‘Is Daddy dead, Mummy?’ His voice sounded just the same, though. It hadn’t changed just because he was being looked after by strangers. When Sigurlaug didn’t immediately answer, he repeated the question.
Sigurlaug cupped his head in her hands and turned his little face up to look at her. The needle tugged at the back of her hand but she ignored the pain. Meeting his blue eyes, she said: ‘Yes, I’m afraid so, my darling, darling boy.’
‘Because you made a hole in his head? Why? You didn’t die.’
Sigurlaug licked her lips, which were flaking and sore from the tape. ‘I didn’t make a hole in his head, Siggi. You were dreaming, remember? The man killed him. But you needn’t be afraid because the police have arrested the man.’
‘Oh.’ The boy looked confused.
‘Have you been a good boy and done everything I said?’ Her son nodded gravely. ‘Did you tell the police you only remembered a car and the man who took you to the flat?’ Again, he nodded. ‘You’re the best – the best boy in the whole world.’
Sigurlaug bent his head so she could kiss it and hide the tears that were pouring down her cheeks into his fair hair.
She wept soundlessly until she had no more tears left. She wept over the past and over what was to come. Over what awaited her and her son and her unborn baby. Siggi kept perfectly still. At last, Sigurlaug sniffed and rewarded him by dropping another kiss on the top of his head.
What would become of them? Would life without Sibbi be as good, as wonderfully peaceful for herself and her children as she had dreamt? Or would everything come crashing down around her ears? Would she be taken away and her children sent for adoption? There were long waiting lists for children and some people would do anything to get hold of a newborn as they were rare these days, that much she knew.
Sigurlaug closed her eyes and tried to work out her situation. She had answered the police’s questions clearly, without any problems or lies – except at the end. They hadn’t seemed remotely suspicious, but then it hadn’t exactly been a proper interview. They were bound to want to talk to her again. They hadn’t asked the most important question of all, so she assumed they must be keeping it back until later. That was the question that would demand the most from her. Unless they meant to spare her on account of her condition. Surely the police would go easy on a woman who was about to give birth?
She would have to keep the child inside her as long as possible.
She allowed herself a glimmer of relief over what she’d achieved so far. They’d believed her when she said she hadn’t got out of the car in front of the block of flats on Sudurhlíd. Which meant Thórdur must have kept his side of the bargain and assumed the responsibility for Sibbi’s murder. Not told the real story of how he had been standing arguing with Sibbi when she had crept up behind her husband and struck him on the back of the head with the heavy toolbox she’d found in the Yaris. It had weighed a ton and normally she wouldn’t have been capable of lifting it but rage had lent her an astonishing strength. The anger had flared up inside her when she heard Sibbi pouring out the usual unspeakable filth, not only about her but about Siggi too. It was one thing for him to take out his hatred on her but she wasn’t going to let him turn on her son as well. With a sudden surge of strength she had swung the toolbox up in the air and – whack! – hit him right on the back of his head. Sibbi had crumpled as if he didn’t have a bone in his body and lain there jerking convulsively on the cold tarmac at her feet. When she looked up, the stranger was gaping at her in shock.
‘He deserved it.’ That had been all she could say at the time. Then she had looked round and to her horror seen that Siggi was awake and watching her through the car window, his eyes huge. The toolbox had fallen from her hand and she had opened her mouth to scream when the stranger clamped a hand over it, marched her back to the car and made her get in. She sat there, stunned at what she’d done, and watched him drag Sibbi’s body inside the building. When Siggi asked if his daddy had got a hole in his head, she sat staring blankly and told him, in a voice not her own, that he had been dreaming and should go back to sleep. Eventually he did, after she had kept repeating over and over again: ‘It was just a dream. Nothing’s happened to Daddy. Go back to sleep.’
Although she had been driven to violence for her son’s sake, he should never have had to witness it. She had acted in the heat of the moment, though the desire to do it must have been unconsciously growing for a long time. Never, when she’d been racking her brains for a way of escaping unharmed from her marriage with her son, had anything like this occurred to her. If any such thoughts had been stirring, her subconscious must have whispered them too quietly for her to hear. But when she’d bashed her toe on the heavy metal toolbox in the car, the idea had lanced into her mind as if from nowhere and before she knew what she was doing, she’d grabbed the handle, climbed out of the car and was striding towards her husband. The last thing she heard him say was: ‘The little bastard won’t say anything and neither will my cunt of a wife.’ She could still hear the sickening wet crunch the sharp edge of the toolbox had made as it sliced through his scalp and cracked open his skull.
