The Last Refuge (27 page)

I breathed deep and made for the square house with the daffodil-coloured walls. Dark clouds, whisked through with menace, were hovering low over the ridge behind.

Hvirla, the Hojgaards’ sheepdog, was standing in the garden as I approached, his nose in the air sensing the change in the weather. When he saw me, he let loose a single bark to alert those inside, then bounded over to me, his tail swishing from side to side. At least someone was happy to see me.

As I ruffled the dog’s mane and ears, the way I’d seen Martin do frequently, the door opened behind him. Hvirla was still doing his tornado-spin of happiness when Silja made her way down the couple of steps into the garden. She looked troubled and wary. There was no sign of her husband.

‘Hvirla,’ she called. ‘
Koma.
’ The dog ducked under my hand and trotted off to sit at her side, its tail still wagging contentedly. Silja’s straw-coloured hair was tied back and she wore jeans and a chequered Faroese jumper.

‘Martin at fish farm.’ She was pushing stray strands of hair out of her eyes as the breeze tossed them about. ‘You are okay?’

The question caught me by surprise, even though it shouldn’t have done. Silja Hojgaard had much more right to worry about her welfare than mine, but it was in her nature to ask after my well-being. If what I feared most was true, maybe she had reason to fear for her safety. I suddenly saw some of that fear. That was what the wariness was, and I felt ashamed. Worse than that, I wondered if I should be there at all, wondered if I was a danger to this kind woman and her daughter.

‘I’m okay. Thank you. Silja, I will go away if you want me to. I understand. Or I can come back when Martin is here.’

She toyed with her hair again before giving up and letting the wind blow it as it pleased. She looked at me as if I was some kind of creature she’d never seen before. Her shoulders lifted almost imperceptibly in either acceptance or resignation.

‘No. Is okay. You want stay at other house still? If yes, it okay.’

I shrunk a little, embarrassed by the woman’s generosity of spirit. In so many ways it would have been easier if she had told me to get lost. If she’d said they couldn’t take the risk or face the embarrassment or even stomach the thought of me living in their property. Instead they shamed me by letting me stay.

‘Really? Martin doesn’t mind? After everything that has happened?’

She hesitated, words unspoken on her lips but sadness in her eyes. ‘You stay if you want. It okay.’

The temptation was to ask what it was she wasn’t telling me, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

‘Silja . . . you don’t have to do this. I will understand if you want me to go. I don’t want to make things difficult for you. You and Martin have been very good to me, giving me a place to live. I owe you for that.’

The sun sprang from behind the cloud and Silja shielded her eyes with the back of her hand. As she did so, I saw something move out of the corner of my eye, and looked again to see Rannva peeking out from the doorway, her body behind the wooden frame and only half her blonde head visible. I waved and after a few moments’ hesitation, an arm appeared and waved back.

Silja saw her too and moved a pace to her right, placing herself between me and her daughter, blocking the view from one to the other. I felt something shrivel inside me. Silja’s face fell too, seemingly feeling bad about her instinctive reaction, although not so bad that she moved away.

‘John . . . court say you go free. That I trust. Not Torshavn people who speak bad things. Please. Stay.’

I wanted to hug her, or at least shake her hand to say thank you, but feared that any attempt would come across badly. I sensed her unease fighting with her decency, and the latter winning. I didn’t want to do anything to alter that result.

‘Oh . . . other thing.’ Silja looked embarrassed. ‘You stay for free now. Not pay. You . . . you have no work now. Martin is sorry but he . . .’

‘It’s okay. I understand that.’

‘Later . . . when is over . . . you have work again.’

I nodded, wondering if it would ever be over, but grateful for this little pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

We left the house just minutes later, Silja with fresh sheets and towels in her arms, politely declining my offer to carry them. Rannva and Hvirla wandered together in our wake, one chattering and the other nuzzling at her hands.

Torshavn fell away beneath us and the clouds edged closer, still holding onto the rain and the threat of unleashing it. Nothing was said between us and any noise was left to Rannva’s self-contained conversation, the occasional yap from the dog and the whisper of the wind. Silja was more comfortable in the silence than I was, the stammer of another stilted apology never far from my lips.

