The Ship

by Stefan Mani

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No phone calls, no guests, no panic … nothing. Okay?’ Jón Karl’s voice is so cold that Lilja shudders.

  ‘Okay,’ she says, half sobbing, and disappears into the darkened children’s room where their two-year-old daughter is sleeping, while Jón Karl goes to their bedroom and pulls out underclothes, socks, T-shirts, shoes, a half-empty carton of Prince cigarettes and a green duffel bag from drawers and shelves in the big closet, throwing it all on the unmade bed. He puts on black socks, a black T-shirt and black army boots, which he laces right to the top. The rest of his clothes he shoves in the duffel bag. Through the window in the master bedroom he can see Lilja driving off into the night.

  In the living room Jón Karl slides a big cupboard aside and punches a seven-number code into the electronic lock that’s built into the concrete wall.

  Inside the safe are one million crowns in new 5000-crown bills; a revolver in an ankle holster; a box of .38 calibre shells; the family’s passports; a hunting knife in a leather sheath; stock and share certificates; various documents, and three bank deposit books from Switzerland and Luxembourg. The revolver is a 1970 model, .38 calibre, Smith & Wesson, short-barrelled, its cylinder holding five rounds. It fits tightly into the custom-made holster that Jón Karl fastens with Velcro around the top of his right boot. Then he shovels the rest of the safe’s contents into his duffel bag and tightens the drawstring. Everything except the miscellaneous documents, which he throws in the fireplace before lighting them.

  Jón Karl stands in front of the fireplace and watches the flames take hold of the paper, burn it and change it into thin black membranes that break, float up, keep burning and, little by little, become ashes and finally nothing at all. The smoke rises up the chimney, the fire sputters and the reddish light flickers, reflected in the wide-open eyes that stare into the dancing flames, into them and beyond to somewhere much further, much deeper.

  Hypnotising fire. Like an open doorway. And a lurking shadow.

  Crying wolf?

  Jón Karl turns suddenly and looks towards the French windows that open onto the deck behind the house. There is nothing to be seen. No shadow, no movement, no sound.

  But something is bothering him. Something that is close enough to ring warning bells in his subconscious.

  In the distance he hears a soft creaking.

  And a moment later the electricity goes off in the whole house.

  Darkness – apart from the fire in the fireplace, that forms dancing shadows on walls, floor and ceiling.

  The only thing Jón Karl is sure of at this moment is that time is short. The fact that something evil is around is not what matters the most. And what form or purpose that embodiment of evil has is completely irrelevant. First and foremost he must be ready for its arrival, whatever it might be.

  Jón Karl bends down, releases the revolver from its holster with his right hand while feeling around in the duffel bag for the ammunition with his left hand. When his fingers find the box they tear it open and grab a fistful of shells, most of which fall onto the living-room carpet and roll under tables and chairs. His hands move with the assurance of long practice; Jón Karl pushes the cylinder to the side and loads it, chamber by chamber, shoves it back in place and pulls back the hammer, his finger utterly still on the highly sensitive trigger. This is done in less than ten seconds.

  There is still one shell in the palm of his left hand, which Jón Karl rolls between clammy fingers as he listens. There is the low creak of door hinges out by the entrance hall and someone hurries along the carpeted corridor. Jón Karl throws the shell in the fire and creeps, bent over, into the darker side of the living room, where he shelters behind a leather armchair.

  When the shell explodes an uninvited guest leaps into the living room, turns in a circle, aims a sawn-off shotgun in all directions and shouts, ‘You’re dead!’

  Jón Karl aims and fires two shots, which silence the intruder, echo around the room and light it up.

  The first shot misses and shatters the glass in one of the windows that faces the driveway, but the second hits the intruder in his right shoulder.

  ‘Help!’ he yells and falls to his knees. He grabs the wound with his left hand and tries to handle the shotgun with his right, but his trembling fingers give way and the gun falls to the floor.

  Help? Are there more of them?

  Jón Karl steps away from his hiding place and cocks the gun for the third time, tasting blood, crazed thoughts spinning in his head and an ice-cold glint in his purposeful stare.

  ‘Don’t!’ the man cries, starting to crawl along the floor. He has a dark blue ski mask over his face and claws and kicks his way forward like a disabled bug, leaving bloodstains on the carpet.

