‘Karl … the bastard … tried to kill me. He’s armed and dangerous. I found out he murdered Pálmi’s mother, and a woman in Denmark.’ Ari Thór spluttered and coughed as he struggled to make clear the impending threat.
‘Calm down, Reverend.’ Hlynur took the news calmly, almost as if he had expected Ari Thór to appear in just this state. ‘Sit yourself there and get some coffee down you. I’ve called Tómas.’
‘Tómas?’ Ari Thór took the mug Hlynur handed him. ‘You’ve already called Tómas?’
‘Karl called, a couple of minutes ago.’
‘Karl?’ Ari Thór yelped. ‘What the hell for?’
Hlynur laid a hand gently on his shoulder, the good shoulder. ‘He called because he wants to make a formal complaint.’
‘A complaint?’ Ari Thór could hardly form a complete sentence. He felt overwhelmed, besieged by Karl’s treachery. He buried his face in his shaking hands and exhaled. The murderer was going to complain about him?
‘Calm down,’ Hlynur said amiably. ‘Don’t worry … We know what Karl’s like and nobody’s going to believe him. But the complaint will have to go through the proper channels, for formality’s sake.’
Ari Thór sat speechless.
‘He said you pushed your way in and started interrogating him, even though he’d obviously had a drink and you weren’t on duty. He wants you charged with assault. Smacked him, did you?’
‘He was trying to kill me!’
Ari Thór jumped to his feet and hurled the coffee mug to the floor where it shattered into pieces, splashing coffee in every direction.
‘He was going to kill me, the bloody murderer. You hear me?’
‘Let’s wait for Tómas, shall we?’ Hlynur said, his voice oddly comforting.
‘No, you go get Karl right away!’ He yelled. ‘He may try to escape, do you hear me?!’
‘He won’t get anywhere.’
‘Are you kidding me, Hlynur? Are you going to believe him or me? You have to go over there and arrest him! Do you hear me?’ Ari Thór said furiously.
‘Take it easy, Reverend.’ Hlynur said. ‘I’ll get you another cup of coffee.’
‘Tell me again what happened.’ Tómas tried to keep a calm and quiet voice. Ari Thór was noticeably upset and spoke incoherently. ‘Did you attack him?’
‘No, of course not. He had a knife, I had to hit him to get out of there! I confronted him with my theories. That Linda had tried to commit suicide, and that he had covered it up when he found the body, by moving the knife.’
‘Why?’ Tómas asked.
‘Because of the insurance terms. He wouldn’t get the ten million if it had been ruled as a suicide.’ Ari Thór said anxiously.
‘And did he admit to it?’
‘More or less. He didn’t deny it.’
‘I don’t think that will do, my boy,’ Tómas said calmly. ‘And anyway, it would hardly be more than a misdemeanour, interfering with a police investigation.’
‘And then … I think he killed two people.’
‘Really?’
‘Pálmi’s mother. The old lady, Sandra, mentioned that he had done all sorts of stuff for Pálmi’s mother, including exterminating vermin. I asked her about it in more detail: she remembered him buying rat poison in the Co-op. Pálmi’s mother died shortly before Karl moved away with his parents, and just before he bought the jeep, she died penniless. They must have hurried away when they found out what he did. And …’ Ari Thór tried to catch his breath between words. ‘And, the symptoms of rat poisoning could be the same as her alleged cause of death, a haemorrhage.’
‘It’s a theory, my boy,’ Tómas said. ‘I believe Karl is capable of anything, but do you have any real evidence? Anything concrete? Maybe you’re putting two and two together and getting five, just because you want to.’
‘He didn’t really deny it!’
‘He may be playing games with you, Ari Thór, winding you up.’
‘Anyway, the last thing is dead certain … I’ve seen the police records from Denmark, I have them printed out on my desk. He was the prime suspect in the killing of a woman in a break-in, some jewellery went missing.’
‘Again, what can we do now? The Danish police have surely done their best. You should go home, get some rest.’