He deserved it. She had to keep reminding herself of that. He had been plotting to kill a man who had done nothing to him except sleep with her – a long time ago. It had bothered him less that the man had posted a video online of them having sex. To Sibbi, she was his possession and no one else was allowed to touch her.
There had been one thing missing from the policewoman’s questions. Sigurlaug didn’t know if this was good or bad. She smiled weakly at her son, then, her face solemn again, asked him: ‘What did you do with the piece of paper, Siggi?’
‘What paper?’
‘The paper the man put on the bedside table when he left you behind in the big bed. What happened to it?’
‘Oh. I don’t know.’
Sigurlaug breathed through her nose. ‘Try to remember, Siggi. What happened to the piece of paper?’
The boy frowned, thinking hard. Then suddenly he beamed. ‘I put it in my pocket. I drew a picture on it at the police station. But not on the side with the writing on it. Only on the back.’
‘You drew a picture on it?’ Sigurlaug repeated, at a loss for anything else to say.
‘Yes. Of you, me and Daddy. I had some crayons in my pocket. Only two, though, because I forgot the others. I left them in the room, by the bed.’
‘What happened to the drawing?’
‘The police took it.’
Sigurlaug’s heart gave a sickening lurch. Something had gone badly wrong. If the police had seen what the paper said, they would have asked her about it. Unquestionably. This couldn’t be a good sign.
‘The man stuck the picture on the wall. At the police station.’
The relief was so great that Sigurlaug thought she was going to faint, but the dizziness soon wore off. What if they never took the picture down? What if they never saw it? How was she to let them know?
‘I want to go to Disneyland.’ When Sigurlaug didn’t immediately answer, Siggi added: ‘Or to Majorca again, if we’re poor.’
She almost burst out laughing. If they’d never gone to Majorca, she wouldn’t be lying here now. Sibbi would still be alive and nothing would have changed. Everything would have been just as awful – but at least she wouldn’t have been in uncharted waters.
The holiday had started well. Siggi had played in the sun and splashed around in the swimming pool. All three of them had relaxed in the heat, all their worries left behind at the departure gate. It was when their skin started to turn brown in the sun that the axe fell. Sibbi had noticed a large, colourless patch on Siggi’s back that hadn’t been obvious before but now couldn’t be missed. Although Sigurlaug had taken care of bathing and dressing him since he was born, the penny had never dropped. After all, she had only been persuaded to watch that disgusting video once and then only a brief clip. But Sibbi had pored over it until he knew every detail by heart, like the similar patch on Helgi�
�s back. And then it had dawned on him: Siggi wasn’t his son but Helgi’s.
Sigurlaug had been lucky to escape with her life from the ensuing explosion. She was a whore who had cheated on him and only got back together with him so her child could have a father. Helgi hadn’t wanted anything more to do with her, had seen through her, had seen what a disgusting bitch she was. It was useless for her to point out that Siggi had been conceived at a time when she and Sibbi had kept breaking up, then getting together again. It didn’t help either when she told him that lots of people had birthmarks and patches of colourless skin. Perhaps it was just a coincidence.
It wasn’t, though. In the lull between their fights she had done the maths. Siggi had in all likelihood been conceived during that night with Helgi, but instead of giving birth at the right time she had been overdue, like many first-time mothers. That would also explain why Siggi had been such a big baby.
She didn’t tell Sibbi this: it would be better if some doubt remained in his mind. But his behaviour afterwards suggested that he was sure. He stopped having anything to do with Siggi and began treating her even worse than before, right up to the moment when it occurred to him that he might be able to squeeze some money out of Helgi for his son. His mood worsened again when he found out that the child-support payments would be so low that they would change nothing.
Then he had received a phone call. Later he told her that it was from a man who wanted to kill Helgi. If he helped him, Siggi would stand to inherit, since Helgi was unmarried and childless, as far as Sibbi could discover.
The story was so ludicrous that she hadn’t taken it seriously, not until Sibbi woke her up in the middle of the night and forced her and Siggi to get in the car. Apparently the intention was to incriminate her as well, so she wouldn’t go to the police, but then Sibbi had never been troubled by common sense.
‘Hopefully we’ll be able to go to Majorca and Disneyland, Siggi,’ she said now. ‘But not right away. Not until the baby has arrived. We need to wait for it to be born and to get a bit bigger first.’
The boy seemed to accept this. She hoped she’d be able to keep her promise. It would do them so much good to go away, just the three of them, with no man to order them about and insist that everything was done his way.
She mustn’t fall into the trap of believing that all men were like Sibbi. Thórdur, for example, couldn’t have done more for her.
