The Blood Strand Read online

  “So do you think it was suspicious – that he was there doing something illegal?” I asked to clear up the ambiguity.

  Hentze considered. “No, we can’t say so for sure. There could be other explanations.”

  I nodded. Faced by a complete stranger, it was fair enough for Hentze to play it conservatively. I’d probably have done the same thing, but even so, I still wanted to get some indication of what he really thought and he was making me work hard to get it.

  “You said the shotgun had been fired recently?”

  “Ja, I think so. One shot only. The barrel was dirty and the used – cartridge – had not been removed.”

  Still neutral.

  “And he had a graze on his head and knee from a fall of some kind. Or a push, or a fight,” I added. It didn’t prompt any greater response though, just a nod.

  “So do you have a theory – a guess – about what happened?” I asked.

  Hentze rubbed a hand over his chin, as if to indicate he thought it was a valid question, without necessarily endorsing it. Finally he said, “My police eye tells me the situation isn’t usual, but without your father to explain I don’t think I can say more.”

  He made an open-handed gesture and I knew it was as much of an answer as I was going to get. I couldn’t tell whether he was maintaining a professional neutrality in order to conceal what he really thought, or because he didn’t have a clue. He didn’t come across as obtuse, but I recognised what was effectively a “no comment”.

  Time to go.

  “Okay, well thanks for your time,” I said. “If you get any more information will you let me know?”

  I took a card from my wallet and handed it to him.

  “Of course.” Hentze nodded, then pushed himself upright from the table. “I’m walking outside. Let me take you.”

  I followed him along the modern, featureless corridor and through a heavy grey door which led out on to a landing and wooden stairs. Three flights below, the stairwell gave access to the main entrance and I expected Hentze to let me find my own way out. Instead, he set off down the stairs without reference to me, then along the ground floor corridor to the exit. He pushed the door open and stepped outside on to a concrete ramp, holding the door and waiting for me to join him.

  “Do you smoke?” he asked when I stepped out. There was a breeze, but bright sunlight was reflected off the damp road in front of us.

  “Not often now. I used to.”

  “I also stopped,” Hentze said, slightly rueful. “But sometimes it is – useful – to have a reason to stand outside, you know?”

  When he cast me a sideways glance I knew what was going on. “Yeah, I think so,” I said

  He nodded, considered the view for a moment. “You said you left here when you were three years old?”

  On the surface it was conversational, but I knew it was an invitation to provide a final confirmation that he hadn’t stepped outside for nothing. I said, “My mother left Signar and took me to Denmark, then England. I haven’t been back since.” Not the entire truth, but enough for the moment.

  “Ah. Okay.” Hentze nodded. “I have been to the UK – to Scotland – for seminars. Just two times. The speeches weren’t so interesting, but there was a word I can’t remember, for a guess – a feeling about an investigation. Do you know it?”

  “A hunch?”

  “Yes, that was it.”

  I took the cue. “You have a hunch about Signar?”

  Hentze glanced up at the building behind us, as if to confirm he had left it. “Unofficially? For myself? Yes, of course.” He turned to look at me. “The same as you, I think.”

  “If it was my case I’d think it was blackmail,” I said baldly. “I can’t think of another reason why anyone would go to an isolated spot with a briefcase full of cash and a gun. And if the gun’s been fired and there’s evidence of a struggle I’d think it was blackmail gone wrong.”

  “Ja, I think so.” Hentze made an affirming gesture. “But I have nothing to prove it and the hospitals have seen no one with a shotgun injury, so I have a dead end.”

  He’d anticipated my next question so I reconsidered for a moment.

  “Have you asked the family about blackmail? I mean, directly.”

  He looked off across the road, as if debating his reply. “It’s a difficult thing,” he said in the end. “If you say, ‘I think there was blackmail,’ you are also saying you think there is something a person wants to keep secret. It could be anything: personal or business – you understand what I mean? So it’s difficult. Especially with harra Ravnsfjall.”

