The Shadow Killer

38

He remembered the first time she visited him on her own. This was after he had heard about their engagement. Previously, she’d always come with her boyfriend, but this time he spotted her walking up the path alone. He’d been hard at it in the smithy all day, so he hurriedly washed his hands and tried to scrub the worst of the soot off his face before she reached the door. An interest in ironworking had prompted him to start the smithy not long before. He’d set up his forge in the old turf farmhouse, where he also did a bit of woodturning, a skill he had picked up at a workshop during a visit to Reykjavík.

He asked where her fiancé was, and she explained that he had gone into the next village and wouldn’t be back until late that night. The three of them knew each other quite well as they had all grown up in the area, though he himself hadn’t moved there until he was nine years old. Admittedly, he had sometimes cast an appreciative eye in her direction, but that was all. He was unusually timid around women and had never dreamt that he had any chance with Vera; she had never shown the slightest interest in him, after all. And now she was engaged and, as far as he knew, would be married soon. She had once had a reputation for being able to twist men round her little finger, but her engagement had put an end to all such talk. Her fiancé farmed the neighbouring property, and he regarded him as a friend.

‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’ she asked, standing at the door and smiling, though the smile didn’t reach her eyes.

‘Of course. Is everything all right?’

‘I just felt like a walk,’ she said. ‘I’m bored.’

She took a seat at his kitchen table, her skin attractively tanned by the summer sun. He set about making coffee and tried to keep up a flow of conversation but sensed that she was distracted and not really listening as he rambled on about the weather and the hay harvest and how he had run an electric cable from the diesel generator to his new smithy in the old turf farmhouse, so now he could listen to the radio in there and have a bit of light to work by.

‘He doesn’t want to move,’ she announced, when he finally ran out of things to say, running her tanned hand over the tabletop. She had beautiful hands, with slim, delicate fingers, one of which sported a ring.

‘Move?’

‘He promised me, but then he started making all kinds of excuses: he wouldn’t get enough for the farm, didn’t know how to make a living anywhere else. Now he says he’s changed his mind and can’t face leaving. He’s dreaming of extending the hayfields, draining the marshes, constructing new outbuildings. I doubt he’ll actually go through with any of it, though. He promised me we’d go away, move to Reykjavík. He promised.’

She looked disconsolate and he remembered how she had often talked of Reykjavík as though she were dazzled by the very idea of the city, how she used to declare that she had no intention of rotting away in the countryside. He recalled that her fiancé hadn’t been averse to the idea either and had even talked of selling him the farm if he’d give him a good enough price for it.

‘Perhaps you’ll be able to get him to change his mind,’ he said, for the sake of saying something.

‘I doubt it. I even...’

‘What?’

‘I actually threatened to leave him. To go to Reykjavík alone. Break off our engagement.’

‘How did he take it?’

‘He didn’t. He said I’d get over it and see that he was right. That we were country folk and the city was no place for the likes of us. Can you... Have you ever heard anything to beat it? He never used to talk like that. I think... I feel as though he’s betrayed me and now he’s forcing me into a life I don’t want. I always meant to go south, to the city.’

Tears were sliding down her cheeks, and he didn’t know what to do. In the end he went over and sat down beside her in an attempt to comfort her. She took his hand, then put her arms around his neck and cried into his shoulder. He was conscious of her breasts pressing against him. Then she loosened her embrace and abruptly announced that she had to go. She thanked him, and before he knew it she had vanished into the dusk.

A few evenings later he saw her walking up the road again, and he came out to meet her in the yard, worried that someone would spot her visiting him alone and unchaperoned, in the evening. He hastily invited her into the house, though his conscience was clear. He hadn’t done anything wrong except think about her ever since she’d stopped by, about her relationship with her fiancé, which didn’t seem without its problems; about her beautiful, tanned hands and her soft breasts pressing against him. Perhaps it was guilt about these thoughts. They were lustful. Impure.

Instead of going inside she asked if she could see his forge, and he took her into the old turf building and switched on the light bulb hanging from the ceiling. She switched it off again immediately, and they stood in the semi-darkness, talking softly. At that stage he didn’t realise how brazen she was, how unwavering of purpose. She was wearing a woollen jumper over her dress, and her legs were bare. She wanted to thank him for the other evening, she said. There was no need, he replied; he hadn’t done anything, and she smiled and asked if he ever thought about her. Said she sometimes thought of him, which surprised him. He admitted that he had been thinking about her ever since the other night. ‘And before that?’ she asked, and he answered with silence. She came closer, but he didn’t move, and then she was standing pressed against him, kissing him gently on the lips. He let her do it, and only then did he realise that he had been yearning for that kiss, yearning to feel her lips on his, and that perhaps he had wanted her for a long time, longer than he’d realised. She kissed him again and he kissed her back, flung his arms around her, crushed her against him. She drew his hand under her dress, and he discovered that she was naked underneath and felt a hot shiver run through his body. She kissed him hungrily, pulling him against her and reaching for him, then leant back against the old workbench. He lifted her up and felt the hunger, heat and lust overwhelm him as she undid his waistband and thrust herself against him, her slim, brown fingers guiding him in.

They met twice more in the smithy, and on both occasions she pulled him to her and hoisted herself onto the bench, where she thrust herself against him, sending him to new heights of pleasure each time.

