs at the bottom before drifting back up to her face.
‘But you’re an expert in interview techniques, aren’t you? Arne said you’d just come back from the States.’
I leaned across to her and clasped my hands. ‘How on earth does he know that?’
‘Arne’s a business lawyer for one of North America’s biggest oil companies.’ Frei ran her fingers through her riotous hair. ‘He likes to know things about the people he meets, both privately and in connection with his work.’
‘What else?’
‘You’re half Norwegian and half Icelandic, your father is a professional marine biologist, but is some sort of radical environmental activist at home in Iceland. Your parents divorced when you were small, and your mother moved back to Norway with you and your sister. Yes, and then you’re recently divorced yourself.’
‘Then you know all there is to know,’ I replied, bending down to lift the bag I had stowed between my legs. I had spent half the night gathering all the documents I could find about the Bergen case and the establishment of the former SEFO. ‘By the way, here’s what I could find for your dissertation. The European Convention’s torture committee also came out with a report that posed several critical questions about—’
‘I don’t need them.’ Frei remained seated, gazing at me with her cup balanced in the middle of one palm, as if she were adopting a lotus position, completely unknown to me, for young, urban café-goers.
I turned my cup upside down and replaced it on the saucer. ‘What are we doing here, then?’
‘Getting acquainted,’ Frei replied. ‘In your way.’
‘My way?’
‘Isn’t that what your job is, your expertise? Collecting facts about a person, presenting these in a controlled environment where you and your people can unearth our secrets, defects and pressure points? I just wanted us to start with you, first of all.’
‘My God,’ I groaned, tapping my knuckles on the underside of my cup before chuckling to myself. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ I said in the end, and stood up to leave. ‘Or, do you know what? You’re spot on.’ I picked up the bag of documents and gave a slight bow. ‘My game, you win. Adieu.’
I stepped swiftly across the chequered tiles before making an abrupt about-turn and heading back to the table to resume my seat. ‘No, as a matter of fact, let’s finish the game.’ I reclined in the chair. ‘So, what is it you want to know, Frei? Ask away.’
‘I want to know your secrets and lies,’ she answered, unruffled, still with her teacup perched on the middle of her palm. Suddenly she replaced the cup and rested her fingertips on the table in front of her. ‘Before I give you mine.’
‘OK. Where shall I begin?’
‘Wherever you want.’
‘My mother was a child psychologist until she fell ill. She now lives in sheltered housing in Asker. She has Alzheimer’s; has had it for almost ten years. I haven’t seen her for a long time. I don’t know why.’
‘Tell me about Iceland.’
‘We travelled around from aluminium works to aluminium works, power stations and smelters when I was little. Mum, Liz and I, to watch Dad and his environmental protectors chain themselves to excavators and pipe couplings, cranes and dumper trucks, as they screamed with rapture and pissed themselves so that the world could see that the human race was out of control.’
‘The idealist.’
I nodded absently.
‘Why did you go to the States?’
‘After the divorce procedure my ex-wife and I had reached a point where we ended up misunderstanding each other in every respect, every single detail, every nuance. So when I read about the course, I just went.’
‘To interview criminal policemen in a foreign country?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Why?’
‘To improve at my job, and to—’
‘Understand them?’
‘Yes.’
Frei suddenly gave a broad smile. ‘Do you break policemen for your father, Thorkild?’
‘Probably,’ I answered, sounding drained. The rain was hammering on the windows. Outside, water had gathered in streams on the ground, and was running along the street on either side of the café building.
Frei suddenly burst out laughing. ‘You’re a cliché, Thorkild Aske,’ she said, touching her head. ‘Don’t you see that?’
‘Yes, I do. If I get myself a psychologist one day, I’ll damn well say that you told me first.’
I had already decided to continue the game, regardless of the questions I would have to answer, and the confidences it would cost. The divorce from Ann-Mari and the time spent on the American south-east coast with the men and women Dr Ohlenborg and I had interviewed behind bulletproof glass had cost a great deal. For me. And sitting here with this girl in a café caused the hard outermost layer of my skin to crack. I could already feel the pulse of something new and alive in there beneath that shell. Something I had never felt before.
Frei hesitated for a moment with her smile hidden just beneath the surface, until she said in the end: ‘Was that why you divorced? Had you finally understood everything about her and found nothing more to dig for? Had you charted her entire landscape, job done and on to something else, the next case?’
‘Case? Such as … you?’
‘No,’ Frei replied. ‘You still know nothing about me. We two don’t know each other.’
‘You’re right. Is it my turn now?’
‘Your turn.’
‘OK,’ I said, leaning across the table. ‘Tell me about yourself.’
Frei sat looking at me, only her eyes moving, gliding over every pore on my face like dazzling twin suns. ‘I dance,’ she said at last, and snatched up a sugar cube from the saucer.
SATURDAY
CHAPTER 14
‘Hello there, what’s red and says blob blob?’
‘Wh … what?’
‘What’s red and says blob blob?’
‘My God, I’ve no idea,’ I answer, trying to wriggle away from the small creature with questions from hell.
‘Ha ha! A red blob blob, of course!’
