The Reckoning: Children's House Book 2 (Freyja and Huldar)

by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

  One consolation was that the sender couldn’t know the effect the messages were having. Thorvaldur had resisted the temptation to reply to them, though the urge to send back a stream of abuse had been overwhelming at times.

  Reckoning. The clue must be in the name. But he had no reason to expect a reckoning because he’d never harmed anyone. Not personally. Of course, it was inevitable, given that he was a prosecutor, that some people might feel they had a score to settle. Any number of them, come to think of it. Which was unfair, as they had only themselves to blame for their problems. But the possibility couldn’t be ignored.

  Yet the messages never gave any hint of being from a current or former prisoner. There was nothing to suggest a link to a court case. Besides, his twelve-year legal career had taught him that the wrath of the convicted tended to be directed elsewhere – at their accomplices, witnesses, the police or judges, whereas prosecutors got off pretty lightly on the whole. The criminals didn’t seem to grasp how much power resided in the job. The power to prosecute or not. To decide which law to apply. Whether the defendant should receive a token sentence for assault or a long spell in prison for attempted murder. To decide who should be charged with being the ringleader and who the accessory. Just as well none of them had the brains to work this out.

  Unless the e-mails were being sent by someone who had realised? Someone who had suffered from one of these decisions?

  No. Unlikely. In the eyes of those he had prosecuted he was merely an insignificant lackey of the justice system. A misapprehension, yes, but a very convenient one.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be in court?’ One of the young clerks stuck his head round the door; a boy who had assisted Thorvaldur on numerous occasions but whose name he couldn’t for the life of him remember.

  Thorvaldur tried to appear normal and relaxed. The last thing he wanted was for word to get around that something had happened to fluster him. He had a reputation for never losing his cool and he wanted to keep it that way. Clearing his throat, he gave the boy his customary look of disdain. ‘The case was postponed. The judge is ill. He rang to tell me I wouldn’t be needed.’

  ‘Wow. Did he call in person?’

  ‘What do you think?’ Thorvaldur made no attempt to conceal his irritation.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I thought they had secretaries for that kind of thing.’

  ‘It depends who they’re dealing with. You wouldn’t get a call like that yourself.’ Thorvaldur didn’t do the boy the courtesy of looking at him as he said this. Let him blush. ‘Would you mind closing the door after you? I’m rather busy.’

  The door closed unnecessarily loudly, without actually slamming. The boy was no fool, though he had a lot to learn.

  The e-mail was still open on his screen, the attachment still there, a picture file with the disagreeable name: betrayal.jpeg. Could the messages be from an old girlfriend he’d hurt? His ex-wife? Surely not. He didn’t make a habit of treating women badly – to be honest, he didn’t have many opportunities to do so. Since the breakdown of his marriage to Æsa, the mother of his children, he had buried himself in work and made no attempt to go out looking for women. He had little taste for trawling the city’s bars, and still less for the drunken slappers, with their slack mouths and glassy eyes, who were all he seemed to attract. On the rare occasions he met a woman he liked the look of, his interest was never reciprocated. The din in those places drowned out all conversation, so there was little point in trying to persuade them that what he lacked in sex appeal, he made up for in success. He still cherished the dream of meeting the right woman one day, but that hope had faded during the year and more that had passed since Æsa walked out on him.

  The thought of Æsa automatically stirred up bitter memories of their break-up. He felt hard done by – not financially, because he’d been cunning enough to keep the flat in his name and take responsibility for the mortgage payments, which had left her empty-handed. But the divorce had deprived him of his children. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to him given the preferential treatment habitually shown to mothers in custody cases. A woman practically had to turn up with a syringe dangling from her arm, a hash pipe in her mouth, a bottle of vodka in her hand, an aluminium cap on her head to ward off aliens, before she would be deemed less suitable to be granted custody than a man. Despite being an exemplary father and model citizen, he hadn’t had a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the custody battle over their two children. Æsa, who had been considered the more suitable guardian, was a nonentity who worked for the council. She had barely scraped through her school-leaving exams, while he had graduated fourth in his year. And although he’d had to forgo the postgraduate degree he had planned, he would have passed that with flying colours too.

