Snowblind

by Ragnar Jónasson

  ‘I don’t think there’s any point,’ Tómas said, deep lines of concern etched on his face. ‘But we need to call Hlynur out right away. He needs to go over the crime scene, both inside the flat, if that’s where the attack took place, and out here. Take as many pictures as you can while there’s still anything to be seen in the snow.’

  Ari Thór nodded his agreement. It wouldn’t take Hlynur long to arrive and it was unlikely he had left town in this weather; practically impossible, in fact.

  They watched the ambulance crew, waiting for developments. Ari Thór pulled the camera from his pocket and took pictures.

  Tómas moved closer to Ari Thór and spoke in the quietest voice he could, with every sound dampened by the thick snowfall, the conditions worsening by the minute.

  ‘We have to ask Karl to come with us.’

  ‘Ask?’

  Or arrest him?

  ‘Ask him politely. We need to get him to make a statement. I understand that they haven’t always …’ He paused. ‘They haven’t always agreed on everything.’

  ‘Pulse!’

  Ari Thór was startled and moved closer.

  ‘We have a pulse!’ a paramedic shouted.

  The ambulance crew lifted Linda onto a stretcher. They had now covered her with a blanket, the narrow gash to her chest and the deeper one on her arm now hidden from view. The motionless body in the snow had at first looked artistic to Ari Thór, almost beautiful, but now reality had taken over, and he reminded himself that this was just a poor woman fighting for her life.

  ‘She’s alive?’ Ari Thór asked in surprise.

  ‘A very faint pulse, but yes. She’s alive.’

  25

  SIGLUFJÖRDUR. WEDNESDAY, 14TH JANUARY 2009

  ‘You’ll have to come with us. We need you to make a statement.’

  Tómas spoke in measured tones, struggling to keep any brusqueness out of his voice. Karl stood still as he watched Linda being lifted into the ambulance.

  ‘Of course. I’m coming.’

  ‘Can we have the key to your flat? We have to check for any signs of activity there.’

  He nodded. ‘It’s not locked. There’s nothing to see. I had a look just now to see if anyone was there.’

  ‘Sit in the car.’ Ari Thór ushered him to a seat.

  The ambulance had gone, its lights lurid against the relentless snow. The garden behind the house on Thormódsgata no longer looked like a crime scene, washed clean by the flurries of snow that had now settled in a gleaming cold blanket. Linda had been taken away, Karl was in the car. Only traces of red could be seen. The garden was being transformed in front of Ari Thór’s eyes; it could be any back yard in a quiet street of a small northern town.

  Hlynur arrived a few minutes later.

  ‘I’m going back to the station with Ari Thór,’ Tómas said, his voice almost lost in the wind. ‘Karl comes with us. I need you to investigate the scene as best you can. We need to locate the weapon. We don’t have any details of her injuries – they were too busy keeping her alive – but my feeling is that it was a knife. Keep your eyes open. Take a look in the flat as well – see if there’s anything that indicates a struggle.’

  Ari Thór fought to keep his eyes open as the storm raged. The thick snowflakes no longer fell gently to earth but instead lashed anyone so unwary as to step outside in such weather. He sat next to Karl in the squad car’s back seat. Tómas drove them in silence.

  The police station provided a welcome refuge from the force of the blizzard with its safe, familiar environment. It wasn’t until he was inside that Ari Thór realised how hard his heart had been pounding. He could clearly feel himself relaxing and felt the pain in his shoulder return.

  They showed Karl into the office that was used as their rarely needed interview room. Ari Thór was finding it difficult to comprehend Karl’s attitude. He seemed strangely placid, considering the circumstances. He asked, ‘Is this going to take long? I’d like to get up to the hospital as soon as I can.’ Little emotion.

  ‘We’ll do our best to be quick. It helps make things go faster if you speak clearly and distinctly,’ Tómas said, and explained to Karl that he was being treated as a witness.

  The tape recorder started. Ari Thór wrote a few words and passed a note to Tómas.

  ‘Would you give me your jacket?’ Tómas asked.

