I Will Miss You Tomorrow

by Heine Bakkeid

  ‘Forget it,’ I say, leaning further back in the chair to dodge the smell. ‘It’s just my body trying to tell me that it’s long past time for my medication.’

  ‘I have some Paralgin Forte in my handbag,’ Liz tells me. ‘They belong to Arvid. For his back pains. I always carry them with me when we go out, in case he suddenly needs them.’

  I take the blister pack she offers me and press out a handful of pink pills that I toss into my mouth to stifle the screams deep inside me.

  ‘What will we do now?’ Liz asks when I finally feel ready to tackle the mug of coffee. Another car passes outside, but this one also drives on. The sky is blue-black on the horizon out at the lighthouse.

  ‘We’ll stay here overnight and tomorrow you can drive home again.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I’ll follow in the hire car. First I just need to pay another visit to the lighthouse.’ Reclining in the chair, I close my eyes and massage my cheek with my fingertips. ‘Oh my God,’ I groan. ‘Where the hell can they be?’

  ‘The two policemen?’

  ‘And the woman I found in the sea. It all started with her, that’s the only thing I’m sure of. She was first to disappear, almost a month ago. Who can have vanished for so long without anyone reporting her missing?’

  ‘Someone who’s not from here?’ Liz asks.

  ‘Yes.’ I open my eyes and sit up straight again, then grab the blister pack and pinch out two more tablets. ‘But not only that,’ I go on after swallowing them down with a swig of coffee. ‘She must be someone who was meant to travel here, and who still isn’t expected back wherever she came from. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘A tourist?’

  I look at Liz. She has moved to the very end of the sofa and is sitting beside me with her hands on her lap. ‘Yes, OK. But who comes here as a tourist in late autumn?’ I ask.

  ‘Maybe she came here to work. From another country?’

  ‘And who doesn’t phone home to her husband, boyfriend, children or family for more than a month?’

  ‘Maybe she has nobody,’ Liz suggests.

  ‘Nobody at all?’ I drink some more coffee. ‘Young, alone, come from another place and have nobody who misses you. What sort of woman is that?’

  ‘A prostitute?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They come to Tromsø too, book into hotels and bedsits for a few months at a time, before travelling on,’ Liz informs me. She is talking faster now that she sees I am interested. ‘Yes, I’ve read that in the newspapers—’

  ‘Great, Liz,’ I say when I feel the pills finally beginning to work. ‘Really great. Well, maybe you’ve hit on something there. A young woman, a prostitute. But what would she have to do with Rasmus?’

  ‘He took her with him out to the lighthouse to—’

  ‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘Rasmus was gay. Besides, he was murdered. I think he found her by chance when he was out diving. And then what happened?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Liz answers.

  ‘Yes, you do,’ I press her. ‘He called the police.’

  ‘Yes,’ Liz exclaims, kneading her fingers and looking at me, wide eyes glinting in the gloom. ‘Yes, that’s what he did.’

  ‘OK, he phoned the police, to tell them what he’d found. And then, let’s complete the scenario: Bjørkang and Arnt came to Rasmus and killed him because no one could know what he had found? Is that what you’re saying?’

  Liz shakes her head. ‘I … I,’ she stutters before her eyes stray to the cake container. ‘I don’t know, Thorkild,’ she says in the end.

  ‘No, I suppose not. That’s where it all goes astray. I mean – why didn’t they come back afterwards and keep up whatever game they were playing as soon as they had picked up the body? Why go into hiding?’

  Liz gives me a strange look: smiling, her eyes gleaming, as if brimming with tears.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I like to see you when you’re like this.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like now, when we’re talking to each other, just the two of us. Do you remember Dad and his friends used to sit round the kitchen table discussing what had to be done to defend Iceland against industry?’

  I lean back in the chair again and turn to face Liz. ‘Last time I saw him was in the early nineties,’ I say in a murmur. ‘In a little village called Reyðarfjörður where the state-owned energy company, Landsvirkjun, was planning to build an aluminium plant. I had just learned that I had gained entry to Police College.’ I shut my eyes and compress my lips as I cast my mind back to that grey, rain-soaked village. ‘That white hair and beard of his, my God,’ I say, laughing. ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘He still has them.’ Liz chuckles again, blinking, and keeps her eyes closed for a few seconds, as if trying to picture him.

