The Silence of the Sea

Chapter 12

‘It’ll have to wait till morning.’ Thráinn hauled himself back on deck after leaning so perilously far over the rail that Ægir moved instinctively closer to grab him if he fell. ‘I can’t get a good enough view. It looks like it’s that sodding container, or at least part of it. You should have called me sooner, Loftur. When there’s debris like that in the sea you’re lucky if it shows up on the radar, as you should know. We might have been able to avoid the collision if we’d spotted it at the point when it became visible. This isn’t what we need right now.’

‘It was too late.’ Loftur looked shamefaced. ‘We hit it almost immediately after the radar picked it up. I was keeping an eye out but then he came in and distracted me.’ He indicated Ægir, his expression distinctly unfriendly.

‘Don’t try and blame it on him.’ Thráinn wiped his hands on his trousers.

Ægir ignored them, not wanting to create trouble between the two men. The outcome was inevitable; sooner or later they would make up and then they would both resent him even more than they did before. He bent over the rail and peered into the gloom below, where he could see the gleam of water but little else. ‘Won’t it have drifted free by morning?’

‘Maybe. That would be the best outcome.’ Thráinn turned to Loftur. ‘I think we should let her drift tonight rather than trying to hold our position. But Halli had better keep watch with me in case there’s any more wreckage about. You go to bed and we’ll take it in turns to keep an eye on the bugger and see if we can get any sense out of the VHF. The transmission you heard was probably someone repeating a warning about the container.’ He looked over the side again. ‘With any luck it’ll break away during the night; if not, we’ll sort it out by daylight.’

Loftur nodded, still looking sullen. The moment they spotted the container he had sent Ægir to wake the captain. The thud when they struck it had not been loud, nor had it noticeably checked the vessel’s progress, but Loftur was alarmed and insisted on putting the engines in neutral until Thráinn had assessed the situation. The captain had taken it seriously too, which did nothing to reassure Ægir. If Thráinn was worried, there was every reason to be afraid: he didn’t seem the type to make a fuss about nothing.

‘If we’re just going to idle, I could take the watch with you.’ Ægir let go of the rail and instinctively stood up straighter. ‘Wouldn’t that make more sense? Loftur and Halli need their sleep and this may be the only time on this trip that you can trust me with a night watch.’ The two men said nothing; their expressions were hard to read. ‘If it turns out that you do need to sort it out tomorrow, wouldn’t the sleep do them good? We can always wake them if anything happens.’ Still neither man broke the silence. Loftur was apparently waiting for Thráinn to come to a decision, but it was unclear whether he hoped the captain would choose Ægir over Halli, or vice versa.

A wave drove the flotsam against the side and another low boom broke the silence. Ægir couldn’t help wondering how strong the hull was and how many blows of that magnitude it could withstand. Perhaps his idea of taking the watch was foolish; if the yacht was holed his presence on the bridge would be worse than useless. Even as these reservations occurred to him, Thráinn accepted his offer with a decisive nod. ‘If anything goes wrong, Loftur, we’ll wake you or Halli. With any luck the current will carry it away and solve the problem for us, so there’s no need to have two men on watch. It’s probably an unnecessary precaution, but you never know when it comes to junk like this.’

‘No problem.’ It wouldn’t be the first time Ægir had stayed up all night. ‘I’ll just nip below and fetch my book.’

Lára was asleep in the cabin with the duvet bunched up around her. Her breathing was heavy and her eyelids flickered as if in a dream. Ægir perched gently on the side of the bed and whispered that he would be on the bridge for the rest of the night. She murmured something incomprehensible and turned over. He doubted she had taken in the message and wondered if he should wake her, but then she might not be able to get back to sleep and would lie awake for the rest of the night. On his way out he stuck his head into the girls’ cabin and saw that they were lying oddly entwined in the middle of the double bed. Sigga Dögg beamed at him from the headboard as if to reassure him that everything would be all right; she would watch over her twin sisters while he did the same for the yacht.

He closed the door, plunging their cabin back into darkness.