‘Aren’t you going to arrest him?!’ Ari Thór looked outraged.
‘I’ll have a talk with him. You say he pulled a knife on you?’
‘Well …’ Ari Thór hesitated. ‘He had a knife when I came in, slicing a lime.’
‘Okay, that’s enough for now, my boy.’
It was Ari Thór’s word against Karl’s, Tómas thought to himself. The boy had been off duty, probably slightly unbalanced. And he had apparently hit a suspect. He had made more than one mistake that night. But he had also drawn some interesting conclusions, even though most of it could probably never be proven. Yes, the boy had potential, but he needed to be more careful.
Tómas had interviewed Karl at the police station while Hlynur had searched his house.
Karl was calm and self-possessed, answering in monosyllables or with silence. Tómas told him he was being interviewed as a possible suspect, and could have a lawyer present, or listening in via telephone. Karl said that there was absolutely no need for a laywer.
After Karl had flatly denied having anything to do with the death of Pálmi’s mother, Tómas shifted the interview to Linda.
‘We found traces of dark-blue wool on the knife. The evening you found the body you were wearing a dark-blue wool sweater. Linda had life insurance and you stood to gain financially from her death. So tell me …’ Tómas looked steadily at Karl. ‘Tell me why I shouldn’t arrest you here and now for attempted murder?’
Karl sat silent for a while.
‘She had the knife in her hand when I found her. You can’t pin an assault charge on me, no way.’ He seemed to be in total control of the situation.
Tómas sat still and waited.
‘I don’t know what came over me. I hid the knife in the garden next door to, well, so as not to damage her reputation. It was a lack of judgment on my part, of course.’
‘And because you knew you wouldn’t get a penny if it was shown to be suicide.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
He grinned in the certain knowledge that no copy of the insurance policy would be found in a search of the house.
Tómas pursued a line of questioning about the earlier reports of domestic violence, despite having nothing more than suspicion and Leifur’s testimony that Karl and Linda had argued frequently. According to the latest reports, there was nothing to indicate that Linda was likely to regain consciousness and bear witness against Karl.
‘Did you threaten Ari Thór with a knife?’ he asked, trying to wrong-foot Karl.
‘I certainly did not. I had a knife in my hand when he barged in on me. I gave him a chance to speak, though he was obviously quite unstable, and when his accusations became outrageous, I stood up and asked him to leave. That was when he attacked me. I hope that my complaint will be dealt with properly.’
‘Of course,’ Tómas said. ‘I need to ask you to wait here for a moment.’
He left the interview room and made a call to the police lawyer on duty, seeking advice on the next steps.
‘It doesn’t sound like you’ve got any real evidence linking him with the attack on Linda,’ the lawyer said after Tómas had gone over the situation in detail. ‘As to the other cases, the older ones, I don’t see that anything can be done about that. Pure speculation. No grounds for custody, in my view.’
Tómas waited for Hlynur to finish the search, which proved fruitless, and subsequently informed Karl that he could leave.
‘But don’t leave town for the next few days,’ he added as a warning.
‘I’m not likely to go far with all the roads closed,’ Karl smirked, as he stepped out into the darkness, the snow eddying around him. The smile and walk of a man, thought Tómas, who knew that he had escaped justic
e; because he’d done it before.
41
SIGLUFJÖRDUR. THURSDAY, 22ND JANUARY 2009
Fish.
It all started with the fish.
If there hadn’t been fish in the sea then nobody would ever have thought of living here. The first house would never have been built and Ari Thór would never have come to live here. Now he couldn’t be sure that he would keep his job, and he was facing an assault charge.
That bloody fish.
Shattered by the events of the evening, Ari Thór had slept soundly that night. He stopped at the bakery on the way to the station to buy himself a roll and felt that every eye was on him – in the bakery and on the street – searching, inquisitive eyes, as if his altercation with Karl had become common knowledge. He tried to steady his breathing. Of course nobody knew. He had to get his bearings, get his feet back on the ground. There was no all-encompassing conspiracy of townspeople against him.
