The Mistake

by Grant Nicol

  ‘You’ve always over-romanticised this notion of running away together. It may seem like an adventure to you but the reality of the situation is somewhat different.’

  ‘Here we go again,’ she flapped her arms in exasperation and slumped down into one of her armchairs as if resigned already to the upcoming argument.

  ‘You get this flat for nothing, you never want for money. All in all you’ve got it pretty sweet. Am I wrong?’

  ‘That’s right, how could I possibly forget. All I have to do is look after your little tarts downstairs and all is well. Clean up after them and their disgusting clientele, keep the trouble-makers out of the place and make sure the police don’t take an interest in any of it. Just as long as nothing interrupts the flow of money into the place you couldn’t really give a damn about what goes on here. Far be it for me to want something better for myself.’

  ‘Calm down.’

  ‘All I want is what’s best for both of us. What you want is what’s best for you and only you.’

  ‘We’ll go when the time is right, not because you want to put a premature end to things.’

  ‘It’s not premature, that’s my whole point. You just don’t get it, do you? Any longer and it’ll be too late.’

  ‘What are we supposed to do with this place?’

  ‘Put it on the market and get rid of your illegal help downstairs before the police come back to interview them and realise there’s something fishy going on here.’

  ‘No one is going to realise anything. Those cops couldn’t catch a cold in a rainstorm. We’ll move the girls somewhere else for a while and tell the police they’ve moved on and we’ve no idea where.’

  ‘What if Gunnar Atli opens his mouth to appease the cops? He knows all about what’s going on here and he won’t hesitate for a second to tell them if he thinks it will save his skin.’

  ‘What do you mean? He knows nothing of the sort.’

  ‘Yes, he does. I found out he’d been visiting one of the girls downstairs for a little stress relief before he met Bella.’

  Adolfína laughed gently and yet wickedly at the same time. She got up and walked across the carpeted living room, put her arms around Thorgeir’s shoulders and tucked her forehead into his neck. A long tired sigh escaped her lips before she took a deep breath.

  ‘I’m scared we’re going to blow it all just when we should be getting the hell out of here,’ she whispered. ‘If you can’t see that then we’re in trouble and we’re going to burn.’ She lifted her head to look him square in the eyes. ‘But before I let that happen I’ll tell your wife everything and watch you go up in flames all on your own. You just watch me.’

  #14

  Thorgeir was worried about Gunnar Atli now. As much as he disliked admitting it, Adolfína was right. They had ridden their luck for a long time and it was due to run out sometime. Luck was pretty reliable that way. Next stop was his office at Kleppspítali. The minute he was in he asked for an update on their new patient. Apparently he had slept right through the night without any problems, not surprising considering the sedatives he’d been prescribed, and was now ready to talk. His head wounds would probably still be very tender but he’d been given painkillers and it was time to see just how much of this was an act and how much was real. Thorgeir smiled to himself and told one of the nurses to let Gunnar Atli know his presence was required. They were to let him bathe and see to it that all his dressings were changed. In other words, he was to be made as presentable as possible for the head of the hospital.

  Thorgeir made himself comfortable and stretched his legs out over his desk. It would be a while before Gunnar Atli would be ready so there was time to have a think about what he was to do about Adolfína. The situation was slowly but surely becoming untenable. She had outlived her use as far as he was concerned and it was high time he moved on, without her. It wouldn’t be easy nor would it be very pretty but it had to be done. He would find someone younger, better behaved and discreet enough to fill the void that would be left by her departure. All he needed was someone reliable to live in the top-floor apartment and keep an eye on the girls below; make sure they didn’t get themselves into any trouble and collect the cash off them at the end of every night. There would always be a few trials and tribulations involved in such a business but never anything serious enough to necessitate abandoning the operation.