  “Why especially?”

  Before Hentze could answer a man in a waterproof jacket approached. He climbed the steps and passed into the building with a nod towards Hentze and a mildly curious look at me. Hentze waited until he’d gone inside before speaking again.

  “Signar Ravnsfjall has a large business. He knows many people in many places.” He turned back to see if I understood. I did.

  “So for now – until he can tell me what happened, or unless I discover something else – I have to wait.”

  Of course he did. If you’ve been told not to ask the obvious question, and if the family don’t want to cooperate, it’s bound to be a dead end.

  “I understand,” I said.

  Hentze shrugged, as if he’d said nothing at all. “Where are you staying?” he asked.

  “Just there. The Hotel Streym.” I gestured to the long, modern building, half clad in timber, half in silver grey steel, ten yards away. It still struck me as an unlikely, even ironic coincidence that the hotel had turned out to be next door to the police station.

  “For how long?”

  “I don’t know yet. I only got here this afternoon. A few days, probably.”

  “Okay,” Hentze said. “So it will be easy to contact you if there is news. And if there is anything you think of to help…”

  I realised I’d decided to like him. He seemed like someone you could do business with, so I nodded to show him I got it. “I’ll let you know,” I said. “Thanks for talking to me.”

  I held out my hand, and although he seemed to find it an unexpected gesture he shook it.

  “It’s no problem,” he said. “I’m sorry you had to come back because of these circumstances.”

  He sounded genuine about that, as if somewhere there had been a breach of etiquette. Then, with a brief nod, he turned away to open the door and go inside.

  As the door closed behind him I looked out across the road for a moment. I still didn’t know the name of the island on the far side of the grey sound water, but now that the light had shifted it didn’t look so make-believe any more and I knew that the black dog had lifted. It might still be skulking nearby, but maybe I’d kicked it hard enough to stop it sniffing at my heels for a while.

  4

  I STILL HAD TIME TO KILL BEFORE I WENT TO MEET KRISTIAN Ravnsfjall so I went in search of something to eat. I’d picked up a free tourist map at the hotel but I didn’t use it. I wanted to take the town as I found it, but despite the indecipherable signs and the underlying foreignness of the style and context of the buildings, what struck me most was the almost complete absence of people.

  It was nearly seven o’clock now and the streets were deserted. It felt as if the entire population had withdrawn to safety; taking shelter from some imminent disaster or storm, leaving only strangers like me outside in my ignorance. It was a feeling I couldn’t shake. What had I missed that everyone else knew?

  The emptiness of the streets added a strange, otherworldly dimension to the unfamiliarity of the place. I’d been curious to see if anything would strike me as familiar from the last time I was here twenty-five years ago, but I’d retained no conscious memory of the place. Of course, all I’d really been interested in back then was a fight, which I’d got: knocked on my arse. What I’d wanted then had been easy, but wandering the abandoned streets made it even less clear what I hoped to achieve by coming here now.


  I didn’t like the lack of purpose, the absence of knowing what I was doing. If you’re a copper the question of purpose is beautifully simple and defined: you want to know who did what. The why isn’t important – unless, perhaps, it sheds light on the who. But more often than not, why doesn’t matter. Why does someone kill a ten-year-old girl and leave her body in a stream? Who cares? What matters is who had the opportunity; who had the weapon; who left the DNA.

  Sure, in the course of trying to find the who you might come across a few whys along the way – that your suspect had a thing for little girls; had been abused himself as a child; hated his wife or his life. But do you really care about any of that? Not particularly. All you care about is who’s the right suspect.

  Put into police terms like that, I knew who and I knew what. Forty-odd years ago Signar Ravnsfjall and Lýdia Reyná had married and conceived a child, but not in that order. Three years later they separated. Lýdia had left the islands and taken me with her: old enough to walk and to talk by then, little else.

