by Zena Shapter
“And Jón?” I clear my throat, try to sound neutral. “He’s your—”
“Boyfriend,” Anna mumbles. “Yes.”
“And does he live at The Himinn too?”
“No.” She glances in her rear vision mirror. “That wouldn’t feel right.”
“Does he stay over sometimes?”
“When he insists.” A private smile flickers over her lips, which she bites again as if delighting in her memory of the last time he insisted.
“Tonight?” I ask a little too quickly. If he’s staying there tonight, I’ll need to find somewhere else to stay while I organise his arrest.
“I’ve asked him not to be.”
“And what about last night, did he stay with you then?”
“Yes.” She cocks her head, confused. “Why?”
“Um,” I hesitate, tempted to blurt out the truth. I settle for a part of it. “I had a threatening phone call this morning on the Austurleid.” I watch as her expression shifts to alarm. “And a death threat via text this afternoon.”
“What?” She glances at me, her body stiffens. “From who? What did it say? Are you okay?” Her foot braces against the accelerator, making us speed up. She looks at me a little too long and we veer towards a parked car.
“Hey, watch out,” I clutch my seat as she swerves to avoid it.
“Sorry. I’m not the best driver. I can’t believe you had a death threat, an actual death threat.”
“Didn’t Jón tell you,” I act surprised, “when you were waiting for me?”
“No, he was too busy trying to get me to change my mind about tonight. You must feel awful.”
“I’m more confused than worried, I think. I don’t understand how or why my being in Höfkállur is anyone’s business.”
“What’s Höfkállur got to do with it?”
I tell her what the caller and the text said, about Director Úlfar and what he’s been saying to me, and what Jón told me beside the scan pods. “The man on the phone this morning, he sounded a little like Jón actually.” I resist saying ‘a lot’. “Were you with him all morning?”
“Yes. But how do you know the man sounded anything like Jón? Didn’t you say he used a Word2Word translator?”
“Jón also uses Word2Word, and the man had a very distinctive wheeze.”
“A wheeze?” she chuckles.
“Yes, and so does Jón.”
“Well,” she glances in her rear vision mirror again, “it couldn’t have been. He was far too busy this morning to make any calls, let alone drive up and down the highway, trust me!” She gives me a look that confirms her insinuation.
“Oh.” So the deep rasping wheeze imprinted in my memory belongs to someone else? I was so sure… “He didn’t pop out at all?”
“No. But,” Anna muses, “that doesn’t mean someone else from the Litrúm-Hús didn’t call you. You said Ari met you from the Austurleid? How did he know you were even there?”
“Director Úlfar told him.”
“Isn’t that a little coincidental?” She pulls into the driveway of a large white house with a russet-red roof. Attached to its white picket fence is a sign bearing a maple leaf and black letters reading ‘The Himinn’. “Ari is the one who found Mark. Did he tell you that?”
“Yes, eventually.” Although the coincidence of it hasn’t occurred to me until now—that the man who found my brother is the same man sent to find me.
She lets me dwell on that for a moment, then points to Mark’s report, resting on my lap. “What’s that?”
“Mark’s autopsy report.” I flick through its pages as Anna turns off her engine. “Doctor Emil wasn’t very happy about giving it to me.”
“Why not?” She leans in to scan it as well. When I flick to the end, she cocks her head as if expecting to see an extra page.
“What?” I ask her.
“Hm?” She pulls her keys from the ignition.
I glance over the report’s conclusion. Its translation seems complete. “Is something missing?”
“Oh, um, I was looking for the signature page.”
I turn over the last page. There’s nothing on the back. “Should it be signed?”
“I always thought they were. I’ve got one myself somewhere, if you want to compare.” She pulls her door handle, checking her rear vision mirror before climbing out. At the boot, she glances up and down the street.
I follow her to the kerb and check the road too. There’s no one there. “You seem nervous.”
“Me?” She passes me my suitcase, then pretends to look over the sky while slamming the boot shut. Really she’s still surveying the street. “I can’t believe it’s so late, that’s all.” Her tone is whimsical but loud. “Will you look at that sky now? My husband always used to say the light in Ísland could play tricks.”
“Your husband?”
She laughs and beckons me inside, stepping ahead to hold the door open for me. We step inside a hallway decorated with embossed white wallpaper and a crimson floral carpet. There’s a staircase at the end of the corridor. Anna pauses beside a photo hanging on the wall between two doorways, one leading into a dining room, the other into a kitchen. The photo is of a stocky, thick-necked bald man with full lips. In the photo he’s brandishing a giant halibut aboard an open-sea Viksund. His blue jeans and tight marl jumper indicate a muscular body. A Canadian flag flies from the ship’s mast.
“My husband, Pàll,” she gazes at the man. “He was also my childhood sweetheart, if you can believe in love so young. I used to visit Höfkállur every summer with my family. They were from here originally.”
“But you were born in…Canada?”
“Right.” She nods. “We waited until I was twenty, then I moved here. That was, what, over thirty years ago?” With her next breath, her lungs quiver. A glossy sheen comes to her eyes. “He…he died a year and a half ago. It’s his autopsy report I have upstairs.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” The words feel inadequate. She must have heard them a thousand times already, just as I’m destined to hear them.
