At this point the man from the Sexual Offences Unit spoke up again. Aware from bitter experience how hard it was to get a conviction in cases like this, he wondered aloud about another possible approach. ‘What about her death? Is it conceivable that they raped her and bumped her off afterwards? They can’t have wanted to run the risk of her going straight to the police? Although they all used condoms, the chances are it would have been possible to obtain significant biological traces. They could have ended up in big trouble. Perhaps they took the precaution of drowning her in the sea. It’s not that far down to the shore from the flat on Sudurhlíd. What is it – a hundred metres? Two hundred?’
No one commented on his conjectures; they all knew how short the distance was. But Huldar answered his question anyway. Once the interview with Tómas was over and they’d found out the woman’s name, Erla had asked Huldar to call up the files on Maren while she herself was preparing the next steps. Her fury with him for playing the video during the interview had evaporated the instant Maren’s name came up.
‘I’ve been reading the reports on Maren’s death,’ Huldar said. ‘They contain no indications of anything suspicious. The post-mortem concluded that there was no evidence to contradict the idea that she entered the sea of her own volition. There was no head injury or signs of strangulation or any other evidence to suggest that her hands had been tied or that she had been held under water. There were signs of rough intercourse, but as the search for her didn’t start immediately, her body had been in the sea for three days before it was found. By then it was impossible to tell whether the intercourse had been consensual or not. Or when it had taken place.’
‘Didn’t they try to find the man who’d had sex with her?’ The representative from Sexual Offences was obviously reluctant to let it go.
‘No. There was no point. She was receiving treatment for depression. Her coat was found folded up beside her shoes and bag near Fossvogur Cemetery and a verdict of suicide seemed uncontroversial. She’d gone out clubbing with a girlfriend, she’d been drinking heavily and they got separated during the evening. Alcohol and depression are a toxic combination. That explanation was regarded as sufficient. But now we’ll have to contact her next of kin again. They may turn out to be sitting on information that didn’t emerge in the files. I can’t imagine what, though.’
Silence fell again. No one could think of anything to say. If the young woman’s parents had any evidence that could prove their daughter had been murdered, they were unlikely to have withheld it at the time.
Huldar made a vain attempt to pursue the murder angle: ‘The woman is apparently gang-raped and drowns the same night. Regardless of whether the men actively took part in drowning her, anyone in their right mind can see that it’s a case of cause and effect. At the very least, it must have tipped her over the edge, given that she was already in an emotionally fragile state. Isn’t there any chance they could be charged with manslaughter?’
The lawyer pondered for a moment. ‘It’s a criminal offence to encourage or cause suicide. But it’s never been tested in Iceland and the punishment in circumstances like this would be no more than a year’s imprisonment. I doubt we could find a prosecutor to take on the case. It would be almost impossible to prove that the alleged rape had been the decisive factor. It’s not as if she left behind a letter stating that that was the final straw.’ The lawyer picked up his pen and started to gather his things together. ‘Anyway. Keep me posted, Erla. If none of these suggestions work, there are plenty of other women out there who might be prepared to press charges. Are there plans to go through the videos on the site and trace the women in them?’
Huldar kept his head down at this point. Erla had completely swallowed his lie about how he knew Ugla. But once the murder inquiry was over and attention was focused on the friends’ internet forum, she was bound to find out the truth: that they hadn’t merely swapped phone numbers in a bar.
‘I’ve got two men who can take care of it alongside their other jobs.’ The officer from the Sexual Offences Unit got to his feet. ‘It would make sense to start with the video that turned up on the file-sharing site. That’s probably the most serious example of distributing pornography.’ He looked at Huldar and Erla. ‘Was Tómas able to tell you who posted it?’’
Erla shook her head. ‘He claimed not to know. He blames the fifth user but swears he has no idea who it is. IT are looking into it but they say it’s pretty much a lost cause because the site’s on the Dark Web. Though they did spot one detail straight away: the new user only popped up after the video was posted on the file-sharing platform. So he or she can’t have had any connection to that. Which means it must have been one of the four men who shared it.’
‘Then all we have to do is find out which one. He’ll be charged, at least, even if it’s only a token gesture in the circumstances.’ The lawyer paused by the door. ‘But to be honest with you, I doubt you’ll be granted custody for those two on the basis of the video alone. Though there’s nothing to stop you trying.’ He flicked a glance at the clock. ‘The twenty-four hours you’re allowed to hold them for is nearly up. But you can get an extension for another twenty-four if you bring them before a judge and demand they be kept in custody – assuming the judge requires that amount of time to come to a decision. Let me know as soon as possible. It’ll take me an hour to put a case together.’
Erla nodded dully. She knew the clock was ticking. Everyone working on the case was aware of that.
‘But let me give you one piece of advice.’ The lawyer’s face remained grave. ‘Find the woman. That should be your absolute priority.’
‘The woman?’ The man from Sexual Offences was confused, his thoughts clearly still on the video and the website. ‘Which woman?’