  All this I knew, and in police terms there was nothing left to answer: no mystery, no doubt. Those were the facts.

  So why was I here?

  Because it wasn’t enough. I wanted a reason, but it was a hard shift to make; to put aside the copper side of not caring about why and realise that it was the only question I was really interested in. It felt like I’d left solid ground and started to drift out to sea, where everything is fluid and changeable; pulled and distorted by the currents and tides of other people’s interpretation. There were no facts to tie up to any more, and that’s hard for a copper: it’s not how we want things to be.

  It wasn’t how I wanted things to be either, but I was here now, and here I wasn’t a copper any more. I’d have to get used to that, even if the idea was as foreign as the streets and their signs.

  * * *

  I ate in a restaurant called Marco Polo: dimly lit, silent and empty. From start to finish I was the sole customer, but the food was good and I left it deliberately late before paying the bill.

  When I stepped outside again the streets still seemed preternaturally quiet – more so, if that was possible, and I heard a church clock chime the hour in an ornate, tinkly sort of way, somewhere distant across the town. At a stroll it took me only three or four minutes to walk back through the streets as far as the Café Natúr, an old building which parted the road around it a short distance from the harbour. Outside it was clad in black wood with a turf roof; inside there was a bare wooden floor and a bar which extended half the length of the room.

  Fewer than half a dozen customers were scattered amongst the tables and booths and a lone barmaid in a low-cut T-shirt was hanging newly washed glasses from the rack above the counter. She smiled as I went up to the bar, as if she was glad of the distraction, and seemed to take my pronunciation of “Bjór,” as normal, which I was pretty sure it wasn’t.

  “Jan?”

  I’d been aware of the man leaving a table by the window and crossing the room. Now I turned as Kristian Ravnsfjall held out his hand.

  “I’m Kristian. It’s good to meet you at last. Really good.”

  “You too,” I said; an automatic response, not yet qualified.

  We shook hands and Kristian clasped mine in both of his own for a moment, as if to emphasise his feelings.

  He stood as tall as me, dressed in designer jeans and a smart-casual sweater under a sports jacket. He was good-looking the way many Scandinavians are, with healthy, athletic features and fair hair. It was receding a little at the temples but he wore it long enough to still give him a somewhat youthful appearance. I looked for any resemblance to Magnus but found little.

  The barmaid brought my beer then, but as I reached for my wallet Kristian immediately stopped me. “Please. Don’t think about it,” he said. “This is from me.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  He paid for the beer and we moved across to his table by the window. As I sat down I saw him looking at me openly before smiling again.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “We’re half-brothers, but I don’t see it. I thought… I don’t know.” He shrugged, waved it away. “People see no similarity between Magnus and me either. You’ve met Magnus, yes?”

  I nodded. “This afternoon at the hospital.”

  “It didn’t go so well?” He framed it as a question, but only just.

  “Did he say that?”

  “He didn’t have to. I saw him, and with Magnus you see what he’s thinking on his face.”

  He paused for a moment, as if considering the implications of what he’d said, then he shifted. “Don’t you think it’s strange that we’ve never met before?”

  “Not really. I’ve only been back once. You’d have been – I don’t know, ten maybe?”

  Kristian nodded. “I remember.”

  I frowned, not sure how he could. We hadn’t met then. “You do?”

  “Sure. You gave our father a black eye: we saw it. Someone gave Signar Ravnsfjall a black eye – that was a big thing. Even though we didn’t know the details then, we knew he had been in a fight.”

  “It wasn’t much of one,” I said. “I hit him – two or three times – and then he hit me and that was it.”

  “And you’ve never spoken to him since then?”

  “There was nothing to say.”

  Kristian seemed to consider this, then glanced around, perhaps assessing how public we were.

  “Do you smoke?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Not any more.”

  “Lucky man. But I could use one. There’s a smoking area at the back. Do you mind?”