“Takk,” she thanks me before turning to climb the staircase.
As I follow, my mind does some maths. “So how long have you been with Jón?” I try to keep judgment out of my voice.
“Jón moved to Höfkállur a few months after Pàll died. He was a good friend to me, a shoulder to cry on, some comfort at night.” She sighs as if forgiving herself. “His eyes, they sang to me like sirens. I tell you—a woman of my age, ah, it was flattering. Still, I should never have gone with him. If I could turn back time, I would.”
I’m about to ask her why when we reach the top of the stairs and she pauses.
“There was nothing left for me, after Pàll died,” she gestures around the guesthouse. “What was the point of anything? Breathing, eating? Jón, he gave me hope, something else to think about. You’ll find out. Having something else to think about can save your life.”
I understand that already, more than she knows.
She turns to her left. “This is my room. If you need anything, please knock—day or night.”
Her door ajar, it’s hard to miss the massive canvas above her bed. It’s a photo of her standing with Jón, his arms wrapped tight around her. Behind them a verdant field rises towards a mossy cliff face with a wide but delicate waterfall. A rainbow is visible in the spray. Anna’s head rests against Jón’s shoulders, her eyes closed, a smile beaming with bliss. Jón stares straight at the camera. There’s no smile on his lips, rather an intensity in his expression that speaks of possession.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Anna says, catching me staring. “Pàll hates it, of course.”
“Pàll? I thought you said you didn’t meet Jón until after he…”
“I didn’t.” She laughs at my confusion. “Don’t worry, I will explain later. You must
be tired. This,” she heads towards a door with a ceramic black number three on it, “was Mark’s room.” Taking a master keycard from her pocket, she swipes its door pad and reveals a large room with plush-pile cream carpet.
A king-sized wooden bed dominates the far wall, crammed with plump white pillows that appeal to my tired limbs. Beside the window are two pink leather armchairs that curl around a glass coffee table. I’m drawn to them, so walk over and place a hand on the back of a chair. This is where Mark would have worked on his thesis, where he would have emailed and phoned me, where he would have stayed up all night comparing and contrasting the world’s energy theories, analysing his first hand experiences of all of them. He studied feng shui, Zen Buddhism, chi force and Taoism in Asia. He investigated the spiritual journeys of Navajo and Mandan Indians in America. But Iceland was where he planned to isolate the one element he said they all had in common.
“Energy. The numinous. It’s both, together,” he told me last weekend. He sounded so excited.
Anna taps a series of commands into the door pad and shows me how to swipe my keycard to preset it to this room if I want to lock it. “Most of my overseas guests prefer to lock their rooms. Habit. I’ll go find Pàll’s autopsy report. Coffee?”
“Sounds good.”
“I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”
I throw some toiletries around the ensuite sink, hang up my skirts, then grab Mark’s autopsy report and my phone. If Jón isn’t the man who called or followed me, I’m safe enough here tonight, and my next priorities will be to get some sleep, so I can think straight tomorrow, and to ask Anna about Höfkállur. Anonymous and faceless, I have no real way of recognising the man who apparently wants me dead if I remain here after tomorrow. But Anna has known Höfkállur all her life—she might know someone or something.
A fresh coffee aroma greets me as I descend the stairs. Entering the grey and white kitchen, I see Anna swiping the barcode of an empty packet of ground Arabica beans across the sensor on her silver fridge. On the marble-topped kitchen island a steaming cafetière is brewing.
“Milk?” Anna asks. “Sugar?”
“Just milk please.” Milk is twenty calories extra, but I need a boost. So I add twenty-five to my calorie count, then perch on a stool beside the island while Anna retrieves mugs and a sugar pot from her cupboards. Beside the cafetière is a plate of cookies that smell of cinnamon, as well as a typed document that looks similar to Mark’s autopsy report, only without the translation comment boxes. I stare at its incomprehensible letters and wait for Anna to pour the coffee.
“Biscuit?” Anna nudges the plate towards me.
“No, thanks.” My tummy grumbles in defiance but I ignore it. The hunger will pass once my coffee settles the gnawing. Giving into temptation this late in the day will only make me feel bad. Instead I imagine the warmth of cinnamon on my tongue and breathe in the spice to supplement my imagination. It doesn’t satisfy my hunger, but it satisfies me.
“Is this Pàll’s report?” I ask after stealing a sip of my coffee.
Anna slides her document across the island.
I turn to the last page. An inky blue signature is scrawled above a line, under which is the printed name ‘Doctor Emil’ and his title, ‘Höfkállur Dánardómstjóri’. I check Mark’s report. Of course there will be no signature, Doctor Emil printed out a fresh copy and didn’t sign it before handing it over. There’s also no signature strip. I look over the documents. Anna’s autopsy report is on Doctor Emil’s letterhead, mine isn’t. “He must have printed on the wrong paper.”
Anna shrugs. “Didn’t you say he was reluctant to print it out at all?”