Ægir hesitated and considered opening the door again, either to turn on the light or at least to leave it open a crack so that the blackness would not be so profound. But neither was a good idea. If he turned on the light, the girls might wake up, and the constant motion of the yacht would make the door bang if he left it open. After a brief pause he set off down the corridor, only to stop by the door at the end. Everything looked as it should; the ceiling lights glowed dimly and all the doors were closed. They fitted so tightly that not a sound could be heard from the cabins and even the drone of the engines seemed more muffled down here than in any other part of the yacht. Even so, Ægir couldn’t rid himself of the unsettling feeling that he was abandoning them somehow. Perhaps it was instinct warning him to make the most of every second he could spend with them while they were on board this boat. As if the future was measured in minutes, not years.

Thráinn was waiting for him in the pilot house. His back was turned and Ægir had the impression that he had been speaking into the radiotelephone but was now trying to hide the fact. ‘Was there another message?’

‘What?’ Thráinn frowned as if he didn’t understand the question. Then realising what Ægir was referring to, he said: ‘You mean on the VHF? Oh, no.’ He ran a hand lightly over the screen. ‘It seems to be buggered – at least, I’m having trouble getting through. It’s a pain in the arse that the long-range radio’s playing up as well. I expect what you heard before was the result of a short circuit. Maybe a fuse has blown and affected both radios. On the plus side, it means you won’t have to worry about them. You won’t hear a peep out of them, not until I’ve given them the once-over tomorrow with the boys. The problem’s too complicated for me to fix tonight.’

‘I won’t mind that.’ Ægir stared at the VHF, fervently hoping the captain was right; the last thing he wanted to hear when he was alone was that sinister voice echoing through the bridge. The captain’s explanation struck him as a little odd, though; how could a short circuit cause the ship’s name to be transmitted over the loudspeaker? But the man must know what he was talking about. Ægir couldn’t afford to start doubting his expertise at this stage.

He watched as the captain checked the screens, and wondered about the man. He still hadn’t come to any conclusion about his character; one minute he was friendly, the next gruff. Even his age was hard to guess. His appearance offered only vague, contradictory clues; thick, dark hair contrasted with a lined or weather-beaten face, and his powerful frame made his height even more striking; Ægir only reached up to his ears. His arms were tanned a dark brown and the back of his right hand was criss-crossed by a network of mysterious white scars. Perhaps they were an accumulation of many different small cuts. Ægir was too ignorant about life at sea to know whether they went with the territory. As he stood beside this big, strong man it occurred to him how sheltered his own life had been – how different from the life of a sailor. Every morning he went to the office where the greatest peril he faced was paper cuts, while this man wrestled with unpredictable currents and ferocious storms. There must have been times when he doubted he would make it home alive. Nothing like that had ever happened to Ægir in his line of work. He cleared his throat. ‘Do you want me to start outside or inside?’

‘Probably best if I take the outside watch to start with.’

‘Anything in particular I should keep an eye out for?’

Thráinn surveyed the bridge. ‘Well, there’s no need for you to touch the console since we’re idling, so I won’t waste time teaching you how to use the equipment. If anything happens, just come and get me.’

Ægir was left alone in the pilot house. His book seemed to have lost all its power to entertain and he could barely make out the print in the semi-darkness anyway. Despite Thráinn’s absence, Ægir couldn’t bring himself to occupy his seat like a fully grown man playing at being captain. Instead, he huddled in the corner with his feet propped on a side table. He put his book down, not even bothering to check whether it was open at the right page. It didn’t matter, as he was unlikely to return to it during the voyage; if he didn’t feel like reading it when alone on night watch, when would he?

It was going to be a long night. He sat with his hands in his lap. Outside there was nothing but impenetrable darkness; there were no stars and the moon was hidden by cloud. Night in the city was nothing compared to this dense, unrelieved blackness. It seemed almost palpable; if he thrust his arm far enough over the rail he imagined he would be able to feel its texture, yielding and slippery, like cold slime. Rising, he moved into the circle of light in the middle of the room. Mercifully, the VHF remained dormant but that malevolent voice still rang in his ears.

