I Will Miss You Tomorrow

by Heine Bakkeid

  I fumble with the lock until it finally springs open, and hurry inside. The place smells of fresh timber and sawdust, but with a hint of old dust and something else, something indefinable just below the surface. The walls and floor are draped with transparent plastic. Even the upturned Nordland boat, whose hull Rasmus has sawn through to transform into a reception counter, is covered over.

  I pull the plastic aside and enter through the door on the right-hand side of the foyer. The room opens out into a large L and appears to have functioned as both bar and meeting room. In one corner sits a curved pink velour sofa with dusty grey curtains piled on top.

  In front of that, new boxes are stacked, containing black Murano glass lamps on fine iron stems, white marble tiles and fluorescent pink LED strips, as well as a dozen white bar stools with silver-coloured legs wrapped in plastic.

  I take out my mobile phone and key in Anniken Moritzen’s number.

  ‘Yes, it’s Anniken,’ she says sharply. ‘Who is this I’m speaking to?’

  ‘It’s me, Thorkild Aske.’

  I can hear her catch her breath. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m at the lighthouse. Standing in Rasmus’s bar. Extraordinary place,’ I say, even though nothing is finished. The room is full of eighties decor, geometric shapes, rolled-up red rugs, padded bar stools with leopard-print covers and purple wallpaper that has started to bubble at the edges and seams. Even the new picture windows are covered in plastic. ‘A bar with a view.’

  I cross to the bar counter where Rasmus has set up a camp bed. Magazines about millionaires’ yachts are lying on the floor, together with a bag stuffed with clothes and a Rubik’s cube. I also spot a box of pamphlets, the pamphlet showing a picture of the place as it had looked when it was newly renovated.

  ‘Blekholm Conference Centre,’ I read aloud.

  ‘Sorry? What did you say?’

  ‘Apologies. I just found some old brochures from the time when it was a conference centre.’

  ‘Read,’ Anniken whispers. ‘I want to hear what’s in it.’

  ‘OK.’ I open the pamphlet and see that Rasmus has circled some of the sentences, as if already planning how the advertising for the place should look. ‘We have two conference rooms and one meeting room with a capacity of ten to thirty persons. All laid out so that you can draw strength and fresh inspiration between sessions.’

  ‘Is that all?’ she asks when I stop, hesitating at the part that Rasmus has circled.

  ‘No,’ I answer, reading out the final sentence: ‘Blekholm offers you experiences to remember long after the conference is forgotten.’

  I catch sight of a trawler in the dim daylight filtering through the plastic on one of the picture windows. It is really a horizontal streak on the blue seascape. Soon I also feel vibrations from the engine rising from the floor where I have planted my feet.

  ‘Tell me more. I want to know what you are seeing, Thorkild,’ Anniken continues, tearing me out of the moment. Her voice seems shriller now, as if veering into something else. I have an urge to tell her that I know how it feels when anxiety, fear and panic claw at your innermost defences. To say that it’s dangerous to hold it in for long, and that one day it will be forced to burst out. But I don’t dare. I’m not the sort of person who can be there for you when you need me.

  I put away the pamphlet and squat down beside the camp bed. ‘A bed with some clothes, books, a washbag and a few razors in a white plastic container.’ I draw aside the sleeping bag on the camp bed and spot a handheld Motorola radio transmitter and two packs of spare batteries at the foot. ‘Some kind of maritime VHF radio, I’m not sure.’

  ‘What else?’ she presses me harder as we continue the verbal balancing act in which every word, every single breath in and out, tugs at the fibres of the gossamer fabric that keeps her away from the abyss. ‘What do you see?’

  ‘Nothing more,’ I finally tell her, leaning my back against the bar. I close my eyes and try to pinpoint the sound of the diesel pistons on the trawler out there in the storm. ‘He’s not here, Anniken,’ I whisper. I notice how dizzy and tired I am, and don’t have the strength to continue with this painful exercise. ‘Rasmus is no longer here.’

