by Stefan Mani
Stefán Máni grew up in Ólafsvík, a small village on the west coast of Iceland. He left school at an early age and became a fisherman, which meant a hard and often violent life at sea. Over time Stefán realised he wanted something else from life, especially as many of his friends ended up in prison –or worse. Sixteen years and several books later, he wrote Skipið, which won the 2007 Drop of Blood prize for best Icelandic crime novel. The Ship has been translated into many European languages and at last is now available in English. Stefán lives in Reykjavík.
Published for the first time in the English language by Pier 9, an imprint of Murdoch Books Australia Pty Limited, 2012
Murdoch Books Australia
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Millers Point NSW 2000
Phone: +61 (0) 2 8220 2000
Fax: +61 (0) 2 8220 2558
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Copyright © Stefán Máni 2007
Title of the original Icelandic edition: Skipið
Published by agreement with Forlagið, www.forlagid.is.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: (ebook)
Author: Mani, Stefan.
Title: The ship [electronic resource] / Stefan Mani.
ISBN: 9781743438497 (ebook)
Subjects: Crime--Fiction.
Suspense fiction.
Dewey Number: A823.4
Cover design by Madacin Creative
Cover images by Malcolm Fife / © Alamy (ship); Kim Westerskov / © Getty Images (sea);
Maga / © Shutterstock (lightning)
Author picture courtesy of Jóhann Páll Valdimarsson
The rusty brown hull rests on underwater crags, sloping five degrees to port and thirty astern. Its prow pierces the ice at a sharp angle and the stern juts out over a murky fissure, causing the six-storey wheelhouse to lean over the abyss like a haunted house, the empty windows of the bridge staring at nothing. During the day, bluish light filters through the ice into the depths, where curious seals swim around the wreck, which quickens occasionally in the ocean currents, producing a long, drawn-out screech, heavy thumps and a thick oil slick, green, pink and purple in the weak light that floats up under the ice like liquid aurora borealis.
That which sleeps forever is not dead.
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Title
Copyright
Introduction
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
XXVIII
XXIX
XXX
XXXI
XXXII
XXXIII
XXXIV
XXXV
XXXVI
XXXVII
XXXVIII
XXXIX
XL
I
Monday, 10 September 2001
It’s four minutes to eight in the narrow kitchen of the Old Town house where a young family of three is eating cabbage and meatballs with melted butter and new potatoes.
Outside the window is the cold and dark of autumn; inside the kitchen it is warm and bright.
‘I’d have liked to have something a little better for your dinner, Sæli love,’ says his partner as she cuts up a meatball for their three-year-old son.
‘This is just what I wanted, Lára, my sweet,’ says Sæli, smiling as he helps himself to more food. ‘I’ll be getting nothing but cream soups, roast meat and gravy for the next month.’
‘Poor you!’ says Lára with a grin.
‘Come on, you know what I mean,’ Sæli says, gently pinching her waist.
Sæli is first seaman on a freighter and Lára works as a hairdresser in 101 Reykjavík, the heart of the city.
‘Did I show you that flat on Framnes Road?’ asks Lára, wiping most of the tomato sauce off her son’s face. ‘There were pictures of it in today’s paper.’
‘Yes. No … I didn’t see it,’ mutters Sæli with a sigh. ‘I thought we weren’t going to look at flats just yet?’
‘There’s no harm in keeping our eyes open,’ says Lára, irritated.
‘Yes, I know … I just …’ Sæli puts his right hand over her left. ‘It’s just that there are enough payments as things stand, and …’
‘We can’t stay here forever,’ says Lára with a maternal smile for her son, who is guzzling water from a sticky glass. ‘Not now that – you know?’
‘I know,’ Sæli says under his breath. He carries on eating, though his appetite is gone.
‘We’ll look into it when you get back, okay?’ says Lára, affectionate now.
‘Yes, we will.’ Sæli looks tenderly into the eyes of the woman he loves, then the distracting sound of his mobile phone, ringing out in the hall, suddenly makes him tense.
‘Do you have to answer it?’ says Lára.
‘I’ll be quick,’ says Sæli, bolting from the table. He fishes the phone out of the inside pocket of his jacket and looks at the lit-up screen.
Name withheld
‘Hello?’
‘This is Satan.’
Sæli has no idea of the real name of this man, who introduced himself that way when he phoned the first time, a few days ago.
‘Yes, hello,’ says Sæli, then continues in a lower voice: ‘I’ll phone you back in a while … Don’t phone again. I’ll phone, all right?’
‘Listen to me,’ says the cold, calm voice on the phone.
‘No, you listen to —’
‘I’m in the neighbourhood,’ says Satan firmly. ‘Would you rather invite me in?’
‘No, I …’ Sæli glances into the kitchen, where Lára is pretending to not watch or listen. ‘What do you want?’
