‘What prevented you?’
The woman silently mouthed: ‘His father.’
‘I see.’ Freyja asked Siggi: ‘What’s the red meant to be?’
The boy stopped his colouring and raised sleepy eyes to Freyja. ‘I’m not telling.’
‘I see.’ Freyja smiled. ‘Who’s the picture of, then? You can tell me that.’
‘Mummy.’
There was a sharp intake of breath from the boy’s grandmother. At that moment the carer put her head round the door and asked if Siggi would like some hot chocolate and doughnuts with the other kids. The boy accepted the offer and, climbing down from his chair, went out of the room with her. He had seemed pleased to see his grandmother but his pleasure had been muted and wary. He had soon wriggled free of her affectionate embrace, preferring to sit on a chair on his own and draw.
‘He’ll be back, don’t worry.’ Freyja thought the woman looked afraid that Siggi had gone for good and that next minute she herself would be shown the door. ‘We can talk freely now. I get the feeling you want to tell me something that’s not suitable for his ears.’
Margrét closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. ‘What do they think has happened to my daughter?’
‘To be honest, I don’t know. I’m not from the police. I expect they’ve got some theories they’re working on but they haven’t shared them with me. At least you can be comforted by the fact that they’re making it their number one priority to find your daughter and her husband.’
‘I couldn’t care less about Sibbi. They needn’t bother looking for him at all as far as I’m concerned. I want them to find Systa.’ Margrét coughed and lowered her eyes to the table. ‘Alive.’
So Margrét was no fan of her son-in-law. After learning that the man was suspected of being abusive, Freyja wasn’t surprised. The information had reached her via the Child Protection Agency, who had been alerted to the situation by the police.
Although Freyja had no say in what would become of Siggi while the search for his parents was going on, she had been asked to help out in other ways, such as informing his grandmother that she would not be able to take him home with her at present, and to answer any questions the woman might have. If Margrét showed signs of wanting to talk or unburden herself, Freyja was to provide a listening ear. Given the circumstances, there was no call to be stiffly professional towards the understandably distraught woman.
The request to speak to Margrét had come in towards the end of the afternoon. Although it was a fairly minor part of the investigation, Freyja had, as always, welcomed the opportunity for more work. Children’s services were so overstretched these days that her willingness to do overtime would end up making her the most popular girl in the system. Then again, if she agreed to rent Tobbi’s place, her money problems would be a thing of the past and there would be no more need to take these extra shifts. That damned snake wasn’t all bad news.
‘I understand that your son-in-law is suspected of having been abusive towards your daughter. Has it been going on long? From the beginning of their relationship, perhaps?’
‘I don’t know when it began. It may well have been like that from the beginning. They started seeing each other six years ago but Systa broke things off after a year. He went running after her, though, begging her to take him back, and after that it was on and off for several months until Systa got pregnant. Then they moved in together and got married. I wish she’d stuck to her decision to leave him but then she wouldn’t have had Siggi. It’s complicated.’ The woman looked up, wiping her eyes. After a moment, she got a grip on herself, gave a little cough, and went on: ‘But it’s easy to be wise in hindsight. I first began to notice something was wrong about three years ago, after Siggi was born. Systa would never admit it, so I had nothing solid to go on, except that I know when she’s lying. I brought her up on my own and I could always read her like an open book. But despite that it took me a while to cotton on. It had just never occurred to me that she’d end up in a relationship like that – a strong, clever girl like her. But I’ve since learnt that it happens to all kinds of people.’ Deep lines of worry appeared between her brows. ‘As you can imagine, I keep asking myself if there was something I could have done. I don’t know what, though. I tried to talk to her often enough. Perhaps I should have called the police and reported my suspicions. Then maybe I wouldn’t be sitting here now.’