He regretted not having asked if it would be all right to step outside now and then for a breath of fresh air or a drink. Surely it would only take him a couple of minutes to dash down to the galley and grab a can? He longed for a cold beer but decided against it, not because he was indirectly in command of the ship but because he was afraid it would make him drowsy. For some reason he felt a strong aversion to sleeping alone in here. No doubt it was the fear of being caught by Thráinn.

The galley lights came on after an instant’s delay. He hadn’t noticed the humming of the fridge before; perhaps it was because everything was quieter now. He was assailed by a sudden feeling of loneliness and wondered if he should wake Lára to keep him company, but dismissed the idea at once. If he did, the girls would be alone while their parents slept off their fatigue in the morning, and it would be unforgivable to leave them unsupervised on deck. Though they were growing up faster than he liked, they were still young and foolish enough to do something silly.

The fridge, a big double-door model, was half empty. The stores they had lugged on board could not fill the deep shelves and it was almost alarming to see how little they had to eat. Supposing they ran out of food before the voyage was over? Then again, they had the world’s biggest larder right underneath them, so they were unlikely to starve. He pushed aside a bottle of ketchup in the hope of finding a can lurking behind it. No such luck. The same went for all the other possible hiding places in the roomy interior. For a moment he was glad Lára wasn’t there to tick him off for failing to replace the can he had taken out earlier. It was an endless bone of contention between them; they both took drinks out of the fridge, but he took it for granted that she would replace them. And the last thing he wanted right now was a tepid Coke. How stupid to have a big fridge like that with no ice-maker. That would have saved the day.

Feeling grumpy, Ægir fetched a Coke from the larder, but his spirits revived when he caught sight of the huge chest freezer whose existence he had forgotten. They had chucked a couple of loaves in it to ensure they would keep for the entire voyage, along with some packets of chicken breasts and mince. He had been in a hurry at the time, so couldn’t recall if he had seen any ice cubes, though he did remember that the former owners had left the freezer stuffed to the brim – they had barely been able to squeeze their own food in on top – so it was quite possible there was ice in there somewhere.

The large lid creaked as he opened it. He was met by a puff of arctic vapour and recoiled for an instant before bending over to root around among the frozen contents.

At first he was able to shift the packets without much effort, but couldn’t find any ice cubes. Determined not to give up straight away, he carried on digging, deeper and deeper, hampered by increasingly numb fingers. While he rummaged, he reflected on the inadequacies of freezer design; it was impossible to reach the contents at the bottom of the cavernous chest except by removing the upper layers. He was only halfway down when he encountered a black bin-bag, which seemed to fill the rest of the interior. He prodded it in the faint hope that the owner of the yacht had been planning a mega party and had bought in several kilos of ice for the occasion. Unsurprisingly, this turned out to be over-optimistic. Whatever the bag contained, it was much larger; the entire carcase of a suckling pig, perhaps, or a side of beef. Snatching back his hand, he blew on his fingers. He would have to make do with lukewarm Coke.

Food packets of various sizes were now heaped at either end of the chest and Ægir set about replacing them. It wasn’t easy as the freezer had been crammed to bursting. As he tried to stuff some fish fillets down beside the bin-bag, his hand was forced up against the cold plastic, making him uncomfortably aware of its contents. Withdrawing his arm slowly, he peered into the chest, from which a cold mist rose as if it were exhaling. What the hell had he touched? It wasn’t a side of beef, that much was certain. Nor a suckling pig either. It had felt almost like rigid fingers. Waving the vapour away, he tried in vain to make out the shape of whatever the black plastic was covering. He felt an urgent desire to slam the lid, take his Coke and return to the bridge without exploring any further, but he couldn’t.

In the lull before he acted he was acutely aware of his solitude. He yearned for the warmth of Lára’s body under the thick duvet and the sound of her gentle breathing. The last place on earth he wanted to be was here, with whatever was in that bag. Suddenly, losing patience with himself, he tore open the plastic where he had touched it.

The light picked out a white finger, sparkling slightly with frost, tipped with red nail varnish.

They jostled for space in the small larder, nobody wanting to stand too close to the freezer. ‘What are we going to do?’ Lára’s voice was husky from sleep, her hair tousled, her cheek still creased by the pillow. Loftur and Halli were in much the same state, also newly woken, though they succeeded better in keeping their cool. ‘What are we going to do?’ she repeated in a trembling voice. ‘We can’t sail home with a dead woman in the freezer as if nothing had happened.’

