The regulars had scratched their heads and suggested a slightly down-at-heel old woman with a pram who often wandered around the junkyard. And then there was the village idiot from the derelict farm with the Shetland ponies. And the three drunkards who lived in a lean-to near the ferry berth, or at least they had done so recently.
However, the regulars had soon agreed that none of these people were in dire need. The drunkards looked like they had enough to drink, the village idiot had enough to eat – at least, considerably more than his poor ponies. And it was believed that the old lady with the pram lived in a nice thatched cottage on the road to Sønderby – with a neatly trimmed box hedge and a fine little windmill in her front garden. Her husband was a retired bookkeeper. She was just crazy.
And then there was Jens Horder on the Head; now he had always been a bit odd and difficult to get close to. He drove around with a lot of junk, but that didn’t necessarily equal hardship, and he certainly had plenty of stuff at home. Nor was his wife thought to suffer serious hardship because, according to the postman, she had grown quite big. By the way, it was a very long time since anyone had seen her south of the Head.
Horder had a child, Roald remembered. Had. Everyone on the island knew that the poor girl had died at sea. Imagine being a parent struck by such a tragedy. It didn’t make it any less tragic that a few years earlier they had lost a baby, also in an accident. As far as Roald had gathered, it had been the girl’s twin brother. How cruel is fate allowed to be? So if you weren’t already a little odd, surely such experiences would make you so.
Roald remembered the sound of the helicopter restlessly criss-crossing the island and the shoreline during the search for the girl. If only they had found a body.
You would surely reach that point eventually. Wanting to find the body. At some stage, hope would die like a tired fire and become a small, glowing wish. It was better than nothing.
Imagine getting to that point.
The strip of flooring was in place, and he shifted back slightly to look at it. At least that wasn’t going anywhere.
So it couldn’t be Horder’s child, either. For obvious reasons.
Could it be a dwarf?
He dismissed the thought and got up. If a hungry dwarf with a penchant for bubble wrap lived somewhere on the island, he would undoubtedly have heard about it.
He needed a beer.
Roald flopped into the office chair and stared at the telephone. The curved black handle lay neatly across the cradle. The glossy Bakelite had grown a little dull from being held by sweaty hands, and the once so transparent dial had taken on a taupe hue of dust and dirt. Roald took a swig of his beer.
He knew that he ought to contact the police. He had built up an excellent relationship with the police officer, who was a sympathetic man, when you could get him off duty.
But still he hesitated. Why?
After the next gulp he had made up his mind. He wiped the froth off his lips and set the empty bottle down on the table. He would start by trying to get to the bottom of this himself. There was no need to make a big drama out of it, and the police officer wasn’t going anywhere.
There had always been a few days between the night-time visits, so Roald waited four days. On the fifth evening he went to bed early and caught a few hours of shut-eye before getting up around midnight. Then he tiptoed down to the kitchen and began his vigil. He had set out various items and had even fetched a pile of Donald Duck comics from the bookcase on the landing. On the rare occasions that children were among the pub’s visitors, the comics were usually a hit. Now they were laid out on the kitchen table.
If only he had been able to turn on the light, then he would have been able to read a book, or a Donald Duck comic, for that matter, but it was out of the question. Any kind of light would be seen through the windows. At one point he fell asleep, slumped across the small table where he was sitting, and around five in the morning he was woken up by pins and needles in his arm. The house was as quiet as the grave, and he tiptoed back upstairs to bed.
Another few nights passed in a similar fashion: no visits. And then, finally, on Monday night something happened. This time Roald had brewed himself a cup of strong coffee in the hope that it would keep him up until the early morning, and at two thirty he was still wide awake. His mind was focused and his thoughts moved calmly back and forth between tax accounts, whisky stocks, ex-colleagues and his ex-wife to pest control and pools football. He was even enjoying sitting here, thinking, while everyone else was asleep. Outside, the wind was blowing just enough for the pub sign to squeak on its hinges, and a branch from a bush scratched the wall softly.
And then suddenly another sound came from the back of the building. It was quite faint, but it was there. He got up as quietly as he could and retreated to his hiding place in the corner, next to the dining room. He was able to squeeze in next to a tall cupboard and stand unnoticed in the darkness.
Soon he heard the handle on the door to the corridor being pushed slowly down. It wasn’t in his field of vision. But the fridge was. And soon the boy was too.
Roald held his breath as he saw the small figure approach the fridge. If it hadn’t been for his eyes adjusting to the darkness over the previous few hours, he wouldn’t have been able to see a thing, but now he could clearly see the contours of a small boy. Shortish hair, slim build, and holding a large bag, possibly a rucksack, in his hand. He moved with impressive lightness and didn’t make a sound. Roald couldn’t hear a single one of his footsteps.
The boy didn’t turn on the light, but he evidently knew his way to the fridge. He opened the fridge door, only very slightly, but enough to see what it contained. As he had his back to Roald, his face wasn’t revealed by the fridge light, but Roald had time to catch sight of dark, straggly hair and a brown-and-orange-striped sweater. The next moment, the boy took out a foil tray and closed the fridge door. He stayed where he was, sniffing the tray, which contained the leftovers of the meal Roald had cooked for himself the night before. Spaghetti Bolognese. It wasn’t at all bad.
The boy ate a little with his fingers before putting the foil tray back, quickly and noiselessly, apart from the hissing sound which the door made when the rubber strips found one another again. Then he licked his fingers clean and turned to the table where Roald had been sitting. His hand reached the Donald Duck comics and, for a brief second, a tiny beam of light revealed Scrooge McDuck’s face. Then it was dark again. The boy put his rucksack on the table, took some magazines from the bottom of the pile and put them in his bag. Then his hand sought out the small glass bowl with sweets, and there was a momentary flash of multiple colours. He grabbed a handful and let liquorice pastilles and gummy bears trickle into a side pocket of his rucksack. A single pastille missed; it hit the floor with a small ping and rattled over the floor tiles.
The boy stood stock-still and listened out while he waited. Roald did likewise. No noise came from the rest of the house. Then the boy bent down, felt with his hands across the floor until he found the pastille and popped it into his mouth.
Was he going to take anything else? Continue to the stock room? Roald didn’t want to reveal himself yet. To his amazement, he was not only intrigued but also overcome with a strange tenderness towards his shy guest. There was something infinitely tragic about how skilled the boy was at executing his routine. Roald felt no anger at all, only compassion. And wonder.