  So far the arrangement had worked very well and if he had to get rid of Petra and Dinka too he was confident he would be able to replace them without too much bother also. Illegal immigrants willing to do that kind of work were as easy to find online as second-hand mattresses. These two had originally come from Bosnia in the back of a truck. They went as far as Ystad in southern Sweden before being transferred to another truck and being driven to Stavanger to service men as they came back from the natural gas rigs. They were willing workers and before too long had earned enough money to pay off their accommodation fees and buy themselves fake Polish passports. After that it had been on to Reykjavik where he’d picked them up himself at the airport and brought them to their present domicile in the city centre.

  He’d had it pretty easy with them when he thought about it, he certainly wouldn’t get rid of them just for the sake of it. They were both well and truly broken in and even seemed to like what they did. Petra did anyway, it was impossible to tell what the other one was thinking. Either she’d never learned any English or Icelandic or just never let on that she had. For some reason he’d never been able to understand, she preferred to do all her communicating through Petra. But, like most things in this life, they were replaceable. The most important thing was that he not get caught. That part Adolfína had been right about even if her demands to leave the country were way off the mark. He was just about to doze off when an orderly entered his office and informed him that Gunnar Atli was almost ready to see him.

  ‘Which room would you like to use?’ the orderly asked.

  ‘Just bring him in here,’ Thorgeir replied. ‘I’m going to need some privacy for this particular session so my office will be fine. With the amount of time he’s already spent here I think we can do away with some of the usual formalities.’

  The orderly looked a little puzzled but accepted his orders and left. Thorgeir got himself some coffee and made an effort to tidy the office for a few minutes. It was starting to look a little shambolic but that was only because he never let any of the cleaning staff touch any of his things. He was very particular about that.

  A few minutes later Gunnar Atli shuffled into the room looking a little better than he had the day before although his face was still ugly with contusions and swelling. The night’s rest had done precious little to repair his battered features and he looked rather sorry for himself. Thorgeir motioned for him to take a seat on the other side of his now clutter-free desk.

  ‘So, how are you feeling today?’

  Gunnar Atli just shrugged and tried to rub his face without actually touching any part of it.

  ‘Would I be correct in assuming that you’ve stopped taking your prescription?’

  Gunnar Atli nodded. He felt awful but at least he wasn’t in prison. Thorgeir made a show of looking as displeased as he possibly could before continuing.

  ‘You’re well aware of the repercussions of such behaviour which makes me wonder why you would do something so irresponsible in the first place. Were you craving attention again or just eager to experiment on yourself?’

  Gunnar Atli didn’t answer but looked around the room instead, his gaze flitting from one side to the other without actually coming to rest on anything in particular.

  ‘As a result,’ Thorgeir continued, ‘we’ve had to put you on several new drugs to calm you down again. All this is setting your recovery back considerably, is that what you want?’

  ‘They think I killed that girl,’ he said finally.

  ‘If you look at it from their point of view it doesn’t look very good, does it? They also think you pulled that little stunt yes
terday to get out of being delivered to Litla Hraun. Once we’ve got you stabilised they’re going to want to take you back there and charge you with murder. You do realise that, don’t you? They’re not going to settle for any long-term inpatient routine. This time you’ve gone too far, you won’t be able to wiggle your way out of this one.

  ‘Your lawyer has asked me to give you a thorough psychological examination but after that you’ll be returned to the tank with all the other little fish. How do you think you’ll cope with that, Gunnar Atli? You see, I know as well as you do that the only thing wrong with you is that you’re afraid to go to prison and spend time with all those people you don’t know and who might not like you very much. This time they’re serious about putting you away. Do you fully comprehend what that will mean for you?’

  Gunnar Atli fidgeted with one of the butterfly stitches on his forehead. He was beginning to look uncomfortable and nervous and had started to perspire.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Gunnar Atli stopped fidgeting with his wounds and was paying attention now. ‘You know I belong here and not in that other place. All you have to do is tell them that and I can stay. If you don’t they’ll find out about what you’ve been doing with those foreign girls, and the rest of it. Don’t think they won’t.’