  The question seemed to take Karl by surprise and his eyes widened.

  ‘Your jacket. Can you take it off? Give it here.’

  Karl obeyed, apparently just noticing the little stain that Ari Thór had seen, but saying nothing. He passed his jacket to Tómas.

  ‘This will have to be sent away for examination.’

  Ari Thór nodded and fetched an evidence bag for the jacket.

  ‘Blood?’ asked Tómas.

  Karl didn’t seem upset by the question. ‘Probably.’

  Tómas sat in silence and Karl did the same; they were eyeing one another, almost daring the other to speak first. Karl was the winner, as Tómas looked down, shuffled in his seat and began his line of questioning.

  ‘Do you know how it got on your jacket?’

  ‘I took it off when I found her, used it to cover her, to keep her warm. There was blood everywhere. The paramedics put it to one side when they arrived and tried to revive her.’

  ‘When did you last see Linda?’

  ‘This morning.’

  ‘She went to work?’

  ‘Yes, she had a shift until six.’

  ‘Do you know if she went home early?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Have you heard from her today?’

  ‘No, not a word. Could I give the hospital a call?’

  He sat quietly, as anyone with nothing to hide would. Ari Thór’s instinct was that they were wasting time on the wrong person.

  ‘I’ll speak to the doctor shortly. Weren’t you at home at six?’

  ‘No,’ he said and lapsed again into silence.

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘Playing poker with the boys. Every Wednesday. We meet at five, five-thirty, when they’ve all finished work, and we play into the evening. Not too late, though. A couple of beers, a few hands of cards.’

  ‘They’ll confirm that you were there before six?’

  ‘Yes,’ Karl said and hesitated. ‘You want their names?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ Tómas said, handing him a pen and paper.

  Karl handed back a list. Tómas looked at the names.

  ‘I’ll make the calls. I know them,’ he said to Ari Thór.

  I know them, and you don’t. Out-of-towner.

  Tómas stood up.

  ‘Can you call the doctor?’ Karl asked.

  Tómas nodded and left the room. Ari Thór wasn’t sure if he should continue the investigation or keep quiet. Maybe just chat about something else. The result was an uncomfortable silence.

  ‘Coffee?’

  Karl shook his head. ‘You’re sharp. The jacket and the blood on it. I hadn’t noticed anything.’

  Ari Thór wasn’t sure how he should take this and wondered why Karl was complimenting him. Was the man trying to establish a rapport?

  Should he be saying thank you?

  They were silent and then he asked, ‘Sure about the coffee?’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  ‘That’s a nasty cut to your forehead,’ Karl said.

  Silence again.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing serious,’ Ari Thór said shortly, and the uncomfortable silence resumed.

  ‘Lousy weather. I suppose you’re not used to this.’

  Ari Thór tried not to let himself get distracted, but it was not easy to hide the effects that the unremitting snow, the winds and the bone-shattering cold had on him. He certainly didn’t want to be where he now found himself. He would much have preferred to be in Reykjavík.

  Karl seemed to have understood his thoughts and acknowledged that he’d touched on a sensitive point. ‘It can be terrible. I
t’s even tough for me to get used to it, and I was brought up here. It’s like the walls are closing in on you when the weather’s like this,’ he said with a careless smile.

  Damn it. Couldn’t Tómas hurry up?

  Ari Thór kept quiet and tried to think of something else. The minutes passed. Maybe Tómas was deliberately delaying his return, giving Karl time to sweat? If that was the case, it didn’t seem to be working.

  The ring of Ari Thór’s phone shattered the silence.

  He looked at his phone’s screen.

  Kristín.

  He picked up the phone and set it to silent. This wasn’t the time or the place to answer.

  Kristín. He hadn’t heard from her for a few days and wondered what she wanted. He longed to call her back and cursed her bad timing.

