by Cameron Bell
Chapter 15
The street is clear, and Toni leads the way to the Ranger carrying the metal detector and some other useful things she has scavenged. I limp behind and use the spade as an improvised walking stick, to lessen the weight on a now throbbing shin. She has the engine running by the time I get in. I chuck the spade and rucksack across the back seat and roll up the warm wet leg of my jeans. In the centre of my hairy shin there is a jagged hole about a quarter of an inch long. The whole shin is smeared with blood and the hairs are flattened and caked. A light trickle of blood works towards the boot. The outer side of the calf is gashed like an obscene grin and that too bleeds. Twenty-three years of managing mutants on the streets of South Wales and I had never been stabbed – and now on a holiday in Iceland of all places – the irony is not missed.
“Once we are out of here I'll take a look at that. I swiped some bandages and antiseptic from Jon's medicine cabinet. Nurse Toni will take care of you.”
She winks and smiles suggestively, and I am left feeling what that smile couldn't do.
Street lights zip past as we head south out of Isafjordur. Around us the night sky is sharp, clean black and starry. Behind us in the distance, out at sea, I can make out the faint green shimmer of the Northern Lights. I had meant to see them and now they fade in the rear-view mirror. At a junction Toni ignores the dividing line and cuts right through. She guns the engine and we leave the light of the Fjord, ploughing through the darkness disappearing into the mountains.
◆◆◆
“Is the cockroach dead?” she asks, her face dripping with disdain.
“About halfway there,” I reply with an odd sense of shame at not finishing the job and risking her disapproval.
“Difficult to say what would be best. If I had hit him with the axe I don't think I would have been able to stop,” she says reflectively.
“It's worrying to know that someone who is maybe my girlfriend is a potential axe murderer.”
“It's on my dating profile enjoys candle lit dinners, long romantic walks and dismemberment.”
I guffaw like a hyena, her humour cracked me up.
“And you are a fine one to talk walking around with that spade ... people in glass houses and all that.”
“True, I can't argue with that, can't argue with it at all.”
A dozen or so miles out of town we pull off the road onto a gravel track and kill the lights. I open the passenger door and hear the engine tinging with heat. I sit sideways and Toni comes around and kneels at my feet.
“Has your phone got a torch app?” she asks.
I switch it on and under the light she cleans and bandages my wounds like some kind of alternative angel, and a powerful swell of emotion flutters my heart.
“That should do it.”
I look at her longingly,
“A kiss will really make it better.”
She rises, grips the back of my neck and we lock in a passionate kiss. Then she breaks off leaving me wanting more. Radiating heat, she oozes,
“We got business to take care of ... we'll play later.”
We get back onto the road and continue south west along a route called Vestfjaroarvegur. I shrink the map and scroll, speculating where we may be travelling to.
“Before you ask where we are going – it's Svalvogar. I heard Jon say it is a Fjord on the west coast and it is near a lighthouse there. In our haste to get out of town I don't even know I'm heading in the right direction,” and she laughs carelessly like a cavalier.
“I'll find out.”
I type it into the Google map and hit search. A blue line springs south from our location to a small town called Pingeyri. It then bends west onto a road called the 622 which runs along the coastline out onto a peninsula. It tells me that it is sixty-two kilometres and an hour and ten minutes away. I research it and Svalvogar isn't a place, it is a circular route between two fjords starting and ending at Pingeyri and is forty-nine kilometres long.
I look at the map again and the area resembles the gnarled, mutilated fingers of two splayed hands placed next to one another. Then I look again, and it doesn't, it really doesn't. I had in that moment just seen it that way. I take my glasses off and put the phone back in the coat pocket. It had been long day both awful and great.
At such times the Nadurra or one of its brethren calls, and more often than not I answer; and tonight, I reach into my bag for that beautiful bottle. My shin aches and I give myself the excuse that it is medicinal. I pop the top and take a deep slug straight from the source. I have an intimacy with whisky where it is no longer necessary for the intermediary of a glass. I kiss the bottle and it kisses back.
“You're fond of Scotch then?” she comments in a half humorous, half judgemental way that men and women in relationships reserve for one another.
“Whatever gives you that idea?”
I say, grinning and feigning innocence before kissing the lips of the bottle for another hit of the sweet, amber burn. In minutes I am in what I call the lift off zone where you feel the thrusters of the drug behind you, propelling you upwards out of tiredness, doubt and discomfort. I should try and cool my engines and stop here longer, but invariably I don't.
The white lines on the road are eaten up by our speed and soon we drop down onto the coastal road of a fjord. There is a small settlement with scattered lights over the water that I think is Pingeyri. The moon reflects off the dark, choppy water as we wind around the inlet towards the bridge that will take us across.
“I've got to come clean on something,” I say.
“You married, got an STD … are a Scientologist?” she bursts out with derisory laughter.
“Because I think I'd rather the first two.”
“No, none of those I'm not a Firefighter ... I'm a Police Sergeant,” and I wait for a reaction.
Her face doesn't drop like it could have and there isn't a concealing silence to pack true feelings away.
