And Then You Die (10 page)

Guðmundsson looked doubtful for a moment, then nodded resignedly.

‘Very well.’

He got out his wallet.

‘I’d better give you some money.’

‘I can change some.’

‘Not at this time of night.’

Zen glanced at the window again.

‘What time is it?’ he asked.

‘A quarter to nine.’

‘But when does it get dark?’

‘It doesn’t. The sun just dips briefly below the horizon around midnight and then comes up again about two in the morning. In between, there’s a couple of hours of dusk, but no darkness. In the winter, of course, it’s the other way round.’

He wrote something on the back of the receipt returned by the waitress, and handed it to Zen along with a couple of banknotes.

‘That’s my address and phone number,’ he said. ‘Just hand it to a taxi driver when you’ve had enough, or call me if you want company.’

Outside in the street, they separated. Zen drifted off,
wondering
at the invariable grey light. Summer days here in the north evidently didn’t have the classic three-act structure that he’d grown up with. They just maundered on like some experimental film in which the whole point is that nothing ever happens. It was then that Aurelio Zen decided to do something he had not done for a very long time indeed, so long that the person who had done it seemed almost as much of a stranger as the genetically
modified
strangers thronging by in the street. He decided to get quite deliberately and totally drunk.

He took out the banknotes which the consul had given him. They came to fifty thousand
kronur
, whatever that might amount to. He went into the first bar he came to and ordered a vodka. This was not something he normally drank, but it was one of those useful international products, like taxis, which were
available
everywhere and always called the same thing in every
language
. The vodka was served ice cold in a small shot glass. Zen downed three of them in short order, then headed out to the streets in search of more bars.

He found them quite easily. Indeed, after a while they began to find him. They were all more or less the same; dingy, poky, smelly little burrows with bad lighting and deafening music. But after a while he started to feel quite at home, despite the fact that the
other clients were all half a metre taller than him and at least
twenty
years younger, with the studiously bored air of modern youth everywhere. On the streets he had noticed more of the short, dark, unkempt people like the one he had seen eavesdropping on Snæbjörn Guðmundsson’s phone conversation, but they didn’t seem to come into the bars. Couldn’t afford the prices, probably. They looked a bit like the East European refugees and migrants flooding into Italy from Albania and Romania, another race entirely, wearing clothes from another era.

That was outside, though, where Zen no longer had any desire to go. He’d found a cosy nook at the back of a subterranean den where a few youngsters were half-heartedly dancing, and a
lissom
blonde refilled his shot glass as soon as he emptied it.

Later on the action on the dance floor hotted up considerably, until Zen seemed to be the only person in the place not flinging himself about to the battering rhythms of the sound system. Several of the girls were now dancing topless, their breasts
jiggling
about in a touching, natural, slightly comical way. Their partners too had stripped down to the absolute minimum. The air was heavy with the smell of sweat and testosterone.

Later still, the place was half empty, the lissom blonde ignored him, and the lights came brutally to life. Zen consulted his watch, but it was still on Italian time. Anyway, they were evidently
closing
. He got to his feet and shuffled over to the door. The streets were even more packed than the bar had been earlier. No one was dancing, but a couple of drunken scuffles broke out and were quickly subdued. The little, dark, shabbily dressed people were much in evidence too, looking on at the proceedings with that sly, half-mocking expression they all had.

Zen’s first priority was to find a taxi and get himself driven to the consul’s house, but that was not so simple. The streets where he was were all pedestrianized, and his enquiries were either ignored or elicited a broad gesture and a string of verbiage he couldn’t understand. In the end he set off walking along the main street, confident that sooner or later he would find a taxi rank.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a car in a side street with an illuminated sign on top. Someone was getting out of it. Zen started to run, but he was still some way away when the taxi revved up and drove quickly away. The person who had got out
of it entered a nearby block of flats and closed the door. Disheartened, Zen turned back towards the main street. He was still some twenty metres away from it when the figure came
rushing
at him out of an alley to his right, a knife in its hand.