Sæli slips to the front door and peers out the window beside it. He sees a maroon BMW 750 parked halfway up on the footpath across the street. The car is purring in neutral and at the wheel sits a young man the size of a full-grown bear.
‘You owe money,’ says the caller.
‘I know, I know,’ responds Sæli, scratching his head as he speaks. ‘And I intend to …’
‘Nobody forced you to play poker with those guys,’ says the voice, still flat, calm and as cold as before.
‘No, I —’
‘You’re about to sail, aren’t you?’ says Satan without waiting for an answer. ‘My client has connections in Colombia. His people will take a package addressed to you to the harbour down there. They know the name of your ship and when it’s expected to arrive. You are to bring that package home. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
‘Smuggling?’ whispers Sæli, so dry mouthed he’s hoarse.
‘First instalment on your debt,’ says Satan calmly.
‘First instalment?’ whispers Sæli fiercely, going red to the roots of his hair. ‘I could land in jail. Who … How … What’s in this …?’
‘You sail, you collect the package. That’s it,’ says Satan icily. ‘I’ll make sure nothing happens
to your wife and son while you’re away. Understand?’
‘If you … Don’t you dare –’
‘You bring the package,’ Satan interjects with the conviction of one who’s in control. ‘I look after the family. That’s it.’
‘What … Hello?’ says Sæli, but there’s no one on the line, just silence and the echo of his own heartbeat. He again looks out the window, in time to see the BMW roll down off the footpath and disappear around the corner, its exhaust streaming behind it like a tail.
‘I wonder what it costs to have a man killed?’ Sæli asks himself softly as he returns his mobile phone to his jacket pocket.
Sæli has already been in touch with a friend of his cousin’s who has some knowledge of the underworld; Sæli told him about this problem when Satan first called, in the hope that
the friend could give him some good advice or even sort out the mess for him. That guy was pretty tough himself, but when he heard the name ‘Satan’ he just wished Sæli good luck and hung up.
What should he do, Sæli wonders now. What can he do?
Sæli tries to swallow but feels as if he has a potato stuck in his throat. Then he tries to rid himself of all worries and ugly thoughts before turning back to the kitchen and his family.
‘Who …?’ asks Lára, giving her partner the look of a woman who suspects there’s another woman in the picture. After all, he often disappears for hours on end when he’s on shore leave. What’s she supposed to think?
‘It was just Rúnar,’ says Sæli, clearing his throat as he resumes his place at the table. Then he forces a smile and pats his son’s head, before he fleetingly looks at his partner, who is trying to rid herself of her suspicions.
‘Is everything all right?’ asks Lára cautiously.
‘Yes, it’s just …’ Sæli sighs. The bosun, Rúnar, had phoned him earlier and asked him to meet him and three other crew members before they joined the ship. ‘He was just reminding me of that meeting I told you about.’
‘Oh … I see.’ Lára smiles crookedly.
An hour or so later Sæli is sitting by his son’s bed, reading him a fairytale by lamplight.
‘You know Daddy has to leave later on?’ says Sæli when the story is finished.
‘On the ship?’ the boy says with a sigh.
‘Yes.’
‘Can I come too?’ asks the boy eagerly but without much conviction.
‘No, lad,’ says his father, smiling despite all his worries and the pain of parting. ‘You have to look after Mummy for me.’
‘I know,’ the boy mutters, pulling his doona up to his chin.
‘Daddy will be thinking about you,’ says Sæli, kissing the boy on the forehead and turning off the light. ‘Your daddy loves you.’
‘Egill loves his daddy,’ says the boy in the dark. As Sæli squeezes the little hand his stomach knots up and salty tears run down his cheeks.
Once the boy is asleep, Sæli joins Lára on the couch. She pulls a blanket over the two of them and snuggles up to him.
Candles glow in the living room; incense smokes on top of the darkened television set and the soundtrack of Fire Walk with Me sounds softly from the CD player.
Sæli stares at the flames and absentmindedly fiddles with Lára’s hair, which flows down her back like silk.
‘You remember I’ve got to meet Rúnar and the others,’ says Sæli softly and he feels how Lára stiffens under the blanket.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Sæli with a sigh. ‘Something to do with work.’
‘Can’t it wait?’ she asks, irritated.
‘Apparently not,’ mutters Sæli with another sigh.
‘Don’t you let them get you into any trouble,’ Lára says, sitting up to look him in the eye.
‘No, of course not.’ Sæli is anxious now and somewhat uncomfortable. ‘There just seems to be something they need to talk about.’
‘Will you be back?’
‘No,’ answers Sæli, his stomach clenching. ‘We’ll take a cab out to the ship after.’
‘I’m going to miss you,’ says Lára with an empty look. ‘I mean, like, more than usual … you know.’
‘I understand.’ Sæli says, placing his left palm on her stomach, which has a tiny life swimming in its warm sea. ‘You might have a bulge by the time I get back?’
‘Maybe.’ Lára smiles faintly.‘When should we tell Egill?’