  He was gifted; she was average. He was comfortably off; she would struggle financially as a single mother. Yet she had been given custody. Unbelievable. Of course, it hadn’t helped that she had brought up what she described as his excessive drinking, and because he was a man his lifestyle had been subjected to extra scrutiny. Never mind that her claim was absolute rubbish. The magistrate had swallowed it hook, line and sinker, despite Thorvaldur’s objections and a character reference from no less a person than the State Prosecutor herself.

  His e-mail bleeped. He had received another message from reckoning. What the hell was going on? He had half a mind to take the matter to the authorities. Or at least report it in-house. Surely the guys in IT would be able to find out who was behind it? Enough was enough. Thorvaldur rubbed his chin thoughtfully. But what if they were from Æsa? Did he really want to remind his superiors of how messy their divorce had been? Naturally, his boss was a woman. They mostly got along fine; he knew how to mask his opinion that she had neither the expertise nor the experience that would have been required of a man in her position. But a shadow had fallen over their working relationship as a result of the custody battle and he was aware that she had taken a dim view of him. Women tended to stick together at times like that. It was a law of nature and therefore futile to try to change it.

  Could the messages be from her? From his boss? Thorvaldur shook his head over his own absurdity. Of course not.

  Not from his boss, or Æsa, or any old girlfriends or criminals he could think of. So who then?

  No one could have any reason to wish him harm. So why didn’t he hurry up and have the origin of the messages investigated? Was it the gnawing suspicion that this was not in fact a mistake? Was it the fear that an investigation might expose something he would rather keep hidden? Of course that was it. The sender made no bones about the fact that he had something on him. But Thorvaldur couldn’t imagine what it could be. Something he could easily shrug off, perhaps. It would take a lot to threaten a prosecutor with a long and, though he said it himself, bloody successful career behind him.

  It was nobody’s business if that success was in part down to his habit of taking on the least challenging cases. No one ever appeared to notice. Unless his colleagues were whispering about it behind his back.

  Was he becoming paranoid now on top of everything else?

  Thorvaldur took a deep breath. He ran his eyes down the sleeves of his expensive jacket, resting them for a moment on the crisp, white cuffs of his shirt peeping out at his wrists, then flexed his neatly manicured fingers. This pleasing sight had a calming effect on him. An effect that was only enhanced when he tweaked his shirtsleeves a little to reveal the gleam of the expensive cufflinks he had recently treated himself to, when no one else had given him a suitable birthday present. His children’s crudely drawn cards didn’t count. Such naive creations held no charm for him.

  The cufflinks glittered and Thorvaldur felt his spirits rising. He had no need to look down at his gleaming leather shoes and silk socks to recover his sangfroid and remind himself of who he was. A winner. A man who knew what it took. A man who inspired fear and respect, perhaps not from everyone but from most.

  These e-mails were absolutely pathetic. He’d bet his l
ife that the person responsible for the threats wrote them sitting at a crappy computer, wearing a grubby T-shirt and creased tracksuit bottoms that had never been near a gym. Loser. One thing was for sure, he was twice the man the sender was. Nothing got to him. So there was nothing to stop him clicking on the attachment and looking at the picture, then opening the latest message. He was strong. A winner. Thorvaldur smirked as he moved the cursor to the file betrayal.jpeg and clicked on it.

  The photo almost filled the screen. He frowned. What nonsense was this? Two children, a girl and a slightly older boy, stared back at him, their expressions anything but happy. He didn’t recognise either child, but then he wasn’t particularly keen on other people’s kids, and neither of them was in any way memorable. They looked pale and rather scruffy; there was no colour in their cheeks or sparkle in their dull eyes. Where his own children’s untroubled glances revealed their irrepressible joy at being alive, these held a quite different, more adult emotion. He could have sworn it was accusation.

