I Will Miss You Tomorrow

by Heine Bakkeid

  Finally Harvey directs his gaze up at me again. I can already see in his eyes that he has made up his mind. Harvey has not decided to admit anything, or to take anything seriously at all. He is not the type. ‘Bloody hell,’ he whispers huskily, raising the harpoon once more, ‘all you had to do was jump in the sea.’

  I’m all set to wheel round and dive down into the water in an attempt to escape, but Harvey has already shot the bolt. I can feel it enter straight through my hand and carry further, passing my breastbone at the moment the force propels me back.

  ‘I’m just helping you do what you couldn’t manage for yourself,’ I hear Harvey shout from somewhere in the darkness. The pains in my chest are so acute that I want to scream, but each time I open my mouth it fills with seawater. The harpoon bolt has pinned my hand to my chest, and I can feel a stinging, piercing wound in my armpit.

  ‘Was that a hit or a miss?’

  I glimpse Harvey on the other side of the tank, holding a red cord in his hand and dragging it behind him. ‘Found you,’ he triumphs, tensing the cord so that it stretches out between us. ‘And that’s a hit!’ Harvey exclaims before pulling the cord with all his might.

  I scream as my body judders forward and is yanked towards Harvey. A burning pain spreads from my armpit all the way through my chest, as if his heaving is tearing a chunk of flesh away from my torso. I twist my head as Harvey drags me towards him, and I get a brief glimpse of the arrowhead sticking out behind my armpit.

  I try to check my forward progress with my free hand but it’s no use. It comes to me that I have a diver’s knife fastened to my hip, and I use my free hand to search for it, all the time struggling to keep my face above water.

  The dead body behind Harvey gives another lurch forward as Harvey pulls himself even closer to me. He is reeling me in with the harpoon cord, as if I were a fish.

  Harvey is only a few metres away when I finally feel the shaft of the diver’s knife. I start to pull and tug in an attempt to free it, while Harvey hauls in the line so that I’m dragged head-first and now face him.

  The searing pain in my chest stops all of a sudden when I finally release the knife and cut the harpoon cord. Floundering, I pull with my free hand and my feet until I have shifted my body into an upright position again.

  ‘And what are you going do with that little thing?’ Harvey asks when he catches sight of the knife I am holding in front of me. I know there is no chance I can do anything at all as long as I can use only one hand, even with a knife in that hand. Harvey releases the severed cord and pulls up the harpoon again, pointing the weapon straight at me. I can see through the light shed by his torch that he is taking out another bolt from a holster on his thigh and inserting it in the nozzle. Then he starts to pump the weapon.

  I get ready for take-off, launching myself backwards and kicking out to flee. In front of me I see Harvey following through the water.

  ‘What’s the matter, why are you trying to get away? I thought you wanted to die?’ Behind him the line reels out again so that the corpse is dragged through the water in his wake.

  I swim a few more strokes before giving up. My legs are so cold and the pains in my chest so severe that I’m gasping for air. I struggle to keep myself afloat as I cough and spit out bile.

  Harvey stops a few metres away from me to take aim. He shines the flashlight tucked in under one elbow, as he uses the other arm to guide the harpoon.

  ‘Go to hell!’ I bellow, feeling my gullet fill with blood. I lift the hand with the knife out of the water and hold it in front of me in a pathetic attempt to shield myself from what is coming.

  ‘I’m sorry, Thorkild.’ Harvey raises the harpoon out of the water and aims for my chest. From behind him comes a loud splash. I can see that Elena’s body has drifted all the way across to him and is practically nudging his back. He notices it too, and turns to look.

  The dead body seems to be tangled in the line between them, and when Harvey turns round he tugs the corpse even closer, so that she suddenly rises from the water and falls forward on to him.

  ‘Aargh,’ he howls, and fires the harpoon in panic. I see the bolt go straight through Elena’s stomach and out the other side. Harvey drops the harpoon as he continues to revolve. He tries to shove the body away, sawing his hands and pulling back. Instead of wrenching free, the cords in which they are tangled tighten and their bodies spin towards each other, closer and closer, while Harvey’s screams echo around the tank.

