The wild beast of Wuhan al-3

by Ian Hamilton

  The car rental opened at eight and Ava was there ten minutes later. The woman behind the counter was dour, almost grim, her conversation devoid of pleasantries. Ava had booked a BMW but there wasn’t one available; the woman informed her she was getting a Saab. Ava had asked for a GPS system; the woman said she didn’t need one, but Ava argued with her to get it.

  The drive did turn out to be simple, almost a straight run on route E45, from Aalborg northeast to the coast and then north past Frederikshavn to Skagen, at the northernmost tip of the Danish peninsula. The countryside — what she could see of it through the mist and rain — was mainly marsh. The villages she passed, their homes and shops pressed tightly against the road, were uniform and neat: rows of brick houses, red tile roofs, and lace curtains hanging in almost every window.

  She drove into Skagen at ten thirty, found the downtown area easily enough, and parked her car in a public lot that held only one other vehicle. As she got out she had a feeling of deja vu. She could have been in downtown Banff, minus the Rocky Mountains. Skagen had the same touristy feel, its main street lined with souvenir shops, coffeehouses, boutiques, dainty restaurants, and, in this case, art galleries. She counted four within sight and headed for the nearest one. It was time to jump into the haystack.

  A middle-aged blonde woman with a heaving chest was fussing with a group of small paintings. She took a glance at Ava and then turned back to what she was doing. There was no one else in the gallery. Ava stood, staring, waiting. The woman ignored her. Finally Ava said, “Can you help me?”

  “The prices are on the works,” the woman said in heavily accented English.

  “That’s not the kind of help I’m looking for.”

  “Then what can I do?”

  “Do you know a painter called Jimmy Sandman?” Ava said to her back.

  “We called him Jimmy the Sandman,” she said.

  Ava hadn’t expected it to be so easy. Then she noted the past tense. “Excuse me, did you say ‘called’? Has something happened to him?”

  The woman finally turned towards Ava, a look of mild surprise on her face when she actually looked at her. Is it because I’m Chinese? Ava thought. Is it the Adidas jacket and pants?

  “Yes, he left town.”

  “He moved away?”

  “Years ago.”

  “Do you know where he went?”

  “No.”

  “Does he have any friends, any relatives in Skagen I could speak with?”

  “Jimmy was a strange man. Not many people wanted to talk to him, let alone be friends with him.”

  “There must have been someone. Another painter, maybe.”

  Ava watched as the woman searched her memory, almost painfully. “He and Jasper drank together sometimes.”

  “Jasper who?”

  “Kasten.”

  “And where would I find Jasper Kasten?”

  “At the Skaw.”

  “Pardon?”

  “ The Skaw.”

  “I did hear you. I just don’t what the Skaw is.”

  “Come with me,” the woman said, walking towards the door. She opened it and pointed to the left.

  “See that hill at the end of street? If you climb it you can look down on the Skaw. Jasper goes there every morning to paint.”

  “How will I recognize him?”

  “He wears a red anorak.”

  The rain had thankfully let up, but the closer Ava got to the hill, the brisker the wind. It was a good ten-minute walk, which she found invigorating. Steps had been built into the side of the hill, which was actually an enormous sand dune. Up she went, leaning into the wind, glad she had worn her running gear. A roaring noise was coming from the other side of the dune, and the closer she got to the top the louder it got. She couldn’t imagine that it was just waves rolling in; the wind wasn’t that strong.

  She spotted Jasper Kasten squatting on a camp stool, a canvas on an easel in front of him. His back was to her, his focus on the scene below: a huge expanse of beach. But it wasn’t the beach that seemed to hold his attention, and very quickly she saw why. The sea beyond was being whipped into some kind of frenzy, the water spewing into the air like a geyser. The roar she was hearing came from the same source, but now that she was closer she could hear a distinct screech coming from what seemed to be the centre of the geyser.

  The cloud cover had broken, streaks of blue now appearing where there had been only a grey shroud. The clouds were moving quickly, leaving gaps for the sun to peek out, and when it did, it created a pattern of rainbows over the water. Ava was a city girl, most comfortable when she had concrete under her feet, but even she found the seascape breathtaking.

  He didn’t hear her coming and she had to move into his line of vision to get his attention. He looked up, annoyed. He had pale blue eyes, thin lips, a pointed chin, and huge jug ears. “Mr. Kasten?” she said.

  “Do I know you?” he asked in English, his manner easing.

  “No, I was referred to you by one of the women in town.”

  “That sounds dangerous.”

  “I’m looking for someone and they said you might be able to help me.”

  “Who?”

  “Jimmy the Sandman.”

  “Good God, I haven’t heard that name in a while.”

  “So you know him?”

  “Of course,” he said, looking out at the sea as if he had already lost interest in the conversation. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Ava said.

  “That there on the right, that is the Kattegat strait. It flows up from the southeast and the Strait of Denmark. And there on the left, that is the Skagerrak. It comes from the North Sea. They meet here, crashing into each other in some kind of perpetual war, neither of them ever making headway, just smash, smash, smash in futility. Some days are better than others. Today is almost perfect. The wind is strong; the light flickers.”