There wasn’t much Freyja could say to this. Hovering in the air between them was the unspoken fear that Sibbi had beaten her daughter to death. They both glanced inadvertently at Siggi’s drawing. Freyja hoped Margrét wasn’t thinking along the same lines as her: that the boy could have witnessed the incident. ‘Siggi says his mother’s a teacher.’ Freyja was careful not to refer to Systa in the past tense. ‘If I understood him right, she chose to stay at home and look after him. Not many Icelandic mothers take four years off for maternity leave. Mind you, Siggi seems to have benefited from it. He’s obviously been very well brought up.’ In spite of his apparent indifference to the whereabouts of his parents, and his gory drawings.
‘Systa never meant to be on maternity leave for four years. She’d only been teaching for three before Siggi came along, and she was really enjoying it. If you ask me, it was Sibbi who refused to let her go back to work.’
That would make sense. If abusers could find a way of isolating their victims, it was much easier to hide the evidence of their violence and reduce the risk that someone would intervene. But it would be unprofessional to voice these thoughts aloud. After all, Freyja didn’t know the details. ‘Siggi said his mother was planning to begin teaching again when he started at kindergarten. But presumably that won’t be possible until the new baby is old enough.’
‘Systa’s often talked about going back to work. After Siggi was born she couldn’t wait to get out of the house. She did actually start teaching again the autumn after he was born, when he was only eight months old. She’d got him a place with a childminder and everything. Then two months later she quit her job and never told me why. I kept asking her but gave up in the end when I saw what a strain it was for her to lie to me about it being her decision. It wasn’t true: I’m sure of that. Sibbi was behind it. I can see that now.’
Again, Freyja carefully refrained from comment. There were all sorts of possible reasons for Systa’s decision that wouldn’t necessarily have involved her husband: post-natal depression, for example, or job-related stress. ‘Well, let’s hope she decides to go back to work after her maternity leave this time. There’s always a need for good teachers.’
Margrét brightened up slightly, but then her face fell again. ‘When do you think they’ll find her? She could give birth any time. What’ll happen to the baby if she’s being held prisoner somewhere?’
Freyja laid her hand on Margrét’s bony one. ‘There’s every likelihood that your daughter and her baby will be fine. Remember, the odds are just as high that everything will turn out all right.’ Freyja based this on the simple statistic that either it would go well or not, 50/50 – using the same logic with which she had failed her probability test back in the day.
Her attempt at kindness backfired. Margrét’s eyes filled with tears and she had to pull back her hand to wipe them away. Freyja hurriedly went on talking to give the woman a moment to recover: ‘What about Sibbi? Siggi told me he was an electrician. Is he in work?’ Freyja thought he probably must be, or the little boy would show more signs of coming from a problem home. If both his parents had been hanging around the flat all day, he was bound to have witnessed beatings, deliberate humiliation, screaming, shouting and whatever else Sibbi might resort to. Whereas if his father was at work during the day, it was possible that he was able to control himself until after the boy had gone to bed. That might explain why Siggi appeared so placid and free from stress. He was still so young that it would be possible for his parents to conceal a lot from him. But if the situation continued, sooner or later he would start to pick up on it. For all their in
nocence, children were no fools.
Margrét sniffed and shuddered. Then, wiping away a tear with the back of her hand, she answered Freyja’s question. ‘He was in full-time work until about six months ago. Now I gather he takes on odd jobs when they come up. He isn’t speaking to me so I know nothing about his life apart from what I hear from Systa. But we don’t often discuss Sibbi on the rare occasions when I get to see her. I have absolutely no wish to talk about him.’
‘Did you fall out with him?’
‘Yes, you could say that. Just over a year ago I told him bluntly that I was sure he was mistreating Systa. They’d gone on a trip to Majorca that they’d been planning for ages, but when they came home it was obvious that he’d taken his fists to her. Before they went away things had seemed unusually good between them, but that obviously didn’t last because she came back from the holiday with two black eyes and bruises on her neck. She made up some lie about having fallen off her bike but it was blatantly obvious that her injuries weren’t the result of a fall. I couldn’t stomach it, so I confronted Margeir and he went berserk. I thought he was going to go for me, but in the end he just threw me out of their flat and banned me from having any further contact with my daughter. Systa’s too frightened to stand up to him, so we have to meet in secret. That worked all right while Sibbi was employed full-time but we’ve seen a lot less of each other since he was sacked.’