  Slender rays of light shoot out from Harvey’s flashlight, caught in the shapeless, shadowy mass of arms and legs in front of me. Harvey thrashes his arms to strike out and lift the dead body off him. From time to time I hear sporadic gasps and gurgling, guttural sounds, before a rasping roar echoes through the steel tank. Immediately afterwards, the two bodies disappear underwater and are gone.

  CHAPTER 66

  The occasional air bubble breaks the surface where Harvey and the dead woman had recently been. Somewhere below me I can make out a couple of pale rays of light, like rabbit holes in the darkness, though I can see no trace of either Harvey or Elena.

  My body is heavy, and a numb sensation is spreading from my chest where the arrowhead is lodged. My legs push against the surface of the water, while my stomach and thighs, where the rest of the lead sinkers are located, drag me down. Harsh air sears my lungs, and I have a violent feeling of choking with every intake of breath.

  I use my free hand to search for my mouthpiece to connect to the air tanks, as centrifugal force spins my body to one side. Floundering, I pull with my free hand and kick out with my legs in an attempt to right my body. The exercise sends shooting pains through my chest that radiate out into my armpit.

  After the third round trip, I suddenly feel something soft on my fingertips. This time I remain prostrate in the water, upside down, as I try to hold my breath and refrain from moving, at the same time fumbling for the mouthpiece tube. My lungs are about to explode when at last I get hold of the rubber mouthpiece and can insert it into my mouth.

  These exertions have drained me of strength. I am about to lose all feeling in my legs and am aware of my body being sucked down. It strikes me that I must now shed the remaining sinkers around my thighs, or I’ll plummet to the bottom and stay there.

  It has grown harder already to breathe through the mouthpiece, either because it is on the point of running out of air from the tank, or because the arrow through my chest has pierced a lung. The instrument panel showing how much air I have left is attached to the hand pinned to my chest by the harpoon. I therefore have no chance of checking how much air remains. I cannot connect the spare tank with only one hand.

  Below me I can still see light from Harvey’s torch. The rabbit holes are gone and there is only a single star-shaped point of light far down there in the darkness. During my exertions, I have lost my diver’s mask, and the LED light on it must have been damaged. The yellow glow down there is the only source of light I can discern. I try to focus my eyes, aware of the urge to sleep suffusing my body – stronger, more urgent and insistent with each movement.

  The light below me changes colour from deep yellow to a whiter, clearer light each time I look at it. After a while, I don’t even manage to remain in an upright position. My body keels over, and my legs float up so that I’m lying on my side in the water. This time I’m unable to turn back, and instead just hang there, switching in and out of consciousness, as my body drifts on the surface of the water.

  I am surrounded by silence, with no idea whether I am above or below the water. I have lost all sensation in my fingertips and the only thing I do feel is the pain in my chest and armpit. I try to move my free hand and haul myself round again. My lips are numb and I no longer feel my mouthpiece even when I bite into the rubber.

  My eyes snap open when I hear a loud crack from the boat, and a pounding rumble rises through the metal construction, followed by a shower of fine rusty rain. All at once my face is above water again, and I can see a shadow,
more compact and substantial than the rest of the darkness, almost as if someone is hanging there on the roof above me, and at the same instant I am aware of the taste of perfume on my tongue.

  I blink repeatedly, as if to wash away the deadly fatigue and the dirty, rust-infected salt water, as the shadow continues to sink towards me.

  ‘Who are you?’ I ask, though my lips do not move, and I simply go on drifting, rolling round and in and out of water and consciousness.

  No one answers. An intense heat spreads through my body as the shadow drops down from the roof and passes through me. I struggle and strike out with my free hand until I have turned myself over, towards the shadow that is now below me. I try to grab hold of it, pulling it and the heat back. Instead I start to sink.

