But it wasn’t like Karl could swap Halli and Börkur for anyone better; they were his only friends. And it was the same for them: their friendship was based on lack of choice rather than mutual liking. They had met in their teens and in more than a decade no one better had come along. There had been four of them originally, and for a while they even had a girl in tow too. They had all been crazy about her, though she was no goddess, but unfortunately she didn’t return the feelings of Karl, Halli or Börkur. It had been a different story with the fourth member of their group, however, and after she and Thórdur got together, they had quickly made themselves scarce.
It hadn’t really come as a surprise that Thórdur should drop them since he’d never shared their hobby. That was the problem: hardly anyone shared it. Being a radio ham just wasn’t cool. Recently, to Karl’s dismay, both Halli and Börkur had showed signs of distancing themselves from the only interest that bound them together, a development he doubted their friendship could survive. Perhaps part of the problem was that they had only qualified for a novice’s licence, so were somewhat behind Karl. Actually, it was surprising Börkur had even managed to pass that. Halli had lost interest, becoming obsessed with the internet instead, while Börkur just slobbed in front of the TV. They had more or less given up switching on their transceivers and never initiated conversations about radio matters. Karl rarely took part in their discussions about the conspiracy theories that Halli dug up on the internet and believed uncritically. Although Karl tried to fake an interest, he sensed that this was the beginning of the end of their friendship. He just hoped it would last long enough for him to meet some other people so he didn’t end up entirely alone. Yet, against his better judgement, he had been hoping the Icelandic numbers station might revive their enthusiasm.
‘Something’s bound to happen at seven.’ Karl sent up a silent prayer that he would be proved right. ‘Bound to.’
‘If you say so.’ Börkur yawned. ‘God, I need popcorn.’
There was popcorn upstairs but Karl wasn’t about to admit it. He couldn’t be bothered to fetch it and Börkur would only empty the bag, then start moaning on about wanting something else. Karl felt sure that if the equivalent of a cardiograph existed for the human brain, it would soon lose track of Börkur’s thoughts. He certainly didn’t seem to know his way round his own mental maze.
‘What do you think it means anyway, this station of yours? Assuming you weren’t just hearing things …’ Börkur sniffed and brushed his overgrown fringe out of his eyes. Why couldn’t Karl have friends with tidy hair?
‘I wasn’t hearing things.’ Karl gritted his teeth to stop himself snapping. He had always tried to give Börkur’s stupid ideas a sympathetic hearing and this was his reward. A headache broke through the fading, dope-induced high. ‘I’m not a total moron. I listened to it several times and I know what I heard.’ At first the ID numbers had been repeated over and over again, but the second broadcast had included a more complicated sequence that Karl couldn’t make head or tail of, interspersed by the word ‘reversed’. Seventy-five, twenty-three, sixty-three minus ninety-two, seven, thirty-two. Fourteen reversed. Sixteen, seventy-four, sixty-three minus ninety-two, fifty-two reversed – was one series that kept coming up. ‘We just need to be patient. It’ll happen.’
Börkur seemed unaware that he’d annoyed his friend. ‘Whatever. Anyway, what do you think it means? And who could be arsed to do something like that? What’s the point? I just don’t get why your ID number should be mixed up in it.’
‘Neither do I.’ Karl’s voice sounded as odd as he felt. The whole thing was deeply unsettling. The more he thought about the broadcast, the less sense he could make of it and the worse he felt. It had stopped him sleeping last night; he had lain there staring at the ceiling, listening for strange noises outside the window, though all he could hear was the rustle of dead leaves in the garden. He had peered out as warily as he could, only to see a fat neighbourhood cat waddle out from among the bushes, then make off slowly into the darkness. ‘It has to be someone taking the piss. It can’t be anything else.’
Börkur swung his leg up and down, making the chair creak. ‘Yeah. Maybe.’ He sounded sceptical. ‘But who’d bother? It’s not like you know many people.’
Karl coughed. ‘I know loads of people. There are, like, two hundred people in some of my lectures.’ No need to mention that only maybe a dozen knew his name. Karl didn’t for a moment believe that any of them would waste so much as ten minutes on a practical joke aimed at him, let alone go to the trouble of setting up a transmitter. If the other students wanted to make his life a misery, they would do so in the lecture hall. ‘I had the idea it might be someone from the club.’
‘Seriously?’ From Börkur’s expression, Karl might as well have said he suspected someone from the Scout movement. Yet it was the logical conclusion. At least the members of the amateur radio club knew of his interest in numbers stations, could work a shortwave transceiver and owned the right equipment, unlike the students on his chemistry course. Yet Karl couldn’t picture any of them pulling a prank like this.
None of them were the type to play tricks on him, let alone gang up to do so. As Börkur had said, what would be the point?
Börkur scratched his tousled head. ‘Isn’t it always the same old blokes?’ He had eventually been chucked out of the club for failing to pay his subscription – for three years in a row. The committee was so desperate to hold on to their members that they’d turned a blind eye for as long as they could. Karl admitted that they were indeed still the same people. ‘What about the other ID number? Who’s the woman?’
‘Don’t ask me. I was hoping the broadcast would’ve changed and given me more information to go on. She’s just some woman – I don’t know her or have any connection to her. Her name’s Elísa Bjarnadóttir. I don’t know anyone called Elísa.’
‘How can you be sure? Maybe she’s an old aunt or some relative you’ve forgotten about. Could you know her by a nickname or something?’