‘Good morning. Sleep well?’ Tómas asked cheerfully.
Ari Thór nodded and glanced towards Hlynur. ‘Apologies for all the excitement last night.’
‘Excitement? It doesn’t even compare with the news from down south,’ Hlynur replied. ‘These protests are boiling over and I hear our colleagues had to use tear gas to get it under control.’
‘That’s how it goes,’ Tómas said. ‘At least there’s not much in the way of protest going on up here.’
‘Didn’t you say the other day that you missed out on the boom years up here? Maybe you should have protested about that at the time,’ Ari Thór suggested. ‘Anyway, did you speak to Karl last night?’
‘We did, and we had to release him,’ Tómas said. ‘For the moment.’
It was what Ari Thór had expected, but he still felt a stab of disappointment. It was an uncomfortable feeling knowing that Karl was a free man.
‘I spoke to the insurance company this morning,’ Tómas said. ‘I told them that the case is under investigation as an attempted suicide. If Linda dies, which unfortunately doesn’t seem to be unlikely, then Karl won’t get a penny. So there’s a little justice there. Then I had a word with the sheriff in Akureyri as well. We’re commended for an efficient investigation into Linda’s case. They won’t be sending anyone to help us out after all, the case is more or less cleared up,’ he added.
Ari Thór had printed out a version of the information from Denmark the night before. Karl had been interrogated as part of the investigation at the time. The woman’s husband had arrived home early in the morning to find the body by the outside door, with two stab wounds in her back. It had been deemed that she had died instantly on receipt of the second wound, and the case remained open.
‘You asked Karl about this affair in Denmark?’ Ari Thór asked.
‘There’s no way he can be convicted on the basis of what we have,’ Tómas said in a serious voice. ‘There’s no new evidence. It doesn’t matter how convinced you are that he’s guilty, Ari Thór, or what you feel you deduced from his manner, unfortunately. But I’m convinced that you’re right.’
‘What about Pálmi’s mother?’
‘It’s a damned good theory, very convincing… But I reckon it’s far from likely that he’ll ever admit anything. He wouldn’t answer any questions yesterday. He’s not the type to break down under questioning, but we’ll certainly try and look into this. I’ve asked Hlynur to interview Sandra and ask her to make a statement regarding the rat poison.’
Ari Thór felt his spirits lift.
‘But don’t get your hopes too high. Karl will never be sent down for this murder, I’m sure there’s insufficient evidence for a conviction. But we might check on his parents, who still live in Denmark, and see where that leads us. If your theory’s right and they left the country to keep him out of harm’s way, I doubt they’d let him down.’
‘I’m prepared to do my best to put him away.’
‘Sorry, my boy … You’re not going to be part of this investigation, not with an official complaint hanging over you. It has been sent to the state prosecutor, but don’t worry about it. I don’t doubt that the case will be thrown out once the context is taken into account. The man had a knife in his hand, after all.’
Being left out of the case was something that had not occurred to Ari Thór. He had been set on making up for his mistakes by putting every ounce of energy into the investigation. He was silent, disappointed and dissatisfied.
‘But it was clumsy on your part,’ Tómas said. ‘Not clever at all. We might have to give you an official reprimand, but we’ll see … Let’s hope we can get away without that. While I remember, we need to let you have another phone. Yours is part of the evidence.’
Ari Thór nodded, accepting that he had no choice in the matter. The night before he had told Tómas that he’d forgotten his phone at Karl’s, having had to run for his life.
‘And the car?’ he asked earnestly.
‘Car? What car?’
‘Karl’s jeep. The one he bought with the money stolen from Pálmi’s mother. Can’t you check and find out if he paid for it in cash?’
Tómas made a note.
‘I’ll do that, my boy.’
The tale spread rapidly once a news website in Reykjavík posted the story, painting it in suitably lurid colours.