‘Sigurlaug. The wife of the latest victim, Margeir.’ Erla got to her feet as well. ‘She’s top of our list. It’s just that the search has drawn a blank. The rescue teams have been combing the entire Greater Reykjavík area without any results and the search from the air hasn’t achieved anything either. It’s not exactly encouraging that her husband has turned up dead. I need to make a decision about the next step.’
No one envied Erla. It was extremely unlikely that the woman was still alive after this length of time and a corpse would be much harder to find than a living person. Although no one said as much out loud, they were all afraid that Sigurlaug was dead. Anything else was almost impossible at this stage.
Thormar was a very different proposition from his friend Tómas. He sat bolt upright, his face set in uncompromising lines, clearly determined to tough out his sojourn at the police station. Huldar welcomed the change. At least Thormar was unlikely to beg for tissues like that wimp of an economist, though of course the downside was that he was proving much harder to crack.
‘Think about it for a moment.’ Huldar pushed his nicotine gum into his cheek with his tongue. It was hours since he’d last been able to step out for a smoke. ‘You and your friends gang-rape a woman who’s found shortly afterwards washed up on the shore by the Gallows Rock. Five years later, Helgi’s found hanging in the same spot. Does that sound like a coincidence to you?’
Thormar shrugged. ‘That’s for you to work out. I’m not a policeman. I’ll say it again: it wasn’t rape. I didn’t kill that man Margeir. I didn’t kill Helgi. And I don’t distribute porn.’
‘So you claim.’ Huldar glanced at Erla, who seemed content to let him take care of the questioning at this stage. ‘They’re doing a fingerprint check on the video camera you chucked in the bin bag. I wouldn’t be surprised if all of you had handled it.’
‘We’ll just have to wait and see. But I don’t know what difference that’s supposed to make. Surely you’re not saying the man on the balcony was killed with a camera? And Helgi certainly wasn’t. Isn’t that what this is all about? Murder?’
Huldar had no intention of letting the man take over the interview. He carried on talking as if he hadn’t heard Thormar’s comment. ‘The came
ra will be handed over to our IT department, who say it should be easy to establish whether it was used to make the recent recordings on your site. We’ve found where it was set up and connected to a switch on the wall. As the camera was well hidden inside a speaker and trained on the bed, it’s blindingly obvious that the purpose was to film without the knowledge of the women involved. You can deny it until you’re blue in the face but you’re wasting your time because we’ve got incriminating videos of you with several women, taken using the same camera.’
‘Bullshit.’ Thormar ground his teeth in a manner hardly appropriate for a dentist, though the circumstances were of course exceptional. ‘When can I leave?’
‘When we decide to release you. You’re under arrest, remember?’ Huldar wondered yet again why Thormar hadn’t requested a lawyer. Unless it had something to do with the fact that his wife was a solicitor. If he asked for anyone else to represent him, she would smell a rat. ‘Now that your friend Tómas has shown us how to access the website, you’d be better off telling us the whole story. We can see all the content, and the next task on our agenda is to call in the other member of your charming little gang. The last person to come clean will be left holding the baby. I don’t believe you want to be that person.’
‘I don’t know anything about the murders. Or about a rape, because it wasn’t rape. This is a waste of time.’
‘You said it.’ Huldar stared at the uncooperative man, his face expressionless. Then said: ‘Let’s turn to a couple of questions you should be able to help us with – minor details that shouldn’t concern you.’ When Thormar didn’t react, Huldar went ahead and asked anyway: ‘One is about the fifth user. I can’t see what possible reason you’d have for protecting him. The question is this: who posted the video of Helgi and Sigurlaug Lára on the file-sharing site? I recommend that you give us a straight answer. If you choose to remain silent, I’ll interpret it as meaning that you’re protecting yourself.’
‘I don’t know who the new user is. I didn’t share the video myself and I can’t tell you who was responsible – for the simple reason that I have no idea.’
There was a light tap on the door. Erla glanced at Huldar, her eyebrows raised, then got up, opened the door and went outside, closing it behind her. Huldar caught a glimpse of Gudlaugur in the gap. He had been tasked with going through all the content on the platform, so he must have come across something significant or he would never have interrupted.
Huldar turned back to Thormar. The interruption had momentarily broken his concentration, and he hoped it didn’t show. Groping around for some line to take, he decided to return to the subject of Thormar’s presence in the flat. It would give him breathing space to contemplate his next move while the dentist was repeating his earlier excuse. ‘What were you doing in the flat if you weren’t destroying the evidence of your presence there? Let me remind you yet again that your friend has already told us the whole story.’ Huldar omitted to add that the moment Tómas’s lawyer arrived, he had dried up, like a tap being switched off. He hadn’t answered a single question after the video of the gang rape had been played back to him, so it was a bit of an exaggeration to claim that he had told them the whole story.
‘Like I said before, we were cleaning. Gunni borrowed the flat for a party the weekend before Helgi died and left it in a disgusting state. We didn’t want Helgi’s parents to find it like that.’
‘Did they know about the flat?’
‘No, as I’ve already told you, they weren’t aware of it. But they’re bound to learn about it when his will is read. That’s why we were tidying up. Of course, I can’t speak for Tómas but that was why I was there.’