  The distance between them was starting to take its toll. Their emails were becoming fewer, the calls far less frequent. He missed her and dearly wanted to lie close to her at night, when his spirits were at their lowest ebb and when the isolation was at its worst. But he was still upset with her – upset by her reaction to his moving north, upset that she hadn’t gone with him to Siglufjördur that first weekend, upset that she hadn’t called him on Christmas Eve. Admittedly she had called on Christmas Day…

  Damn it! Your girlfriend should call on Christmas Eve. Elderly aunts are the ones who call on Christmas Day!

  The door was opened suddenly.

  ‘A word, Ari Thór. Out here.’ There was determination in Tómas’s voice.

  ‘I’ve spoken to them all,’ he said, when Ari Thór had shut the door behind him. ‘The whole poker school.’

  There was a dramatic pause, indicating that there might be something of an actor in Tómas.

  ‘They all say the same thing. He was there the whole time, turned up around five and was doing well. He didn’t leave until the phone call, when the neighbour called him.’

  ‘When did Linda leave work?’

  ‘Around six-thirty. I spoke to the nurse who was on the same shift that Linda was. She finished her shift and had something to eat at the hospital. That seems clear enough. He didn’t do it.’

  ‘Anything from Hlynur?’

  ‘No. We’ll leave him to get on with it for a little longer.’

  Tómas peered out of the window. The visibility was practically zero. Ari Thór was grateful that he hadn’t had to handle the crime scene.

  ‘I’m going to try and get hold of the doctor. Wait for me and we’ll get back to the interview.’

  Ari Thór could feel his phone ring in his pocket. That would be Kristín again. He wondered if something might be wrong. Tómas was on the phone so he took the opportunity to answer. For a fraction of a second he thought of Ugla’s beautiful face, but quickly shrugged off the distraction.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Kristín demanded immediately, her voice cold and determined. She sounded curious, even excited.

  ‘What?’

  This wasn’t the greeting he had expected. No darling, no warmth.

  ‘This woman – you know. The woman in the snow.’

  What the hell?

  News clearly got around fast.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I saw it on the web,’ she said and mentioned the website by name. ‘Are you involved in the investigation?’

  He went to the computer.

  Woman found naked and unconscious in Siglufjördur …

  ‘I can’t say anything…’ – my love. The words dried up before he said them. Words that had been so normal a few weeks ago had become something terribly distant. All the same, he longed to say something pleasant, something affectionate, but she had clearly called simply to ask about the breaking news. His irritation intensified.

  ‘I can’t talk now. I have to get back to work.’

  He could hear Tómas about to finish his own call.

  ‘I reached the doctor,’ he said, coming over to Ari Thór. ‘He’s going to call again later. She’s still unconscious. She had probably been there around three-quarters of an hour or so, he thinks. It’s unbelievable that she’s still alive, but thank God she is.’

  He smiled, obviously relieved not to be dealing with a murder case. Not yet, at least. His expression changed when he saw the computer screen and the report on it.

  ‘How the hell did that happen?’

  ‘No idea. My girlfriend called and told me about it.’

  ‘That’s despicable! First Hrólfur and now this! Everything goes straight into the papers! We can’t get any peace to work.’

  ‘You don’t think this has anything to do with the accident at the Dramatic Society, do you?’ Ari Thór asked mildly.

  ‘What? No, hardly. But it’s bloody infuriating. Completely unacceptable that we have to handle two cases like this in a row.’

  Even more ‘infuriating’ for Hrólfur and Linda.

  Ari Thór remained silence, and then Tómas’s phone rang.

  ‘Hello?’ Silence. ‘No, dammit,’ he said furiously. ‘You can just leave me to get on with my job!’ There was a short silence. ‘No. I don’t have time. No comment. Did you get that?’ He ended the call.

  ‘Bloody journalists. Come on, we’ll finish the interview. There’s no reason to keep the man hanging around here,’ Tómas said angrily. ‘This is going to turn into a nightmare. We have to get to the bottom of this right away, otherwise people are going to be terrified.’

  Ari Thór glanced quickly out of the window before they went back into the office. It was still snowing. This peaceful little town was being compressed by the snow, no longer a familiar winter embrace but a threat like never before. The white was no longer pure, but tinged blood red.

