The Undesired: A Thriller

by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

  Then, less than six months ago, disaster had struck. Lára had fallen out of the window of her flat and his life had undergone a transformation. Ódinn the weekend dad was a thing of the past; fatherhood no longer consisted of a film and a visit to the Hamburger Factory every other weekend. He had changed jobs in order to be able to take proper care of his daughter, and his uncomplicated, cushy existence was history. Though still not used to the change, he was gradually finding his feet.

  ‘I’m not kidding. I often used to hear her groaning as if the stress were killing her.’ Seeing that Ódinn was unimpressed, Diljá added, with slightly less vehemence: ‘Sometimes it sounded like she was talking to someone. Though not to me, that’s for sure.’

  ‘I expect she was talking to herself or muttering under her breath. It’s not that unusual, especially when someone’s ill.’ As far as Ódinn was aware heart disease didn’t usually manifest itself in delirium or bipolar episodes, but what did he know? He regretted letting himself be drawn into gossiping: if he’d resisted, Diljá might have given up and left him to get on.

  When she spoke again there was no trace of the little-girl voice she adopted to appeal to men; she sounded like an adult, albeit an indignant one. It was a distinct improvement. ‘I know what I’m talking about after listening to her for nearly two years. She wasn’t like that until recently. The change had something to do with that case. It’s up to you whether you believe me or not. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.’ She sat down again without waiting for his response. Although she’d be able to hear him over the flimsy partition, he decided not to answer. When it came to women, he had a tendency to put his foot in it. He went back to examining the files.

  It was too late to resurrect the conversation when he finally came across a second folder of documents relating to Krókur. Oddly enough, he found himself missing Diljá’s chatter; it would have provided a comforting backdrop to what he now read. The first page was a photocopy of the picture on the wall of the cubicle that had caught his attention. Underneath, Róberta had written two names and placed a cross after each:

  Thorbjörn (Tobbi) Jónasson †

  Einar Allen †

  Only now did Ódinn notice the cold draught blowing on him from the air-conditioning vent above his head. Goose bumps crept over his scalp and he snapped the folder shut. His own cubicle wasn’t as chilly; he would take a closer look at it there. But the clumsily drawn crosses hung vividly before his mind’s eye. Shaking off a feeling of unease, Ódinn quickly left the cubicle. He didn’t care for the way the boys in the photo were watching him. Maybe it was the knowledge that they must have looked on equally impassively during Róberta’s death throes. Perhaps they had welcomed her on the other side, finally able to tell someone what had happened at Krókur.

  Chapter 2

  January 1974

  One of the washing-up gloves was leaking. Aldís gritted her teeth and carried on; it wasn’t worth changing the scummy water for the few things left to wash. Besides, she couldn’t face another lecture on extravagance and waste. She hadn’t a clue what washing-up liquid cost but from the fuss they made here you’d have thought it was liquid gold. She had to use it so sparingly that the bubbles disappeared as soon as she put the dirty dishes in the sink. And it wasn’t as if she was washing up for small numbers, either: seven boys for dinner, thank you very much, plus staff, not including herself. If the couple in charge had been in their right minds they’d have invested in a dishwasher long ago. But no, she’d be lucky if she got a new pair of gloves.

  ‘Why are you always so bloody slow?’ It was as if the mere thought of Lilja and Veigar had drawn the woman to her. She had crept up behind Aldís and was now breathing down her neck. ‘You know we’ve got a new boy arriving later and you’ve still got to make up his bed.’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’ Aldís was well aware this would be misunderstood; it was almost as if she wanted the woman to have a go at her.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, we’ve been over this a hundred times. How could you forget? It’s not as if you’re required to use your brain much here.’ From her tone it was clear that Lilja relished this excuse to nag.

  Aldís met her own eyes reflected in the window over the sink. It was pitch black outside as the snow had thawed in the unusually mild weather and none had fallen since. ‘I meant I haven’t got to make up his bed. I did it earlier.’ Her words were met with silence and she sensed that Lilja was casting around in vain for a put-down. ‘I knew I wouldn’t have time this evening, so I thought I’d better do it while the boys were out.’ The new boy had been allocated the top bunk in a twin room. No one had slept in it since his predecessor had left a month ago; a boy so quiet that although he had only been gone a short while, Aldís couldn’t for the life of her remember what he looked like. Perhaps it explained his success as a shoplifter before he came to Krókur: in that line of business invisibility was a definite plus.

  ‘So you actually showed some initiative for once.’ Lilja was incapable of praise. On the rare occasions she was pleased, it sounded no different from her scolding. For the first few weeks after Aldís had started her job, six months ago, she’d had no problem with the woman, but for the last two months Lilja had gone around looking like a thundercloud. It was hardly surprising under the circumstances. And she was especially bad when Veigar was away, as he was now, though fortunately this didn’t happen often. Absurd as it seemed, Aldís got the feeling Lilja didn’t trust her husband, though all he was doing was collecting the new boy. They were made for each other, really: she bitter and twisted; he in a perpetual bad mood. How could a woman fall for a man like that? Aldís couldn’t understand why Lilja would worry about him cheating on her; it must be due to her recent ordeal. Perhaps Veigar had lost interest in her after what happened. It occurred to Aldís that he might be confronted with the same image she was whenever Lilja appeared – a vision of horror that it was impossible to erase from one’s memory.

