The Last Refuge (7 page)

Rather than stare back into the gloom of the far wall, I waited patiently for my stalker to come into the light, as he would surely have to do. Sure enough, I became aware out of the corner of my eye of the man getting up from his seat and venturing across the floor to the bar. He didn’t look at me as he passed, but I had every opportunity to see him.

It was the same guy that had taken such an interest in me in the Cafe Natur. The balding man with the white beard. Tummas Barthel. He was wearing the same leather waistcoat, this time over a black T-shirt. I stared at his back, wondering what the hell his problem was.

He turned, pint in hand, and walked back to his seat, this time looking at me openly. I could feel a familiar anger growing in me, uncomfortable at being an exhibit in a zoo, and barely resisted the temptation to stick a leg out and trip him up.

Barthel retreated into the darkness and I fixed my own gaze firmly on the tennis, determined not to give him the satisfaction of seeing me turn to look at him. If anything, it made it worse. The irritation festered, beer going down my neck quicker, my patience shrivelling.

As the evening wore on, the darkness of the room engulfed my mood. I imagined my hands round the man’s throat, demanding answers. Demanding that he fuck off.

When he finally lumbered unsteadily from his seat and made not for the bar or the toilet but for the exit door, I made an instant decision to go after him. I sat still for a minute or so then threw the last of my glass down my throat and got up, discovering that my own feet weren’t much steadier than Barthel’s.

Emerging blinking into the half-light, I looked left and right until I saw Barthel a hundred yards ahead of me, steering a wayward ship. I set off after him like a dog chasing a car, with no particular idea what I would do if the pursuit was successful. I gained on him along Sigmundargøta, not wanting to alert him to my presence.

The darkness of Glitnir was still in me, an indignant rage boiling over, urging me to ask him what his problem was. Every step closer multiplied my need to know why he looked at me the way he did. I knew full well that I probably wouldn’t like the answer, but I still needed to hear it.

I was close enough now to smell the beer on his breath, but he seemed no wiser to my being there. I knew what I was going to do now: the only question was how much I was going to regret it. Up ahead was a corner drowning in shadow and solitude. It seemed the perfect place.

Barthel was much drunker than I was, weaving one way then the other. That was why I saw it before he did. It was why I moved quickly, as quickly as I could, throwing myself at him with every effort I could muster.

The sounds and the movement all rolled into one, tumbling over each other in a blur. I was going through the air, lights blinding me from inches away, the violent shriek of a car’s brakes, air choking out of Barthel as I crashed into his midriff, pulling him with me. We crashed onto the ground together, dust coming up and concrete bruising bones. The car was still coming to a raucous halt as we tumbled, two as one, to the safety of the other side of the narrow road.

Barthel was groaning and clearly in shock, but he had landed like a baby, relaxed enough not to suffer any harm. He rolled and sat upright, looking around bewildered.

The car’s driver, a bulky dark-haired man with bushy eyebrows, jumped out, red-faced and panicking. When he saw Barthel sitting unscathed at the side of the road, he breathed a huge sigh of relief, but quickly let loose a furious string of Faroese that didn’t sound remotely complimentary. There was a lot of pointing, mainly at the older man, but also a couple of gesticulations in my direction.

Barthel reacted with upstretched palms and then with his hands clamped firmly over his ears, shutting out the admonition. He was still in denial of the man’s fury when the driver gave up with a final bellow, slamming the car door behind him and driving off with a crunch of gears and complaining tyres.

As the car spun into the distance, Barthel and I were left in the surreal vacuum of a Torshavn night. No daylight, no dark, no sound. We might as well have been sitting by the edge of a road on the moon.

All I could hear was my own breath coming fast and the probably imagined sound of my heart beating faster than necessary. He sat strangely ashen-faced, yet with the ruddy cheeks of a man who’d been drinking all night. Somewhere overhead I heard wings beat and looked up to see the white shadows of a pair of birds slipping across the skyline.

‘Are you okay?’

Barthel looked up, seemingly as surprised by my question as he was at my being there. He focused long enough to ascertain who I was and what I meant and at last gave me a lazy nod of agreement. ‘I am okay. I am. I’m just groovy.’