  ‘Who sent you?’ asks Jón Karl, stepping on the intruder’s right ankle. He peers round in the dark and listens with one ear for the sound of other people as he bends down, points his revolver at the man’s abdomen and curls his left hand round the sawn-off shotgun.

  ‘Nobody,’ he answers hoarsely, staring at the master of the house with the fear of death in his bulging eyes.

  ‘Who are you?’ asks Jón Karl quietly and he shoves the revolver up under the man’s ribcage, eliciting a cry of fear and pain.

  ‘Nobody,’ he answers again, now thoroughly wet with his own blood and panting with discomfort.

  Jón Karl lets go of the sawn-off shotgun, smashes his knee deep into the abdomen of this uninvited guest and tears his mask off with his left hand.

  At the same moment somebody bashes him heavily in the back of his head. Bones crunch, muscles soften and everything goes black.

  Travel without consciousness is an amazing experience. Rolling back and forth as if in a swing, only more slowly, with the addition of uncomfortable sideways movements and always this funny feeling that the swing down is longer and deeper than the swing up, as if your limp body were falling over some kind of rim, shown in slow motion like a television replay, again and again.

  It’s rather soothing in some hypnotic way but first and foremost there is an unending feeling of numbness that seems more unreal the longer you float about in this oppressive void that smells of warm blood and is as large or small as your mind, as deep as the echoing in the slow drumbeat of the blow to your head.

  Boom, boom, boom …

  The inside of the ambulance is black. Jón Karl, wearing a light-blue-and-white seaman’s outfit, lies tied to the stretcher. The doctor sitting by him is an octopus man with an Albert Einstein mask over his face.

  If I say, ‘It begins well, then jogs along, really takes flight around the middle, but no-one understands the ending’, what would I be talking about?

  Is it a film?

  Yeah, but I’m not talking about a film.

  Is it maybe a book?

  Yeah, but I’m not talking about a book.

  Is it this boat trip?

  Yes, but I’m talking about something more and greater than this boat trip.

  The ambulance drives along a pitted road and the bumps echo inside a metal box the size of a ship’s hold.

  Boom, boom, boom …

  The pain is almost overpowering but at the same time as sweet as honey, as warm and tender as a sunbeam. The pain is a consequence of consciousness and consciousness is entwined with life itself. Pain is life and life is pain.

  Not dead yet, thinks Jón Karl behind closed eyes, broken bones and swollen flesh. He pretends continued unconsciousness while he attempts to work out the surroundings, the situation and the state of his own body.

  He is sitting on a chair, tied hand and foot. His ankles are tied to the front legs of the chair, while his wrists are bound together behind the chair back. The chair is bolted to the floor in a cold, damp space, under a naked lightbulb. His eyes are swollen, his nose sore and his jaw badly bruised, even broken. His ribs are aflame and his left collarbone cracked or broken. The back of his neck is extremely sore, his innards mauled and most of his joints stretched and twi
sted. Jón Karl can smell blood, cigarette smoke and foul sweat. He can distinguish three voices, but he can’t hear what they’re saying because of the ringing in his ears. But since the men are neither whispering nor keeping their voices down, Jón Karl knows he is in a ‘safe’ place somewhere far from help and civilisation.

  These guys are professionals.

  ‘Wake up, shithead!’ says one of the men and he strikes Jón Karl a blow with a rubber truncheon on his right thigh, just above the knee.

  Jón Karl lifts his head and opens his eyes. He knows they won’t stop beating him until he comes to and talks to them. He doesn’t know what they want, but he knows they won’t let him go until they’ve got what they want, whatever it is. If they’re going to let him go at all. The only thing Jón Karl wants to find out is how the hell he can get out of this alive and, without telling them anything about anything, whether he knows something about something or not.

  ‘Where’s the gambling joint?’

  Gambling joint? What fucking gambling joint?

  The questioner is hidden in a whirling haze, standing wide-legged in front of Jón Karl, who narrows swollen eyes and waits for confused colours and wavering outlines to take on a clearer form.

  ‘Where is it?’ says the man in a growling bass voice, slapping Jón Karl with a hand the size of a bear’s paw.