  ‘But he was there,’ she answers harshly. ‘Very recently. His scent is still there – it’s just that you don’t recognise it because you’ve never held him close to you as I have. I can picture him where you are now, that’s what is so difficult. And I just can’t, I can’t bear to—’

  ‘I’ll keep searching,’ I whisper as I stand up, mustering the energy to continue. ‘Stay on the line, Anniken, and we’ll move on. OK?’

  ‘The lighthouse,’ she exclaims with renewed vigour in her voice. ‘He used to phone me from the top of the lighthouse.’

  ‘Fine. Let’s go there and look.’

  An oppressive, subterranean darkness follows on my heels in the whirling snow as I dash across the courtyard towards the steps that lead up to the lighthouse. Even though it is still early morning, it feels as though I’m in a waiting room midway between night and day.

  The steps are carved into the mountainside, with a rusty iron frame used as railings. The lighthouse is an eight-sided cast-iron cupola with a broad, red-painted stripe just beneath the dome. The red and white concrete tower practically merges with its surroundings.

  ‘This is going to be a suite,’ Anniken begins to say once I have closed the outer door and set off up the iron steps that spiral to the top. The walls are of polished concrete with black and white pictures of stormy seas and dark clouds all the way up: an outstanding way to create an ambience for tourists. ‘A location between sky and sea with a vista in all directions.’

  ‘I can see it.’ The innards of the lighthouse tower are stripped out, the whole lens apparatus removed and an antique four-poster bed placed in the centre of the room so that you have a 360-degree outlook through rows of new windows. LED strips are mounted on the ceiling and the beginnings of a ship’s deck looks as if it will form the flooring.

  ‘Isn’t it lovely? Rasmus sent photos of the room and the view from his mobile phone.’

  ‘Beautiful,’ I answer, as I push a few boxes of wall tiles over to one of the windows and sit down.

  ‘And the view? What do you think of the view? Rasmus calls it unbeatable.’

  ‘He’s right.’ I lean my elbows on the window ledge and let my eyes wander out to the wall of snow drifting past in a steady stream. It is so grey that I can no longer see land. Even the instrument shed at the lighthouse entrance has vanished in the dense grey mist. ‘Absolutely unbeatable.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Anniken exhales noisily.

  ‘Anniken,’ I venture after a lengthy silence in which we both just listen to each other’s breathing. ‘I don’t know what else I can do.’

  ‘Just come home,’ she replies wearily. ‘I know it now, I do know. He’s not there. Oh God,’ she gasps, as her defences finally collapse. ‘He’s not here any more …’

  I stay seated, my mobile phone pressed against my ear, long after Anniken has hung up. The trawler has gone, the wind is howling outside and the waves beat on and on against the shore. In front of me, soft flakes of snow spiral effortlessly, elegantly, like couples in some exotic dance.

  I think of Frei.

  CHAPTER 16

  Dancing class with Frei, Stavanger, 24 October 2011

  I saw Frei again the very next day after our meeting at Café Sting. She swept through a crowd of youngsters and their parents, all with painted faces and weird hairdos, into the Sølvberg Arts Centre. According to a sign at the entrance, a family festival was being held all day long.

  A stage had been rigged up inside the foyer. Costumed mythical creatures with black eyes and smiling, predatory faces were leaping and dancing around the audience holding blue UN flags in their hands.

  It was far from coincidental that we met there. I had been in the area for several hours already, drifting restlessly between the arts centre, exhibitions and shop windows a
s I waited for the time to near six o’clock. As stated on a notice on one of the second-floor glass doors, right beside a course in origami for children, ballroom dancing classes were held on two days a week.

  In an effort to make the time pass more quickly, I had even watched a theatrical performance about a boy with a soft toy snake that came alive only when they were together, but it did not help much.

  Frei was dressed in dark-grey leggings with a hoodie and black trainers as she jogged up the stairs without spotting me. At my back, a microphone switched on and an enthusiastic woman announced that it was now time for the troll and sprite workshop in the arts centre basement.

