The Dead & The Drowning Read online

  We cross over the bridge, the water below a ripple-less grey, while great swathes of the sky fill with black overbearing cloud, swollen and imminent. Off the main street there is an N1 petrol station with a huge forecourt and a café. We stop and I fill the RAV with diesel and make sure that I'm the one to pay. Toni excuses herself to the ladies to freshen up and I park the RAV in a space.

  We meet back up in the café and Toni has already ordered a couple of lattes. We sit at a pine coloured table facing each other. Looking over her shoulder through the large window I can see in the near distance, a range of jagged toothed mountains, topped by a brooding bank of dense bruised cloud. I stir my coffee and comment,

  “The heavens are going to open up any minute.”

  “Looks that way.”

  I take a breath and say with a smile,

  “So, are we there yet?”

  “What are you nine?” she replies throwing back her head in a mocking laugh.

  “Sometimes, don't you know that boys never really grow up,” and it occurs to me I was paraphrasing something that Beth had said to me many times.

  “And don't you know that girls never grow out of teasing boys.”

  She fixes my eyes with hers and the lips strike a note of attraction, moving alluringly into an uneven smile. I decide not to press the question even in humour. It doesn't really matter where we are going, and perhaps it is best to just switch off and go along for the ride. Switching off is good and I needed to do more of it, however it is no different to telling an alcoholic he should drink less.

  The bigger question is why Marcus and his buddy had followed Toni to Iceland? If he wanted to get to her surely he could have done it with far less difficulty back home. He would only have to wait up on Toni at her tattoo parlour and there would be an opportunity. The trouble with making deductions is you must be sure of the facts that you are deducing from. If the source material is questionable so are all deductions. The only fact I could be certain of is that I heard one of them demand that Toni hand over something - but what? It had to be something valuable or incriminating, and something that had to be obtained with some urgency. There are several possibilities: a code or password of some kind, a key, a photograph, a document, a recording, drugs, money or precious stones perhaps.

  “A penny for your thoughts?” she said.

  I hesitate - a man should rarely tell a woman what he is really thinking. Thoughts had to be edited before spoken. I dissemble wanting to know more about my Femme Fatale.

  “I was going to ask if you’d always been a tattoo artist or if you had done other things?”

  Toni took a deep breath and then answered,

  “My life in two minutes. The last nine years I’ve been in the ink trade, five working for someone else, and four out on my own. Before that I was a nurse, and before I was a nurse I was a dancer.

  As a teenager I went to an academy of performing arts and majored in contemporary dance. After graduation I went to New York and got work in off Broadway productions in the chorus line. Some of the productions toured and one even made it to Broadway for a bit. I auditioned for dozens of commercials and managed to get a couple, and I featured a few times in hip-hop music videos as a backing dancer. I was enjoying what I was doing and making a good living from it until I got injured. I hurt my Achilles tendon and it just wouldn’t heal properly. I didn’t have the money for surgery to correct it and it kept giving me problems; in the end I couldn’t dance to the level that was needed and I had to stop.

  So, at twenty-four years of age I moved back to Buffalo and tended bar at The Union Pub for a nearly a year, until I figured out what I was going to do next. I needed to re-train but earn at the same time and nursing seemed like a good option. I nursed in E.R. for the next seven years, never really liking it and I felt unfulfilled. The carnage and working conditions wore me down, and I became depressed and dependent on Sertraline.”

  Nibbling her bottom lip, she looks down at the table as if processing some hurtful memory, then continues.

  “To add to this, around the same time I had a short, stupid marriage to a paramedic that was screwed from the start. We both had affairs, and Brandon the guy I got with is a tattooist. It developed into more than a fling and I ended the marriage. I moved in with him and grew interested his work; there are tattooists and there are tattoo artists and Brandon is an artist. I mean his designs and inkmanship are incredible, and he has done all my work. I wanted to learn, and he took me on as an apprentice, and I quit nursing.

  Over the next five years I learned the craft and the business and became good in my own right. Over time our relationship cooled, and we became more friends than anything, and it felt like it was time to go it alone. So, four years ago I moved to a small city outside of Buffalo called North Tonawanda and opened a parlour … and that's me.”

  “Is it one of them cities that's really no more than a town?” I ask.

  “Yeah small-town America, population 31,500. We just like to make things sound bigger than they are,” she replies.

  “Is that where you met Marcus?” I venture.

  Toni rolled her eyes and made a nauseous gesture with her mouth.

  “Yeah, and we'll leave that for another time. Anyhow, changing the subject, what about you, have you always been a firefighter?

  I was faced by my own lie. I didn't like lying, unfortunately deceit is a necessary adjunct to the job. Criminals dealt in lies, and to be a wholly truthful person put you at a disadvantage – the dishonest bird catches the worm. But this is not one of those situations, and I had lied about what I do for a living because I am sick of it, and the stigma it often carried. People just treated you differently: they were wary of you, resentful of you, scornful of you, some were curious, a few sought to solicit favour, others had admiration, and the odd one would do you harm if they knew. The trouble is you couldn't stand aside from it – you wore the uniform and it wore you. I wanted just for one week to forget it all, and now what I thought was a casual conversation in a bar, was not.