  The slap that comes snaps through flesh and bone and resonates through Jón Karl’s body like a copper gong, waking him from the stupor of the knockout blow. His blood fairly boils in his veins, his muscles swell and in his head flare the fires of evil, revenge and blood letting. The plastic bands tighten round his ankles and wrists; there is a creaking in the chair and the floor it is bolted to; he grinds his teeth and his bloodshot eyes bulge halfway out of their sockets.

  ‘I’ll kill the lot of you!’ he spits, spraying blood and a tooth onto the unpainted wooden floor.

  ‘You’re not killing anyone today,’ says the deep-voiced man lighting a cheap cigar.

  The voice and the dim outline of the man are familiar to Jón Karl. He stares into a thunder cloud through humming mist and tries to dig information from his confused brain, while little by little the dark cloud takes on the form of a man.

  Black leather jacket, black hair and eyes like black holes in a face like a fierce guard dog.

  This man is none other than Óðin R Elsuson, the thirty-five-year-old legend of the Reykjavík underground, by far the oldest of the hard guys and debt collectors who still have some power and the most dangerous of them all; a full-blooded lowlife and merciless thug who trusts nobody, fears nothing and lives according to the devil-inspired maxim ‘Happy is the man who has dead bodies as friends and ghosts as enemies’.

  Behind Óðin are the shapes of men who fade into the gloom and the dark walls.

  ‘I thought I heard someone crying wolf,’ Jón Karl whispers.

  ‘What did you say?’ asks Óðin coldly as he pulls Jón Karl’s gun out of the pocket of his leather jacket.

  ‘Nothing,’ says Jón Karl, snuffling blood up his nose.

  Óðin is muscular as a young bull, dark complexioned and so ugly as to be almost handsome. His hair is carefully combed to the back of his head and his brown eyes are widely spaced, lying deep in his coarse, big-boned face that is reminiscent of either a young beast or an old man, depending on the light.

  Jón Karl keeps it hidden, but the minute he recognises the man he loses all hope, like a flame going out in his breast. In the shadow of hopelessness, though, evil awakes from a deep sleep, and it is not concerned about life or death. It feeds off itself and shoves all else aside. It lives and behaves like a fire that grows and grows until it becomes so huge and fierce that it consumes itself and ceases to be.

  Evil takes possession of Jón Karl. It growls in his head, pumps black poison into his blood, permeates every nerve and has no aim but to grow and grow, open up and blossom like a hellish spirit in the flesh that encompasses it, whatever the consequences.

  Evil is essentially eternal and so has nothing to lose and nothing to win.

  ‘What a pea-shooter this is,’ says Óðin, handling the gun like a professional. He chews on his burning cigar, spins the cylinder on the gun, stops it with the thumb of his right hand, pulls back the hammer, shoves the barrel against Jón Karl’s knee and immediately pulls the trigger:

  Click!

  The hammer hits an empty chamber and nothing happens.

  Jón Karl jerks, his heart misses a beat and then does a somersault in his breast; his muscles stiffen; his veins, nostrils and pupils dilate, and a hot sweat breaks out on his face and back.

  ‘You have a reputation as a lucky bastard,’ says Óðin, putting the gun down on a rusty oil barrel. He picks up Jón Karl’s duffel bag, pours its contents on the floor and starts investigating them.

  Salty sweat drips into Jón Karl’s eyes. He blinks rapidly and studies the situation. There are three men: Óðin and two assistants, both dark clad and rather similar to each other. One is sitting bent over on a stool, holding his trembling right hand around his bloody right shoulder. This is the one Jón Karl shot in his living room. The other assistant is standing off to Óðin’s side, holding a rubber truncheon. These lads are hardly more than twenty years old. The one he shot is somehow familiar to Jón Karl, but he can’t remember who he is or what he’s called, which says it all about the reputations of these punks. They’re just some Heckle and Jeckle whom Óðin has lured with vague promises, or paid to follow him for a time. Nameless dopeheads who dream of fame and success in the underworld but are going to end up shot, cut and canvas-bagged in some building foundations, at the bottom of the sea or in a lava field where nobody will ever find them.