Zen’s drunkenness saved him initially. He was so startled that he fell over backwards, landing heavily on his buttocks as the assailant swerved past. It was one of the little dark men he had been seeing all evening. He turned now, the knife held out, and walked back to where Zen was lying sprawled on the paving stones. The blade of the knife gleamed in the light from the
nearest
street lamp, but the man’s face was in shadow.

Tackling a man on the ground is a tricky business. You have to stoop to his level to get anything done, and if you do you lose your only advantage. Aurelio Zen was aware of this, having been in this situation before, but playing the other role. His attacker, oddly enough, was also aware of it. He made no further berserk moves, did not hurl himself on his prone victim, just stood there, sizing up the situation.

Zen was still drunk, but drunks can often focus very
effectively
on just one thing, which was all he had to do at present. So when the dark figure made its move, aiming a kick at Zen’s ribs, he was ready. He flipped over, away from the blow, and was on his hands and knees before the other had regained his balance. The next assault was a straight lunge aimed at Zen’s chest, which he parried at the cost of slit knuckles, then rose to his feet, using his assailant’s impetus to throw him clear and to one side.

They were both standing now. Taking the initiative, Zen moved in and aimed a kick at the hand holding the knife,
following
up with the heel of his right hand slammed up into the man’s jaw. He felt completely fearless, even when the swung blade returning stung him on the shoulder. Off balance but totally in control, he stripped the man’s shin with the instep of his left foot, causing a satisfying shriek, then stepped back to consider his next move.

It was only then that he noticed the siren and the flashing lights at the far end of the street. A moment later a white Volvo with blue and red stripes and a yellow shield on the door pulled up. Disconcerted, Zen looked round for his attacker. He was nowhere to be seen. Two uniformed patrolmen got out of the car.
One of them spoke to Zen, who shrugged and replied in Italian, ‘Sorry, I don’t understand.’ One policeman inspected Zen’s hand, which was covered in blood. The other bent down and picked up a knife from the pavement. He got out his radio and made a call, then the two men led Zen over to their car.

The next hour and a half was spent in the emergency
department
of a hospital, where the injuries to Zen’s hand and shoulder were cleaned and the former stitched. At a certain point he remembered the consul’s card and the receipt with his address, which he handed to the hospital staff. When Snæbjörn Guðmundsson showed up in person, he initially seemed more agitated by Zen’s lack of agitation than by what had actually
happened
. Zen just ignored him. He was feeling better than he had for months. He had no idea what had happened, still less why. That didn’t matter. Something had, and he had dealt with it. He was in charge again, engaged with the real world, making and breaking. It felt good, and he wasn’t going to let some weedy, neurotic diplomat tell him otherwise. In fact it was only with the greatest difficulty that Guðmundsson managed to convince Zen to come home with him and go to bed rather than take to the streets and see if there were any bars still open, but in the end he prevailed. They drove somewhere, Zen got out, they went inside, there was a bed, he lay down.

He awoke in a bright, hard light. His shoulder and hand ached abominably, but neither could begin to match his head. He was lying fully clothed on a narrow wooden bed in a musty room filled with cardboard boxes. He had no idea where he was, or any memory of how he got there. The world was a painful enigma whose solution, if there was one, eluded him utterly.

Some time later, Snæbjörn Guðmundsson appeared with a cup of tea in his hand.

‘Feeling better?’ he asked in an excessively loud and
patronizingly
cheery tone. ‘Bathroom’s to the left. I’ll be next door when you’re ready to talk.’

Twenty minutes later, Zen shambled into the room next door. It was a bleakly austere space stretching from one end of the small one-storey house to the other. The walls were white, the floor bare wooden boards, the furnishings hard and minimal. Since the front door was at one end, he must have crossed the
room to get to the bed where he had woken up, but he had
absolutely
no memory of this.