A teacher stuck at home being a housewife; an unemployed electrician – two professions that were always in demand, especially in the current economic climate. When Freyja had needed an electrician a month ago, she had been advised to put her name down for a course on the grounds that she’d probably have qualified herself before she managed to get one to come round. ‘Once she’s found, I hope your daughter will manage to sort out her problems. Now that children’s services are involved, they’ll be able to provide her with help and counselling, to empower her to take control of her own life and provide her little boy with a safe environment to grow up in. That’s part of our job, since it’s in the child’s interests.’
‘Counselling, huh?’ The woman emitted a short, bitter laugh. ‘I think a contract killer would be more use. There’s nothing wrong with Systa: Sibbi’s the problem. With him out of her life, she’d be fine. But as long as he still draws breath and is living in Iceland, she’ll be frightened and permanently on edge. With good reason. He either needs to change or to get out of their lives. But he won’t change. Adults never do.’
There was something in what Margrét was saying – apart from the nonsense about contract killers, of course. ‘The solution to your daughter’s problems doesn’t have to be as drastic as you think.’ Freyja gave the woman a friendly smile. After all, people often said stuff they didn’t mean in circumstances like this. She changed the subject. ‘Do you have any other children who can support you while you’re waiting for news?’
‘Yes, a son, Dadi – Systa’s older brother. He’s at work at the moment and I’m waiting for him to finish before I break the news to him. I’m not looking forward to it.’
‘No, it’s no fun being the bearer of bad news.’ Freyja was glad to hear the woman had someone to turn to. ‘Is he aware of what’s been happening to his sister?’
‘Yes. That’s partly why I’m dreading telling him. Of course he couldn’t accept the situation and he tried talking to her, and to that bastard Sibbi, but it didn’t go well. He ended up being frozen out like me. But he found it harder to forgive his sister for putting up with the situation. Their relationship hasn’t recovered because he wasn’t prepared to meet her in secret.’
At that moment Siggi came back into the room with a brown cocoa moustache on his upper lip. The carer appeared in the doorway behind him and told him to say goodbye to his grandmother as she was going home now. The boy accepted this news without any tears or other evidence of distress. He simply went over to her and accepted a kiss and a cuddle before he freed himself and went back to the carer, pausing in the doorway to turn and wave. Then he was gone.
His grandmother was left, her arms suspended in the air, as if expecting her grandchild to come running back to her.
Chapter 18
Huldar’s stomach was rumbling so loudly that it was distracting him from work. He’d tried to fob it off with coffee but it had seen through this cheap trick and redoubled its protests. The only answer was to feed the damned thing, so he got to his feet and asked Gudlaugur if he wanted to go for a quick burger. Gudlaugur declined the offer without even looking up from his screen. He’d been glued to it ever since they got back to the station, where he’d found a whole new batch of CCTV from the city centre waiting for him. Although he needed to finish editing together the videos in which Helgi appeared by tomorrow morning at the latest, he had brushed off Huldar’s offer of help. Well, that was his problem.
Huldar went to let Erla know that he was going to grab some food. Most of the others had already gone home; the only detectives still there were either single like him or older men whose kids had grown up. All the young fathers had left for the day, as had the single guy with the cat. But, needless to say, Lína had stayed behind, radiating satisfaction over the urgency and sheer number of tasks that remained to be completed. Huldar wanted to warn her not to appear too eager since Erla still hadn’t allocated the job of going through the rubbish, but she looked so happy as she sat focusing intently on her computer screen that he couldn’t bring himself to spoil her pleasure. It was a long time since he’d seen anyone in this office emanating such an air of contentment.
He tapped on the door to Erla’s office and opened it without waiting for a Come in. Erla rarely bothered to respond anyway.