  Thorvaldur stared at the photo, powerless to close it and resume his work. The longer he studied those nondescript faces, the stronger the feeling grew that there was something familiar about them. Where did he know these unfortunate creatures from? How were they connected to him? Think, damn it, think. It was bound to come back to him.

  He shifted his attention to the rest of the picture. The surroundings told him nothing: the children were outdoors, the corner of a building and a street just visible behind them. They could have been anywhere in Iceland. Nor could he date the photo; he had nothing but the clothes to go by and they appeared to have been chosen with no purpose beyond shielding the children’s nakedness: some things were too large, others too small, all of them threadbare.

  All of a sudden it fell into place. Shit, shit, shit.

  The terror that had seized him gave way momentarily to relief. Thank God he hadn’t reported the messages. Thank God.

  With trembling fingers he opened the latest e-mail. After reading it, he snatched up the telephone and selected Æsa’s number.

  What beautiful children you’ve got. Make sure you take good care of them. There are people out there who might betray them, as you know only too well.

  Chapter 4

  ‘It’s the same handwriting. Without a shadow of a doubt. The writer doesn’t seem to have made any attempt to disguise it.’ The handwriting expert raised his eyes from the blown-up letters on his screen. ‘There’s no sign of hesitation or unusual care either, so we can conclude that he wasn’t trying to copy the writing of the other boy. This Thröstur.’

  ‘Great.’ Huldar straightened up. He had been leaning eagerly over the man’s desk. In the past he would never have wasted time on something like this in person, merely sent the man the letters and asked for his opinion over the phone. But even though the station had been turned upside down by the discovery of the severed hands, he was lucky to have the time capsule to keep him busy. Erla still hadn’t assigned him any role in the new inquiry and he was beginning to wonder if she ever would. From what he had overheard, the case had made little progress. The hands had been sent to the Identification Committee, but there was no news as yet. And when it came to police investigations, no news did not mean good news.

  ‘Is this really worth wasting police time on?’ the handwriting expert had asked sceptically, after Huldar had explained where the letters came from. ‘A fourteen-year-old boy’s not likely to stick to a ten-year plan, surely?’

  ‘No, fortunately not, but we’re still obliged to look into the matter. There are always exceptions.’

  The man grunted, though whether in agreement or derision was unclear. Not that Huldar cared either way.

  ‘Thanks. Then I can go ahead and talk to the boy.’

  ‘Young man, you mean. He must be in his twenties by now.’

  Huldar didn’t bother to respond. He declined the proffered photocopies and left. There was no wind for once; the storm that had been raging earlier had blown itself out. He lit a cigarette, having long abandoned any attempts to give up, though he wasn’t advertising the fact. His five sisters mustn’t find out – they had a tendency to go overboard with the anti-smoking lectures, and right now he was in no mood to be harangued.

  His mobile rang as he was putting away his lighter and he answered without checking the caller ID. There weren’t many people likely to call him. It turned out to be the school secretary, who informed him with due solemnity that she had cleared a space in the headmaster’s diary and that he could see Huldar later that day. At ten minutes past nine. A little surprised by this very precise time, Huldar thanked her and said he’d be there, possibly with a child psychologist in tow, just to be on the safe side.

  Freyja had said the matter was worth looking into, and there was nothing wrong with living in hope.

  He decided to head back to the office, though he knew there would be nothing to do there but surf the net. After the meeting at the school, he would hopefully know the pupil’s patronymic and therefore be able to go round and see him. And once that was done and he’d established that everything was fine, the case would presumably be closed. And his in-tray empty again. He took a final drag on the cigarette, buried his hands in the pockets of his parka and set off.

