He stood on the quay and looked landwards along the fjord.
His Danish visitors were still asleep, the old woman and her son. Why the hell did she have to come? She was staying in his basement – ninety years old and on a pilgrimage to Iceland with her son tagging along, asking to stay with Pálmi simply because she had known his late father during his time in Denmark.
‘I want to take the opportunity to visit Siglufjördur. Your father always spoke so fondly of the place,’ she had said over the phone in her clear Danish. After decades of teaching the language, Pálmi spoke Danish with ease. He had warned her that the weather could be unpredictable at this time of year, and that there was no guarantee that she would even be able to get to Siglufjördur, let alone leave it.
‘All the same, I have to try. I so want to see the fjord with my own eyes before I die. I will be staying in Reykjavík at New Year because I want to see the fireworks,’ she had said with almost childlike excitement. ‘Could we visit you for a few days after New Year, if the weather is reasonable?’
How could he refuse?
A whole week to go. They were planning to travel back south next Monday. A whole week.
There was still no breath of wind, but Pálmi knew that in a place such as this the coming storm was inevitable.
23
SIGLUFJÖRDUR. TUESDAY, 13TH JANUARY 2009
The news spread like the first frost of winter.
Almost everyone heard that Úlfur had been interrogated in the hot tub at the swimming pool, and the tale grew with each retelling. By the time Ari Thór heard it from Tómas, it had been magnified beyond all recognition, although he had to admit that there was a kernel of truth to it. The core of the story was correct; he had certainly asked Úlfur about the sequence of events at the Dramatic Society.
It was clear that Tómas was angry with Ari Thór, and even Hlynur didn’t try to take the opportunity to crack a joke, aware that there was no funny side to the riot act that was being read.
‘The case is closed,’ Tómas said, his voice determined. ‘It was an accident and that’s all there is to it. I thought I had made that crystal clear the other day.’
Ari Thór nodded.
‘You step out of line one more time and you’re through here.’
The atmosphere at the police station was almost viscous. There was no point opening a window, with the shingle-clattering wind, yet more snow falling and temperatures well below zero. Ari Thór hadn’t slept well the last few nights. The break-in still preyed on his mind but, above all, he was terrified of waking up in the middle of the night, unable to breathe.
‘People are frightened,’ Hlynur said suddenly. ‘That’s my feeling.’
‘What do you mean?’ Tómas asked, turning to face him.
‘Well, it seems people think we’re investigating the … the … the Dramatic Society incident as a ….’ Hlynur paused. ‘As a murder investigation.’
You’re not helping, Ari Thór thought.
He glared at Hlynur, with no visible effect. Hlynur was hardly on Ari Thór’s side, even though they were both Tómas’s subordinates. Ari Thór was the new boy, a new arrival and unlikely to stay for long.
‘You think people are afraid?’ Tómas said with a piercing look at Hlynur.
‘That’s the feeling I get, and one or two people have even mentioned it. There’s something about a murder in a small community that’s disturbing, especially at a time like this – the middle of winter,’ Hlynur said with a self-important look on his face. ‘People’s imaginations can run away with them.’
‘Hell and damnation,’ Tómas muttered.
Ari Thór nodded his head.
Hell and damnation.
He was on the point of making a royal mess of his opportunity. His first posting, and everything seemed to be going badly wrong.
Hell and damnation.
Wet behind the ears and only out of college for five minutes, this was the price of trusting instinct without having experience to back it up. He had allowed this young woman, Ugla, to arouse his suspicions about Úlfur and Hrólfur’s death.
The weather brightened later in the day, and Ari Thór called at the little fish shop in the Town Hall Square on his way home, wading through the drifts of snow.
There were more people about than usual, relishing the opportunity to get out for a breath of fresh air, running their errands before the snow filled the streets again, making them impassable.
‘Two haddock fillets,’ ordered the man ahead of him.
Ari Thór recognised him right away: he had met him outside the theatre on the evening of Hrólfur’s fatal accident; Karl, a member of the Dramatic Society. He had come across as a decent sort of character.
The man behind the counter passed him a package of haddock. Karl pulled a note from his pocket, dropping some change as he did so, but then ignoring it.
Ari Thór picked up the coin from the floor and tapped Karl’s shoulder.
‘Keep an eye on the pennies,’ Ari Thór said, handing him the coin.
‘Hello. Ari Thór, isn’t it?’
‘That’s me. Hello again.’ He wanted to use the opportunity to ask about that Friday evening, at the same time knowing that it would be better not to. He had learned from bitter experience that even the most innocent conversation could become a salacious and fasttravelling tale.
‘How do you like Siglufjördur?’ Karl asked.
‘Fine, thanks.’
It was not, perhaps, an entirely truthful answer, but this was no time for baring his soul.
Karl’s eyes half closed as he smiled. ‘You get used to it.’
‘Have you lived here long?’
‘Born and bred here, but not long moved back. There’s no better place to be.’
The word he had been searching for came to Ari Thór: reliable. There was a warmth to this man.