The door bumped into the back of the man who was standing just inside, as far away from Erla’s desk as possible, forcing him to move up, closer to her. Huldar vaguely recognised the guy. Young and painfully shy, he hovered awkwardly as Erla introduced him as Geir from IT.
‘Found anything yet?’
Geir turned to Huldar, apparently thankful to speak to him rather than Erla. ‘Yes, some pretty interesting files on the desktop computer from Helgi’s flat.’
‘Oh come on, just spit it out. What’s in the files?’ Erla glanced irritably at Huldar. ‘He’s been standing here for five minutes, blithering round in circles. I can’t get any sense out of him. Perhaps he’s like one of his computers: needs a bit of a kick to sort him out.’
‘Kicking is no way to treat a computer.’ Geir found his tongue at last, deeply affronted on behalf of all the microprocessors and motherboards in the world. ‘They’re not like a jammed vending machine.’
‘For Christ’s sake, how many times do I have to ask? What’s – in – the – bloody – files?’
Geir braced himself. ‘Sex videos.’
‘Jesus. Why couldn’t you say so straight away?’ Erla shook her head, exasperated. ‘What kind of sex videos?’
‘Homemade ones, we think.’
‘Homemade? How can you tell?’
‘Because that’s what they look like.’ Geir shot a look at Huldar in a transparent plea for help but Huldar was no more eager than him to explain to Erla the difference between homemade sex tapes and the kind of stuff churned out by the porn industry. Geir was on his own. ‘Well, er, the action always happens in the same room, in the same bed, filmed from the same angle. Same headboard, different sheets. There’s no camerawork to speak of – just a fixed point of view – and the sex is over too quickly for a professional job.’
‘Are you saying there’s no short porn?’ The two men looked at Erla uncertainly. She didn’t appear to be joking.
Geir threw another despairing glance at Huldar, who merely smiled and prompted him: ‘Go on. Enlighten us.’
The young man cleared his throat. ‘I wouldn’t know. But I think the man in the videos is Helgi himself, though I can’t be absolutely sure.’
Huldar guessed that Geir’s uncertainty on this point was because all his attention had been fixed on the wo
men. When he himself watched porn, he studiously avoided looking at the men – they were only there as props.
‘Unfortunately,’ Geir added, ‘they appear to have been shot on a camera that wasn’t connected to GPS or we could have identified the location from the metadata.’
‘Metadata?’ Erla raised an enquiring eyebrow.
‘That’s what they call the information that accompanies the file. The format’s not always the same but generally it shows the date when the file was created, the last time it was updated, what program was used, and so on. But like I said, we’ve nothing like that to go on in this case. The camera wasn’t connected to the internet or GPS.’
‘Just our luck. How many videos are there?’
‘Thirty-five in total. The oldest is from about two years ago; the most recent was made just over three weeks ago. But there could be more.’
‘Were the files locked?’
‘No. The computer wasn’t even password protected. People are often unbelievably careless with their home computers. His work PC and laptop were locked but we managed to get into them anyway.’
‘Did he have the same sort of files there?’
‘Not that we’ve found so far.’
While Erla was pondering this information, Huldar slipped in a question of his own. ‘Could it be more than one man, seeing as you’re not sure it’s Helgi?’
‘No. The man’s instantly recognisable in all the videos, though you hardly ever see his face. He’s got this large white patch on his lower back. Like the scar from an old burn or something. You can’t miss it because he’s got his back to the camera most of the time.’
Erla reached for the pile of papers on her desk and leafed through them until she found what she was looking for. Extracting a report of some kind, she ran her eyes down it. ‘It says here in the post-mortem report that Helgi had an oval patch of unpigmented skin, measuring five by ten centimetres, right across the lumbar region, probably caused by vitiligo – whatever that is.’ Erla laid the report back on the pile. ‘So it definitely was Helgi. What about the woman? Is she always the same too?’
Gallows Rock - Freyja and Huldar Series 04 (2020) Page 16