  ‘Don’t you threaten me, you little shit.’

  Thorgeir lunged across the table so his face was as close as he could get it to Gunnar Atli’s without him actually leaping across the other side.

  ‘Who do you think you’re talking to?’

  Gunnar Atli permitted himself the smallest of smiles to celebrate his victory no matter how small it was. It didn’t last for long.

  ‘They’re going to find out you were sleeping with her and then they’re going to find out you dropped her bags and keys back at the flat and then what? What will they think then? That this nice boy with the broken face was just trying to help out? No, they’re not going to think that are they? They’re going to think she was trying to run away from you because you become obsessive with girls and when this one wouldn’t stick around either, you killed her.’

  ‘You’re the one she was trying to run away from, not me. You’re the one who scared her so badly she wanted to leave.’

  ‘Who in their right mind is going to take your word over mine? Tell me that. Face it, there’s nothing you or your lawyer can do without my help. Either you play the game by my rules or you face the music all on your own.’

  Gunnar Atli’s eyes were wide and angry now as if he were daring Thorgeir to continue. It was a sneak preview into the Gunnar Atli that lay just behind what he allowed the world to see. Eventually he took a deep breath to calm himself down, leaned back in his chair and smiled.

  ‘You hold all the aces then, Thorgeir. It looks like the next move’s yours.’

  ‘I do hold all the cards, don’t I? In fact, the way I see it, there’s only one way out of this for you now so let me tell you what it is. You’re going to want to pay attention to this.’

  #15

  Gunnar Atli was so cold he was shaking like a leaf but the chance to spend some time outside the tedious environs of the hospital was just too good to pass up. After being locked away in that tiny observation room for so long, being outdoors again was intoxicating even if it was a very limited sort of freedom. He was accompanied everywhere he went by an oversized giant of an orderly with red hair who wouldn’t even tell him what his name was. He had to be new because he hadn’t been there when he’d been discharged about a year ago. The guy’s only communications were in the form of succinct instructions which he expected to be followed immediately and without question. ‘Turn right here,’ ‘Sit down on the end of the bed and put both hands on your knees,’ ‘Take this pill, drink all the water and make sure you swallow it,’ ‘If you make an effort this will go much more smoothly for you,’ things of that nature.

  He was still trying to absorb everything Thorgeir had told him. Knowing that self-involved sack of wind it was probably nothing more than hot air, just another way to make himself feel more important than he actually was. Thorgeir may have been trying to frighten him with all his talk of prison time and certain doom but Gunnar Atli knew there was at least some truth to what he’d said. His chances at trial, should it come to that, were not good. He hung his head in his hands and gently rubbed the parts of his face that he could bear to touch and scratched at the bits that were becoming itchy as they healed. There were plenty of those. When he closed his eyes he could hear the world around him as if it were a movie playing in a cinema next door. The gentle crunch of someone walking through the snow that had collected around the fir trees and the edges of the lawn, a bird trying to find something to eat while communicating with its mate and the distant banging of chairs being moved across squeaky floors somewhere in the vast building behind him.

  The first time he’d entered Klepp he’d been in a similar sort of situation but at the same time completely different. His girlfriend, Nanna, was dead and he’d been seriously injured, his right leg desperately painful and restricting his movement to hobbling around on crutches with all sorts of screws sticking out of his ankle. His inability to find any kind of hope to hang onto had been the primary cause of two suicide attempts. Both times he’d tried to hang himself and both times he’d been cut down just in the nick of time. In the end they had put him in a protected room where he could no longer harm himself. He’d even been on twenty-four hour suicide watch at one point, non-stop surveillance with lights that were never dimmed so they could always keep an eye on him.