“My uncle Warren was a cop and I've got a cousin Liz who is one too; why didn't you tell me from the get-go?”
“Because I wanted to forget I am one … it weighs on me sometimes and … I just want to drop the load and be something else. When we first spoke, I had no idea it would turn into this.”
“No one could have predicted this. I hit on you for wrong reasons … but I guess it just goes to show that sometimes good can come out of bad,” and she pouts and ripples her mouth the same as a cheeky wink of an eye.
“Everything else I told you Toni is the truth,” I say slowly wanting the words to have gravity, to fall out of the air with their weight.
“Naw it's cool, it explains a lot actually, about why you stepped in and protected me ... like a guard dog.”
I gaze out of the window at the dense black mountains silhouetted against a less black sky and remark to myself as much as to Toni.
“More like an old dog clinging onto the hunt, loyal to a master that no longer wants him.”
“You've lost me a bit with that metaphor Will.”
“I ran into some grief in work with another asshat that likes to beat on women, and the cop that is investigating the complaint is determined to do my legs because it will make him look ethical. The logical side of me thinks I'll get through it, yet I'm nagged by an irrational dread that I won't.”
“That sounds like anxiety Will. I got hit with a bullshit disciplinary when I was a nurse, and my reaction was to say fuck them and their job; and there was no anxiety because I didn't care. I chose not to play their game. Be your own man Will, determine your own fate, it's liberating.”
I heard words that I needed to hear and an attitude that I needed to have. Our eyes meet and another hook pierces my skin.
◆◆◆
The bridge is a narrow strip of road laid low over the water and has piled rocks for sides. We shoot across, the night ours, the landscape dead but for us. The half-cut moon illuminates like a weak spotlight, and the beams of the Ranger push back at the near pitch-black darkness of a
land that has yet to be tamed. Through the night we storm towards Pingeyri, foot down, tearing at the bends, Toni locked in a duel with the road.
I have to flick the Fitbit twice to get the time: 7:43, but what does that mean out here doing this? It is midway through an afternoon shift, the time I usually woke up from a nap before a night shift, it was around the time Beth and I had sat down for supper. We are off the clock and now it is just a number on a screen.
The speedometer is nudging seventy miles per hour and the Ranger rolls on its sloppy suspension like a water bed on wheels. Houses and street lights appear, and Toni drops the speed. A quarter of a mile in, the road dips to the right, and I can see two red flags busily flapping in the wind in front of a forecourt.
“Toni there is a petrol station on the right.”
“Got it.”
The Ranger bisects the junction and pushes out onto the gravel, and the nearside tyres spit out chippings like machine gun fire. We drive onto the forecourt and I fill up, while Toni goes into the red framed shop to pay for the fuel and get supplies. On the other side of the road there is a small harbour and I watch the fishing boats gently bob and rock at the hand of a strong wind.
My buzz is easing, and I slip back in the Ranger to top up like the sly drinker I am. She gets back in and hands me a Red Bull which I take eagerly. It goes well with whisky and on many a work's night out I've blasted both.
“Is there a plan?” I ask.
“Of course not,” she replies as if it were a dull question, and she tips her head back for the Red Bull.
“Thought as much they always go wrong anyway … we'll wing it ... fly by the seat of our pants.”
We hitch on to the 622 and at first it is little different from the Vestfjaroarvegur road. Then it starts to break up and get primitive like the farm tracks of home, except this road is carved out of the side of a mountain and drops into the sea.
“We'll stop here,” she says with a note of exasperation,
“There's no point in going over a cliff is there.”
“Drive to arrive … that's something my first Sergeant said to me once and it stuck. There was a code red put out and everyone jumped in cars and vans and tore off to help the officer in trouble. Another police car overtook us like a lunatic and the Sarge said to me, Will, drive to arrive because you're no good to them wrapped around a lamp post.”
“Yeah … and the brooch is no use in the dark any ways. Let’s get some shut eye, there'll be lots of shit to get through tomorrow.”
“You don't say. If the last two days are anything to go by it will be a shit fest. You could have a side-line ... Toni's Alternative Tours: Fight Your Way Around Iceland.”
I snigger at my own sarcasm and she joins in like a good sport.
“You just like the tour guide.”
“Maybe, or perhaps I miss punching scumbags in the head.”
I dropped the seat back, crossed my arms and nestled into my hood. I am enervated yet wired and far from sleep. 8:22, I have known her just shy of two days, and I am worried that I more than like her. What little judgement I have left is eroding, crumbling like a castle made of sand. I see it. I see it like a slow-motion car crash where there is a part of you that seeks the impact, seeks the carnage.
I segue onto Adam and where I left him busted up in the basement. I said I'd phone an ambulance for him and I should because it is the right thing to do. I fish out my phone and dial in the number - even vermin didn't deserve to suffer. My thumb hovers over the call icon but I don't press. In this situation right and smart aren't the same. My number could be traced even if I withheld it. This is a gamble and I'm not sure where to place my chips. If Adam is saved he may say nothing, and the case would be closed. If cops find him dead there will be a full-blown investigation and I'll get drawn into it because of the previous police report. If Adam manages to crawl free or Marcus went back to get him then it could work out. I put my phone away, in this situation doing the right thing is a bad bet.