  I am unsure whether I actually move or whether what I see is merely a fag-end of myself, a fine layer of transparent ectoplasm flowing out of the dying body to combine with the seawater. Nevertheless I continue, kicking, scratching and dragging my body through the rusty rain as I bite into my mouthpiece as hard as I possibly can.

  Somewhere ahead of me, the yellow light appears again. In a brief glimpse I catch sight of Harvey and Elena in the glimmer from the weak rays of the flashlight between the two dead bodies, tied together by Harvey’s line. His eyes are wide open and staring terror-stricken into the gloom as their bodies dance around each other, following the rhythm of the seawater. Suddenly her head glides up so that they are facing each other, the black hair on the back of her head fanning out behind her, and the bodies continue their downward drift until the light between them is gone.

  I see the opening in the tank ahead of me, not far from Arnt’s back, now lying on the bottom, and turned away from me. I don’t see Bjørkang’s corpse, and soon I pass through the hatchway and emerge into the place where the seabed is covered with rotten fish corpses. The shadow moves on, up past the hull of the wreck at a slow pace. The shadow is just beyond my reach the entire time. Sometimes it spins round itself, and other times it seems as if the whole shadow is pulsating, taking on a glowing black hue and pointing the way out of the murky fog around the wreck.

  We follow the path of dead fish, past the severed wheelhouse towards a pale blue glimmer above our heads. Eventually, as the colour grows stronger, I also begin to kick harder as I claw with my hand to climb faster. I tear the mouthpiece out by accident, but hardly notice it. Every fibre of my being is focused on the blue colour and the heat it discharges.

  I break the surface with a hoarse and gurgling guttural scream directed at the sky above me. Seawater streams from my nose and mouth as I lie on the surface of the sea, shouting for joy. The sky is still bright, even though it is humid outside: this semi-darkness is a thousand times brighter than what I have just swum out of. The shadow is gone, leaving only a vague taste of perfume lingering on the tip of my tongue.

  In front of me I see Johannes’s boat and Harvey’s catamaran, moored together. I see no sign of Johannes as I draw closer to the boats and embark on the strenuous process of clambering up the ladder and on board.

  Only when I clear the rail do I see him. Johannes is lying at the bottom of the boat between the steering console and the gunwale, a broad gash visible on his head, just above one ear. Below him, bloodstained seawater splashes.

  ‘Johannes,’ I croak, as I haul myself all the way across to the seat installation. I lean over the back of the bench, coughing, belching and gasping for air. ‘Johannes!’ I spit out more blood, more saltwater, and sink to my knees in front of him.

  I place two fingers on his carotid artery and feel a weak pulse. ‘Don’t die, for Christ’s sake,’ I beg him, before crawling round on the bottom of the boat searching for my belongings. In the end I find my mobile phone. Edging my way over to Johannes again, I lean towards the gunwale, using the side that was not harpooned, as my trembling fingers key in the police emergency number. As soon as I’m finished, I put the phone on my lap and take hold of Johannes’s hand.

  After a while, I feel a faint vibration on my thighs. Somewhere above me, a gull is screeching. I open my eyes to see that my mobile is ringing: an unknown Stavanger number. I let go Johannes’s hand and take the call.

  ‘Yes, hello?’ I groan as I struggle to press the mobile against my ear.

  ‘Thorkild Aske?’

  ‘I think so,’ I whisper hoarsely.

  ‘Hi, Thorkild. This is Iljana from the unemployment service in Stavanger. Have you a few minutes to spare just now?’

  ‘I hope so,’ I say, coughing into the receiver. ‘I sincerely hope so.’

  ‘You paid us a visit last week and signed on as a job applicant, isn’t that right? Well, I’m calling you today to tell you that I’ve already arranged a job interview for you at an employment agency here in the city. It’s a large telecoms company that needs more staff in their customer-service department out at Forus. Doesn’t that sound exciting?’

