I Will Miss You Tomorrow

by Heine Bakkeid

  My back is aching when I finally reach the broken quay. I hurl my bag ashore before sliding from the dinghy and hauling myself up on to the rocks. I jog to the boathouse and open the door: there is no one here, and I carry on across the island. At the foot of the stone steps I pause again to peer up at the lighthouse. The entire island and surrounding sea are bathed in a clear shimmering radiance and the cold silver moonbeams make the whole building shine. I take a deep breath and run on.

  Sporadic raindrops and the raw, salt tang of the sea lash me, but I don’t bother to zip up my jacket or even tuck my T-shirt down into the waistband of my trousers. The front door of the main building is draped with red-and-white police crime-scene tape. I rip this off and drop it on the ground. As soon as I’m inside, I rush straight for the bar.

  ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’ I rage as I come to a standstill at the bar counter. A faint oniony odour lingers in the room, an odour that was not present last time, but that I recognise from somewhere else. All the windows but one are covered in black plastic bags. In the centre of the floor, a work lamp sits, switched on, and pointing straight at the uncovered window.

  I cross the room to open the window. It is pitch dark outside: the break in the clouds has closed over completely now. ‘Too late,’ I gasp.

  I linger there, looking up at the cloud cover for several minutes while I wait, hoping that the gap will open up again, but nothing happens, and even thicker clouds conceal the earlier ones – there is no moon, no light, no Frei: only an endless black barrier that nothing can penetrate. In the end I close the window and leave the bar.

  I know it is time to make another attempt to expel the compacted lump in my gut, and I head downstairs to the disco where, according to the sign, a toilet is located.

  The door at the bottom is padlocked and I don’t have the key. I turn and hurry back upstairs to the foyer and on up to the floor above. The air here is heavy and muggy, mixed with a foul whiff of singed timber and damp fabric.

  I head towards one of the slightly open doors. This room is on the floor of the building that seems to have been most badly damaged by the fire. The roof and walls are demolished, both in the main room and inside the connecting bathroom that contains no furnishings or WC. A number of tools are strewn across the floor in addition to a work lamp and several rolls of new insulation material. This room is the only one on this storey in which Rasmus has embarked on restoration work. The rest of the place seems to have been left untouched since the eighties.

  The next room is crammed with furniture: a few old camp beds stacked one on top of the other, pushed up against the outside wall, as well as some bunk beds, all made of bleached pine. The interior walls are stained with soot and the carpet is sodden, with oval patches revealing where the material has burned right down to the chipboard underneath.

  I close the door and return to the staircase and corridor on the opposite side. The first room I reach has a sign on the door indicating that this is Meeting Room 1. Inside, the curtains have fallen on the floor and the windows are littered with dead insects caught in countless spiders’ webs. The chairs are arranged in horseshoe formation around a table with an old computer.

  Inside the next door I find a gymnasium full of exercise bikes, benches, apparatus and weights. Dusty mirrors line the walls. One of the air vents is missing, leaving only an open hole in the outer wall. On the floor not far away I spot a bird’s skeleton. I step inside, making my way to a door near one of the gable walls.

  A tiny toilet with a single washbasin opens out in front of me. I yank down my trousers and sit on the toilet seat, the cold stabbing into my skin when I make contact. All the same I remain seated and push the door to, just enough to leave a crack of light between it and the door frame as I try to relax my muscles and let gravity do its work.

  Nothing happens. Eventually I get fed up sitting here, straining away while the wind whistles through crevices and the freezing cold bites at my arse. ‘Fuck’s sake,’ I pull up my trousers, jerk the door open, and head out of the room in the direction of the stairs leading down to the ground floor. It’s time to tackle what I came here to do.

  As soon as I’m back in the bar, I cross to the glass shelves behind the counter and pluck a bottle of Smirnoff from one of the shelves. I take out the blister packs and a few loose pills, all shapes and sizes of multicoloured tablets and capsules. ‘I hope I have enough,’ I whisper to myself, swallowing them down with a bitter, burning gulp from the bottle.