‘Who do you think it is?’ Thráinn bent over and peered into the chest. The contents were just as Ægir had left them; no one apart from the captain had liked to touch the bin-bag after Ægir had opened the lid to convince them it wasn’t a delusion.

‘I’m not sure I want to know,’ said Halli. ‘And personally I have no desire to see the woman’s face. What difference would it make, anyway? It wouldn’t be anyone I know.’ He shuddered. ‘At least I hope not.’

Lára chewed her lip. ‘Answer me, somebody – what are we going to do?’

Ægir opened his mouth to speak, then changed his mind. He hadn’t the faintest idea; besides, Thráinn was in charge, so it was his problem. He didn’t envy the man; he was finding it hard enough to get a grip on himself let alone take responsibility for other people. Ever since he had realised what was in the bag, he had been obeying a stream of orders issued by his brain without any apparent intervention from his conscious mind: close the lid, fetch the captain, wake Loftur and Halli, and take them up to the bridge without disturbing his wife and daughters. Lára had, in fact, woken up, but the girls were still sleeping peacefully.

Thráinn spoke then with a firmness that brooked no disagreement. ‘We won’t do anything. Just close the freezer and hold to our course. If we try to deal with this ourselves, we’ll probably end up destroying vital evidence.’

‘Shouldn’t we call the police and ask them to come and remove the body? We could wait for them, or maybe sail to meet them.’ Lára hugged her cardigan more tightly around her in the chill from the freezer.

Thráinn snorted. ‘We’re not waiting for the police. Where do you think they’d come from? We’re in international waters, hundreds of miles from any police station or any country’s jurisdiction.’ This was true – Ægir had noticed from the course plotted on the chart in the pilot house that they had long since left Portuguese waters.

‘So what, then? Are you suggesting we do nothing at all? Aren’t there any laws in force at sea?’ Lára darted a glance at the freezer and shuddered. She had been unable to bring herself to take more than a brief peek inside; the only reason she had followed the men into the larder was to avoid being left alone in the galley.

‘Of course there are laws.’ But Thráinn didn’t elaborate, or explain how they were supposed to comply with them or organise an investigation. He must know, though; even Ægir had been given a brief overview of international maritime law on his sailing course. Perhaps Thráinn simply wanted to shut Lára up. Ægir decided not to intervene. He could always explain the situation to his wife once they were alone together. But in the event there was no need because Thráinn took pity on Lára and clarified: ‘We have no choice but to hold to our course. Close the lid. I’ll report the body and we’ll continue to Iceland as planned. When we get there the authorities will take over. This is an Icelandic ship and when in international waters you’re under the jurisdiction of the flag you sail under.’ He addressed his next comment to Ægir. ‘All the papers are definitely in order, aren’t they? You haven’t bungled the registration of the yacht like you did the satellite phone?’

Ægir met his eye and didn’t require a mirror to guess that his own expression must be idiotic. ‘Yes, I mean no. She’s Icelandic now.’ He sincerely hoped he was right. After all, he had never registered a ship before and it hadn’t helped that the documents were all in Portuguese or French. He could conceivably have made a mistake, though everything should be in order.

‘Just as well. Otherwise it’s possible we’ll be turned back.’

‘Where to?’ Lára looked at him in alarm. ‘Portugal?’

‘Yes, or Monaco where the yacht was last registered. That’s a risk if the change of ownership hasn’t gone through and she’s not registered as Icelandic.’

‘But…’ Loftur broke off as suddenly as he had interrupted.

‘But what?’ Lára sounded as if she feared even worse was to come. Though what could possibly be worse?

‘No, I was just thinking.’ Loftur looked embarrassed as all eyes turned to him but realised he had better continue despite his reluctance, since Lára looked quite capable of extracting his words by violence. ‘That body must already have been in the freezer when we embarked. Mustn’t it?’

