“Why?”
“His wife, I think. She found it too crowded here.”
“Crowded?” Ava said in disbelief.
“In the summer we get overrun by those fucking German tourists, but most of the time it’s like this. Me, a couple of other painters, and a few guys on the beach throwing sticks for dogs to chase. The wife was a bit of a nut job, used to nag him something awful. Though when you think about all the kids she had to look after, maybe she had a reason.”
“Do you know where they went?”
“No.”
“Do you think anyone you know would know?”
“I don’t know him, but Jimmy had a brother in Hirtshals.”
“What’s his name?”
“Ronny. He owns a fish plant, Sorensen Fiske. It’s right on the main pier in Hirtshals.”
“Is that far from here?”
“Straight west about forty kilometres. Just follow the concrete bunkers.”
“Bunkers?”
“During the Second World War the Germans dotted this entire coastline with them, to defend themselves against an attack that never came. The walls are so thick we can’t rip them down. That’s why some of the fuckers come back here every summer — to relive the old glory days.”
“Thanks for the help,” she said, not particularly wanting to hear a rant about the Second World War; she’d heard them often enough when Chinese spoke about the Japanese. Different continent, different occupiers, same hatred.
(15)
She punched Sorensen Fiske into her GPS and up it popped, a half-hour drive if she kept to the speed limit.
Hirtshals was smaller still than Skagen, and she had no trouble wending her way through town to the harbour. There was one large jetty that, according to signs in Danish and English, handled ferry traffic. The others seemed devoted to fishing boats. Ava was surprised to see so many of them in port. Around the outer perimeter of the harbour were a number of what looked like fish plants, and at the far end she saw the sign sorensen fiske.
She parked the car at the far end of the harbour lot and started to cover the two hundred or so metres to the plant. She had walked about a hundred metres when the smell first became noticeable. She couldn’t identify it at first, but the closer she got to the plant, the more intense it became. And then she realized what it was: urine.
She gagged and began to breathe through her mouth. Every four or five breaths she would try her nose again, hoping the odour had abated. It just got worse — the raw, overpowering smell of piss. She felt as though she were walking in a cloud of it and the pale overhead sun was causing it to ripple up from the pavement. It reminded her of a street corner, a block from her hotel in Ho Chi Minh City, that served as a toilet for street vendors and drunks. She had to walk past the corner twice a day, and she could smell the urine from at least twenty metres. Ho Chi Minh was child’s play compared to Hirtshals.
She was breathing entirely through her mouth when she got to a wide-open plant door, from which the urine smell was obviously escaping. She looked inside and saw six men labouring. They were picking up grey fish that looked like small five-pound torpedoes. They lifted each one by the tail and then drove the head onto a spike that was attached to a bench. They then cut across the back of the fish’s neck, gripped the skin with pliers, and ripped it off.
All the men were in rubber boots and overalls. None of them of them wore shirts. Their chests were massive, their forearms even bigger. One of them spotted Ava standing in the doorway and yelled something at her in Danish.
She stepped inside, trying not to breathe. “I don’t speak Danish,” she said.
“We already have a Chinaman who buys our fins,” he said in English.
“I don’t want to buy fins.”
“And we have a contract in the U.K. for all the meat.”
“I don’t want the meat.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I’m looking for Ronny Sorensen.”
“He’s in the office,” he said, pointing to a cubicle on the right.
She walked to the door and knocked. She heard something in Danish and assumed it was Come in.
A short, fat, bald man looked up at her when she opened the door. “Erik told you, our fins are all sold,” he said.
“Are you Ronny Sorensen?”
“I am.”
“My name is Ava Lee. I’m trying to locate your brother, Jimmy.”
“You mean Jan?”
“Yes, the one and the same.”
“Why?”
“Business.”
“Jan doesn’t do business.”
“Painting business.”
“That’s not business. This is business,” he said, motioning to the plant.
Uninvited, Ava sat in a chair across from the desk. “What are those fish anyway?” she asked.
“Sand sharks, dogfish, rock salmon, whatever you want to call them. Every market puts its own name on them.”
“And that stench?”
“Uric acid. It is natural to the fish — nothing to do about it. If you want to process dogfish, you have to learn to cope with it. Me, I don’t notice it anymore. The men, the same, though it’s hard on us when we leave here. The smell gets into your clothes, which is why the men work in as little as they can. Still, my wife swears it gets into your skin. Nothing to do about that either. It puts money in the bank, and in this town we’re about the last fish plant still in full production.”
Ava wondered if her nylon Adidas jacket would absorb the urine smell, and was thankful she hadn’t worn her good clothes.
“Where do the fins go?”
“New York, to a Chinaman, and from there God knows. Probably China. The meat goes to the U.K., to the fish-and-chippers. They don’t have much cod anymore so they use the dogfish. They call it rock salmon. Sounds better, I guess.”
“Yes, it does,” Ava said. “Mr. Sorensen, I was asking about your brother.”
“Haven’t seen him in years.”
“But do you know where he is?”
“Why?” he repeated.
“I have a client who bought several of his paintings. They’re in the market for more but haven’t been able to locate him.”
“Jan’s paintings were never in any great demand.”
“Times change; things get trendy.”
“Jan is trendy?”
“He has a growing following.”
“Son of a bitch! I’m surprised.”
“So, Mr. Sorensen, do you know where I can find him?”
“He’s in the Faeroe Islands.”
She had heard the name but just couldn’t place it. A vision of travelling to some South Pacific atoll surfaced in her head. “Where are the Faeroe Islands?”
“In the middle of absolutely fucking nowhere,” Sorensen said.
“That’s helpful.”
He laughed. “It’s true — the middle of nowhere. They’re about 800 kilometres southeast of Iceland, 650 kilometres north of here, and 800 kilometres northeast of Scotland, in the North Atlantic. The Faeroes are the kind of place you don’t arrive at by accident, unless of course you’re some stupid Viking who got shipwrecked there two thousand years ago.”
“Why did Jan go there?”
“Helga.”
“His wife?”
“The fat cow is from there, never wanted to leave, and she nagged him all the time about going back. He finally gave in to her.”
“How can I contact him?”
“You can write him a letter.”
“Do you have a phone number for him, a house number or a mobile?”
“He doesn’t have a phone.”
“Email?”
“Don’t be stupid. This is my brother we’re talking about, a man who doesn’t have much use for the outside world. He’s living in a fishing village about half an hour from Torshavn, the capital. It isn’t enough that he wants to live in one of the most isolated countries in the world; when he gets there, he has to isolate himself even more.”
“Do you have an address for him?”
“Yes.”
“Can I get it?”
“I’m not sure he would appreciate that.”
“Mr. Sorensen, all artists like to know their work is appreciated. I’m not trying to sell him a magazine subscription or a mobile phone plan; I want to buy some of his work.”