Methúsalem: ‘He’s a bastard turncoat! We really ought to lock him in the forecastle too.’
John: ‘I don’t know about this. We should have some better evidence. Something tangible.’
Ási comes down and joins the group. He takes the wire-cutters out of his apron pocket and hands them to John.
Ási: ‘Don’t these belong here?’
Methúsalem: ‘The cutters!’
John: ‘Where did you find these?’
Ási: ‘Out by the rubbish bins. As if they had fallen from the sky! And when I looked up, there was the new guy. He was messing around with the lifeboat.’
Rúnar: ‘Satan!’
Sæli: ‘What was he doing to the lifeboat?’
Methúsalem: ‘Do we still need more evidence? Something tangible?’
Everyone: ‘No!’
Methúsalem: ‘Ási, we need to use the lock and chain you use to fasten the rubbish bins.’
Ási: ‘What for? What are you guys talking about?’
Stoker stands inside the open door to the storeroom and peers into the engine room. The gang of five stands close together talking just three metres away, their voices as loud as a male philharmonic choir, but their words drowned in the noise of the dynamo. Stoker sees their lips moving but can’t hear what they’re saying.
‘Satan,’ murmurs Stoker as he hangs up his greasy ear protectors. ‘That’s the name. His name is Satan! Of course – he is Satan!’
Stoker smiles so widely that he shows his brown wisdom teeth.
XXII
D-deck
Sæli leans against the doors leading out onto the platform behind the wheelhouse, lightly drumming his fingers against the door. He’s out of sight here if anyone should come along the newly scrubbed stairwell, and the door to Satan’s cabin is just two metres away. He assumes Satan is inside the cabin. Where else would a man be when he can’t be bothered to work?
But what’s this Satan doing aboard the ship anyway? He told Sæli to bring back some bloody package from some contact in Suriname, and more or less threatened to hurt his family if he didn’t do as he was asked.
‘You bring the package,’ the bastard had said on the phone. ‘I look after the family. That’s it.’
All because of that fucking gambling debt! A loss of a million that became a loss of two million, then three, four and five, like a hole that keeps getting bigger as you try to fill it, and before Sæli had realised he was falling, not flying, and the loss had become a soulless monster whose stomach had room enough for a whole flat in the Old Town.
Why should the bugger be on board the ship, though, if Sæli’s supposed to bring the package? And how is he going to ‘look after’ the family if he’s nowhere near them?
Sæli can’t find answers to these questions on his own,
but if this Satan guy is on board, then his wife and son must be safe back in Iceland, right?
But Sæli has to be sure. He has to get answers to these questions. He can’t just behave as if nothing’s happened – as if he doesn’t know who this man is. He’s the fiend who’s made his life a nightmare! A devil who has, up to now, remained in the shadows, been just a deep voice on the phone. But now he’s here. The man on the other side of that cabin door is Satan, the arch-fiend in the flesh. The terror of the underworld is cornered in a ship’s cabin, trapped inside a narrow room, like a mouse in a shoebox.
Sæli has nothing to fear. In just a couple of minutes three armed men will enter the cabin and overpower the scum. But before they put him in chains and lock him in the forecastle, he ought to speak with Satan, face to face. Get answers before it’s too late to ask. Before he realises he’s nothing but a mouse in a shoebox. After Methúsalem, John and Rúnar overpower the man he may just close up and refuse to say anything at all. Hard guys like that are not exactly known for breaking down and crying when things go against them.
It’s now or never.
‘To hell with it.’ Sæli takes three steps forwards and breathes deeply before he knocks on the door with three short blows.
Knock, knock, knock…
Satan is sitting on the couch, drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette when someone knocks on the door. On the table in front of him is the ampoule of morphine sulphate solution, the syringe and the needle. He’s dying to inject himself with this heavenly stuff and float into a sleep that is deeper, longer and darker than any other. But a man who is in the power of the sleeping death of a morphine rush is totally vulnerable, and considering the situation on board this ship, there’s not much chance it’s going to be some Prince Charming who brings him back to life with a tender kiss. And unlike the seven dwarfs – who laid Snow White to rest above ground in a cushy glass coffin – these blockheads are as likely as not to throw him in the sea headfirst if they find him unconscious in his cabin.
There is another knock on the door.
‘Just a minute!’ says Satan, laying his cigarette down on the edge of the table. Then he winds the bandage back around the ampoule, syringe and needle, shoves the whole lot into the empty cigarette pack and puts the pack in his right trouser pocket.
Satan has a sip of cold coffee, then picks up the cigarette and takes a drag, leaning forward on his elbows and watching the door. He knocks his heels lightly on the floor to get a feeling for the gun and knife, both of which bounce lightly on his ankles, sending nerve impulses up to his brain and from there to his fingertips.
He’s ready for anything.
‘Come in!’
Sæli slowly opens the door and enters the cabin warily.
‘What do you want?’ asks Satan, knocking cigarette ash onto the table.
‘Me? I want to know what you’re doing here,’ says Sæli. ‘I want to know why you can’t leave me alone!’
Satan looks at Sæli as if he has no idea what he’s talking about and couldn’t care less anyway. And indeed, he does have no idea what Sæli is talking about and he couldn’t care less.
‘You’re Satan, right? You said that downstairs, didn’t you?’ says Sæli, standing in the middle of the cabin shuffling his feet. ‘I’ve only spoken to you on the phone up until now, and maybe you haven’t seen me before – at least, not face to face. I’m Sæli, the guy who owes money. Ársæll Egilsson.’
Satan takes a smoke, leans back in the couch and examines Sæli from head to foot as he casually blows smoke out through his nose. But he says nothing.
‘Why don’t you say something, man?’ asks Sæli, going red with rage. ‘You threaten my family on the telephone, order me to fetch some package and I don’t know what else! And then when I face you, you can’t say a word. I just want to know what you’re doing here. Are you following me? Don’t you trust me to bring you this package? Maybe you were sent here to kill me? Eh? Am I to be killed for a measly eleven million? Or is it twelve, now? Who sent you? The owner of the gambling joint? What’s his name again – Sverrir?’
When Sæli mentions the gambling joint Satan raises his eyebrows. He sits up, leans forwards on his elbows, takes the cigarette out of his mouth and narrows his eyes.
‘Goddammit!’ Sæli throws up his hands and sighs noisily. ‘You don’t want to say anything – fine. But tell me one thing: is my family safe? I’m the one who owes money, not them. Are they safe? Answer me that!’
‘What gambling joint are you talking about?’ asks Satan, waving his left hand in a circle counterclockwise, as if wanting to rewind Sæli’s speech. ‘You said you owed money to some casino?’
‘Yes. In Dugguvogur,’ says Sæli, glancing sideways at the door and wiping the sweat from his forehead. ‘Stop acting as if you know nothing! You’re a collector for those pigs. You’re Satan!’