  She looked at his painting. “You come here every day?”

  “I do.”

  “And you paint the same thing?”

  “It is never the same. That’s why I find it so beautiful.”

  “I was told Jimmy painted scenes like this too.”

  “He painted this one, except he couldn’t resist sticking in those ridiculous characters of his.”

  “On driftwood?”

  “Yeah, the crazy bastard.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You would have thought he’d invented the idea of painting on driftwood. He used to scour this beach every morning looking for what the tide had brought in. He used to go nuts if anyone else got there first or was looking when he was. There was more than one fight down there.”

  “Do you know what happened to him?”

  “Why are you interested?”

  “I’m looking for him. It’s business-related.”

  “Business? That’s a word I’d never associate with him.”

  “Do you know what happened?”

  “He left.”

  “When?”

  “Four or five years ago.”

  “Why?”

  “His wife, I think. She found it too crowded here.”

  “Crowded?” Ava said in disbelief.

  “In the summer we get overrun by those fucking German tourists, but most of the time it’s like this. Me, a couple of other painters, and a few guys on the beach throwing sticks for dogs to chase. The wife was a bit of a nut job, used to nag him something awful. Though when you think about all the kids she had to look after, maybe she had a reason.”

  “Do you know where they went?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think anyone you know would know?”

  “I don’t know him, but Jimmy had a brother in Hirtshals.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Ronny. He owns a fish plant, Sorensen Fiske. It’s right on the main pier in Hirtshals.”

  “Is that far from here?”

  “Straight west about forty kilometr
es. Just follow the concrete bunkers.”

  “Bunkers?”

  “During the Second World War the Germans dotted this entire coastline with them, to defend themselves against an attack that never came. The walls are so thick we can’t rip them down. That’s why some of the fuckers come back here every summer — to relive the old glory days.”

  “Thanks for the help,” she said, not particularly wanting to hear a rant about the Second World War; she’d heard them often enough when Chinese spoke about the Japanese. Different continent, different occupiers, same hatred.

  (15)

  She punched Sorensen Fiske into her GPS and up it popped, a half-hour drive if she kept to the speed limit.

  Hirtshals was smaller still than Skagen, and she had no trouble wending her way through town to the harbour. There was one large jetty that, according to signs in Danish and English, handled ferry traffic. The others seemed devoted to fishing boats. Ava was surprised to see so many of them in port. Around the outer perimeter of the harbour were a number of what looked like fish plants, and at the far end she saw the sign sorensen fiske.

  She parked the car at the far end of the harbour lot and started to cover the two hundred or so metres to the plant. She had walked about a hundred metres when the smell first became noticeable. She couldn’t identify it at first, but the closer she got to the plant, the more intense it became. And then she realized what it was: urine.

  She gagged and began to breathe through her mouth. Every four or five breaths she would try her nose again, hoping the odour had abated. It just got worse — the raw, overpowering smell of piss. She felt as though she were walking in a cloud of it and the pale overhead sun was causing it to ripple up from the pavement. It reminded her of a street corner, a block from her hotel in Ho Chi Minh City, that served as a toilet for street vendors and drunks. She had to walk past the corner twice a day, and she could smell the urine from at least twenty metres. Ho Chi Minh was child’s play compared to Hirtshals.

  She was breathing entirely through her mouth when she got to a wide-open plant door, from which the urine smell was obviously escaping. She looked inside and saw six men labouring. They were picking up grey fish that looked like small five-pound torpedoes. They lifted each one by the tail and then drove the head onto a spike that was attached to a bench. They then cut across the back of the fish’s neck, gripped the skin with pliers, and ripped it off.

  All the men were in rubber boots and overalls. None of them of them wore shirts. Their chests were massive, their forearms even bigger. One of them spotted Ava standing in the doorway and yelled something at her in Danish.

  She stepped inside, trying not to breathe. “I don’t speak Danish,” she said.

  “We already have a Chinaman who buys our fins,” he said in English.

  “I don’t want to buy fins.”

  “And we have a contract in the U.K. for all the meat.”

  “I don’t want the meat.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “I’m looking for Ronny Sorensen.”

  “He’s in the office,” he said, pointing to a cubicle on the right.

  She walked to the door and knocked. She heard something in Danish and assumed it was Come in.

  A short, fat, bald man looked up at her when she opened the door. “Erik told you, our fins are all sold,” he said.

  “Are you Ronny Sorensen?”

  “I am.”

  “My name is Ava Lee. I’m trying to locate your brother, Jimmy.”

  “You mean Jan?”

  “Yes, the one and the same.”

  “Why?”

  “Business.”

  “Jan doesn’t do business.”

  “Painting business.”

  “That’s not business. This is business,” he said, motioning to the plant.

  Uninvited, Ava sat in a chair across from the desk. “What are those fish anyway?” she asked.

  “Sand sharks, dogfish, rock salmon, whatever you want to call them. Every market puts its own name on them.”

  “And that stench?”