  I considered telling her the truth, but why spoil the fling. If perchance it grew to become more than that, then that would be the time for full disclosure. Until then I would be honest in all other respects bar that I am a Copper. I put my hand through my hair and began telling the story of my alternative life,

  “For nearly all my working life yeah. After school I went to college, where I failed to distinguish myself. I spent too much time in the gym and the common room, and not enough in the library, and I left getting the grades I deserved. University was out, and so I moved through a succession of dead-end jobs. I worked part-time in a record store, drove a taxi for a bit, collected and cleaned cars for a car dealership, was briefly a bouncer in a nightclub, and eventually wound up through my uncle in the steel works.

  I laboured in the blast furnace: it was dirty, hot and randomly dangerous and it clarified my thinking. I saw that I could spend the best years of my life in a smelly shit-hole, or that I could get out and get a career. The way I saw it with my qualifications I could join the army, the fire service or the police.

  By this time, I had been seeing Beth for about two years and was completely smitten by her, so the army with its prospect of overseas postings was kicked into touch. That left the fire service and the police, and the fire service were the first to say yes. I joined at twenty-two and gradually worked my way up to become a Watch Manager.

  Beth and I married two years after I joined, and we had two children together Nathan and Annabel. Funnily enough, it was Nathan that enlisted in the 1st Queen's Dragoon Guards known as the Welsh Cavalry, and Annabel who went to university to study law. They both have done what I couldn't, which is what you want for your children.”

  I had told Toni last night at the Gaukurinn that I am a widower, and I didn't feel the need at this stage to go into the unpleasant details. I sensed a sadness in Toni when I mentioned my children, and I made a mental note to steer clear of the topic.

  “Speak
ing of services, my father was in the Navy, and he was stationed in Iceland through the late 70's and early 80's,” Toni said.

  I didn't understand whether her father was Icelandic or American, and vocalized my confusion “Really in Iceland as Ice ..”

  Toni interrupted,

  “The United States had a naval air base at Keflavik. My father was a P-3 Orion crewman.”

  I pursed my lips, gave a gentle nod and I said,

  “I did not know that.”

  “My father loved the country. In his free time, he would drive around the island exploring. He was a history buff and a keen metal detectorist. He would spend hours alone, scanning fields and beaches for Viking artefacts.”

  “He find anything?” I ask.

  Toni laughs, an echo of a laugh from another time and place.

  “Yes, a few boat nails, a coin, a cooking pot and a brooch.”

  “Didn't make him rich then?”

  “No, but it did make him a friend, Jon Einarsson, and they corresponded with each other for nearly forty years.”

  Chapter 8

  The wipers work frantically against the slashing rain which pounds the car in heavy sheets. Toni sits hunched at the wheel peering through the spattered windscreen, driving like at any moment the road is doing to disappear. Rain drops explode on the road creating a film of water that the tyres split and whish over.

  Lights smudged against the misting glass emerge ahead. A beast of a transport truck driving to a deadline and skimming the white line roars past - its mass close and unnerving. I flinch, and the mangled car sculptures now have meaning – don't stray over the dividing line, do not take the weather lightly.

  “Jeez that truck was close, he was over our side of the road!” I say, sitting back properly in the seat. Lorry drivers are a law unto themselves, do all sorts of things in their cabs whilst driving.

  “Visibility is shit. We should stop somewhere and let it pass,” Toni replies, looking rattled herself.

  The downpour had started fifteen kilometres out of Borgarnes, and we had been travelling north along Route 1 at a snail's pace for the last thirty.

  I hear a car horn. A single barp, followed by a longer one, two short ones and then a longer one. Toni checks the interior mirror, and I look over my shoulder through the rear windscreen. I see about two car lengths behind us, a large green four by four which looks like a Land Rover Defender with its hazard lights blinking. The horn sounds again in a Morse code pattern of barps.

  “What does this prick want?” Toni exclaims irately.

  I check the dashboard for warning lights and there aren't any, and the RAV4 doesn't feel or sound in difficulty.

  “Car seems okay,” I say.

  Toni lowers the driver's window and waves the Defender on.

  “Come on if you wanna pass, fucking overtake. Come on what are you waiting for!”

  The Defender lays back, hazards blinking and horn blasting.

  “He must want to warn us of something, wants us to stop,” I say.

  “Should we?” Toni asks in a tone suggesting that we should probably not.

  “Broken bridge ahead or ulterior motive; I go with people are shit, every day of the week.” I reply sardonically.

  Then in a burst of speed the Defender darts into the opposing lane, overtakes, and crosses back over the white line in front of us. It slows and settles a length and a half ahead.

  “What's he playing at?” I think aloud.

  Is some idiot dicking around to break the boredom of the open road? And I remember, when age fourteen, riding my racer home one night along a stretch of deserted dual carriageway, and a car slowing alongside pushing me into the kerb. And then for no reason an arm shooting out the back window, trying to snatch the handlebars.