I pushed myself up and walked over to him, stretching out an arm and offering it as a help to get him back on his feet. He waved it away airily and instead placed his hands on the ground and tried to lever himself up off the road. After a brief effort, he collapsed back onto his haunches and admitted defeat with a deflated flutter of his lips.

When my hand reached out to him a second time, Barthel grasped it and I hauled him upright. ‘Are you okay?’ I asked a second time.

‘Groovy, man. Just groovy.’

‘What did the guy in the car say to you?’

Barthel stared back at me, clearly making an effort at concentration, and I was reminded of the first night I saw him in the Natur and the look he gave me as he left the bar. I got the feeling he was looking at me from behind his eyes, trying to overcome first impressions. Then he answered:

‘I know who you are.’

My heart missed a beat. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized it was anatomically possible. But I felt it then.

I tried for deflection. ‘That’s what the guy told you? That he knew who you were?’

Barthel laughed. It was dry and throaty and came from deep inside him. A laugh borne from cigarettes and booze and having seen it all before.

‘No. He told me that I was a fucking idiot and I was lucky he hadn’t killed me. He said he would have gone to jail and I would have gone to hell. He was half right, I think. And he told me that I would have been dead for sure if it wasn’t for you. He said you saved my life.’

I said nothing, as I’d already known all of that. It was what I was less sure of that bothered me. And I both wanted and dreaded to hear it from him.

Barthel straightened up as if ready to make an official pronouncement and extended his arm towards me. I stretched out my own hand and he took it and shook it forcefully.

‘Thank you. Thank you for saving my life.’

‘You’re welcome. Will you be okay getting yourself home from here?’

He smiled and tapped a finger at his forehead. ‘I will.’

‘Okay then.’

The man turned away, wheeling on unsteady legs and walking a couple of paces before stopping in his tracks. He turned painfully and faced me.

‘Oh and Mr Callum . . .’

I breathed deep. ‘Yes?’

‘
I know who you are
.’

Chapter 11

‘Whisky?’

His near-death experience seemed to have sobered Barthel up and he was intent, clearly, on changing the situation. The bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue he was brandishing was 80-proof of that.

We were in the main room of his house, a red-walled building topped with a green roof just off Skiparagøta. The apartment was a shrine to a lost world of rock. Framed concert and festival posters were dotted across the walls: The Who at K. B. Hallen, Copenhagen, in 1972; the Rolling Stones in Cologne in 1973; the Stones again in the Olympiahalle, Munich, in 1976; Radiohead at Glastonbury, 1997; Nirvana in New York City, 1993. A large white bookcase stood against the far wall, but it didn’t hold a single book; instead album covers were placed on it, looking out like favourite paintings: Lynyrd Skynyrd, Pearl Jam, Jimi Hendrix, Bad Company, Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Books were piled on the floor to make room for the album display. Biographies, roadies’ tales, photographic memoirs, chart listings. Anything and everything the rock junkie might need for his fix. A computer sat in one corner with more books piled beside it. In pride of place on a pristine white table sat a small but powerful looking CD player, which on closer inspection turned out to be a Krell Cipher and probably cost as much as the house.

‘Just a small one,’ I told him, having little doubt that what Barthel regarded as a standard whisky measure would fill the glass.

‘Water?’ The question was loaded with judgement and it was obvious which answer he would approve of.

‘No, thanks.’

‘Good. Water is for fishing and bathing. You know what W. C. Fields said about it, right?’

I nodded. ‘Don’t drink the stuff, fish fuck in it.’

Barthel laughed as if he’d never heard the line before. ‘That’s it. That’s it. Fish fuck in it. When people ask me what I take in whisky, I say “more whisky”. The more the merrier, right?’

I wasn’t entirely sure that was going to be true, given the amount he’d poured into the glass. The liquid gold winked at me through the crystal, promising good times and a price to be paid.

‘Did you go to all those gigs?’ I nodded towards the posters.

‘Sure. And others. Cost me a fortune, but it’s my thing. Are you into music?’

I took the glass of whisky he offered me and chinked it against his own glass. ‘Yeah. But not as much as you, I’d say.’

