In the living room Jón Karl slides a big cupboard aside and punches a seven-number code into the electronic lock that’s built into the concrete wall.
Inside the safe are one million crowns in new 5000-crown bills; a revolver in an ankle holster; a box of .38 calibre shells; the family’s passports; a hunting knife in a leather sheath; stock and share certificates; various documents, and three bank deposit books from Switzerland and Luxembourg. The revolver is a 1970 model, .38 calibre, Smith & Wesson, short-barrelled, its cylinder holding five rounds. It fits tightly into the custom-made holster that Jón Karl fastens with Velcro around the top of his right boot. Then he shovels the rest of the safe’s contents into his duffel bag and tightens the drawstring. Everything except the miscellaneous documents, which he throws in the fireplace before lighting them.
Jón Karl stands in front of the fireplace and watches the flames take hold of the paper, burn it and change it into thin black membranes that break, float up, keep burning and, little by little, become ashes and finally nothing at all. The smoke rises up the chimney, the fire sputters and the reddish light flickers, reflected in the wide-open eyes that stare into the dancing flames, into them and beyond to somewhere much further, much deeper.
Hypnotising fire. Like an open doorway. And a lurking shadow.
Crying wolf?
Jón Karl turns suddenly and looks towards the French windows that open onto the deck behind the house. There is nothing to be seen. No shadow, no movement, no sound.
But something is bothering him. Something that is close enough to ring warning bells in his subconscious.
In the distance he hears a soft creaking.
And a moment later the electricity goes off in the whole house.
Darkness – apart from the fire in the fireplace, that forms dancing shadows on walls, floor and ceiling.
The only thing Jón Karl is sure of at this moment is that time is short. The fact that something evil is around is not what matters the most. And what form or purpose that embodiment of evil has is completely irrelevant. First and foremost he must be ready for its arrival, whatever it might be.
Jón Karl bends down, releases the revolver from its holster with his right hand while feeling around in the duffel bag for the ammunition with his left hand. When his fingers find the box they tear it open and grab a fistful of shells, most of which fall onto the living-room carpet and roll under tables and chairs. His hands move with the assurance of long practice; Jón Karl pushes the cylinder to the side and loads it, chamber by chamber, shoves it back in place and pulls back the hammer, his finger utterly still on the highly sensitive trigger. This is done in less than ten seconds.
There is still one shell in the palm of his left hand, which Jón Karl rolls between clammy fingers as he listens. There is the low creak of door hinges out by the entrance hall and someone hurries along the carpeted corridor. Jón Karl throws the shell in the fire and creeps, bent over, into the darker side of the living room, where he shelters behind a leather armchair.
When the shell explodes an uninvited guest leaps into the living room, turns in a circle, aims a sawn-off shotgun in all directions and shouts, ‘You’re dead!’
Jón Karl aims and fires two shots, which silence the intruder, echo around the room and light it up.
The first shot misses and shatters the glass in one of the windows that faces the driveway, but the second hits the intruder in his right shoulder.
‘Help!’ he yells and falls to his knees. He grabs the wound with his left hand and tries to handle the shotgun with his right, but his trembling fingers give way and the gun falls to the floor.
Help? Are there more of them?
Jón Karl steps away from his hiding place and cocks the gun for the third time, tasting blood, crazed thoughts spinning in his head and an ice-cold glint in his purposeful stare.
‘Don’t!’ the man cries, starting to crawl along the floor. He has a dark blue ski mask over his face and claws and kicks his way forward like a disabled bug, leaving bloodstains on the carpet.
‘Who sent you?’ asks Jón Karl, stepping on the intruder’s right ankle. He peers round in the dark and listens with one ear for the sound of other people as he bends down, points his revolver at the man’s abdomen and curls his left hand round the sawn-off shotgun.
‘Nobody,’ he answers hoarsely, staring at the master of the house with the fear of death in his bulging eyes.
‘Who are you?’ asks Jón Karl quietly and he shoves the revolver up under the man’s ribcage, eliciting a cry of fear and pain.
‘Nobody,’ he answers again, now thoroughly wet with his own blood and panting with discomfort.
Jón Karl lets go of the sawn-off shotgun, smashes his knee deep into the abdomen of this uninvited guest and tears his mask off with his left hand.
At the same moment somebody bashes him heavily in the back of his head. Bones crunch, muscles soften and everything goes black.
Travel without consciousness is an amazing experience. Rolling back and forth as if in a swing, only more slowly, with the addition of uncomfortable sideways movements and always this funny feeling that the swing down is longer and deeper than the swing up, as if your limp body were falling over some kind of rim, shown in slow motion like a television replay, again and again.
It’s rather soothing in some hypnotic way but first and foremost there is an unending feeling of numbness that seems more unreal the longer you float about in this oppressive void that smells of warm blood and is as large or small as your mind, as deep as the echoing in the slow drumbeat of the blow to your head.
Boom, boom, boom…
The inside of the ambulance is black. Jón Karl, wearing a light-blue-and-white seaman’s outfit, lies tied to the stretcher. The doctor sitting by him is an octopus man with an Albert Einstein mask over his face.
If I say, ‘It begins well, then jogs along, really takes flight around the middle, but no-one understands the ending’, what would I be talking about?
Is it a film?
Yeah, but I’m not talking about a film.
Is it maybe a book?
Yeah, but I’m not talking about a book.
Is it this boat trip?
Yes, but I’m talking about something more and greater than this boat trip.
The ambulance drives along a pitted road and the bumps echo inside a metal box the size of a ship’s hold.
Boom, boom, boom…
The pain is almost overpowering but at the same time as sweet as honey, as warm and tender as a sunbeam. The pain is a consequence of consciousness and consciousness is entwined with life itself. Pain is life and life is pain.
Not dead yet, thinks Jón Karl behind closed eyes, broken bones and swollen flesh. He pretends continued unconsciousness while he attempts to work out the surroundings, the situation and the state of his own body.
He is sitting on a chair, tied hand and foot. His ankles are tied to the front legs of the chair, while his wrists are bound together behind the chair back. The chair is bolted to the floor in a cold, damp space, under a naked lightbulb. His eyes are swollen, his nose sore and his jaw badly bruised, even broken. His ribs are aflame and his left collarbone cracked or broken. The back of his neck is extremely sore, his innards mauled and most of his joints stretched and twisted. Jón Karl can smell blood, cigarette smoke and foul sweat. He can distinguish three voices, but he can’t hear what they’re saying because of the ringing in his ears. But since the men are neither whispering nor keeping their voices down, Jón Karl knows he is in a ‘safe’ place somewhere far from help and civilisation.