Then one evening he noticed that the light was on in the smithy. He hadn’t seen her for several days and hadn’t spotted her walking up to the farm. He hurried across the yard. He was going to tell her that he wanted to stop meeting in secret like this; they should talk to her fiancé and come clean. She could break off her engagement, and they could be together. He had thought about it and was prepared to leave the farm and move to Reykjavík with her; he could find something to do in town and she would be free to earn her living in whatever way she liked. He couldn’t wait to see her reaction to this plan as he ducked into the old passageway and walked towards the light in the smithy.

He gasped when he saw her fiancé bending over the hearth, prodding at the embers with a poker.

‘Did you do it in here?’ the other man asked, straightening up. He was too stunned to speak.

‘Not on the floor, surely. Where then? Where? On the workbench?’

‘I... I...’

He could see there was no point denying what had happened, so he tried to say that they had meant to talk to him: she was unhappy and wanted to leave him; they were even thinking of moving to Reykjavík. He was going to explain all this, to make a clean breast of things, but the words wouldn’t come.

‘Well, she got what she wanted,’ said the fiancé. ‘I can’t live with a woman like that. The engagement’s off. I wouldn’t dream of marrying her now. Not after she’s been here. Not after she’s been with you.’

‘I didn’t mean to... we were going to talk to you.’

‘We?’

‘Yes.’

The man laughed. ‘You don’t really think she’s interested in you?’

‘We...’

‘When are you going to wake up?’ jeered Vera’s fiancé, with all the fury of a man who has been betrayed. ‘She was only using you to get back at me. She knew exactly what she was doing. I expect you knew too. I bet it amused you, bet you enjoyed thinking about me as you screwed her. I thought we were friends...’

‘How... how did you know...?’

‘We had one of our fights — she’s always picking fights with me. And she told me about you. About your... your love nest. That she’d screwed you in here. She flung it in my face. That you’d fucked her in the smithy!’

The man’s fury was mounting with every word until, beside himself with rage, he snatched the hot poker out of the embers and struck the smith in the face. The glowing end caught him full in the eye, searing his eyeball.

As Thorson listened to the story the sun sank lower in the sky and the shadows lengthened and deepened in the kitchen. The blacksmith instinctively stroked his eyepatch as he concluded his tale. Thorson could tell that he was still suffering.

‘I yelled in agony and stumbled down the passage, out into the yard and into the kitchen, where I tried to cool the wound with water. The pain was unbearable and I knew... I knew at once that I’d lost the eye. That there was no way it could come through something that painful unharmed.’

‘Was her fiancé right?’ asked Thorson after a long pause. ‘Was she just using you to get back at him?’

‘She never spoke to me again. Next thing I heard, she’d broken off her engagement and left for Reykjavík. In hindsight, I suppose I was easy prey and she knew it. Knew I’d be easy to seduce. She used me to punish him, then threw me away like a piece of rubbish.’

‘And you haven’t seen her since?’

‘No. Of course it was tough losing my eye, but I’m not sure it was any worse than being made a fool of. That was the most painful part, really. Being taken in by her wiles.’

His words betrayed such deep suffering that Thorson was filled with pity.

‘So has she got herself into trouble in Reykjavík?’

‘We don’t know,’ said Thorson. ‘It didn’t take her long to find a new man in town and move in with him. He was murdered, like I said. But by then she’d already started seeing a British soldier.’

‘And you think she was involved?’

Thorson shrugged. ‘Impossible to say.’

The blacksmith gazed out of the kitchen window at the sunset, as if weighing up whether he should add something else. Thorson waited patiently, and after a long interval the man cleared his throat.

‘Is there more?’ asked Thorson.

‘No, it’s just she said something that you probably ought to know about. It’s only just come back to me. I thought nothing of it at the time, because she was obviously messing around. I don’t even know if I should be telling you because you’re bound to take it too seriously. Read too much into it.’

‘What did she say?’

‘There was an accident. A man drowned in a trout lake up on the moors near here. And she said I could go fishing with her fiancé and come back alone. That accidents happened. Then she laughed. She said it light-heartedly. I don’t think she meant anything by it, but...’

‘Now you’re wondering if she was only half joking?’

‘No, like I said, I didn’t think anything of it at the time.’

‘But now her boyfriend in Reykjavík has been found dead.’

‘I just wanted you to know. I’m sure she didn’t mean anything by it.’

Shortly afterwards the blacksmith accompanied Thorson out to the jeep. The dogs were nowhere to be seen. Thorson offered him his moleskin jacket in return for the shirt, as they were about the same height, but the man flatly refused to take anything from him.

‘There’s something about her, something that draws men to her, though I can’t put my finger on it’ the man said in parting. ‘Some kind of spell that makes you do anything she wants. I wouldn’t trust a word she says, but whether she’d go so far...’

‘Well,’ said Thorson, ‘we’ll see.’

They shook hands.

‘She disappeared,’ said the blacksmith. ‘She couldn’t leave fast enough. I gather she did a midnight flit and didn’t say goodbye to a soul.’

Thorson climbed into the jeep.

‘The strange thing is... It probably sounds crazy, but...’

‘Yes?’

‘I miss those evenings,’ said the man, his gaze straying towards the smithy. ‘She was... I still think of her sometimes, in spite of everything.’