  I told him I didn’t and we took our beers and crossed to the end of the room where Kristian held the door. Beyond it was a glassed-in terrace overlooking the street. It was furnished with aluminium furniture and a patio heater and there was no one else there.

  Kristian chose a table close to the heater, waiting until we’d both sat down before striking a light on a brass Zippo and drawing on his cigarette.

  “So tell me, are you married? Do you have kids?” he asked, exhaling smoke.

  I shook my head. “Divorced. No kids.”

  “Ah. So we’re in the same boat. I’m not divorced yet, but Anni and I split up three months ago. No kids either, thank God. Just Anni’s daughter from before.”

  “How long were you married?”

  “Seven years. You?”

  “Eight.”

  Kristian nodded, as if acknowledging our shared experience. “Was it because of your work?” he asked. “Every time I see a police show on TV the detective has always split up with his wife because of his job. I think that must be an exaggeration for real life, but…”

  “It doesn’t help,” I acknowledged. And because that was as far as I wanted to go I said, “What about Magnus – has he got a family?”

  “Oh ja, he’s the family man,” Kristian said, as if it couldn’t be any other way. “He’s married fifteen years with three kids. They are all brats, but that’s okay because they’re Signar’s grandchildren. That’s the important thing for Magnus: to keep the family line. You know what I mean? For the business.” He tapped his cigarette on the ashtray as punctuation.

  With someone else I’d have expected to hear an undertone of bitterness or resentment in that, but Kristian Ravnsfjall gave no sign of it. He had an easy, light manner of speaking; quick to add a self-deprecating gesture if he thought he’d said something too serious. He was a man who would be easy to like, I decided: easy to do business with probably, and perhaps easy to trust. I wasn’t sure about doing any of that yet, but I did find myself speculating on how he and Magnus had turned out so different.

  “So do you work for the business as well?” I said, conscious of the lull.

  Kristian shook his head. “I used to, but I’m the second son. Magnus runs Four Fjords with Signar looking over his shoulder. They’re a good team because they’re so much the same.” He paused, took a drag on his cigarette. “But Mag
nus and me, we don’t do so well that way, so when I had the opportunity to make my own business a few years ago, that’s what I did. I have one place at Vestmanna, another on Suðuroy.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Aquaculture. We farm salmon: top quality, almost wild. We sell to the high-end markets all over the world – hotels, restaurants… They all say it’s the best they can get.” He made a wave-away motion, as if to distance the opinion. “We are not as large as Four Fjords, but it’s going okay.”

  “I was told that Signar’s business had made him a rich man. Is that true?”

  “Ja, he’s a rich man – at least on paper.”

  “So would it be usual for him to go around with a lot of cash in the boot of his car?”

  Kristian gave me a slightly wry look. “You’re being a police officer now?”

  “Force of habit,” I said, keeping it light. “The way he was found – the circumstances – seemed a bit odd that’s all.”

  “You mean why he was out there at Tjørnuvík?”

  I nodded. “Do you know?”

  “No one does,” he said with a shrug. “No one can figure it out.”

  “Who was the last person to see him on Sunday, do you know?”

  “Magnus told me it was two guys on a boat in Runavík. Signar was there about five o’clock – the afternoon – but after that, no one has seen him.”

  “He didn’t go home?”

  “No,” Kristian shook his head, but then seemed to recognise a need to elaborate. “My father often goes around to visit people: to talk, drink coffee, make the world right, you know what I mean? Sometimes he stays out into the evening, and on Sunday my mother went to bed early. She has a problem with her knee and her hip. They’re painful, so she took pills and went to sleep. She didn’t know till the morning that he wasn’t there.”

  “Okay,” I said, nodding. “That makes sense.”

  “You think there is something suspicious?”

  He looked at me astutely and for a moment I debated whether to tell him about my meeting with Hentze before instinctively choosing not to. Instead I shrugged, as if I was considering it for the first time.