  Red brake lights flash, and the back of the Defender suddenly magnifies in the windscreen, its tyres disappearing under the bonnet of the RAV. Toni rigid, pushing away from the steering wheel slams on the brakes and we skid towards a collision. We hit with a light but jolting bump, which does not activate the air-bags. We come to a stop, and with our rate of deceleration being more rapid, distance is created, and the Defender comes to a halt fifty yards further on.

  I see the realization in Toni's face, as the Defender its wheels churning up water reverses. The Defender picks up speed and I brace myself for the impact. Toni floors the accelerator, and the wheels spin for traction. I watch powerless, my life in the hands of a maniac and a woman I barely know. The tyres then catch the road and the RAV lurches into an acute left turn, just in time to avoid the backward charge of the Defender. The RAV is now heading off road onto gravel and a ditch. Toni throws the steering into a hard right, and the rear swings out tearing up tufts of grass and small stones. The RAV fish-tails before straightening out and we cut back across the road, the engine straining raucously in first gear.

  The Defender is on our tail, and Toni shifts up the gears accruing speed through the lashing rain. I look over my shoulder and the Defender is gaining on us. It is a bigger, sturdier vehicle used by the British Army and would come off better in any collision. We had to try and outrun it and to do so would mean taking risks. I thought what I could do as a passenger and other than phoning the police there is not much - it is down to Toni.

  I look ahead as far as I can, and there is just the road and the grass beside it. The nearest village Buoardular is thirty kilometres away - so if I did call the police it would take too long for them to reach us.

  The Defender surges behind us, and Toni her hands squeezing the life out of the steering wheel drives harder. I could see a bend ahead and Toni sees it too. It is a sweeping bend on a shallow slope, which in normal conditions would not pose a hazard, but with the heavy rain and high-speed pursuit it does.

  “Slow down for the bend,” I blurt, unsure if I had made the right call.

  Toni's face contorts in anguish at having to make the least shit choice. She eases off the gas and drops a gear, and we approach the bend at a more sensible speed. The driver of the Defender takes a different gamble, and accelerating rams the back of the RAV as we enter the bend. The impact violently shunts the RAV through the bend and over the verge. I stretch my arms against the dashboard, and we bounce and rattle down the bank until running aground on a small tump of earth.

  ◆◆◆

  Toni sighs, a deep resigned sigh. She looks at me intently like I am her last hope on earth and says rapidly,

  “Isafjordur, they're going to take me to Isafjordur. Find Jon Einarsson.”

  So, there is more, a scheme or enterprise of some sort that is unravelling fast.

  “They haven't got you yet … get out!” I said with as much steel as I could muster.

  I grab the travel bag at my feet, fling open the passenger door and leap out onto thick boggy grass. I look behind, clutching the forlorn hope that they'd overturned and are trapped. No such luck - the Defender is perched precariously over on the verge - its doors open.

  Two men are out, scrambling down the shallow hill, they have scarves around their faces and carry aluminium baseball bats. I could see by the nasty bleached hair that one of the men is Marcus, and he takes a diagonal course towards Toni's side of the RAV. I glance across to my right and Toni is running at a clip through the field away from the road.

  The second guy who I assume is Adam makes for me. He is about my height, thickset on top, wide at the hips and pudgy in the arse, thighs and gut. He is swarthy skinned with a short receding hairline, and he is attired in red trail boots, black jeans and a black hoodie.

  I estimate that if I run I could outpace him; he was the wrong shape and looked like he didn't have the cardio. Marcus would catch Toni though, and that mattered enough.

  I'd been in some dicey situations and come out of them, although this time I couldn't see how I am not heading for the hospital or a hole in the ground. A glimmer in the gloom, is that Marcus had made a tactical mistake. He had split from Adam and gone for Toni, when he should have gone for me a
lso.

  Ten yards out Adam brings his run to a stride and hefts the bat over his right shoulder, his hands nervously kneading the handle as he advances. I shuffle backwards, holding my bag in front of me with both hands. I cower, and shaking my head plead,

  “Take her if you want, I won't get in your way.”

  In a guttural voice the masked man replies,

  “No, you won't – period. I'm going to fuck you up six ways from Sunday for that sucker punch.”

  It is a matter of range and I watch it close. Judgement of range, control of range, each step like the ticking hand of a clock - until the time. I see the bat twitch in readiness for the strike and that is the time. I pounce, and from the chest, thrust the travel bag with both hands into flight at his head. I follow through with the momentum, my guard held high. Instinctively he brings the bat across to parry the bag leaving the bat un-cocked. The bag hits the ground and I am almost upon him.

  He takes a step back and re-lifts the bat. I close in and the bat comes down at my range and not his. I block it above the handle with my left forearm and avoid the brunt of the hit as the mid-part strikes the top of my head. He raises the bat again and I get in around his waist, locking my hands together in an S grip. I pull them into the small of his back and bear hug him. He panic hits me to the side of my head with round edge of the handle, and cuts open my scalp. I ignore these scraping blows, get low, lift and steer him right into the side of the RAV.

  “Marcus … Marcus!” he shouts with a whiney pitch that is now far from guttural. He struggles to break free and continues to painfully stab my head with the handle of the bat. I release my grip and pin him to the car with my left shoulder, leaving a small gap to escape to his left. He takes the bait, and as he slides out I punch.