  Letting the phone slip through my fingers, I lean my head against the gunwale and pull Johannes’s hand towards me. ‘Bloody hell,’ I snuffle, squeezing his hand in mine. ‘I’m never going to make it on time for that interview at Police Headquarters …’

  THURSDAY

  CHAPTER 67

  I am startled when the sit-up mechanism on the bed is switched on and I feel my upper body being slowly raised. I try to turn over into another position, but am instantly aware of a pain shooting through my chest.

  ‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ asks a stocky man, towering over me like a bear at the edge of the bed. ‘You’ve turned over in your sleep,’ he says accusingly, placing a cautious hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Where am I?’ I ask groggily, trying to cough up some memory of the circumstances that brought me here.

  ‘You’re in the intensive care unit at Tromsø University Hospital,’ the man tells me. ‘Don’t you recall us taking you off the respirator this morning?’

  I shake my head warily.

  ‘Here,’ the man continues, easing my shoulder forward as he pushes a pillow behind my back.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I resist until a stabbing pain knifes from my chest, sending me into paroxysms of coughing that make the whole bed shake.

  ‘Take it easy,’ the man protests. ‘I’m just trying to help you. You’ve rolled over on to your back while you were sleeping,’ he adds. ‘You have to lie on your side – don’t you remember we talked about that earlier today?’

  This time I don’t try to fight him, and the doctor manages to wedge the pillow so that I’m lying almost entirely on my left side.

  ‘By the way, I should pass on regards from Dr Berg at the trauma reception unit,’ the man continues, skirting round to the other side of the bed. ‘He said you were more dead than alive when they admitted you yesterday afternoon. Both you and your friend.’ He pauses momentarily before ploughing on: ‘He also asked me to tell you they don’t want to see you down there again, and that you need to have a long talk with someone, preferably a professional, about the direction your life has taken.’

  ‘Yes,’ I groan, ‘I understand. So …’ I try to moisten my lips with the tip of my tongue before the doctor gives me a glass of water from the bedside table. ‘That other guy,’ I begin. ‘The one I came in with. Where is he?’

  ‘He’s here, too, in another room. Head injury, lost a lot of blood, slight hypothermia, but he’s stable. These old guys, they can stand a knock.’

  I peer down at my ribcage where a big compress nestles among several electrodes connected to a screen that monitors my heartbeat. On my right wrist, where the harpoon entered, I have a plaster cast, and one of my fingers is attached to an oximeter. ‘What’s the damage? It feels like more than just a few scratches on the varnish this time.’

  ‘Well,’ the doctor begins, taking a deep breath. ‘The harpoon bolt fractured the third metacarpal bone and damaged the fourth when it entered your hand, hence the plaster cast. It looks fine – we had to realign the bones before we could cast your hand in plaster. There’s still
some potential for minor nerve or tendon damage, but it looks OK at present. The harpoon penetrated further in between two of your ribs and on through the lobus medius, that is the middle lobe of the right lung, and out through your armpit. That’s why we’ve inserted a thoracic catheter to prevent your chest cavity filling with blood.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ I comment unconvincingly.

  ‘You’ve been incredibly fortunate, Thorkild. The fact that the harpoon bolt missed all of your nerve centres and the submandibular ganglion, and only grazed the major blood vessel that delivers blood to your whole arm, is practically a miracle. There’s still some risk of after-effects, such as lack of sensation in your right arm, but basically, it looks OK.’

  ‘When can I check out?’

  ‘You will have to stay here with us for a couple of days, just so we can be sure that everything is OK. Apart from that, it’s only a matter of enjoying the peace and quiet and trying to relax.’ Edging round the bed towards the exit, he stops in the doorway and turns round: ‘By the way, I nearly forgot. You have a visitor.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘A policeman. If you like, I can say that—’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I answer, fumbling for the glass of water again. My mouth feels dry, my tongue swollen.

  ‘Cheers!’ Brandishing a paper cup, Gunnar Ore positions himself at the foot of the bed. ‘Our very own Hercule fucking Poirot, eh?’