  I smiled apologetically at a woman dressed as a witch when I narrowly avoided bumping into her daughter, dressed for the occasion in a hand-knitted bumblebee costume with two matching badminton rackets taped to her back. I then continued to the stairs.

  On my way up, I passed a number of display stands at the library entrance on the first floor, where courses in ceramics and henna art were offered. Rapid drumbeats and rhythms began to drift from the foyer below.

  At the door to the dance venue I took time yet again to curse my own almost perpetual childishness and lack of ability or will to do anything about it. Then I stepped inside.

  I entered a crowded corridor and could see Frei’s black trainers and hoodie in the chaos of clothes, scarves and footwear. A glass door divided the corridor from the dance venue where the class, of six couples and an instructor, was in full swing.

  Frei was dancing with a slim, well-groomed man with thick, slicked-back, black hair. His hair gel was almost luminous as they glided around in each other’s arms, floating across the floor, guided by intertwined body movements in perfect step and choreography.

  ‘Elegance and lightness, folks,’ the dance teacher called out in broken Norwegian, clapping her hands and manoeuvring herself flexibly between the couples. ‘And twirl.’ A red-haired man in his forties stood in front of a stereo system with his hands folded under his chin, gazing dreamily at the dancers.

  ‘More twirls. More, more, more!’ the instructor said, clapping, before she turned abruptly to her red-haired assistant in the corner and beckoned him over. ‘Señor Alvin, come!’

  Barefoot, Alvin tripped across the floor and into the woman’s open arms. She placed her right hand round his waist, extended her left hand to one side with her elbow bent and palm upturned, and led him round in a semicircle through the other dancers. ‘Come, now, temperamente: forward, to the side, together. Back, to the side, together. Come on now, one, two, three, four, five, six! All together: one, two, three, four, five, six!’

  Behind me the door swung open and a plump woman came in, panting. ‘Damn, have they started?’ she gasped, squeezing between the door and me, and peering in.

  She kicked off her trainers and struggled out of her multicoloured poncho-style outer garment that resembled a patchwork quilt. ‘So,’ she said, smiling, puckering her lips and winking at me: ‘Bailar pegados!’ She wrenched the door open and slipped sideways into the room. ‘Alvin! Alvin, sweetheart, sorry I’m so late.’

  Fleetingly, Frei and her dance partner with the shining hair slowed their orbit, exactly in time to see the woman and Alvin reunited in a passionate embrace on the dance floor, just as the glass door, which until now had closed neatly and tidily with the help of an electric mechanism, sprang back and slammed straight into my fingertips.

  Pain shot up my arm and it was all I could do to push the door back far enough to release my fingers so that I could wheel around and make for the exit and stairs. My bloodshot fingers pumped and pulsed as if they were sticks of dynamite about to explode.

  ‘Thorkild!’

  ‘Oh no,’ I groaned, stopping at the first step. Hiding my throbbing hand under my jacket, I turned around.

  ‘Frei.’

  A burst of cheering broke out from the foyer to introduce the intrusive rumble of drum rhythms accompanied by African musical instruments.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Important police work,’ I answered, pressing my arm against my aching fingers beneath my jacket. ‘An undercover job.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Absolutely. Haven’t you heard?’

  ‘Heard what?’ she asked as the percussion instruments lifted the music to fresh heights while the audience stamped their feet and clapped hands to the beat.

  ‘The Origami Killer is on the loose in the city again. Grisly case. Truly horrific.’

  Frei shot a look in the direction of the wide-open door behind her where a small Asian boy of seven or eight sat folding paper figures along with three girls of about ten and their parents, before she turned to face me again. She was standing beside a pillar just outside the door into the dance class, meeting my eye with the trace of a smile.

  ‘Is your hand OK?’ she finally asked.

  ‘Super.’

  ‘Shall I drive you to A&E?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘OK. Are you coming with me?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In to dance.’

  ‘No, I—’

  ‘Don’t you want to?’

  ‘Hell, yes, but, I mean, what will your partner say?’