  Aldís resumed the washing up. She didn’t want to think about that now; enough was enough. She banged the crockery to block out the woman’s heavy breathing behind her. There was no point suggesting Lilja go somewhere else; although the others were still working, she never stood over the male employees. They probably made her nervous.

  Aldís felt uncomfortably aware of the clammy rubber glove as it occurred to her that Veigar might have started giving her the eye and that this was the explanation for Lilja’s behaviour. The thought was unbearable. The boys were bad enough. Their eyes followed every step she took, until at times she felt like a hen forced to walk past a pack of wolves. She wasn’t really afraid anything would happen but the sensation of being watched made her uneasy. They ranged in age from thirteen to sixteen and she was almost twenty-two, but the age gap didn’t bother them; it was enough that she was female. However hard she tried to disguise her figure under baggy clothes or neglect her appearance – hair scraped back into a ponytail, face bare of make-up – the boys’ eyes continued to track her every movement. And their number was about to increase.

  To complete her discomfort, a deafening silence always fell when they started staring, as if they were waiting expectantly, though for what she neither knew nor wished to know. In the middle of the night she often started up from a recurring dream in which seven boys were gazing at her, wordless and unblinking. Although she could never remember the rest, when she tried to recall the dream the next morning her heart would start racing and all she could see were those lightless black eyes. Her half-hearted attempts to convince herself that her dream reflected the boys’ yearning for kindness and warmth were in vain, and eventually she’d learnt that it was best to dismiss it from her mind once she was awake. Just turn over and concentrate on something else. Like when would be a good time to hand in her notice and get out of here. Mentally calculate how much money she had managed to put aside each month and how much she had accumulated in savings stamps. If she wasn’t mistaken, she’d be able to move to Reykjavík before long, havin
g saved enough to cover the rent of a room and her upkeep while she was looking for a job. A proper job. And she’d never set foot here again. Never in a million years. She wouldn’t miss a thing.

  With the last plate finally in the rack, Aldís ripped off the gloves, releasing a foul smell of rubber. ‘We need new gloves. These are leaking.’ Lilja was still in the kitchen, no longer breathing down Aldís’s neck but inspecting the glasses in the cupboard for smears. She pretended not to hear. Rather than repeat herself, Aldís put down the gloves and said goodnight. It was probably just as well; if Lilja was ignoring her, she wouldn’t be able to come up with further chores for her to do. Aldís left the kitchen, fetched her anorak and went outside.

  Her room was in a small bunkhouse, a stone’s throw from the main house. The farm consisted of three residential buildings, a cowshed and two smaller tumbledown sheds. The previous tenants had scraped a living from a handful of livestock, but when Veigar and Lilja took over they’d been faced with two choices: either throw in the towel or diversify. The upshot was a home for young offenders, with a little animal husbandry on the side. Not that the location in the remote south-west of the Reykjanes peninsula was particularly suited to farming, with its small pastures and barren, windswept terrain. Perhaps those who built the houses had planned to clear away the lava-field and sow grass for hay, but little had come of it. And it was too far from the sea to provide additional income from fishing. Maybe the original tenant had been after peace and quiet. There was certainly no shortage of either.

  It was around half an hour’s drive to the nearest settlement, Keflavík, and over an hour to Reykjavík. To begin with, Aldís had planned to go into town as often as possible but in the event she was seldom offered a lift. She had no car herself and her requests to ride in with Lilja and Veigar had been greeted with a marked lack of enthusiasm. Either the car was full or they were unsure when they’d be coming back, and so on. As it was hardly the end of the world, she didn’t insist; it merely meant she spent less money and so would be able to leave all the sooner.

  With every step she felt a lessening of the numbness that had slowly and inexorably taken up residence in her soul during the day. She started looking around for the poor bird that had been stranded here last autumn, left behind when the other migrants headed south. Perhaps it had realised when the others took to the air that it was too old for the journey, or perhaps it was injured in some way. Pitying the lonely, defenceless creature, Aldís had taken to slipping it crumbs and other leftovers from the kitchen, which had probably kept it alive, for now. Who knew what its future held?

  The bird was nowhere to be seen but Aldís placed a dried crust in the usual place by the end wall of the main building. The spot was sheltered from the worst of the storms and as long as it didn’t start snowing heavily, the bird would be able to feed on it later. She quickened her pace, though it wasn’t as if she had anything to look forward to; she usually sat in bed and read after work, or listened to the evening radio serial before going to sleep. The story was seldom to Aldís’s taste, but she preferred it to the snores of the workmen who shared the bunkhouse.

  There was a faint smell of smoke and the orange glow of a cigarette lit up Hákon’s face. The three men who boarded with her all chain-smoked. Usually they stank out the house, but from time to time even they would be driven out by the choking fug to sit on the steps instead. Hákon was staring into space and didn’t turn, though he must have been aware of her presence. He was a man of few words and, despite having slept under the same roof as him for six months, she knew little about him. The same was true of Malli and Steini who also had rooms in the dump that went by the grand title of ‘staff accommodation’. Among themselves they simply referred to it as ‘the little house’. There was a communal sitting room that none of them used much: the television was broken and there were two cards missing from the pack on the coffee table. It was better to sit in one’s room and daydream.