I frown. Even if Doctor Emil used the wrong paper, the signature strip should still have printed out with the rest of the document. I think back to my lawyer days. “Maybe it’s still a draft?” Although it seems complete enough, and Doctor Emil didn’t mention anything about it being a draft.
“Did Doctor Emil say he performed the autopsy himself?” Anna asks.
I try to remember. “I don’t know. Why?”
“It’s probably nothing.”
“What?”
Anna jiggles her head like she’s debating something. “Well, maybe he didn’t perform the autopsy himself, and that’s why he didn’t sign it? He might have asked one of his juniors to do it.”
“A junior?” A growl of nausea churns the coffee in my stomach. I stare at the two reports, willing them to tell me what else Doctor Emil might be hiding. Ideas rise but slip away before I can fully grasp them. I consider eating a biscuit, to give my brain the energy it must be craving to function properly, yet resist. The caffeine will kick in soon. I take another sip of coffee and focus on the reports.
Why was Doctor Emil so reluctant to give me Mark’s report? Was it because it’s still in draft, because some junior performed the autopsy and he didn’t want to tell me, or because of something else? What other differences are there between the two deaths, Mark’s and Pàll’s. Two? Two reports? “Hold on. Anna, why was Pàll even given an autopsy? Didn’t he die of natural causes?”
“No.” Anna’s eyes settle on the rim of her mug. “He was crossing the road. It was winter, very icy. A car tried to stop, there were marks on the road. It was the last unsolved hit and run in Höfkállur.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. They never found the person who did it?”
“They, um,” she struggles to finish her sentence, “they never looked. Never reviewed security camera footage. Never advertised for leads. The MUR said the driver would eventually come forward to clear their conscience.”
“But no one did?”
She shakes her head, looks up at me. “That’s how I met Jón. He was the town’s new MUR officer.” She looks away to dispel a memory. “He was going to help, but…”
“Never got around to it?”
“At first I thought it was because he didn’t want to make waves.” She looks back up. “He’s an ambitious man and was new up here. Then I figured it was because he wanted more from me. But after, later…still nothing. He’s got his reasons of course, he always does.” Her expression lifts in realisation. “Becky, when you met Jón earlier at the Litrúm-Hús, what did he say about the man who called and threatened you?”
“I thought you said Jón was in bed with you this morning?”
“He was. But you said something that’s got me thinking, something Jón said when you met him.”
I summarise the conversation for her again.
“Disruption?” She lingers on the word. “Hmm, what kind of disruption could you cause, Becky, if you wanted to?”
“I don’t know. Professionally, I suppose I could investigate the town’s new legal systems and find fault in them, if I were so inclined.”
“Which would be a problem for Director Úlfar, given he’s deep in negotiations to sell the Sannlitró-Völva to the United States, Europe, Japan…Australia.”
“He is? He never said.”
“He hasn’t announced it officially. Dating an MUR officer has its benefits, you know.” She winks at me. “Still, you could have come here in six months’ time and he’d still have been in negotiations with some of them, other countries too. So that’s not it, at least not entirely. Let’s think—what’s brought you to Höfkállur today, specifically?”
I feel like she’s leading me. I’m happy to let her if it gives me answers. “My brother’s death.”
“And what disruption could that cause?”
“Um, I don’t know.”
“I think you do.” She leans forward and waits.
I purse my lips, reluctant to say what’s been in the back of my mind since Director Úlfar called me yesterday. Anna’s right, I could cause an element of disruption over Mark’s death, if the doubts I’ve been having about his sudden hike alone were realised. I just don’t want to admit that possibility yet
.
I sip my coffee. How much longer can I ignore what’s been bugging me since Director Úlfar—the director and press secretary of Iceland’s information and intelligence bureau—phoned to tell me about my brother, since he met me from the Flybus in the middle of the night, since Doctor Emil tried so hard not to give me the autopsy report?
Anna raises her eyebrows.
I clear my throat and put my mug down. “In my experience, governments don’t usually offer to pay for repatriation unless they’re directly responsible for the death in question.”
“Have they offered to fly Mark’s body home then?”
“Twice. Anna, did Mark say anything to you about hiking at that glacier?”
“Nothing.”
“He didn’t mention anything about going, didn’t talk to you about hiking in general, or leave a message for me?”
“No.” She looks at me as if willing me to understand something. Clearly she thinks the circumstances of my brother’s death are suspicious. As do I. As I’ve done for two days now. I can’t bear to think exactly how suspicious those circumstances might be: criminal negligence, gross negligence, manslaughter…murder? But if the government’s involved, I’ll have little chance of discovering what—if they’re somehow responsible, they won’t want me finding out.
Step by step, I remind myself. “Did Mark even mention anyone who was thinking of going hiking?”
“He didn’t really know anyone in Höfkállur well enough to go hiking with them. Why, what are you thinking?” She sips her coffee, doesn’t take her eyes off me.
“I’m not sure.”
“Not sure about what?”
“I’ve never been interested in conspiracy theories.” I’ve had no need.
“But?”
“But,” I say quickly, “they’re claiming it was an accident yet Úlfar’s still offering to pay and… Could Mark have gone to this glacier as part of some government experiment or expedition?”