  The police station was a hive of industry but Huldar’s desk might as well have been on a different planet. No one came to see him and those who did pass by never gave him so much as a glance. The only person to speak to him was Gudlaugur, who sounded as if he was going out of his mind with stress. The task he’d been assigned was clearly beyond him. Now and then Huldar caught sight of his sweat-beaded forehead above his monitor. The situation was a joke: here he sat, one of the most experienced detectives on the team, twiddling his thumbs, while the rookie cop was buckling under the pressure.

  The breaking point came when Huldar found himself watching cat videos on YouTube. He marched over, knocked on Erla’s door and opened it without waiting for a response, aware that she could see him through the glass wall and was unlikely to invite him in.

  ‘I need a word. I promise to be quick.’ Out of the corner of his eye he noticed the picture of the Reynisdrangar sea stacks that he had bought to liven up the office when it was his. It had been taken down and propped against the wall. To be fair, it had spent most of its time on the floor during his incumbency; he hadn’t been able to bring himself to hang it for fear of tempting fate. Sure enough, shortly after the picture had taken its place on the wall, he had lost his job. If the towering black pillars of rock had the power to jinx anyone who dared use them for decoration, Huldar hoped that Erla would leave them where they were.

  Erla tried to act nonchalantly but a flicker in her eyes suggested she was expecting a scene. Huldar was quick to dispel her fears. ‘I need something to do. I can’t sit there playing Patience while other members of the team are drowning in work.’

  ‘Drowning? Who’s drowning?’ Erla’s look of astonishment was designed to give the impression that things were unusually quiet. But her desk, buried under a ton of files, belied her words.

  ‘Gudlaugur, for example.’

  ‘Gulli?’

  ‘Gudlaugur. The kid who sits opposite me. He doesn’t look like he can cope and I’m itching to lend him a hand, apart from anything else.’ Huldar pulled up a chair since Erla obviously wasn’t going to offer him one. ‘And I want to know how the investigation’s going. That’s hardly unnatural, is it?’

  ‘No, of course not. I’m just a bit tied up at the moment. I wasn’t deliberately sidelining you. Only I thought you had enough on your plate with that … what was it again?’

  ‘The time capsule.’ Huldar sat tight, ignoring her claim to be busy. ‘I’m expecting to close the case tomorrow and after that I’ll have nothing to do.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Erla didn’t look or sound particularly sorry. How times had changed – she used to be embarrassingly eager to work with him and her crush had been obvious to all. He didn’t miss those days, bu
t wished she would acknowledge that he was still one of the team. He couldn’t understand why she had turned against him unless she was afraid that he was bitter and wanted to avoid an unpleasant scene. But he would never instigate one. She could keep her promotion; all he wanted was his old job back.

  He smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘OK, well, I’ll just talk to the Assistant Commissioner. If you have no use for me, I’m sure he’ll find something for me to do. He’ll probably take it as a sign that your team’s underemployed and rustle up some forms for you to fill in. I know there are plenty he’d be only too grateful to offload.’ Huldar’s gaze flickered over Erla’s desk, taking in several tedious documents that had a familiar look about them. He prepared to stand up. This wasn’t the result he had been hoping for but he had no intention of letting himself be made a fool of at work. He was perfectly capable of doing that all by himself.

  ‘Sit down.’ Erla’s face wore a new expression. She was regarding him, not like a boss or someone who was nursing a grudge against him, but like an old colleague. It was a while since Huldar had last seen her look like this. ‘You can help the boy. Gulli, I mean.’

  ‘Gudlaugur.’

  ‘Yeah, whatever.’ She stared at him, her blue eyes bloodshot and weary. ‘Things aren’t exactly going well. It’s been three days, and we still have nothing on those hands.’

  ‘Has nobody rung to report them missing?’ Huldar bit back the urge to add a flippant comment about the person in question having trouble dialling the number. It was taking him a while to get used to being on his best behaviour around Erla.

  Erla glanced at her computer as if expecting an e-mail that would contain all the answers the inquiry so badly needed. ‘No. No reports. Not yet. Which doesn’t bode well.’