  ‘Only just knocking off?’ The words were accompanied by puffs of smoke that Hákon couldn’t be bothered to exhale.

  ‘Yes. The boys took ages over the fencing and came in late for supper.’ The boys were expected to perform general chores around the farm, unpaid. Occasionally, they were lent out to other farms, and were allowed to keep the wages they earned from that, as well as for the odd bit of casual labour at one of the fish factories in the Sudurnes district. Yet for the amount of work they did, the poor creatures were paid a pittance. Like her.

  ‘There’s a new boy arriving later.’

  ‘Yes.’ There was little to talk about at Krókur and on a normal day Hákon would have made do with nodding at her and maybe saying goodnight. He was quite a bit older than her and, if Lilja was to be believed, had a criminal record as long as your arm for minor offences, such as forging cheques and committing burglaries to finance the unbridled drinking that he had, by his own admission, finally managed to get under control. Yet his eyes were still evasive and his hands couldn’t keep still. ‘Do you know anything about him?’ Aldís added, so as not to seem curt. Not that she had the slightest interest in the boy. They turned up, full of anger, creating all kinds of scenes, but their cockiness was quick to wear off. Even the most highly strung and violent were crushed in the end by the futility of the place. They received no visits and no letters. And nor did she.

  ‘He’s from Reykjavík, I think. Messed up big time, so the system kicked in. Seems he’s not one of the usual troublemakers who’ve burnt all their bridges.’

  ‘Oh? What exactly did he do?’ Aldís watched as the cigarette smoke vanished into the darkness, only to be lit up by the headlights that now appeared at the bottom of the drive.

  ‘Something bad. Really bad, by the sound of it.’ Hákon took a final drag. He rolled his own cigarettes and Aldís had often admired the way he could smoke them right down to his fingertips.

  They lapsed into silence and watched the car, a large, battered American model, make its slow way up to the farmyard. The headlights were switched off and all was dark again until the car door opened and a light went on inside. They couldn’t see much but knew one of the figures must be Veigar. The other was slimmer and looked younger from the way it moved. When the doors closed, they appeared as silhouettes, making their way towards the main building, the boy’s progress hampered by a large suitcase that twisted his body as if he were crippled. But he must have been strong, since he kept pace with Veigar, who didn’t bother to lend him a hand. Perhaps the boy had declined his help.

  ‘Something tells me this is going to be interesting. To put it mildly.’ Hakón rose stiffly to his feet and flicked the butt into the darkness.

  Aldís looked at the door that had closed behind Veigar and the boy. ‘He’ll be no different from any of the others. A pain in the arse at first, but he’ll learn to toe the line. They all knuckle down in the end.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You don’t agree?’

  ‘There are always exceptions. Sure, most of the poor buggers end up like sleepwalkers, as you say. But not all of them.’ Hákon spat on the gravel, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Some start out bad and end up worse. I’ve worked here long enough to see that. You’re lucky you haven’t had to witness it. I’d watch myself if I were you.’ He said goodnight, leaving Aldís on her own. She mulled over his words, unsure whether to dread or look forward to what was to come. She told herself any variety would make a nice change, but deep down she knew this wasn’t true.

  That night she dreamt the familiar dream, but this time she woke up, sweating in terror. Something had changed; the staring eyes were more menacing than before and the circle the boys had formed round her was tighter. She gazed up at the ceiling, vainly trying to recapture the feeling of security that sleep had deprived her of. Closing her eyes tight again, she forced herself to think about something else. About Reykjavík and how she would decorate the room she was going to rent; the stereo she’d buy; the records she’d listen to. It almost wo
rked but then she felt the bad thoughts coming back. She struggled to hold onto the image of the stereo by murmuring the names of the bands who would have a place in her record collection, but it was no good; instead she saw again the blood-spattered floor of Lilja and Veigar’s bedroom, the dark-red pools on the white sheets. Aldís wanted to scream. Why couldn’t she forget this, like she had forgotten so much that actually mattered? Like what year the Treaty of Kópavogur was signed, which had led to her failing her history test in the sixth form, though she’d done her best to memorise the date. Perhaps she should have tried to forget it. That way it might have stuck.

  She rolled onto her right side, then back onto the left. Neither position felt comfortable, so she tried lying on her back. But that’s how Lilja had lain, screaming and bellowing in childbirth, so she hastily turned onto her stomach. If only the woman had kept her voice down, Aldís wouldn’t have been eavesdropping outside their house when Veigar appeared with the bundle in his arms, his face as white as the only part of the sheet that wasn’t soaked in blood and mucus. She had known at once that something was seriously wrong: towards the end Lilja’s cries had suggested not physical pain but a very different emotion, and people didn’t usually cover newborns with a sheet the way Veigar had done. Invisible in its wrappings, the baby was uncannily still and made no sound.