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.”
He searched her face for a lie. Ava tried to smile, but it was difficult to make it natural when she was still breathing through her mouth.
“Okay, I guess it can’t hurt,” he said. He wrote the number on a yellow Post-it pad, tore off the sheet, and passed it to her.
She read, “Jan Sorensen, Tjorn, Faeroe Islands.”
“The village has fewer than a thousand people. You can’t fart without everyone knowing. I write to him, I send him things, and I know the letters always get through because he always replies.”
“He still has a bank account in Skagen,” she said.
“How would you know that?”
“When we were trying to trace him, my client still had that information from their last transaction.”
“The statements come here. I bundle them and send them every six months or so.”
Ava saw a tiny opening. “I may actually go to the Faeroes to see him. Would you like me to deliver his mail for you?”
“No,” he said.
So much for that, Ava thought. “If I were going to the Faeroes, Mr. Sorensen, what would be the best way to do it?”
“There is a ferry from Hanstholm.”
“And how long a journey is that?”
“Close to two days.”
“Ah, how about flying?”
“You can fly.”
“From?”
“I’m not a travel agent,” he said.
“That’s true,” Ava said, standing up.
“Tell me,” he said, looking up at her. “Those shark fins, what do they do with them?”
“They make soup.”
“I know that, but what kind of soup?”
“What do you mean?”
“I hear that it is a special kind.”
“Well, it’s traditionally served on special occasions: weddings, birthdays, honouring someone.”
“So it’s expensive, huh?”
She wondered what he was selling the fins for — maybe a couple of dollars a kilo. How would he react if he knew that a bowl of shark fin soup with only a few shreds of meat in it could cost anywhere from ten to fifty dollars? “I don’t know. I’m not in the fish business.”
Ava left the plant as quickly as she could, breathing through her nose every ten paces or so to test the air, but this time the odour didn’t abate even when she had reached her car. She climbed inside and the smell came with her. She had no doubt that it had penetrated her hair. It was starting to rain again, a cool, steady drizzle. She rolled down the driver’s-side window and drove away.
It was eleven thirty, still early morning in Toronto, and her travel agent wouldn’t be up yet. She found an Internet cafe on the outskirts of the town. The place was empty. She went online to search for flights to the Faeroe Islands. There was a direct flight from a place called Billund at two thirty. She checked a map; it looked like a two- hour drive. She couldn’t make it. The only other option was to fly from Aalborg to Copenhagen and catch an evening flight from there.
Ava drove from Hirtshals to Aalborg with the window still down. She was getting wet, but it was preferable to the stench. The flight from Aalborg left at three, and that gave her just over two hours to kill. She checked back in to the Hvide Hus, only too happy to pay the full day’s rate for a chance to shower.
The first thing she did in the room was strip off all her clothes. She found two plastic laundry bags in the closet, packed her clothing and running shoes into one, and then double wrapped it in the second bag.
Then she stepped into the shower and scrubbed and rescrubbed every pore of her body. She washed her hair three times. She stepped out of the shower and towelled herself off, then put on her blue-and-white pinstriped shirt and her cotton Brooks Brothers slacks. She finished off the look with her new cufflinks and her gold crucifix and applied a generous spray of Annick Goutal perfume. The laundry bag sat on the bed. She sniffed. No urine smell. She packed it into her carry-on.
The same woman who had rented her the car that morning was at the booth when Ava took it back. She took the keys, noted the mileage, and passed Ava her credit card slip to sign, all without saying a word.
The flight from Aalborg was supposed to take just less than an hour, but it left late and she had to run to catch the Atlantic Airways flight in Copenhagen. That flight was scheduled to last two and a half hours, and because the fare difference between business class and economy was so large, Ava had booked economy. About ten minutes after takeoff she realized she had made a mistake. For the next two hours the liquor trolley made steady trips up and down the aisle. Passengers were buying doubles of everything. Ava had never seen anything like it.
“This is their last chance,” the man in the seat next to her said. “The islands are dry. Liquor can’t be bought anywhere there, not even in hotels. And Customs is very strict about people bringing in alcohol. So this is their last chance to load up.”
“Thank God it isn’t a longer flight,” Ava said.
“Oh, it could be.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Vagar Airport gets a lot of mist and quite often the plane can’t land. They usually divert us to Reykjavik.”
“Iceland?”
“It isn’t so bad, though the people there are more depressed than ever since the country went bankrupt.”