‘When I get back,’ says Sæli firmly. ‘Then we’ll tell him together.’
‘All right,’ Lára murmurs, dreamy-eyed. She leans forward and kisses her man, who pulls her down on top of him and rolls her carefully onto the floor. ‘Am I the one and only?’ she whispers between kisses.
‘Absolutely the one and only.’
Outside the wind is coming up from the west, the curtains twitch, the candle flames flicker and fat raindrops burst against the dark windowpanes in tune to wet kisses, wild hearts and the sombre music. The flames hiss, sputter and go out, the glow dies and the blue smoke swims like a fish into the dark, disappearing into the deep.
Evil lasts forever and nothing good is eternal.
II
The dark in the double garage is absolute, then ceiling lights flicker and come on one after another. Footsteps echo from wall to wall as a young woman wearing high-heeled leather boots strides quickly across the concrete floor. She is dressed in a short skirt, thin blouse and high-heeled leather boots, and carries her two-year-old daughter under one arm.
‘Mummy’s car,’ says the little girl as her mother walks past a two-door Mercedes-Benz convertible.
‘Daddy’s car,’ she says when her mother unlocks a silver Range Rover Vogue with a smart key.
‘Yeah, yeah, keep still,’ says the mother impatiently as she secures her daughter in the car seat in the back of the four-wheel drive, which smells of leather polish, rubber and cleaning fluids, like the new car that it is.
The eight-cylinder petrol engine purrs as the garage doors open and the woman backs out the car, past two concrete lions and onto the street. The garage is under a two-storey villa which is all lit up in the cold and dark of the autumn night, its windows like the red eyes of a wary sphinx. The garage doors close, the engine note rises and the Range Rover disappears into the dark of the suburb of Staðahverfi, one of the most thinly populated areas of Reykjavík.
‘Where are we going?’ asks the child in the back seat. She is dressed in pyjamas and woollen socks, and she’d been sound asleep just a few minutes earlier.
‘To Granny’s,’ her mother answers briskly as she puts even more pressure on the accelerator.
Three minutes later she pulls up in front of a block of flats in the suburb of Rimahverfi.
‘Can I come in?’ asks the little girl, rubbing her eyes.
‘No, just wait. I won’t be a minute,’ says her mother without turning around. She hops out of the car, leaving it running in the dark car park.
‘Mummy,’ says the little girl softly as she watches her mother run towards the building and disappear through an open ground-floor window.
An old lady wakes up when someone turns on the light in her bedroom. On a dark shelf by her bed stands a seven-branched gold candlestick and on the edge of the shelf a highly polished copper plaque proclaims:
Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord!
‘Where’s the case?’ demands the woman’s daughter-in-law, standing at the end of the bed.
‘Lilja?’ says the old lady, sitting up in bed. She is slim and healthy looking, brown-eyed and olive-skinned. ‘What are you doing?’ she continues in her strong German accent. ‘Is something wrong? How did you get in? Where is Jon Karl?’
‘Where is the case?’ says Lilja again, grinding her teeth. ‘He sent me to fetch the case. Where is it?’
‘The case? What case, dear?’ The woman slips out of bed and puts on a bathrobe over her nightgown. She moves like a ballerina.
‘The red case. The suitcase,’ Lilja hisses. ‘The case he
asked you to keep for him.’
‘Oh, that case,’ mutters the old lady, studying her daughter-in-law with a look of doubt and suspicion. ‘I almost decided to just take it to the recycling. Don’t care to keep something I don’t know what it is. And then you come to fetch it in the middle of the night! I haven’t seen you for over a week and then you just wake me up like …’
‘The case. Now!’ Lilja spits out and clenches her fists. ‘I haven’t got all night!’
‘What in the world?’ says the woman in her accented Icelandic, pulling her bathrobe tighter. ‘I’m woken suddenly from a deep sleep and then you just insult me and —’
‘Listen! None of that!’ says Lilja, grabbing the old lady’s shoulder. ‘Little Sara is waiting in the car. Do you want her to be kidnapped or something?’
‘Is the baby out in the car?’ the woman says, gasping. ‘Is something the matter with you, woman? Why are you gadding about with the child in the middle of the night? Why did you not bring her inside? Is something wrong? Where is Jon Karl?’
‘Where is the fucking case?’ screams Lilja and yanks her mother-in-law’s shoulder so hard that the sleeve rips off her bathrobe.
‘In the laundry room. Don’t …’ says the old lady weakly, but she stops speaking when her daughter-in-law lets go of her.
‘Where?’ asks Lilja, turning on the laundry-room light.
‘Under the table. Behind the laundry basket.’ The old lady has followed her into the hall.
‘Here it is,’ mutters Lilja. She pulls out a red suitcase which she attempts to open, but it’s locked and she doesn’t know the combination.
‘Where is Jon Karl?’ the woman says again, following her daughter-in-law to the front door. ‘Where is my son? Is he in trouble?’