  ‘The aluminium plant was going to be run by an American firm. Dad and his crowd of eco-warriors had gone out there to see if they could sabotage the work. It was in the middle of summer, and we sat there drinking wine around a bonfire while Dad talked about our country.’

  ‘I wish I could have been there.’ Liz squeezes her hands against her chest.

  ‘I remember sitting there waiting for the right moment, when I could tell him that I was going to be a policeman in Norway. Dad had pulled up a fistful of heather and soil, tears were running down his cheeks and into his beard, he was weeping buckets on the other side of the fire as his fingers grasped this little clod of Iceland that he clutched to his chest. How long will they be allowed to rape the natural environment of our beloved Iceland?’

  ‘So you didn’t tell him?’

  ‘No,’ I answer. ‘We just sat there, all of us, listening to Dad talking about heritage and homeland. Then we drained our wine glasses and headed down to the fjord, where we rolled the container and barracks the first engineers had set up out into the sea. When we got back again, I packed up my tent and went home to Norway. One month later I started at Police College.’

  A lengthy pause ensues. ‘Can you tell me something about Frei?’ Liz eventually whispers. Her voice is subdued, the way she must speak when she is alone with a husband who beats her. ‘Who she was, why you are so … hung up on her?’

  ‘I slipped up,’ I tell her, still with my eyes closed. ‘I knew I loved her that last evening in the car, the game was over, and there was nothing I could do to change it.’ I take a deep breath and exhale. ‘The next second she was gone.’

  ‘Is that why you want to die?’ Liz puts a wary hand on mine. Her touch radiates warmth along my arm, all the way up to my face.

  ‘I’ve crammed so much into that moment,’ I go on in a whisper. ‘But who can live like that? In a single split second?’

  ‘You mustn’t do it again,’ Liz howls, launching herself at me so that we’re both pushed back into the chair and it creaks beneath the strain. ‘Listen to me, Thorkild. You mustn’t do it again.’

  ‘Good God,’ I gasp, struggling to haul her off me.

  ‘Promise me that.’ Her face is right in front of mine, and she is holding me in a vice-like grip.

  ‘I can’t—’

  ‘Yes you can,’ she pleads, refusing to let go. ‘If you promise me, then you can’t do it. You’d never have done it. I know that. I know …’

  I make another effort to extricate myself, but Liz refuses to budge and clings to me as if I were a lifeboat. In the end I capitulate. ‘OK, Sis,’ I say, sinking into the seat. ‘I promise …’

  WEDNESDAY

  CHAPTER 54

  Next day I wake in the chair, roused by Liz washing up in the kitchen. She has cleared Merethe’s stones from the floor and collected them in a pile on the coffee table. I switch on my mobile and see that I have heaps of alerts and messages on my voicemail. Including a number of rancorous comments from Ulf, who has obviously also learned that his favourite patient is on the run. I switch off the mobile again and go to Liz for a cup of freshly brewed coffee.

  ‘The police car drove back last n
ight, after you’d fallen asleep. I haven’t seen it since,’ she says, with a smile. Her grey and blonde curls stick out in all directions, and more than anything she looks like one of Ivo Caprino’s trolls as she stands humming to herself with the washing-up brush in one hand and one of the paper plates in the other.

  ‘Brilliant,’ I say, giving her a brief hug before taking the coffee over to the chair and pressing out two pink pills from the blister pack she gave me yesterday. ‘Then we can drive down to my hire car at the boathouses when we’re ready.’

  ‘How were you thinking of getting out to the lighthouse?’ Liz asks, as she pulls the plug out of the sink.

  ‘I know someone I can ask,’ I say, massaging my neck muscles. ‘Afterwards I’ll go to Tromsø for the interview.’

  ‘And then, what’s going to happen after that?’

  ‘Well, that’s not up to me, Liz,’ I tell her, forcing a lopsided smile. ‘Is it?’