  One thing was certain. Tonight people would lock their doors.

  26

  SIGLUFJÖRDUR. WEDNESDAY, 14TH JANUARY 2009

  ‘I’ll talk to the boy and his mother in the morning,’ Tómas said. ‘We need to get a first-hand account, but that doesn’t change the fact that Karl is not a suspect. I didn’t believe that he could be the perpetrator. I remember him as just a boy, when his mother and father decided to move to Denmark. That lot were always struggling, always short of cash as far as I remember, and there wasn’t a lot of work to be had here. I think they did well for themselves abroad.’

  ‘And Linda, is she Danish?’

  ‘Danish-Icelandic. They met in Denmark.’ Tómas’s thoughts appeared to be elsewhere and he seemed worried, as if more than just the pressure of work preyed on his mind. ‘Listen. You mentioned Hrólfur just now …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Keep your eyes peeled. We can’t afford any mistakes. Understand?’

  Ari Thór nodded his agreement. ‘You think there could be a link?’

  ‘It’s unlikely, but it’s not something we can rule out. Two deaths in suspicious circumstances …’ Tómas said and his voice died away as an embarrassed look appeared on his face. ‘Sorry. She’s still alive, of course. What worries me is how quickly one incident followed the other, and with Karl and Leifur both at the rehearsal on the evening Hrólfur died.’

  ‘Leifur? What does he have to do with Linda?’

  ‘He lives in the apartment above Karl and Linda. Can you go and talk to him?’

  ‘I’ll do that.’

  ‘There’s something else about that incident in the theatre. There’s some kind of webcam that sends out pictures of the Town Hall Square, some sort of live camera broadcast from the town for the benefit of people who have moved away. You understand? Maybe something might have been recorded that evening, people who came and went. Check it out, would you?’ he asked, passing Ari Thór a slip of paper with the web address.

  A phone rang, this time Tómas’s mobile.

  He didn’t say a lot during the short conversation, little more than ‘Yes, OK.’

  His expression said more than many words could have and he dropped the phone back into his pocket.

  ‘She’s still unconscious. There’ll be an emergency flight to
take her south. Hopefully the weather will clear up enough for them to fly tomorrow,’ he said. ‘There’s something else the doctor mentioned. We need another word with Karl, right away.’

  The heavy drifts had risen higher than any snow Ari Thór had experienced in Reykjavík and he had no doubt that they would deepen further in the coming days.

  Karl had answered the phone when he had called a second time. He was still at the hospital.

  Visibility was poor. The little police 4×4 bumped along the snow-filled streets towards the hospital, its wipers working overtime to keep the windscreen clear. The snow lit up the darkness, reflecting the lights that shone from every window. Most people had chosen to stay indoors that evening and there was a palpable feeling of brooding uncertainty.

  Karl sat placidly in the waiting room, leafing through a newspaper. He nodded to Tómas and Ari Thór before returning to the paper.

  ‘A word with you.’

  He turned the page as if nothing had happened.

  Tómas raised his voice. ‘We need to talk to you.’

  Karl looked up and peered at them through half-closed eyes. ‘Why? What’s going on?’

  ‘You have to come with us.’

  ‘Hadn’t we already been through everything?’ he asked, a new edge to his voice. ‘I’d prefer to stay here, close to her.’

  ‘Come with us.’

  Karl stood up hesitantly and patted Ari Thór hard on the shoulder. ‘All right, then.’

  The pain was unbearable.

  Damned shoulder.

  Clutching their coats tightly against the driving winds, Ari Thór, Tómas and Karl reached the 4×4, setting off once again in the blinding snowstorm.

  ‘I spoke to the doctor,’ Tómas said, when they were sitting in the office at the police station. He waited for a response, but none was forthcoming.

  ‘Have you knocked her about?’

  The question arrived like a thunderbolt.

  ‘Have I what?’ Karl demanded with a hostile glare at Tómas, and then another directed at Ari Thór. At first he seemed taken by surprise, but this quickly turned to shock, and then anger.