“Fancy a cwtch in the back,” I suggest.
“What's a cwtch dare I ask?” she replies.
“It's Welsh for a cuddle. It's going to get cold and we should conserve heat. I'd say this to you if you were a bit of a moose or a guy ... it's practical.”
“You are such a sweet talker Will; you can tell you don't date.”
I take the seat back up, put what is on the back seat into the boot and slide in. Toni joins me and we snuggle into one another.
“Where's that scotch?” she purrs her head resting on my heart.
I draw the bottle out and lament the missing half – it had been a hard trip full of extenuating circumstances and no doubt there would be more to come. We cwtch and sup whisky until eventually sleep overtakes us.
◆◆◆
I sleep fitfully and it is a little after four when a dead leg wakes me. The pins and needles momentarily worsened by the blood flowing back into the leg. Toni's back is curled into my chest and she is sound asleep. I try to get back off to sleep but with the cold cramped conditions it doesn't come easy. I think about Beth and it is like flicking through a book of many chapters. I jump to significant points in time, and others inconsequential yet somehow remembered, so perhaps they have meaning after all. I jump to the beginning and stop at how we met.
It was a Saturday on a bank holiday weekend in late August 1990. I was out at the Sker with my best mate Jason, dressed up in tan chinos and white Pringle polo shirt worn tucked in. The evening was young and beautiful as we sat on the benches in front of the pub, taking in beer and the waning rays of sunshine. Jason's girlfriend Amanda came over with her friend Beth. Beth was a red-haired stunner with bee stung lips and the hands of a screen goddess – she was way, way out of my league and like a goddess I admired her from afar.
They sat down and as was my way I teased and took the piss, never for a moment thinking I was any more than the annoying friend. The night cracked on and we went our separate ways.
Later in a bar called The Accolade we all met up again. I had sunk close to ten pints and should have been more smashed than I was, but on some nights you just can't be put down. There was music I can't recall what and people were dancing, just dancing where they were. It was hot and crowded, and people were singing and swaying, now reduced by alcohol to who they were. Without a word she grabbed my hands, and stupidly we swung around like children. The tiled floor was greasy with spilt beer and inevitably we went over. She landed on top of me and tipped her glass of Pernod and black over my shirt. She was apologetic, though I couldn't have given a damn - she could have stained every shirt in my wardrobe, and I wouldn’t have had a care - a door had opened that I thought was locked to me.
It was time to move onto Wall Street a nightclub of the time, and as we left she led me by the hand out into the car park. I remember thinking whatever is happening I'd better make the most of it, because it will probably never happen again. I stopped and pulled her towards me. I placed my hands around her tiny waist my fingers but inches from touching each other. Then I kissed those soft, plump lips and for the rest of the night I couldn't let her go. I later learned what she liked about me – she liked that I was a charmless man. That I hadn't pawed and fed her oily lines like many others had. I wouldn't have known how.
Chapter 16
I had managed to drift back off and grab pieces of sleep, but I was far from refreshed. Light from behind the mountains had lifted the lid of darkness and brought in the dawn. I got out of the car and stretched, my mouth feeling that something had crawled inside it and died. It is sharply cold, and I am in dire need of a very hot mug of coffee, which it doesn't look like I'm going to get out here. I decide to make do with a Red Bull, waking Toni as I rummage in the bag. I hand her one also and joke,
“Here get some wings.”
She yawns and drags the sleep from her eyes.
“After that night's sleep I need rocket fuel,” her voice husky and scratched by the night's whisky.
“Adrenaline
will do it. I think I've enough left in the tank to carry me one more day before I'm frazzled.”
I open the boot and sit on the sill to change underwear. I then take my toothbrush and paste out of my rucksack and using the spade as a stick carefully make my way down the bank to the Fjord. The wind has calmed and the water laps softly over the stony dirt. I notice further along the shoreline a solitary tree, bent and blanched white dead with a crow perching on one of the cracked branches. The crow caws, opening and closing its knife-like beak and I wonder how many sheep's eyes had been pecked out with it – then I wonder if a crow would have mine, would get to dine on my face on the side of some windswept mountain.
I wash and clean and the freezing water jolts me alert and excites the cold to nip at my face. I find a sheep track and struggle back to the Ranger, and Toni passes me on the way. Back at the Ranger I eat a peanut butter and chocolate bar thinking that she seemed fond of these. Toni returns and we get going.
The road is roughly hewn and is really no more than a thick mountain bike track. It requires full attention and is in parts like walking a tightrope. I drive slowly and delicately across the waist of the mountain, showing due respect, trying not to anger it lest it flip us off. We are quiet and tense, our eyes fixed just beyond the bonnet glued to the minutiae of the road. The Ranger rocks over the bumps and the water dark in the shadow of the mountain waits. A buckle in the road lifts the inside wheel and turns it out, and the Ranger lurches towards the edge. I slam on the brakes and we stop facing the horizon.
“Whoa!” I expel.