  ‘But if you find those two policemen, then they can’t very well—’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ I say, sighing, and swallow the pills with a mouthful of coffee.

  ‘I feel sure you’re going to find them,’ she says, gazing at me with the washing-up brush in her hand and a cheerful, almost saintly, smile on her lips. ‘And then everything will be fine again. I believe so, in fact. I felt it in my bones when I woke this morning. That this is going to be a good day.’

  ‘Oh?’ I grunt, shaking my head. ‘Well, if you say so, then it must be true …’

  Once we have finished in the kitchen, we bring my belongings and drive down to the car park beside the boathouses in Skjellvik. Liz waits in the car while I dash across to the hire car to start it, darting continual watchful glances at the top of the hill, in case of spying a car with flashing blue lights come rolling over the summit.

  ‘Wish me luck, Sis,’ I yell through the open door, signalling to her that she should drive off.

  Liz sends me a meaningful look and leans across the passenger seat. ‘Remember, you promised,’ she says, her mouth trembling.

  ‘Yes, Liz, I promised.’

  Next minute, the Mondeo fires up and she backs out on to the road at full throttle, moving to the top of the bay without taking time either to close the car window or turn off the indicators.

  Just as her vehicle reaches the village, I spot Johannes in the rear-view mirror, heading straight for the cars. He is wearing a suit and his thin grey hair is slicked back. The wind takes hold of it on the side facing the sea, making it stand up straight, blowing and dancing above his head.

  ‘Well,’ he says, greeting me as I emerge from the car. ‘Are you still here?’

  ‘Yes, I’m not quite done here yet.’

  ‘I heard the police were here looking for you.’

  ‘Yes, they probably were. They’re always so helpful, aren’t they?’

  Johannes utters a grunt, and runs a furrowed hand through his hair. He tries to tidy it, but the wind takes hold again as soon as his hand is removed. He is wearing black-and-grey-striped suit trousers that are several centimetres too short and have gone a few too many rounds in the washing machine; the colours are faded and the fabric bobbled. His shoes at least are black, with thick soles. On his upper body he has a crumpled dress shirt with a greyish V-neck sweater on top: it too is unravelling at the seams. On top of all that he has a tailored dark coat reaching to his knees.

  ‘Harvey told me it was a friend of yours who found Bjørkang and Arnt’s boat,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, it was on the foreshore at Reinøya,’ Johannes answers. ‘The boat was in good condition – no sign of it having capsized in the storm. The only thing missing was the navigation equipment.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Ripped out,’ Johannes says. ‘Only the leads left behind.’

  ‘Rasmus’s GPS was also missing,’ I inform him. ‘Sounds like someone doesn’t want us to know where they were going, or had been.’

  Johannes nods thoughtfully.

  ‘I have to go out to the lighthouse,’ I tell him. ‘Can you help me?’

  ‘Well,’ he says, poking the gravel with the toe of his shoe, ‘I’m on my way to Andor and Josefine’s funeral.’ He is struggling to find somewhere to put his hands, since they don’t seem able to fit into his trouser pockets.

  ‘I can wait.’

  He sighs heavily. ‘OK, then. I expect I can run you across after the burial.’

  ‘Hop in, and I’ll drive you.’

  Johannes slams the car door and fastens his seatbelt. As soon as I start the engine, he pulls a packet of rolling tobacco from inside his coat and puts it on his knee. In a matter of seconds he has produced a straight, perfectly rolled cigarette that he pops between his teeth and lights with a match.

  ‘By the way, do you think Merethe will be there?’ I quiz him as I reverse out of the car park and set off up the hill towards the village. ‘At the funeral?’

  With the cigarette held between his lips, Johannes folds his hands devoutly, twiddling his rough thumbs. ‘I don’t know,’ he says as a stream of tobacco smoke pours out through his nostrils and mouth. ‘I honestly don’t know.’

  CHAPTER 55

  I feel as if I’ve just rolled in on a burning wheel when I emerge with Johannes from the car outside the church and encounter the cortege of bald-headed, grey- or receding-haired, wrinkled, stooped and hobbling men and women in the late autumn of their years.