‘I heard that you’re treating Hrólfur’s death as murder,’ Karl said in a loud whisper. ‘Was he murdered?’
‘Can I help you?’ The fishmonger said with a good-humoured glance at Ari Thór.
‘No. It was just an accident,’ he said to Karl.
Just an accident.
Karl had never intended to move back home to Siglufjördur, and he had no particular affection for the place. But when the flat in Kópavogur had been sold from under their feet and the debt collectors still didn’t stop hammering on their door, it seemed the obvious move for him and Linda. Brutal and ruthless, the collectors were after payments to clear his gambling debts, and weren’t inclined to leave empty-handed. If there was nothing for them, the visits would usually end with blows.
There wasn’t much that frightened Karl, but his pain threshold was low; so low as to be non-existent. The decision to move north had been made one evening after an unexpected visit from just such a debt collector had ended badly. Karl knew he couldn’t trust luck or his own strength, and was aware that the next time there would be two of them and they’d be more heavily armed. He suspected that they would be unlikely to follow him to Siglufjördur, but just to be certain, he didn’t bother registering his new legal residence. The debt wasn’t that high, half a million krónur or so; it had often been much greater than that.
He had promised Linda that he would stop gambling. Not surprisingly, she had completely lost it when she heard about the regular Wednesday poker night, only reluctantly calming down when he assured her that they played for nothing more than beer and Monopoly money. The beer, and booze in general, was never a problem. It was the gambling that was his Achilles heel.
It was fun to meet old schoolmates, the few of them from his year left in the town. They met once a week, in the afternoon, at the house of a friend who had remained unmarried, and played poker. It was refreshing, a great way to relax, and no more than that.
Linda had no idea about the other poker club that met occasionally and played for real money, as often as not for serious amounts. Karl turned up whenever he had something to play with; sometimes h
e’d show up empty-handed in the hope of getting a place at the table. Sometimes someone would loan him enough to play – and sometimes not. He couldn’t help but be drawn in; it was the same pull that had always been his downfall.
He and Linda had got to know one another fifteen years earlier in Denmark, where they had lived together for ten years before moving to Iceland. Her father was Danish, her mother Icelandic and Linda herself had been brought up in Iceland until the age of twelve, when the family moved to Denmark. Karl had spent longer in Iceland and was seventeen when his parents decided to move from Siglufjördur to Denmark in the summer of 1983. They had lived in a dilapidated apartment on the outskirts of Copenhagen until Karl found his way to Århus, when he and Linda first met.
There hadn’t been much common ground between Karl and his parents. They had been so conventional, so conservative and so adoring. He loathed their effusive, suffocating affection, and he moved out as soon as the offer of some cash-in-hand work in Århus came through. He snatched the opportunity gratefully and left his parents behind in their little Copenhagen flat.
Linda had been a stroke of luck for Karl. Her parents divorced acrimoniously and in the midst of the turmoil she found herself in Karl’s arms. Unlike him, she had finished college and went on to train as a nurse. This had kept them afloat as she found work at hospitals in Denmark, Reykjavík and now Siglufjördur, while Karl had been out of work since they had moved north. There had been plenty of time that summer and autumn to refit a small fishing boat that had been earmarked for the primary school. An old acquaintance had told him the school was looking for a volunteer – someone clever with his hands – to take on the refurbishment, and Karl hadn’t hesitated. He had always made an effort, whatever had been going on in his life, to do something either with or for children, and had frequently done voluntary work in Denmark. He didn’t quite understand his compulsion to do things for children, except that he somehow wanted to help them maintain their innocence as long as possible. Strangely enough, it never occurred to him that he might have children of his own one day.
As well as his work on the boat, he took occasional manual work when it was offered. Every penny of that ended up on the card table.
He was like a car in low gear when he was away from the card table. It was only when he had cards in his hand that he felt fully alive, flush with high-octane petrol. He could feel the blood coursing through his veins and nothing else mattered, not Linda, and not even winning or losing. It was the rush, the heart-stopping recklessness that drew him back, over and over again, although losing produced a painful, guilty hangover the following day. What was worse was being left with a debt. This type of behaviour was so ingrained in his nature, in his lifestyle, that he no longer lost any sleep about debts. Instead, it had become a practical problem that needed to be solved before he could get back his place at the card table.
Sometimes he wondered what the future might have in store. Linda was anxious to move on, while he was satisfied with being in the town where he had grown up, where he had friends and acquaintances. He had even become a star of the local stage, damn it.
The place seemed empty as he opened the door of their flat on Thormódsgata. He peered into the living room; nobody there.
The living room was unusually colourful, with most of the furniture showing its age. There was a scruffy yellow sofa with a few embroidered cushions, a small coffee table, an old bookcase, a wall hung with little souvenir plates in every colour of the rainbow and a Danish landscape painting positioned over the sofa. A small television faced a tired old leather armchair; next to it stood a wooden table on which sat an old vase, something from the sixties that Linda had inherited from her family.