  “Uric acid. It is natural to the fish — nothing to do about it. If you want to process dogfish, you have to learn to cope with it. Me, I don’t notice it anymore. The men, the same, though it’s hard on us when we leave here. The smell gets into your clothes, which is why the men work in as little as they can. Still, my wife swears it gets into your skin. Nothing to do about that either. It puts money in the bank, and in this town we’re about the last fish plant still in full production.”

  Ava wondered if her nylon Adidas jacket would absorb the urine smell, and was thankful she hadn’t worn her good clothes.

  “Where do the fins go?”

  “New York, to a Chinaman, and from there God knows. Probably China. The meat goes to the U.K., to the fish-and-chippers. They don’t have much cod anymore so they use the dogfish. They call it rock salmon. Sounds better, I guess.”

  “Yes, it does,” Ava said. “Mr. Sorensen, I was asking about your brother.”

  “Haven’t seen him in years.”

  “But do you know where he is?”

  “Why?” he repeated.

  “I have a client who bought several of his paintings. They’re in the market for more but haven’t been able to locate him.”

  “Jan’s paintings were never in any great demand.”

  “Times change; things get trendy.”

  “Jan is trendy?”

  “He has a growing following.”

  “Son of a bitch! I’m surprised.”

  “So, Mr. Sorensen, do you know where I can find him?”

  “He’s in the Faeroe Islands.”

  She had heard the name but just couldn’t place it. A vision of travelling to some South Pacific atoll surfaced in her head. “Where are the Faeroe Islands?”

  “In the middle of absolutely fucking nowhere,” Sorensen said.

  “That’s helpful.”

  He laughed. “It’s true — the middle of nowhere. They’re about 800 kilometres southeast of Iceland, 650 kilometres north of here, and 800 kilometres northeast of Scotland, in the North Atlantic. The Faeroes are the kind of place you don’t arrive at by accident, unless of course you’re some stupid Viking who got shipwrecked there two thousand years ago.”

  “Why did Jan go there?”

  “Helga.”

  “His wife?”

  “The fat cow is from there, never wanted to leave, and she nagged him all the time about going back. He finally gave in to her.”

  “How can I contact him?”

  “You can write him a letter.”

  “Do you have a phone number for him, a house number or a mobile?”

  “He doesn’t have a phone.”

  “Email?”

  “Don’t be stupid. This is my brother we’re talking about, a man who doesn’t have much use for the outside world. He’s living in a fishing village about half an hour from Torshavn, the capital. It isn’t enough that he wants to live in one of the most isolated countries in the world; when he gets there, he has to isolate himself even more.”

  “Do you have an address for him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I get it?”

  “I’m not sure he would appreciate that.”

  “Mr. Sorensen, all artists like to know their work is appreciated. I’m not trying to sell him a magazine subscription or a mobile phone plan; I want to buy some of his work.”

  He searched her face for a lie. Ava tried to smile, but it was difficult to make it natural when she was still breathing through her mouth.

  “Okay, I guess it can’t hurt,” he said. He wrote the number on a yellow Post-it pad, tore off the sheet, and passed it to her.

  She read, “Jan Sorensen, Tjorn, Faeroe Islands.”

  “The village has fewer than a thousand people. You can’t fart without everyone knowing. I write to him, I send him things, and I know the letters always get through because he always replies.”

  “He
still has a bank account in Skagen,” she said.

  “How would you know that?”

  “When we were trying to trace him, my client still had that information from their last transaction.”

  “The statements come here. I bundle them and send them every six months or so.”

  Ava saw a tiny opening. “I may actually go to the Faeroes to see him. Would you like me to deliver his mail for you?”

  “No,” he said.

  So much for that, Ava thought. “If I were going to the Faeroes, Mr. Sorensen, what would be the best way to do it?”

  “There is a ferry from Hanstholm.”

  “And how long a journey is that?”

  “Close to two days.”

  “Ah, how about flying?”

  “You can fly.”

  “From?”

  “I’m not a travel agent,” he said.

  “That’s true,” Ava said, standing up.

  “Tell me,” he said, looking up at her. “Those shark fins, what do they do with them?”

  “They make soup.”

  “I know that, but what kind of soup?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I hear that it is a special kind.”

  “Well, it’s traditionally served on special occasions: weddings, birthdays, honouring someone.”

  “So it’s expensive, huh?”

  She wondered what he was selling the fins for — maybe a couple of dollars a kilo. How would he react if he knew that a bowl of shark fin soup with only a few shreds of meat in it could cost anywhere from ten to fifty dollars? “I don’t know. I’m not in the fish business.”

  Ava left the plant as quickly as she could, breathing through her nose every ten paces or so to test the air, but this time the odour didn’t abate even when she had reached her car. She climbed inside and the smell came with her. She had no doubt that it had penetrated her hair. It was starting to rain again, a cool, steady drizzle. She rolled down the driver’s-side window and drove away.

  It was eleven thirty, still early morning in Toronto, and her travel agent wouldn’t be up yet. She found an Internet cafe on the outskirts of the town. The place was empty. She went online to search for flights to the Faeroe Islands. There was a direct flight from a place called Billund at two thirty. She checked a map; it looked like a two-hour drive. She couldn’t make it. The only other option was to fly from Aalborg to Copenhagen and catch an evening flight from there.