  In the church nave, we are greeted by curious looks from people who have already found their places on the hard blue wooden seats. Johannes points at one of the back rows where two elderly women, both in fox furs and fancy hats, are sitting in splendid isolation on a bench.

  As I move to sit down, I catch sight of Harvey seated with his son several rows farther forward on the opposite side of the aisle. Merethe is not with them.

  I turn towards the exit when a minibus stops outside the door with a hollow thud. Two care assistants jump out and skirt round the vehicle with the driver, who lowers the ramp and opens the back doors.

  ‘Merethe,’ I gasp as I glimpse the face of the woman wheeled out of the vehicle and up the ramp outside the church entrance.

  ‘Where?’ Johannes turns to me just as one of the women on our bench clutches the tail of her fox fur, indiscreetly nudging her companion and pointing at the entrance.

  The faint buzz grows inside the church, and several people draw together, turning round to glance at the woman who is trundled in. ‘My God, what does she look like?’

  ‘Dreadful.’ Johannes turns his eyes to the front, towards the altar and the two coffins. A child starts screaming somewhere in the crowd, loud, racking sobs that the parents try to stifle by alternately pleading and threatening him into silence.

  The metal contraption jutting from both sides of Merethe’s head comprises three screws on either side, one on her upper and one on her lower jaw, and one that locks these together. The corners of her mouth are swathed in white bandages.

  Her hair is elegantly piled up, and she is wearing a flattering black trouser suit with a white blouse underneath. The care assistants push her across to the bench where Harvey and the little boy are waiting.

  ‘I have to speak to her,’ I whisper as the two care assistants lock the wheels on her wheelchair. They depart and close the church door behind them.

  ‘After the burial,’ Johannes answers.

  The nave eventually fills with wheelchairs, walking frames and other gear on both sides, so that those who want to sit near the front have to pick their way through this geriatric labyrinth of rigid plastic and metal. Johannes takes out a transparent bread bag filled with sugary, red-striped mothballs. He opens the bag and offers it to me: ‘Humbug?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Mint humbugs?’ Johannes repeats in a louder voice, rustling the bag, as if there’s something wrong with my hearing. ‘Sweets. From Sweden.’

  I pick one out and drop it into my mouth just as the vicar makes his appearance through a side door.
He moves easily and elegantly through the obstacles in the aisle, and is soon ascending to the pulpit where he raises his hands aloft and looks out over the congregation.

  ‘Everything has its time,’ he announces in a friendly, but nevertheless deeply mournful southern accent. His gaze roams over the assembled company, row by row, until he ends with the closest relatives on the front row right beside the coffins. ‘Even death.’

  Once the prelude strikes up, people start to sing. The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended, the darkness falls at thy behest. Then the vicar delivers the eulogy. ‘They devoted themselves completely to each other for many years, to love. And now they are with God, Our Lord, in Paradise, together.’

  The vicar descends smoothly from the pulpit and moves across to the two coffins. The family sends two girls forward, both in their early teens and dressed in beautiful dark dresses with matching shoes. The vicar and these two girls begin to read out the messages written on the wreaths, as people step forward to light the candles in the wrought-iron candlesticks. The girls read in Swedish, and the vicar in Norwegian.

  ‘Now Selma and Christine will sing a hymn for their grandparents.’ The vicar folds his hands and moves to the side of the choir. Soon a melody rings out from a CD-player, and the two girls break into song.

  The screaming child is no longer crying. The whole church is suddenly silent, with only a vague gurgling or sporadic cough from ageing lungs to be heard between the notes.

  I can see the back of Merethe’s head in front of me. She does not move: simply sits there with drooping shoulders. The metal screws protrude on each side like an insect’s antennae. I see Harvey at her side, his hands clasped on his lap with his face cast down on the floor.

  He appears to be shivering. His shoulders are heaving uncontrollably, moving up and down, and from time to time he shakes his head, sometimes rocking back and forth with his hands on his knee. He is crying. Blubbering like a baby, and when the music is over and the two girls have left the choir, the whole church is filled with the insistent sound of his heart-rending sobs.