  While I stand there, I catch sight of a rubbish bag by the wall and an empty cardboard box that had escaped my attention before. I go to open it and find it contains several pairs of used latex gloves and a few empty glass phials, which, to judge from the smell, must have held Luminol.

  Luminol is a chemical that exhibits chemiluminescence. You mix it with water and spray it over a particular area to check for bloodstains with the help of UV light, which explained the plastic bags covering the windows. The iron in blood catalyses a blue luminescent effect that highlights even the tiniest traces of blood, no matter what attempts have been made to scour them away with chemicals.

  I search for a number on my mobile and press the green button.

  ‘Gunnar Ore,’ the voice at the other end announces in a voice half-curious, half-irritated.

  ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Thorkild? What the fu … It’s only seven hours since I told you in no uncertain terms to stay—’

  ‘Why have you done a crime-scene investigation out here at the lighthouse?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve had crime-scene technicians here, I know you have. Why?’

  ‘I work for Delta now – don’t you remember that? Or are you so far gone in your godawful haze that you’ve already forgotten? Crime-scene technology is none of my business.’

  ‘But you know.’

  A momentary pause ensues, during which I hear Gunnar Ore’s deep intake of breath before he exhales loudly.

  He fills his lungs again. ‘Police Headquarters in Tromsø have submitted a request for cooperation to the national major crime unit at Kripos, and they were recommended to undertake a crime-scene examination on the island in connection with the case of the missing police officers. That’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Surely you can work that out for yourself?’

  ‘So you’re involved,’ I conclude, mostly to myself, before Gunnar Ore’s voice breaks in: ‘Come on. Wake up, man. What the hell do you think? Two missing policemen, a civilian who’s disappeared, and now you too, running around up there talking about sea monsters, body snatchers and women without faces. For fuck’s sake, Thorkild. This is a ticking time bomb. A potential press sensation, a classic cluster-fuck, and here’s your name in flashing lights over the door. Who do you think they call when the name Thorkild Aske crops up and fingers start to itch for panic buttons?’

  I cradle the mobile phone in my hands for a long time and end up wiping snot and tears away and whispering into the handset: ‘Why do you think the two missing policemen came ashore on the island the same night they disappeared?’

  ‘Come on, Thorkild. What are you up to now?’

  I keep an eye out in the semi-darkness ahead of me as I force down a mouthful of booze. ‘You’ve found blood, haven’t you?’

  Gunnar is on the verge of saying something, but suppresses it.

  ‘Where?’ I insist.

  Another silence.

  ‘Come on, where?’ I jump down from the bar and wander around in the gloom. ‘Is where you found it significant? Is that why you can’t tell me?’

  ‘They got a result with the Luminol in the bar in the main building,’ Gunnar finally explains.

  ‘Blood spatter?’

  ‘No, drag marks between some of the floor tiles beside a seating area.’

  Blood spatter shows that the person in question has been murdered, or at least had wounds inflicted on the site, while smeared bloodstains merely signify that the person has bl
ed in that location. I cross to the velour sofa and sprawl there. The floor is smooth and cold, as if recently cleaned. ‘Do you know whose blood?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what makes you think it comes from Bjørkang or his sergeant?’

  ‘We’re waiting for the test results.’

  ‘So you’re telling me that at present you know, purely through intuition, that the blood comes from Bjørkang or his sergeant and not from Rasmus or the woman without a face? Or someone else entirely, for that matter. Is that the way you work these days? Come off it, Gunnar. You’ve found something. Something that belongs to one of the policemen, and with blood on it. Haven’t you?’

  ‘As I just said …’ Gunnar Ore raises his voice the tiniest notch without losing his cool. ‘We’re waiting for the results—’

  ‘I saw a ghost today,’ I interject before he has finished that hellish power-play mantra of his. I am well aware that he is lying, and won’t have our final conversation running purely on his terms.