‘So how are you feeling?’ Snæbjörn Guðmundsson demanded, putting down the book he had been reading.

‘Like hell,’ Zen replied succinctly.

‘Yes, well, you seemed a bit the worse for wear last night, I have to say. Apart from your various injuries, I mean.’

‘I drank a lot.’

‘Expensive business here in Iceland.’

‘I’ll pay you back.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about that. You’re evidently a VIP. I’ll bill the embassy.’

Zen collapsed in a chair made of wooden slats on a stainless steel frame. It was as uncomfortable as it looked.

‘Did they find the person who attacked me?’ he asked.

Guðmundsson looked at him oddly.

‘No, they didn’t. You say he was dark, unkempt looking and short?’

‘Shorter than me, and I’m shorter than most people here.’

‘That’s very unusual. Our genetic pool here in Iceland is remarkably homogenous. Or to put it another way, everyone’s related to everyone else. We don’t have a distinct class of shorter, dark-skinned people, like the Lapps in Finland.’

‘They must be immigrants.’

‘That’s not really a problem here. We’re an island, of course, which helps. The points of entry are strictly controlled and we’re very particular about who we let in. Excessively so, some might say, especially if it’s a matter of non-Northern European individuals. When the United States military applied to build Keflavik as a base during the war, the government agreed on
condition
that no black servicemen be stationed there.’

Zen waved dismissively.

‘Well, all I know is that I saw plenty of these people about last night. And this was before I got drunk. Like that one I told you I saw standing beside you outside the café yesterday, while you were talking on the phone. They looked different, they dressed different and they acted different. And one of them tried to kill me.’

An odd look came into Guðmundsson’s eyes.

‘You say they dressed differently. How?’

Zen shrugged.

‘I don’t know. Like people who had just arrived from some remote village in the country. They were wearing coarse,
homespun
garments, badly cut and badly put together. They looked completely out of place, like the gypsies in Italy, but it didn’t seem to bother them. On the contrary, they were staring at the other people in a really blatant way, with this sort of mocking, malicious smile.’

Snæbjörn Guðmundsson nodded slowly, considering all this. Then he stood up and beckoned.

‘Come this way a moment.’

He walked over to the front door and opened it on to the tiny patch of garden that divided the house from the street. The
consul
looked both ways, then turned to Zen.

‘How many people are there in sight at the moment?’

Zen counted rapidly.

‘Eleven,’ he replied.

‘Ah,’ said Guðmundsson.

‘Why?’

The consul ushered him back inside and closed the door.

‘The reason why the police were on the scene so quickly last night was that all of downtown Reykjavik is monitored by a system of closed-circuit video cameras connected to viewing screens at the central police station, to deter and control violence among the
roving
packs of drunken youths who often go on revelling until five or six in the morning at this time of year. The patrol cars are parked strategically around the perimeter of the area, and can reach any trouble spot in seconds.’

Zen took out his cigarettes and looked questioningly at his host, who nodded.

‘The street in which you claim to have been attacked …’

‘What do you mean, “claim”? Look at my hand! Why do you think I needed all these stitches?’

‘Let’s leave that for a moment. At all events, the street is not very well lit, and the nearest camera was quite a long way from where this happened. Nevertheless, one of the police officers on duty saw you fall over and then start lashing out with your feet and fists, and called in a patrol car. What he didn’t see, and what
re-examination of the video tape has failed to reveal, is any
evidence
of a second person.’

‘Are you calling me a liar?’ demanded Zen, really angry now.

‘Not at all. I’m merely telling you what the police report stated.’

‘You think my idea of a good time is to get so drunk I see
people
who aren’t there and then slash my hand and shoulder with a knife I brought along for the purpose?’

‘Are you drunk now?’ asked the consul.

‘No! Just horribly hung over.’

‘Of course. Just a moment.’

He walked out to the kitchen, returning a moment later with a small glass filled with a brownish liquid.