Man suspected of 25-year-old murder in Siglufjördur.
Reportedly based on “reliable sources”, the story even mentioned that the man in question had been suspected of a murder in Denmark and that his girlfriend was the woman found more dead than alive in the snow only a week before.
Hlynur had not mentioned to his journalist acquaintance that the case of the woman in the snow was being treated as attempted suicide.
Nothing about Karl and Anna’s relationship had reached the media. The reason was a simple one; Hlynur preferred as far as possible to shield the innocent.
Leifur watched as Úlfur timidly made his way up onto the stage in the old theatre. This time the director had everyone’s undivided attention.
Standing by the wall close to the stage, Leifur looked over the room. Nína stood in the doorway, not far from where Hrólfur’s corpse had been found. That now seemed so long ago.
Pálmi sat near the front, Anna and Ugla further back, but not side by side. Pálmi looked despondent and weary. The young policeman from down south had managed to uncover a murder from years back, something nobody had ever suspected. Pálmi’s mother had been deprived of her twilight years by a ruthless killer, or so it seemed, although it hadn’t been possible to prove anything.
Leifur had no answers. Someone had forced his brother off the road, wrecking the family’s happiness. Every day, little by little, he was coming to terms with the fact that the hit-and-run driver would never be found; that some questions would remain unanswered.
Úlfur cleared his throat.
The words “the show must go on” hung in the air, unspoken, and hardly fitting the occasion. Instead he mumbled something as if to himself, and looked up into the auditorium.
‘We have to find a way to manage things with … Karl’s situation. I can well imagine that not all of us are keen on treading the boards right at this moment, but I’m sure it would do us all good to hold the opening night this coming weekend. I … I have spoken to Leifur. He has thought it over and is prepared to take the lead, even at such short notice.’
His eyes rested on Leifur, who smiled shyly and looked out again over the auditorium. Pálmi’s expression remained unchanged; he had presumably known of this already. The others murmured in surprise, never having expected Leifur to have the confidence in himself to take on such a part.
‘Well, I think I can manage,’ he said.
He had made up his mind the evening before. He knew the script well enough, having learned it as Karl’s understudy, but he had taken a few days off work to prepare himself. He was determined to shine.
He thought of his elder brother, who would now have been proud of him.
Leifur felt his
self-esteem growing inside him. Maybe he ought to take the opportunity and have a word with Anna after the opening night? There was something captivating about her.
42
SIGLUFJÖRDUR. FRIDAY, 23RD JANUARY 2009
The town was still under a heavy layer of snow when Ari Thór walked down to the pontoons by the harbour in the early morning, his face drawn after a restless night. Fences had been engulfed by the snow and in many places it reached as high as the windows of the houses. A thrush perched on a post in one garden. A closer look revealed that a flock of thrushes had gathered to feed on the seed that a warm-hearted householder had scattered for them.
Ari Thór walked out onto the dock and looked over the troubled sea, the majestic mountains. Summer seemed a long way off. Would he still be in Siglufjördur when it arrived? Or would Tómas have sent him home in disgrace by then? Even if everything worked out here for the best, if Karl’s official complaint were to come to nothing, would he still want to be here?
He was proud of what he had achieved, despite having been unable to unravel the mystery of Hrólfur’s death. He still believed there was something sinister about it.
After all, he probably was where he should be in life at this point. Police work suited him. If he were to keep his job, then he would have to give Siglufjördur a chance.
Then there was Ugla. He wasn’t sure if he was in love with her, and he wanted to make sure.
She had done her best to persuade him not to give up on the town.
‘Give it until the spring,’ she had said. ‘Sometimes, in spring or early summer, you wake up and see the mist lying on the fjord – you can’t even see the sea, and there’s just a glimpse of one or two mountain peaks, just as if they’re floating in the air. Then it all changes suddenly, when the sun appears. The beauty of the place is breathtaking. It’s when you’ve experienced those days that you find you never want to leave.’
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