‘WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU?’ Jón Karl shouts down to the man, who is beardless, round cheeked, curly haired and cute in some weird way; he looks very pleasant, even from a distance and at such a strange angle.
‘COME GET YOURSELF SOME FISH ON A DISH, FRIEND!’ the man calls back, smiling over the whole of his childlike face before disappearing into B-deck.
Jón Karl grins, throws his cigarette overboard and opens the door to the D-deck corridor. He’s hungry – so hungry his stomach is grumbling – but he also needs to take a shit. He goes into his cabin, turns on the light in the bathroom, pulls down his trousers and sits on the toilet. He’s always thought shitting in an aeroplane was bloody good, and shitting on board a ship is even better. The heavy up-and-down movements help the bowels to do their work and add interest to this otherwise monotonous activity. As if it were the ship itself that is shitting, not him.
The ship takes a deep breath, climbs up to the crest of a wave and tenses its abdominal muscles, then it lets itself go down the side – one, two and…
Boom, boom, boom…
Jón Karl’s backside is pressed down onto the toilet seat; his anus opens and manages to rid itself of a hard turd the size of a bratwurst.
‘Way to go!’ Jón Karl says with a sigh. He pats his pockets and mentally reviews their contents. In the left is the sock with the shells, morphine and syringe while in the right is a pack of cigarettes, a five-million-crown cheque and the picture of Miss September.
Jón Karl pats his trouser legs by his ankles, feeling for his gun and knife, and then considers that maybe he should leave the weapons in his cabin. But it’s probably safer to carry them. His next idea is to try out the morphine. No, that can wait for a while. Eat first. He wipes his bottom and flushes, washes his hands and looks himself in the eye in the mirror above the sink.
He isn’t tired any more. Or not dead tired, at least. Now he’s got a healthy-looking gleam in his eye, blood in his hard muscles and self-confidence in his savage grin. Looking a lot better, champ. Got a bit of Satan in him, a kind of diabolical aura you can almost touch that pulses like an electric current, fascinating and frightening at the same time.
‘Who’s the king?’ Jón Karl says, winking at his own reflection. Then they both laugh at their own joke.
The laugh bursts through flesh and bone, deforming the face in the mirror, like lightning that tears the rain clouds apart and lets the thunder through.
Silence.
Jón Karl stops his satanic smile, turns off the bathroom light and leaves the cabin.
The stairwell is newly scrubbed and smells of soft soap and ammonia. Jón Karl leans on the railing and swings himself down the last few steps at each landing.
The smell of fried fish and onion-butter wafts through the stairwell and makes his mouth water.
XIX
08:27
Guðmundur sits in his chair in the bridge, staring fiercely out of the salt-caked windows. The weather has improved slightly – it’s stopped raining and calmed noticeably – but there are thick cloud banks ahead, heavy waves and strong ocean currents, none of which bodes well. Sailing in bad weather is both time consuming and dangerous, besides which it uses extra fuel to the tune of several tonnes a day.
At the captain’s feet lies Skuggi, looking pensively up at his master.
But Guðmundur is thinking neither of the weather nor the cost of extra fuel. He is more worried about being held up. Most of all, he resents not being able to phone home to Hrafnhildur.
What’s she going to think if she doesn’t hear from him?
The fact is that the ship is totally disconnected from the world and that is almost driving the captain round the bend. Never before in his long career as a seaman has Guðmundur Berndsen had the misfortune to lose all three at once: radar, satellite phone and radio. Anything can happen at sea – that’s true enough – but there’s something dubious about this particular malfunction. It’s simply too widespread to have come about without somebody noticing something. If lightning had struck the ship, for instance, everyone would have noticed.
A blow, a flash, fire and then the electricity would have been out for a while – the engine could even have died. It would have been the same if something had hit the ship: a small plane, a big bird, flying debris. A collision like that would either have come to their attention or had limited impact. No – there are little warning bells ringing in the head of this experienced captain. Not only is the malfunction extensive, it could just as well be called specialised, since it only affects the ship’s ability to communicate. Coincidence? Imaginings?
No, by Christ! Something is not as it should be.
Guðmundur picks up the console phone and calls down to the engine room.
‘Hello, John here,’ Big John drawls.
‘This is the captain. We’ve got a bit of a problem and I’m going to have a little meeting up here at eleven.’
Silence.
‘What’s the problem?’
‘We’ve lost the GPS, radar and radio phone. Can you come up at eleven, and bring Methúsalem with you?’
‘Yes,’ says Big John, raising his voice. ‘Who else will be there?’
‘I’m going to get Rúnar to have a look up on the roof later on. Then he’ll come to the meeting and report to us.’
‘Okay. See you at eleven, then.’
Guðmundur puts down the phone and leans back in the chair. The sea has gone blue-black out at the horizon, the wind is picking up little by little and coal-black banks of cloud are drifting closer. If he’s going to send Rúnar up on the roof, he’d better do it sooner rather than later. He looks at his watch and sees it’s just past twenty to nine. The deckhands’ watch starts at nine and Rúnar usually stops by the bridge soon after to check the weather and have a cup of coffee. Guðmundur gets out of the chair and walks slowly to the port side.
Better make fresh coffee before the bosun comes.
08:45
Big John pushes the dead man’s alarm before he leaves the engine room and stomps up to E-deck, where he knocks on the chief mate’s door.
‘Who’s there?’ asks Methúsalem, opening the door as far as the metal catch will allow.
‘It’s me,’ says Big John. Methúsalem closes the door so he can loosen the catch.
‘Come in,’ says Methúsalem, letting the chief engineer into the cabin.
‘I thought you were asleep,’ says John, fishing a chewed cigar out of a packet in his shirt pocket and then putting it back when he remembers the mate’s ban on smoking.
‘What do you want?’ Methúsalem is not only awake but newly bathed, freshly shaven, smelling of aftershave and hair cream, dressed in well-pressed trousers and an ironed shirt, with his hair carefully combed.
‘The Old Man just called. He says the GPS is out, and also the radar and radio.’
‘What in the world?’ says Methúsalem, his mouth falling open in wonder. ‘And what?’
‘He wants to meet us up in the bridge at eleven,’ says John with a shrug. ‘By that time Rúnar will have gone up on the roof and can presumably give us more information.’