‘So you were cleaning the place purely out of the goodness of your heart when you happened to spot the body on the balcony. But instead of ringing the police, you and Tómas rush out to the shops to buy more household cleaner and then go over the whole flat again. Bit of a strange reaction, don’t you think?’
‘Tómas is getting muddled. We’d only just found the corpse when you burst in. Our trip to buy more cleaning products had nothing to do with that. We’d just run out in the middle of the job.’
Thormar was no fool. His story sounded plausible. But Tómas’s account was more believable and would hold more sway with a judge if the case ever made it to court.
Erla came back in, radiating satisfaction. Huldar watched as she sat down and pulled over the keyboard with an air of schadenfreude. He thought he saw a hairline crack appear in Thormar’s smooth façade as he also picked up on this.
The projector whirred into life again. They had switched it off after showing Thormar the forum at the beginning of the interview to shake his composure. The shock hadn’t worked for long, however.
The website’s primitive interface reappeared on the wall. Erla’s fingers rattled the keyboard and a video Huldar hadn’t seen before started playing. Unlike the others he’d watched, it showed a different bed in a different room. The man wasn’t visible either. It looked more like one of the videos on the file-sharing site where it was obvious that the man was filming the action with his phone. Huldar stole a glance at Thormar and saw that he was licking his lips nervously.
‘Who’s the woman, Thormar?’ Erla paused the recording on a frame in which the woman’s face was revealed.
‘I don’t recognise her.’ For the first time since the interview began, they could detect a faint tremor in his voice.
‘Really?’ Erla pressed ‘Play’ again. After a brief interval, the couple changed position and the phone was briefly directed at the man. It was unmistakeably Thormar. ‘Who’s the woman? You should be able to remember. The recording’s only two years old.’ Erla turned from him to look up at the wall. The image shook as if during an earthquake as the man pounded away on top of the woman. As the rhythm slowed, Erla paused the recording on another frame showing the woman’s face. ‘Are you sure you don’t recognise her?’ Thormar merely shook his head. His face was grey, a fact that seemed to tickle Erla. ‘That’s strange. The officer who found this checked your Facebook page and reckons she looks uncannily like your wife. He actually thought it was her. Is that possible?’
‘No.’ Thormar’s eyes dropped to his clenched fists, which he quickly slid under the table.
‘I see. Well, not to worry. I’m going to call her in and ask her to identify the woman. Just to be on the safe side.’ She stared at the man without an ounce of sympathy: he didn’t deserve any. ‘She may be surprised to discover that you’ve posted the video on your friends’ internet forum. It looks to me as if she knows she’s being filmed, but somehow I doubt she intended anyone else to see it. Still, never mind.’
It worked. Thormar finally agreed to talk in return for their promise to leave his wife out of it. Unfortunately, however, it soon became apparent that he didn’t know anything that could help solve the murders or trace Sigurlaug. His old quarrel with Helgi turned out to have resulted from a disagreement about what to do with the video of Maren. Thormar had wanted to delete it; Helgi to keep it on the website. Thormar didn’t seem to derive any satisfaction from having been right, though he and his friends would have been in a much better situation now if he had won that particular argument.
Thormar revealed that the anonymous administrator had shared a video of Helgi’s hanging and another of him lying unconscious in a car. When the police searched for these, however, they couldn’t be found. If the videos had ever existed, then logically the user must be Helgi’s killer or at least connected to him. But they couldn’t rely on Thormar telling the truth. Erla had rung down to IT from the interview room and, according to them, no one could access the site uninvited, let alone strip the others of their admin privileges. Whoever it was must have accessed the site with the help of one of the four friends.
The only significant piece of information they managed to prise out of Thormar was how the video of Sigurlaug might have ended up on the porn-sharing site, with serious repercussions for her. How serious remai
ned to be seen.
Erla had Thormar taken back to his cell.
The two of them sat there for a while without speaking. Huldar guessed that Erla hadn’t immediately charged off because she wanted to postpone having to decide about whether to apply for a custody order. If the judge refused her request, it would look bad for her at the office. On the other hand, if she didn’t apply for it and the men turned out to be guilty of murder, she would look bad in the eyes of the public.
Lína put her head round the door. She was wearing her red hair loose today and it stood out around her head in a haze of static electricity. For once, Erla was polite to her, which Huldar took as a sign of her distraction.
‘I’ve spoken to Maren Thórdardóttir’s mother,’ Lína announced. ‘She says her daughter had tried to kill herself before and that no one in the family had thought there was anything suspicious about her death. She didn’t try to find out whom Maren had spent the night with before she drowned herself, because it would only have made her grief more unbearable. She couldn’t see what it would achieve. She and her husband were living in Norway at the time but came home as soon as they heard the news. They also have two sons, one older than Maren, one younger. The boys took her death very hard, especially the older brother who was living in Iceland when it happened. The younger boy had moved to Norway with his parents.’ Lína looked at Erla for approval. ‘I didn’t tell her about Helgi and his friends, as you instructed. I just said I was looking into old cases linked to the Gallows Rock in order to eliminate them from our inquiry.’
Gallows Rock - Freyja and Huldar Series 04 (2020) Page 28