She hadn’t lied to the police about that journey to Sæbraut. They had driven in silence, with Siggi asleep in the back. Thórdur had parked the car and sat there thinking for a while, before handing her the piece of paper that was now hanging on a wall in the police station. As she was reading what it said, he told her he was supposed to leave it in Helgi’s flat for the police to find after he was dead. It was a brief declaration that Helgi believed he had a son and that he wanted to do a DNA test to make sure. Siggi was named as this possible son. The page had been signed. According to Thórdur, it had been Sibbi’s idea to make it look as if Helgi had killed himself, in order to make sure that his heir would get what was owing to him. The note was meant to convince the police that it was suicide, and the declaration would explain the motive. But Thórdur said he had doubted anyone would believe it was suicide.
As they sat there in the car, he had offered to shoulder the blame for Sibbi’s death in return for a share of Siggi’s inheritance. He didn’t need much, he said, and didn’t name a sum; he just wanted to be sure of a comfortable income while he was serving his sentence. After all, he was going to prison anyway. It would mean her having to put up with difficult conditions for a few days, a week at most, as Thórdur needed time to tie up a few loose ends. But he would see to it that Siggi was taken to safety.
She had thought about his offer for a long time. In the end, though, the choice had been simple. So simple that there was no real choice. If Sibbi had been right about the size of Helgi’s fortune, no one would be able to spend it all. There would be enough money there to enable dozens of people to live the high life. Of course, strictly speaking the money belonged to Siggi, but she persuaded herself that the boy would want to sacrifice some of it in order to be with his mother. She could cope with being shut up in a boiler room for a few days; with taking the drug and letting herself be treated badly to make the whole thing seem more plausible.
So she had nodded and said she would do it, on condition that Siggi was put into safe hands as soon as possible. Thórdur had promised, saying he would tell Siggi to wait for a while to give him time to hide her, but that he would make an anonymous phone call if the police didn’t turn up by early afternoon. He had added that there was no chance of that since the Chinese delegation was due to visit Bessastadir at midday. One of the numerous guests at the reception was bound to look out of the window and spot Helgi’s body dangling from its gallows.
Before Thórdur took Siggi upstairs to the flat, she had got a chance to talk to her son. She’d done her best to rehearse with him what he should and shouldn’t say. He had seemed to take it in and left obediently with Thórdur, having given her his rabbit in parting. At that she had nearly broken down. When Thórdur came back, he said he had frightened Siggi into staying quiet by showing him the video of Helgi and threatening to do the same to his mother if he didn’t stick to the script. This had almost been enough to make her change her mind about the whole thing. What kind of monster had she got involved with? What sort of person would dream of showing a small child the video of a man being hanged? But it had been too late to turn back. All she could do was keep quiet and dismiss her doubts. The only alternative was prison, which would mean losing custody of both Siggi and her unborn baby. So she had gone on listening while Thórdur told her that he had left the letter containing Helgi’s declaration that he was Siggi’s father on the bedside table and ordered Siggi not to touch it.
They had made their plans while waiting in the car until it was safe to enter the building. Once everything was decided, Thórdur had gone to his office, reappearing after a while to take her down to the boiler room. And after that she genuinely remembered very little.
There was a tap on the door of the hospital room and her mother put her head round it. ‘Can I come in? I really can’t wait any longer.’
Sigurlaug beckoned her over. Her mother kissed her gingerly, then sat on a chair by the bed and started talking about the future and how lucky she and Siggi had been. But all Sigurlaug could think of as her mother chattered away was the letter at the police station.
How could she ensure the police read it? What would happen if Thórdur had second thoughts when it became clear no one knew about the paternity issue? Would he give the game away if he suspected he wasn’t going to get any money? On no account must that happen.
She could feel how rapidly and unevenly she was breathing. Soon one of those machines would start beeping. Calm down, calm down.
She inhaled deeply through her nose and exhaled again several times. After that she was relaxed enough to see a way of solving the problem. The moment she was discharged, she would go to the police station with a box of chocolates to thank them for rescuing her. Spotting the picture, she would ask if she could have it for Siggi as a reminder of what their family had been like before Sibbi’s murder. She could rehearse her amazed reaction when she discovered what was written on the back.
She felt better immediately. Until it occurred to her that the picture might have been thrown away. Calm down, calm down. If that had happened, she would just have to find another way.
She had nothing else to do while she was lying in hospital but make her plans. Sigurlaug smiled at her mother and hugged Siggi to her again, dropping another kiss on the crown of his head. They had got through the worst. From now on, things could only get better.
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Table of Contents
Contents
About the Author
About the Translator
Also by Yrsa Sigurdard
óttir
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Pronunciation guide for character names
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Gallows Rock - Freyja and Huldar Series 04 (2020) Page 32