  ‘Really? Seriously, Thorkild. Ghosts – is that where we are now?’

  ‘I saw her in the eyes of another woman. It was her, the woman without a face, the one I found out here at the lighthouse; the one no one seems keen to take any interest in.’

  ‘Well, as I said’ – his tone is harsher now, more determined – ‘no one at police headquarters believes this woman you’re talking about even exists. People are just pissed off that you’re haring around hurling accusations and insinuations at two well-respected officers who have vanished into thin air. That’s an all-time low, even for you.’

  ‘And you,’ I say in an undertone. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Me? Well, I can easily tell you that, Thorkild. I think you’re a piece of damaged machinery that should get the hell out of here before you fall down again and can’t be put back together this time.’

  ‘Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.’

  ‘Yes, spot on,’ Gunnar answers, though there’s no sign that he finds the analogy the least bit amusing.

  ‘All the king’s horses—’

  ‘Jesus, Thorkild! Pull yourself together.’

  ‘So what’s your theory? What scenario are you cooking up?’

  ‘You know I can’t—’

  ‘OK, what do you think my role is in all of this? Can’t you at least tell me that?’

  Gunnar Ore laughs croakily. ‘Take it easy, Thorkild. You’re not the type, as I also said to Sverdrup the very first time we spoke on the phone. Despite what happened to you and that girl out on Flyplassvegen. You’re someone who runs away, someone who shirks issues and gives up in critical situations. I told him that the faster they get you out of this case, the better for all involved.’ He hesitates. ‘You’re someone who always chooses the easy way out when things go against you, and this time you were on the wrong island at the wrong time, that’s all.’

  ‘What the fuck do you mean by that?’ The hard stone in my gut suddenly reminds me of its presence, and I grit my teeth as I wait for the pang to subside.

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘My modest bid at early parole via the back door?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘I haven’t told you what happened down there in the showers,’ I goad him further. ‘Would you like to hear?’

  ‘No,’ Gunnar Ore replies crossly. ‘Save it for someone who gives a shit. Just get the hell away from …’ He stops. ‘You said here,’ he adds abruptly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said here, a moment ago when you were talking about the crime-scene investigations. You aren’t at the lighthouse right now, are you?’

  This time it is my turn to refrain from answering.

  ‘Bloody hell, Thorkild.’ I can hear a storm brewing at the other end of the phone, but it doesn’t matter. At last I feel the effects of the insect eggs and alcohol wash over me, high waves cresting, followed by deep troughs.

  ‘Time will soon be up,’ I whisper, tucking the bottle of Smirnoff into the crook of my arm before I find a place to sit on the floor beside the boxes of Murano glass lamps and close my eyes.

  ‘Didn’t I say quite specifically that under no circumstances should—’

  ‘Sorry, boss,’ I babble to the best of my ability. ‘As you say yourself: I’m someone who runs away, and now I have to fly. Caw! Caw!’

  CHAPTER 37

  I’m not sure how long I have been sitting here following my conversation with Gunnar Ore. All at once it feels as if my senses have returned and it dawns on me that I can hear music – grinding, piercing, glassy notes composed of drum machines and 1980s synthesisers, as if I’ve woken to find a party in full swing around me.

  I place the bottle of vodka on the floor, where it topples over and rolls across the boards until it settles. My neck is stiff and painful when I lift my head and open my eyes. The bar is dark and cold, far more so than when I first arrived.

  Once I have struggled to my feet, I follow the music out into the corridor, where the volume increases. I reach the landing above the stairs that lead down to the locked disco in the basement when a powerful female voice launches into an accompaniment to the invasive synthpop music, some kind of pleading, yearning ballad of heartbreak.

  I head down to the foot of the staircase, where the bomb- shelter door that had been locked earlier now stands ajar. Inside, I can make out the outlines of yellow, green and blue lights gliding across one of the walls. Several glass display cases are hung in a symmetrical row with white signs above, though I can’t see what these say or what the showcases contain.