Barthel shrugged and moved the glass to his mouth, before hesitating when almost there. ‘A toast. To lives lost and lives saved.’

All I could do was stare back at him before filling the silence and my mouth with Johnnie Walker. I let it swirl round, bathing my tongue and tonsils in escape. Only once I’d swallowed it did I raise my glass in silent agreement to the toast.

‘So, do you go to the G! Festival at Gøta?’ I asked.

He knew I was changing the subject but he let it go. ‘Of course. I’ve been every year since it started in 2003. From Bomfunk MCs to Karin Park. Seen them all. I’ve been all over the world but it’s probably my favourite festival.’

‘So where else have you been?’

‘I lived in New York for a few years so I had plenty of choice. And I lived in London for a bit too. So Wembley, the O
₂
, Hammersmith Palais. But also Berlin, Rome, Los Angeles. All over.’

‘And you played?’

He narrowed his eyes then shrugged modestly. ‘Yeah. Not at Wembley, though. The Half Moon in Putney was as big as it got for me in London. Great venue. U2 played their first sell-out gig there. I was a drummer. Played with a few bands.’

‘Must have been a great life.’

Barthel laughed, a sound like gravel being churned. ‘It had its moments. It wasn’t throwing televisions out of hotel windows or trashing rooms, none of that. But we did lots of things we shouldn’t have and we had some fun.’

‘So how come you came back here to be a fisherman?’ I’d learned a little about Barthel from Oli the barman, keen to know something about the man who seemed so interested in me.

His laugh dried up and he looked for an answer in the bottom of his whisky glass, scooping up a mouthful of its contents. ‘My father got sick. He couldn’t work the boat and I had to come home to help out. He made me promise I would stay and keep the family business going. Then he died on me.’

A bigger gulp of Johnnie Walker washed down the one before. ‘I don’t break my promises.’

He picked up the bottle and splashed whisky first into my glass and then his. There was something reassuring about the sound, something infinitely preferable to the words whose place it filled. We both sipped in silence.

‘Why were you following me home?’ Barthel asked at last, reluctantly voicing the question that must have been trying to break free from the moment he saw me by the roadside.

‘Why were you staring at me in the Glitnir? And in the Cafe Natur before that?’

Barthel nodded and drank some more. ‘Fair enough. I think we both asked questions we know the answer to.’

‘It’s why I followed you out of the bar. To ask you that question. I’ll admit I was annoyed at you. I was angry. But I decided I had to know. Even if I didn’t want to hear it.’

He scratched at his cheek contemplatively, looking at the floor then back up at me. ‘Like I said, I know who you are. And what you did. Or what they said you did.’

A sinking feeling enveloped me. Just words, just confirmation of the expected, but depressingly sickening. I had fled to the middle of nowhere, but my past had come with me.

Barthel must have read my mind. ‘It’s a long way from Scotland, I know. But the world is a much smaller place these days. I like to keep in touch with as much of it as possible. I guess I’m not like most people here. I moved away, didn’t think I’d ever come back. So I need to travel still, even if it’s only in my head.’

He walked over to the corner of the room and tapped the computer monitor. ‘This is all that keeps me sane. Or reasonably sane. This and music and good whisky. I am probably the only person in the Faroes who keeps up with the Scotland page on the BBC news website.

‘Why Scotland?’

‘I lived in Edinburgh for two months once. It was full of English people.’

‘And you must have a good memory for faces.’

He shrugged. ‘I guess I must have. Although it took me a while to put it together. With your name and all . . .’

I tried to fight the resentment I could feel running through me. Anger at being recognized. Uncovered. He was the only man in the islands who knew me. Who knew who I had been.

Gulping at whisky, I urged myself to calm down. I wasn’t that person any more, wouldn’t be him again. I needed to say something, offer some kind of reply that didn’t beg more questions. Or worse, more answers.

‘I came here for a fresh start. A quiet life. I move crates of fish and watch salmon swim.’

He nodded. ‘Most people look at a cage of salmon and see thousands of them swimming there. They think they all look the same and certainly couldn’t pick one out from the shoal. They can’t see that they have different spots and individual ways.’

‘It would probably need someone who knew the fish to point it out to the others.’