  It was when his need to self-harm became an obsession as opposed to a habit that he’d been medicated to the point where he could no longer have those sorts of thoughts. The flipside was that he no longer had thoughts of any kind whatsoever, such was the dosage he was prescribed. He became a pharmaceutical zombie, walking the corridors of the facility in a trance-like state, unaware of the time of day or the day of the week. Every day blurred into the next, and then the next and so on.

  When they finally cut back on the pills he realised they were pointing him down the road back to the outside world. Dealing with day-to-day society and looking after himself again beckoned and the prospect of having to take charge of his life once more scared him more than being cooped up in a psychiatric ward for the rest of his life. So much so that he fell back into the habit of self-harming again just to let them know he wasn’t ready to take that step. Back then all he really wanted to do was hide from the world. And now all he wanted was to stay out of prison. And if he couldn’t do that, he would run.

  As if right on cue, a chair crashed through a window at the end of the first floor of the hospital building and dropped into the snowy garden below taking shards of glass and bits of broken window frame with it.

  Lilja came to the front door and screamed for help at the red-headed behemoth who took a quick look at Gunnar Atli and then ran off to see what was wrong. That was when he knew that this was the moment they had spoken of in Thorgeir’s office. He stood up to take stock of his surroundings and to his amazement found he was completely alone. The bare birches rustled quietly down one side of the grounds while the tall well-dressed firs stood guard over the other, but that was it. Not a soul about outside, and inside nothing but the caterwauling of staff falling over each other as they tried to deal with an emergency of some sort that had been predicted with psychic-like ability by the hospital’s head doctor.

  Gunnar Atli had never been one to look a gift-horse in the mouth. He got to his feet and headed as best he could for the rear of the property. If he could make it through the firs and around the east side of the main building he would be on the road that led to the port before anyone noticed he was gone. There would be one more road to cross and then he would be on his way to Mosfellsbær. Even if they caught up with him it was unlikely he could find himself in any more trouble than he was in already. He could always blame his disappearance on poor supervision and the voices in his head; and at the
moment those voices were telling him to get the hell out of there, so that’s just what he did.

  He limped through the firs and around the side of the main building until the container terminal’s perimeter fence stood directly in front of him. In an ideal world he would jump the fence and stow away on a container vessel but with his dodgy leg that was never going to happen. He turned to double-check one last time that he wasn’t being followed.

  He still hadn’t been spotted. Somehow with all the ruckus inside they had forgotten about him and even though that had been the idea all along he was still surprised. Normally, anything that could possibly go wrong for him did and the fact that it hadn’t this time concerned him a little. He hobbled as fast as his leg would let him along the fence-line looking for an opening, until he decided that he wasn’t going to find one.

  When he slowed down to catch his breath he heard a shoe scuff the pavement behind him. He wasn’t alone after all and the realisation made him feel sick. What had he got himself into? As he turned to see who his company was he saw a man appear from behind an old shed. The tattooed monolith gave him a look that stopped him dead in his tracks and then lashed out with what appeared to be a chain from a motorcycle. It was long, heavy, covered in black grease and designed to rip a man’s face off.

  The impact exploded across the side of his face and dropped him to his knees. His lost his vision completely as his one good eye was swamped by a stream of blood. His nose, already in a bad way, felt as if it had been pulled right off the side of his face. A terrifying realisation hit him as he felt himself being dragged by his collar across the footpath and into the back of a waiting car. Thorgeir hadn’t arranged the diversion so he could escape, he’d arranged it so he could get caught. He’d been lured into the trap and he’d fallen for it.

  Aron Steinn gunned the engine while Kjartan kept a close eye on the injured Gunnar Atli in the back seat. Inside twenty seconds they had disappeared through an unlocked metal gate behind a disused part of the container terminal. The car screeched to a halt, the back door was yanked open and Gunnar Atli was dragged from the vehicle onto the wet concrete. He could feel a gun being pressed against the underside of his chin and hear Aron Steinn’s words even if he couldn’t see his face. The air was rich with the scents of the ocean.