The shack soon winked at us from the natural camouflage of the hillside, the sun glinting from the windows the only real clue that the structure was anything other than a natural phenomenon. My uneasy home.

There was something else though. Something that hadn’t been there earlier that day. Something that jarred.

I saw it first, courtesy of better eyesight or keener interest than Silja. Even then, though, I didn’t see it for what it was. Part of me thought, however illogically, that the Hojgaards had had the door painted for my return. Common sense would have told me that wasn’t the way the prodigal son was treated.

As we got closer, I realized the truth and then Silja saw it too, a gasp escaping from her throat and a hand raised to her mouth. She stopped in her tracks, but I walked quicker.

The door to the shack was red. Dripping red. The wood was soaked in it but it had clearly not been done by a brush. And it clearly wasn’t paint.

A pool of blood swam stickily on the dirt at the door’s foot, soaking into the earth. It stank. Sickly sweet with a tang of rusty nails or old coins. There was a richness about it that turned my mind and my stomach in equal measure, stirring both memories and my guts. Breath caught in my throat and I had to turn away to inhale.

I saw Silja standing there open-mouthed, eyes wide. She had pulled Rannva towards her, her lamb’s face buried in the fibres of Silja’s jumper. Beside them, Hvirla spun nervously, living up to her name, in a whirl of confusion.

Silja bent down and whispered into Rannva’s ear. The little girl took off without a backward look, calling on the dog as she scampered past him and the pair dashed onto the hillside, rolling together blithely in the grass.

The blood had been thrown over the door by the bucketful. It had landed artlessly, drenching the wood and splashing all around. I could only imagine it being hurled angrily. I could feel a similar fury building up inside me.

‘Silja . . . I am so sorry. I—’

‘No!’ She interrupted me forcefully even though her voice was shaking. ‘No. This not your do. Is wrong. Is bad. You stay our house this night. Tomorrow we fix. This very bad.’

The woman had an ability to make me feel worse by trying to make me feel better. Every kind act killed off a bit of my soul. I couldn’t let her slay the little that was left.

‘No. I’ll stay here.’

‘But . . . you cannot. The blood . . .’

‘Silja, you and Martin have done enough. I won’t make things worse for you. And I’m not letting whoever did this drive me out. I’m staying here. As long as that’s okay with you.’

She looked doubtful, struggling to take her eyes off the blood-soaked door. ‘Okay. But I clean this. I go home and get what I need.’

‘No. I will do it. It’s my responsibility.’

Silja thought for a bit then shook her head grimly. ‘We both do. Make work quick.’

Neither Silja’s scrubbing brush nor mine made easy inroads into the tacky red mess that had worked its way into the timber. The top coat came away without too much problem, leaving a rusty pool on the earth below, but the rest needed to be attacked vigorously again and again. She worked away at the lower part of the door and me at the top. My hands moved faster, more furiously than hers. Driven by rising anger, I tried to scrub the wood away. She glanced up a couple of times, obviously aware of my fevered exertions, but quickly averting her eyes.

‘It sheep blood.’ She sounded weary and resentful. ‘A terrible thing. In Foroyar, we . . . respect sheep. It feed us and keep us warm with wool. We look after sheep. Sheep look after us. It not right it be killed for . . . for this.’

The mention of the word killed fell into the space between us. Silja had never asked me if I’d murdered Aron Dam. She’d made it clear that I would be judged by her god and no one else. It seemed that hadn’t changed. If she was interested in my guilt or innocence, she didn’t show it.

We worked in silence for a while until a question that I’d been holding back finally forced its way into the open.

‘Silja, when I was away, did I . . . have any visitors?’

She paused and looked at me, hooking up an elbow so that she could push hair away from her face without using her blood-streaked hands.

‘Not the one I think you mean.’

‘Karis Lisberg.’

She shook her head. ‘No. Sorry.’

Ranva and Hvirla continued to play on the hillside, keeping their distance from the blood, the door and me. If Silja wanted to keep the little girl away then it made perfect sense as far as I was concerned.