‘Obviously.’ Ægir was disappointed by the banality of the observation. Against his better judgement, he had been hoping for more, for the insight of a sailor with experience under his belt. ‘No one’s missing from our group.’ He added hastily: ‘And we didn’t bring a body on board with us.’ He remembered that Thráinn had seen them stashing food in the freezer and wanted to remove all suspicion that he and Lára might have put the bin-bag in there.

Loftur nodded. ‘In which case the body was on board before the ship was registered as Icelandic. Does that make a difference?’

Thráinn’s lips thinned. ‘There’s no way of knowing. It could have been brought aboard somewhere else entirely. Icelandic jurisdiction only covers crimes committed on Icelandic vessels in international waters, so if it happened in territorial waters, I’d be duty bound to report to that country. The rule applies to all countries with a coastline, so the nationality of the ship is of secondary importance in those circumstances.’ He reached out and closed the lid. ‘Look, there’s no point discussing it any further as we haven’t a clue how, when or where it happened. Or even if a crime’s been committed. There may be a perfectly natural explanation.’

‘A natural explanation?’ Lára sounded a little bolder now that there was no danger of inadvertently catching sight of the corpse. ‘What could possibly be natural about finding a body hidden in a bin-bag in the freezer of a yacht?’

‘Well, maybe not.’ Thráinn left the larder and beckoned to the others to follow. ‘But that doesn’t alter the fact that I’m in charge and I’m going to turn the matter over to the Icelandic authorities. I’ll report the incident, then leave it in their hands.’

Lára realised it wouldn’t be in their interest to object. Thráinn wanted to carry on, as they all did. In Portugal they would be taken in for questioning and maybe even banned from leaving the country until the investigation was over.

‘I’m going to try and make radio contact,’ Thráinn announced. ‘You two go below and get some kip,’ he said to Loftur and Halli, adding to Ægir: ‘I won’t be requiring your assistance again anytime soon.’ Ægir didn’t reply; it would be a long time before he offered to stand watch alone again. There was something very wrong with this yacht.

Once in bed he and Lára lay staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep. They hadn’t discussed the body since coming below, just brushed their teeth and got ready for bed as if nothing had happened. They exchanged inconsequential comments in a way that made Ægir feel as if he was acting in a bad play.

‘I know who it is.’ Lára didn’t turn towards him.

‘Oh?’ Ægir lay very still. ‘Who?’

‘It’s Karítas. I recognised her scent just before the lid was shut.’

‘Somehow I doubt a corpse smells the same as a living person. Your mind’s playing tricks on you.’

‘It wasn’t the smell of decomposition, it was perfume. The bottle’s in a drawer in the dressing table. It was the same scent.’

‘Surely millions of women wear that perfume?’

‘No. It’s a very exclusive brand that I’ve never come across in any shop. That’s why I had a sniff. I was curious because I’d never heard of it.’

‘I expect that’s because they sell it in the kind of luxury stores abroad that we never go into. For all you know it may be popular with rich ladies. Perhaps the woman’s one of the hundreds who must have been guests on board over the years.’ Ægir closed his eyes. ‘Though the body can’t have been there for that long. If the previous owners had hidden it in the freezer, they’d surely have disposed of it at sea, which means it must have ended up there fairly recently.’ Ægir opened his eyes wide again. Whenever he closed them he couldn’t get the image of the blue-white hand out of his mind. ‘Or just before the yacht was confiscated.’ After a brief, pensive silence, he continued: ‘Unless they hid it there when the yacht was in port. The seal was broken, remember? Maybe someone smuggled the body on board – someone with keys, because there was no sign of a break-in. That doesn’t leave many suspects – apart from the couple who owned the yacht.’

‘Not Karítas – she’s lying in the freezer.’

‘You can’t be sure. In spite of the perfume.’

‘It wasn’t just the perfume. When Thráinn was poking around down there with the wooden spoon I could have sworn I caught a flash of red. I didn’t realise until I smelt the perfume, but it must have been the necklace. The red jewel in the painting.’

Ægir gave up. He couldn’t be bothered to argue with her by pointing out that Karítas’s necklace was not the only object in the world that was red. It wouldn’t make any difference. Whoever it was, Karítas or some other unidentified woman, she had been doomed to a premature death and an ice-cold grave.