I open my eyes wide and see that I’m lying in the middle of the kitchen floor, partly hidden under the table where Harvey and I had sat sharing alcohol the night before. The same boy I had met the previous day is sitting beside me, smiling. I can see Harvey’s feet over beside the cooker and am suddenly aware of the aroma of freshly brewed coffee.
‘Well, then, that’s the other guy up as well.’ Harvey bends down to peer under the table.
‘Mhmm,’ I moan, struggling to my feet.
‘Why are you sleeping on the floor?’ the boy at my side asks.
‘I don’t know,’ I answer, banging my head on the edge of the table as I try to stand up.
‘For a private investigator, you don’t hold your booze very well,’ Harvey chuckles over a steaming hot cup of coffee that he places on the table above me.
‘One day,’ I grin ruefully, catching hold of one of the chairs to pull myself up. ‘Just give me time.’
‘Daddy, was he drunk yesterday?’ The boy looks from me to his father.
Harvey comes over and helps me up. ‘Well, something or other, anyway,’ he says with a smile.
‘What ti
me is it?’ I ask, burning my lips on the hot coffee.
‘It’ll soon be half-past five, crack of dawn,’ Harvey answers. ‘We’re leaving in ten minutes.’
The inside of my skull is thumping, my sinuses feel filled with cement, and my cheek is throbbing like mad.
‘It’s foul outside today,’ Harvey says over his coffee. He seems surprisingly fresh and sharp, considering the night before. ‘I’ve laid out a set of woollen underwear for you to borrow, as well as a pair of boots and a hat.’ He smiles again as he comments: ‘To ward off the cold.’
‘Thanks.’ I shiver at the view outside the window. It’s still dark outside, and only a pale morning light above the highest peaks shows that day is breaking.
‘No problem, man.’ Harvey raises his cup in a toast. I down a few more swigs until the grumbling in my belly and the general unease I feel before consuming my morning dose forces me to my feet and into the bathroom.
The sight that greets me in the mirror is enough to send any living thing from the underworld racing back to where it came from. I take out my morning pills and wash them down with water from the tap. Afterwards I squeeze a drop of green children’s toothpaste on my forefinger and do my best to brush my teeth. The rest would have to wait. What’s broken can’t be mended.
En route to the hallway, I meet the young boy again.
‘Hey, you.’ He imitates his father by standing with one hip lower than the other, his arms crossed over his chest: ‘What’s red and says blob blob?’
I stare at him sternly in the hope that my withering gaze will make him appreciate that he is insane and needs to make himself scarce, but it doesn’t seem to have any kind of effect. So I give up, smile and answer: ‘Yes, wasn’t it some sort of blob blob, red in colour?’
‘Silly! It’s a cranberry with an outboard motor, of course! Ha ha ha ha!’
Outside, everything is greyish-black. Even the houses on the estate seem to have lost all trace of colour. A magpie is sitting on the roof of a bird table in the garden, staring at us with its head cocked. It takes off just as Harvey activates the lock on the pickup door. He starts the engine and we drive down the winding road past the centre towards the boathouses at the foot of the cove.
Yesterday’s wind has died down and the outside temperature has plummeted. The air is raw, making it hard to breathe without coughing. The pain in my cheek is pounding, piercing, a constant presence. To top it all, it is time for me to acknowledge that my digestive system is out of order, and these stomach pains I’ve been struggling with recently are not going to disappear of their own accord.
‘I’ll pick you up as soon as I’ve finished at the farm,’ Harvey tells me.
‘OK,’ I answer just as I catch sight of an old man in a plastic boat on its way to the coast. As soon as the boat lands, the old guy jumps out and busies himself pulling it up the foreshore.
‘Do you need help, Johannes?’ Harvey goes down to the man even though he is shaking his head. He hauls out a box of fish and starts to gut them on the pebbles.
‘I’ve got a genuine private investigator here with me,’ Harvey says, leaning on the gunwale as Johannes cuts open the belly of a large cod and tears out the entrails. A couple of seagulls are roosting on the fish flakes beside the boathouses. ‘He’s here to find the Danish guy, you know, the one who was staying out at the lighthouse.’
Johannes steals a glance at me again before shaking his head and tossing the entrails out to sea, just as one of the gulls takes off from the drying frame and comes swooping towards us. ‘The Danish bloke is dead.’
‘Yes, but—’ Harvey ventures, only to be interrupted by Johannes, who has flung the gutted cod back into the fish box and pulled out another.
‘You know …’ Johannes presses his lips together so that it looks as though he’s chewing the inside of his cheek, ‘the Sea Ghost sails high on the crests of the waves at this time of year. There’s bad weather in store.’ Using his knife to slice open the fish’s stomach, he rips out what’s inside and throws it out to sea. ‘Take good care of that southerner. You remember what happened to the Russian trawler in the last storm.’
‘He isn’t a southerner,’ Harvey retorts laughingly. ‘He’s an Icelander.’
‘I see.’ Johannes lifts another box of fish out of his boat and sets it down between us on the pebbles. ‘Is there a difference?’ He crouches down and continues gutting as we head back to the boathouses.