In the bedroom Karl switched on the light. Linda was asleep in the threadbare bed that probably dated back to the seventies. It had come with the flat when they agreed to rent it, along with the print of Jesus, who looked down from his place on the wall over the headboard. Two lamps flanked the bed, and they too were probably as old as the bed itself. The light woke Linda, and she stirred, rubbing her eyes.
‘Up you get, sleepyhead. I bought haddock for dinner.’
24
SIGLUFJÖRDUR. WEDNESDAY, 14TH JANUARY 2009
The little boy had been allowed out after dinner to play in the snow, a fresh, delightful snowfall that created a wonderland where anything could happen. The flakes had stopped tumbling down around dinner time and his mother had finally let him go outside to play.
A small cat with a bell hung at her neck had stolen out into the evening calm and tempted him to follow her into the neighbouring garden, arching her back and purring as she led him along a frozen border into another garden. He knew where he could sneak through between the trees and still find his way home.
He revelled in the snow; it was in his blood. The darkness was comfortable and snug.
The sight of the angel, a beautiful snow angel, didn’t frighten him.
He knew the woman. He had played often enough in her garden that he even remembered her name. What he couldn’t understand was why she was lying so still and why she wasn’t wearing a jumper. In his eyes, the blood-red snow that formed a halo around her was beautiful, a vivid embellishment to the rest of the pearl-white garden.
He didn’t want to disturb her and with one last glance at the wondrous sight, made his way home, stopping just once on the way to make a snowball.
Karl put down his glass of beer. Old habits born of experience ensured that he kept his cards close to his chest; nobody could be trusted. The six of spades and the seven of clubs in his hand, plus a four, an eight and a jack on the table meant he was in with a chance. The round table about which they sat was covered with a green cloth and a bowl of crisps had been placed at the edge. The tension was palpable.
His old schoolmates watched carefully, waiting for him to move. It wasn’t a tough decision – playing only for Monopoly money. Hovering at the edge of his mind, and feeding his growing excitement were thoughts of the real game. This was child’s play by comparison. Maybe next weekend? Except that he was flat broke and already owed his mate a few grand.
The phone rang just as he made the decision to stay in the game. He looked at the number but didn’t recognise it. Seeing that it was a call from a local landline number, he answered it. Normally he avoided unfamiliar numbers, preferring not to find himself unwittingly engaged with debt collectors from down south.
‘Karl?’
A woman’s voice, a young woman’s voice that he couldn’t place.
‘That’s me.’
She introduced herself, an old school friend who lived not far from him and Linda.
‘Listen, my Gunni, my little boy, was knocking about in your garden just now.’ She hesitated, as if searching for the words to continue. ‘I tried calling your home number, but there’s no reply. He said he saw your Linda, out in the garden, naked.’ She laughed awkwardly. ‘These kids. They say such weird things … but it felt so strange. I just wanted to make sure everything was all right.’
‘As far as I know,’ Karl said. ‘I’ll check. Thanks for calling.’
He ended the call without another word, stood up and put his cards on the table.
‘Sorry, guys. I have to shoot home. I’ll be back.’
He took his jacket off the back of the chair, and went out into the cold. It had started to snow again, so violently he could hardly see.
The ambulance was at the scene moments before the police jeep. Ari Thór and Tómas were on duty, disagreements about Hrólfur forgotten in the time it took to take the call from Karl on the emergency line. He now stood at the back door, in black jeans and a dark-blue sweater. His jacket lay in the snow and the paramedics crouched by the motionless body, feeling for a pulse. It looked like there would be no chance of identifying footprints, anything useful long obliterated by the fresh snowfall; and both the ambulance crew and Karl had trodden through the snow at the scene.
She lay in the snow, pale with blue li
ps and eyes closed. Ari Thór hadn’t seen her before, Linda Christensen, Karl’s wife. She looked disturbingly peaceful. Karl stood to one side and Ari Thór felt a surge of sympathy for this likeable man to whom he had chatted so easily only the day before in the fish shop.
Linda’s arms were outstretched and there was a wide pool of blood in the snow, far too much blood. Ari Thór felt himself overwhelmed with anger, as he tried to control his breathing. It wasn’t good to take things too personally and he knew he had to keep his distress, his rage under control and not let it cloud his judgement.
Who does this kind of thing? Who leaves someone to die in the snow and their own blood?
She was wearing jeans and nothing else. Bare feet, naked above the waist.
He was almost certain she had to be dead. There was a cut to her chest – it was a shallow one, but was startling on her pale torso – and a deeper cut to one arm. This one appeared more serious, and the cause of the crimson stain that had spread around her into the snow.
Defensive injuries?
Weapon?
Knife?
Ari Thór looked about and saw that Tómas also seemed to be searching for a weapon, but in the riddle of footprints and the still-falling snow, nothing could be seen.
‘Should we call out a technical team from Reykjavík?’
Ari Thór had only been trained in the basics of crime-scene procedures, essentially just enough to know what not to do and how to avoid compromising evidence. But this was no usual crime scene. To begin with, efforts to save the young woman’s life – if she were still alive – had to take precedence and the blizzard would make everything even more difficult.
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