  ‘Planning a trip?’ says Óðin as he flips through the family’s passports before tearing them up. ‘I think not.’

  ‘You can’t break a man who won’t be broken,’ says Jón Karl, and continues studying where he is while he has the time and freedom to do so.

  He’s in some kind of shed, an old hovel, garage or storeroom. The walls are plywood or corrugated iron on a wooden frame, insulated with rockwool. There is rockwool in the windows and on the inside of the door. There are tools in a wooden chest on the floor near the door. Every joint on the chair Jón Karl is sitting on is reinforced with metal, but the chair creaks anyway after repeated use. On the floor and walls are black drops, black splashes and black streaks – dried blood that bears ugly witness to this unappealing space.

  ‘Keep your philosophy to yourself,’ says Óðin as he takes the million crowns out of the envelope and furtively hides them in his clothes. ‘It doesn’t affect me.’

  ‘I wasn’t talking to you,’ says Jón Karl. He is trying to breathe calmly, relax and think clearly, but all three activities are difficult to achieve in these surroundings and this company.

  Jón Karl is barefoot and shirtless; the plastic bands cut into his ankles and wrists, and he knows from experience that it’s almost impossible to break them without scraping away flesh and tendons.

  What can he do?

  ‘Well,’ says Óðin as he takes Jón Karl’s hunting knife and slices through the leg of his sports pants from his ankle to above his knee. ‘We’d better get started.’

  Óðin picks up a blue one-litre gas canister with a burner attached and opens the gas halfway.

  ‘I’m going to fry your leg,’ Óðin says, taking his burning cigar out of his mouth. ‘The smell will be gross and the pain indescribable. But you can get out of it if you talk now. Where is the gambling joint?’

  ‘South of heaven?’ says Jón Karl, just to say something. He can’t start bawling like some old woman just because they’re going to barbecue his leg. He has to think of his reputation. Without a reputation, he’s finished.

  ‘Wrong answer.’ Óðin puts his cigar to the spout of the burner. Nothing happens.

  ‘That was a question, not an answer,’ says Jón Karl through clenched teeth.

  ‘Save the jokes,’
says Óðin as he sniffs at the spout of the burner, then throws it to the floor. ‘It’s empty!’

  ‘I didn’t know …’ says Jeckle, stiff with fear.

  ‘Shut up!’ Óðin shoves him against the wall by the door. ‘Hand me the fucking bore!’

  ‘Here,’ says Jeckle, giving his boss a battery-driven hand bore with a steel bit in the chuck.

  ‘For fuck’s sake!’ says Óðin when he pulls the trigger on the bore; it groans and turns the blood-covered bit a few times before stopping altogether with a sorry-sounding squeal.

  Óðin throws it on the floor and punches Jeckle so hard in the stomach that he collapses, unable to breathe.

  ‘You guys wait here while I go and get a new gas canister,’ says Óðin to Heckle, who is still sitting holding his gunshot wound.

  ‘Can’t we just use a knife or the gun?’ asks Heckle. ‘Or cut off some fingers or toes?’

  ‘Tonight I’m going to fry,’ Óðin responds calmly and pats Heckle’s head.

  ‘But I need to get to a doctor!’ wails Heckle, showing his employer the bloody palm of his left hand.

  ‘Not until I’ve extracted the bullet.’ Óðin opens the door. ‘Hang tough. I won’t be long.’

  Óðin slams and locks the door on the outside with a padlock. A moment later a car door slams, a starter motor turns, a fanbelt screeches and an eight-stroke engine roars in the dark outside. Gravel rattles under wide tyres and the thunder of an engine fades into the distance.

  ‘Goddamn him!’ groans Jeckle, who is lying doubled up on the floor. He’s breathing in short gasps, his face a mask of pain.

  ‘Shut up, man,’ Heckle says tersely to his partner.

  ‘Sorry!’ says Jeckle, stumbling to his feet.

  ‘He’s not coming back,’ says Jón Karl with a cold grin.

  ‘Just shut your fucking mouth!’ says Heckle, bunching his fist in Jón Karl’s face. Heckle’s face twists from the pain of this gesture.

  ‘Yes, he will come back,’ mutters Jeckle. He collapses onto the tool chest by the door. ‘Of course he’ll come!’