‘Who’s the Sea Ghost?’ I ask once we’re skimming through the waves in Harvey’s RIB on our way out to the lighthouse. The wind has whipped up over the past few minutes, and I grab at a rope for support.
‘Haven’t you heard of the dead man who sails around in half a boat, dressed in leather oilskins and giving warning when someone is about to die?’
‘Sounds like a nice guy,’ I mutter, tugging my hat further down my forehead. ‘Johannes’ more playful big brother, maybe?’
‘The sea gives and the sea takes away. Up here old superstition is something you hug close to you when storms are raging at their worst. There are more things in heaven and earth, Thorkild Aske. Especially up here in the north. Don’t you have those traditions in Iceland?’
‘Yes, of course.’
He reduces the boat’s speed and turns to face me. ‘Do you believe in ghosts, Thorkild?’
‘Ghosts?’
‘Apparitions, dead souls who wander among us and all that stuff?’
‘I …’ I start to say, but stop. For a moment I simply sit there without moving a muscle while I feel the cold and wind pummel my face.
‘I remember when I was little.’ Harvey brings the boat to a complete standstill, so that it bobs up and down with the rhythm of the restless sea. ‘You could hear the voice of a crying child from the forest around our cabin back home in Minnesota. This was in winter, when swamps and lakes froze fast, that we could hear it. Heart-breaking childish sobs like an echo between the tree trunks when the frosty mist settled on the forest floor. It made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, I can tell you.’
‘I see,’ I mumble as my eyes roam restlessly over the cold dark surface of the ocean.
‘Later, a couple of the smallest lakes were drained in connection with building another big cluster of cabins. The excavators found a child’s body in one of the bogs: a corpse they thought had lain there for more than a century. After that, the forest was silent. What do you say to something like that?’
‘I don’t know.’ I glance up at the sky where dark clouds are billowing in from the ocean. Ahead of us lie the lighthouse and other buildings on the small island. I see a statue on a plateau, a square with a circle on top placed on the farthest reaches of the coastal rocks. Someone has strung tattered nets round the square part of the statue, and these are fluttering in the strengthening wind.
‘The widow,’ Harvey remarks, as he starts up the engine again. He is pointing at the jetty that has appeared in the grey weather. ‘Part of a series of contemporary art works the regional council had installed in various town and country locations up here a few years back. A Frenchman came and put that up here one summer, and then disappeared again.’
‘Have you been there often?’
‘No, the place has lain empty since the eighties. I called in a couple of times after the Danish guy took over, that’s all.’
‘What was he like?’
‘A competent carpenter,’ Harvey replies. ‘The first time I met him was one evening when I was on my way home from the farm. I caught sight of him down there by the jetty where he was struggling to haul these bloody windows up to the main building, lugging them on his back, one by one. Triple glazing, frost-proof and God knows what else. Heavy as fuck. Must have cost a fortune. I helped him put them into the bar. Fantastic. No shortage of ambition with that boy, anyway.’
‘When did you see him last?’
‘A few days before he disappeared.’ Harvey runs his fingers over the stubble on his chin. ‘Bumped into him in the video shop
. He wanted to know what kind of cement I had used for the concrete foundations out on the farm. I think he had reinforcing the jetty in mind.’
I can see the waves beating against the jetty ahead of us. Several columns look rotted through, and the whole structure is swaying in time with the body of water. Some of the ones farthest out have already broken off and are sticking like black stubs of teeth out of the choppy sea.
Harvey peers up at the sky and shakes his head. ‘This isn’t going to be good,’ he says. ‘This will be no good at all.’
The clouds are gathering and darkness seems almost to be falling again, even though the day has just begun. A loud creak sounds as the boat hits the rubber strips suspended along the entire length of the jetty.
I feel my stomach churning as I clamber out of the boat and up on to dry land. At once my head is spinning and I clutch the bag I have brought more tightly as I look around for something to hold on to. The next moment it starts to snow: huge thick snowflakes that come sailing down from the dark clouds to melt as they land.
‘It looks as if Johannes was right,’ Harvey says, as he backs the boat out from the jetty, straight into the steadily mushrooming white flurries.
‘About what?’
‘That there’s a storm brewing—’
Harvey says something else, but the rumble of the engine and the howl of the wind drive his words off in another direction. The very next second there’s a loud roar and then the boat is gone.
I clutch my bag still harder as I head towards the main building, with my shoulders hunched against the wind.
CHAPTER 15
The whole of the small grey island is about to be obliterated by the snow squall that’s whipping up with the wind. Sprinting the final stretch to the building, I take out the keys with the yellow tape and inscription Rasmus Lighthouse & Main Building from my trouser pocket and insert it into the lock.
The former keeper’s residence is a massive wooden house from sometime early in the 1900s, with vertical cladding and windows with white bars. It looks as if Rasmus had made good progress with the renovation of the exterior. The only visible traces of the fire are a few scorched fascia boards, windows and roof tiles, all lying in a heap between the house and the boathouse. The slate roof has been replaced by copper sheets and matching gutters. Even now, in the scudding, oppressive snowstorm, it reflects the light in a strange and somehow beautiful way.
I Will Miss You Tomorrow Page 6