  ‘Robert?’ Frei giggled. ‘But I told you about Robert at Café Sting. Uncle Arne’s boyfriend? Fabulous dancer, probably an insatiable lover too, don’t you think?’

  ‘Bound to be,’ I muttered, feeling the pain in my fingertips sneak out through my pores and into the dance rhythms that filled the arts centre from basement to roof.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, holding her hands out to me. ‘I know you want to.’

  I no longer heeded the pain in my fingers as I walked with Frei back to the dance class. All I was aware of was an intense tingling from the point where the skin of our hands met, and the scent of her hair. If I had leaned my head closer, her curls would have brushed my cheek and lips.

  CHAPTER 17

  I am startled by a knocking on the door at the base of the lighthouse. It makes me lift my head from the window ledge and stare straight into the condensation from my breath that has settled on the glass. I’m freezing: my clothes are cold and my boots feel stiff and tight, as if they have shrunk while I slept.

  More sounds of knocking come from somewhere below, hollow thumps that vibrate up through the building all the way to where I am sitting, and make the plaster rattle at the joins. I wipe the mist from the window with my sleeve and peer out: the weather is just as grey as before, and you can’t tell day from night. A constant stream of snowflakes drifts past, and waves roll towards the tiny island.

  All at once I catch sight of a man hovering between the instrument shed and the front door of the lighthouse. He is wearing oilskins and waving at me with one hand while pointing to the sea with the other, as if trying to point out something in the blizzard.

  I am about to lean closer to the glass to see out more clearly when I am startled to hear loud bangs from the base of the lighthouse. The next moment everything is totally silent again, as if I have suddenly found myself inside a vacuum. I turn back to the window and look out: the man in the oilskins is gone.

  Between the boathouse and the jetty, a gap has opened up in the storm in which the snow is spinning like a miniature tornado high above the coastal rocks. I can only just make out something protruding from clumps of thick seaweed eddying at the water’s edge below: a shape whose colours and structure do not belong in the seascape.

  Standing up, I am on the verge of walking to the door when there is another bang from below. The echo of metal against metal sings through the walls as the wind plays havoc, whistling and gusting outside. I approach the door and tentatively turn the handle.

  A chill blast of raw, salty polar wind rips through me into the room when I open the door. I cross to the stairs, where I lean over the railings and try to see down through the spiral staircase to the source of the knocking. ‘Hello!’ I shout so loudly that my voice cracks, and brings on a
violent burst of coughing.

  No one answers, and I start to make my way down the stairs. Now and again the door below slams so hard against its frame that the whole staircase shakes and I have to stop and brace myself against the banister as the din assails my ears.

  The entrance is covered in snow and the metal door stands open. I grab the door handle and begin to use my feet to shovel away the snow before stepping outside and closing the door behind me.

  The shape to the south-west has disappeared, and there are no footprints in the snow. I run down the steps, holding tightly to the railings. All around me the snow is cascading into the sea and battering the island, while waves spray the rocks and rotten jetty with frothing foam. A layer of new snow covers the courtyard. The wind will soon escalate to reach gale-force.

  Halfway across the courtyard, I come to a halt. There is no sign of anyone else having been here recently, but something catches my eye out in the water. The wind builds up as I approach the sea. The snow is falling less densely now and I can see the lights of houses on the distant shore.

  I drag myself forward for the final stretch, finding handholds on tussocks of grass and rock crevices to avoid sliding or falling. The lights on land shine yellow like lanterns on an old ship, and then the snowstorm intrudes once again between island and mainland, making everything shades of white and grey.

  Drawing breath, I feel the taste of salt fill my mouth once I reach the water’s edge. The sea here is deep and black with white crests that strike the rocks, causing the body in the water to rock from side to side.

  The dead body is floating face down. Only the back and a few slimy strands of hair are visible; the rest is underneath the mass of water or hidden in the tendrils of seaweed. I am on the point of leaning forward to seek for a groove or shelf to take me closer to the body when a huge wave surges in front of me. I just manage to fling myself backwards before the wave takes hold of the corpse and washes it away over the rock where I had been standing a moment before.