There was a quiet determination about Silja, a stoicism that was hard to miss. If Jesus himself had been nailed to that door than I suspected she would have been shocked for all of two minutes before setting about washing him down and cleaning up the mess. I envied her calm tolerance and wished I could find some of my own rather than the contrasting emotion that was growing inside me.

Eventually we realized that the door would get no cleaner. It would never pass for white without a new coat of paint; its pink-streaked veneer stood testament to blood being thicker than water.

Both Silja and I were left with raw red hands. I looked at mine and couldn’t help but see them painted in guilt or at least the appearance of it. Silja caught me staring at them.

‘Hot water inside for you wash. I made hot if they let you free. I go now. Martin, he home soon.’

Silja, her daughter and their dog made their way back down the hill, Rannva running in front of her mother this time, stopping every so often to let her catch up and to sneak curious glances back at the man with blood on his hands.

I went inside the shack, feeling better about being in the cramped, under-equipped confines of the tiny house than I had earlier that day. It wasn’t prison. My jail was still the eighteen islands of the Faroes that I couldn’t leave, but this part of it at least felt like home. I stretched out on the familiar sagging bed and studied the ceiling.

I wanted sleep, needed it, but dreaded it. Since Dam’s death, the nights had got shorter and the nightmares deeper. The sweats and the shakes seemingly knew no end and it was draining me. It was hard to tell how much sleep I’d actually got since my arrest. When I wasn’t dreaming about Aron or Liam Dornan or the others, I was dreaming about not being able to sleep. Or at least I thought that’s what I’d been dreaming about. It all rolled into one, just like the clouded sun and the backlit darkness that defied you to pinpoint where one ended and the other began.

I fell back and closed my eyes. I might not have been able to distinguish lack of sleep from nightmares but I was ready to face both down.

Chapter 40

I’m sitting. Swaying back and forward but going nowhere. My eyes are shut, my legs crossed beneath me, yoga-style. I look down and see I’m stripped to the waist. I might even be floating a foot or two above the ground. I can’t tell.

It’s a dream or else things have changed. Rules of science may have evolved. I test them. Yes. Yes! I can float, rise up as I please. I look around and see no one else hovering. No one but me. I can fly if I want to, I know that. No one else can. Maybe I’m God. Or some kind of god. It feels great.

All I know is that it is a good thing. On the edge of my understanding is the belief that I must use this power for something. My arm has a life of its own. It waves loosely, arrogantly, through the air. Bring on the bands. Bring on the clowns. Entertain me.

They appear. As if by magic. Four man-boys. Early twenties going on gnarled forties. They are sullen, resentful. Like beaten tigers, claws shorn yet still fully armed with teeth. They stand in a row, heads bowed, but with a capacity about them. A readiness to turn, spring, attack. They remain dangerous.

I clap my hands and they all look up. There’s a slither of sweat trickling its way slowly down my back, crawling over vertebrae one by one, leaving a taint of guilt with every millimetre.

My hands clap again even though I’m barely aware I’ve done it, and the first man-boy screams as his arm breaks. The noise is quite incredible, a frozen branch snapping halfway up a snow-covered mountain. A bullet fired into a vacuum. An avalanche flows. Space set free.

I like the power.

A leg breaks on the next boy. Then a hip. A thigh. The ankle bone’s connected to the knee bone. Crack. Crack. Crack. It’s the look on their faces. All four shocked, surprised, outraged. They break, one by one, by one, by one.

There’s a thing I remember. Something buried way down deep. The guys who make sound effects for movies. Foley artists. That’s it, foley artists. They use peanuts or monkey nuts to replicate the sound. They take either end in their fingers, hold them up close to a microphone . . . and tear. Is that what I’m really hearing? The ripping open of peanuts or the clean – and yet not so clean – breaking of bones?

There’s my answer. A femur, the largest bone in the human body, rudely split in half in front of my eyes. A wrench. A pistol crack. The tear of gristle. The rip of tendons. The snap of muscle.

Above all, it’s the bones. The broken bones. There’s something about the finality of it. Break. Gone. Finished. Snap. Crackle. Pop.

I sit and watch. Impassive. I couldn’t care less. In fact . . . truth is . . . I like it. There’s something satisfying about the sound.