  The woman goes on singing, begging her lover to take her into his arms, for this night, for always. I push my way past the door to enter a changing room with an open double door at the opposite end. The changing room comprises empty coat hooks on the left-hand side and two doors marked for ladies and gents. The air is oppressive and stale, and everything looks undisturbed since the yuppies stopped dancing down here almost thirty years ago, way back in the eighties.

  I cross to the first glass display case fixed at head height into the concrete wall, just as the drum machine works up to the refrain, the singer begging her lover to tell her she is the only one, to tell her this isn’t a game, it’s love, that it’s for forever.

  I can see a bird’s nest inside the glass case and the sign above the exhibit reads ‘Common Guillemot (Uria aalge)’. Two eggs are displayed on a bare stone slab. The eggs are dark green with dark, irregular spots and speckles on the shells. Beside this is a showcase that contains two grey-white auk eggs, with black-brown spatters, laid out on a grooved rock.

  I follow the wall past other birds’ nests in the direction of the disco. The chequerboard pattern from the changing room continues in here. The rest of the interior is made from steel and glass with pastel colours on the walls and ceiling.

  On the ceiling a disco ball rotates, spinning and twirling in time to the music, which has now changed to an old classic I vaguely recall from my teenage years. On the floor, either side of the DJ booth, two smoke machines are periodically spewing thick clouds of smoke on to the deserted dance floor as Rick Astley takes over from the female voice, promising and promising, never to give up, never to run around.

  The acoustics, dust and smoke from the machine lend the place a sulphur-yellow hue, with pulsing billows of dust drifting between the booths and the dance floor. From the DJ booth itself, high-frequency flashes of light are strobing across the dance floor. ‘What sort of place is this?’ I growl, raising my hand in front of me, gazing at its movements – juddering, mechanical gestures. It’s as though I’m roaming around in one of my own pill-induced dreams, where everything is floating.

  Suddenly I stop mid-movement, just as a fresh puff of smoke ascends from the dance floor. The particles of dust curl and twist around me like a display of Northern Lights. And I have glimpsed something farther inside the room.

  Something that should not be there.

  CHAPTER 38<
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  The pills and alcohol make my body feel ethereal and detached as I stagger across the floor towards the seated woman who leans against the wall in the farthest booth, close to an emergency exit.

  But I know that more is required of me, if I am to accomplish what lies ahead. No rusty water pipes or other defective props are going to spoil the grand finale of this performance.

  Two tea lights are burning in jam jars on the table in front of her. One hand is held up at her face, as if she is asleep or has simply turned away from the music, smoke and flashing lights.

  The woman with no face is still wearing the flimsy nightdress with T-shirt on top, the same as last time. Her body and head are grey and sheathed in a fine layer of ash that makes her look like a mummy of the kind you see on TV documentaries from Pompeii and other such places.

  The candles in the jam jars are guttering, about to wink out, by the time I reach the table. Grains of dust rise from the glass, sparkling and swirling before my face like fireflies before they burn out and disappear.

  ‘Are you waiting for someone?’

  She makes no reply and I let myself flop on the sofa, edging my way to the opposite side of the table. The wall feels clammy and dank, as if we are sitting in a house at the bottom of the ocean, with icy waters pressing in, slapping against the exterior concrete walls.

  I lean towards her, gingerly caressing the thick, bright-green hair that covers her forehead. It is cold and stiff and crackles the way frozen clothes do when you touch them. A smooth, transparent film blankets her body as I brush away the dust. She is as icy and solid as a slab of fish or meat recently removed from the freezer.

  ‘What are you doing in here?’ I lean heavily across the table again, carefully scraping away the dust from the deep-frozen corpse. It is like sweeping soot off an old snowman – the dirt slides off, leaving behind grey-black threads on the shiny layer of ice where my hand has been. Underneath, I see blue-purple skin speckled with bronze post-mortem lividity.