Karl couldn’t begin to imagine what this ‘or something’ could be. Nor could he think of any nickname that fitted with the name Elísa. ‘No. She’s no aunt of mine. I looked her up on Facebook. Her page is public and there are loads of pictures of her. I’ve never seen her before, or anyone else in her photos. She’s just some mother with a husband and young kids.’
He got no further. From the amplifier behind him the numbers station began to transmit. The musical box picked its way through the opening tune that had become so ominously familiar, to be followed by the woman’s voice. Its mechanical, obviously artificial, tone should have made it less spooky but had exactly the opposite effect. ‘Good evening. Good evening. Good evening.’ Silence. Then the voice began to recite a string of numbers.
Karl was happy, despite the sense of misgiving the broadcast aroused in him. He hadn’t screwed up after all. Halli woke with a jerk and stared, transfixed, at the receiver, as if it were providing the answers to life’s great mysteries – though without the key to the code, these answers were no more than a monotonous string of numbers.
Chapter 10
The liquid dribbling from the machine couldn’t even be described as light brown. To think he’d dropped by the office to grab a decent cup of coffee before attending Margrét’s interview at the Children’s House. The grinder had made a hell of a noise but, judging by the sound, the beans must have run out halfway through. Huldar decided to make do with the thin, watery brew and let the next person refill the machine; he had more than enough on his plate already.
On his way through the office he passed members of the investigation team working under his direction on Elísa’s murder. He hoped he had assigned each of them a task appropriate to their talents. Although he knew them all, he had never made any effort to learn their individual strengths. That was the job of those in more senior positions.
He had only accepted the job of leading the investigation because it seemed the easiest thing to do. Now,
after the pathologist’s warning, he suspected he had made a serious mistake. He hadn’t exactly been given much time to think about it. According to his boss Egill, the heads of CID had had little chance to consider the matter but decided to offer the job to Huldar on the basis that he had been one of the detectives called to the scene and his name came first in the alphabetical list of candidates. Leifur was next, should he decline the position. As Huldar couldn’t stand Leifur and had no intention of working under him, he didn’t think twice. So now he was stuck with this unlooked-for promotion and a potential fall from grace if the investigation went badly. Well, that wouldn’t be the end of the world, and even if he was successful, he might still ask for his old job back. Managing people had never particularly appealed to him. But he wanted it to be his decision, not have it forced on him by senior management.
‘Great meeting.’ A young female officer smiled at him as she passed. So there was at least one person who had appreciated the team briefing he’d held. Personally, he thought he’d done all right too; no worse than his predecessors, at any rate, though he felt a slight sense of disappointment because he’d intended to be so much better. He smiled back and hoped she wasn’t on her way to fetch a coffee from the empty machine. Unfortunately he couldn’t remember what task he had assigned her, but he hoped it was interesting. It might compensate for the lack of coffee beans.
‘How’s it going?’ Huldar paused by Ríkhardur, and immediately regretted it. Too late now to pretend he was in a hurry. Anyway, he was sick to death of beating himself up about the situation; it was time to push it to the back of his mind.
‘Badly. We’re getting nowhere. Nobody has a clue how to crack this and, just to make matters worse, it turns out we have no expert codebreakers in Iceland.’ One of the jobs Ríkhardur had volunteered for was to search for a way of deciphering the mysterious message discovered at Elísa’s house. ‘The question is, should we look abroad for help?’
‘What if it’s in Icelandic?’ Huldar had relaxed once they started talking, his tension eased by how normal Ríkhardur seemed – or, rather, how dry, wooden and ill at ease. The fact that Ríkhardur was his usual awkward self must be a sign that he hadn’t found out. Soon Huldar would be able to stop worrying altogether; after all, it was months since his encounter with Karlotta at that bar, and therefore increasingly unlikely that their ludicrously ill-advised shag in the toilets would come out. Especially now that she and Ríkhardur were getting a divorce. She would hardly use the incident as a parting shot. ‘I mean, isn’t it impossible to decipher a code in a language you don’t understand? If it is in code?’
‘Yes, I suppose so. But they might be able to give us some advice; tell us what system it’s based on or suggest a way in. I have no idea how we’re supposed to decipher it without assistance.’ Ríkhardur pushed away the photocopied message in disgust. With no clutter on his desk to provide an obstacle, the sheet of paper slid off on to the floor.
Huldar reached down and replaced it on the desk. ‘Put in a request for assistance from abroad. Interpol must have a department or expert who can take a look at it for us.’ He took a gulp of coffee and grimaced. ‘Until then, you’d better focus on something else. Any updates from the inquiry into the husband?’
‘Same story. Nothing doing. He appears as blameless as his wife. No disputes, no enemies, nobody hates him. Or at least we haven’t succeeded in proving otherwise.’
‘What about at work? Anything cropped up there? Any medical errors or sexual abuse of a patient? That sort of thing?’
Breaking out of his habitual impassivity, Ríkhardur screwed up his face. ‘Sexual abuse of a patient? He’s a gynaecologist, for Christ’s sake.’
Huldar was surprised. ‘Not all gynaecology patients have STDs, you know.’
‘That’s not what I meant. I believe the majority of the women he sees are pregnant. He works in obstetrics.’
‘Oh, yes, so he does.’ How could it have entered his head that the fastidious Ríkhardur would have associated Sigvaldi’s patients with herpes or gonorrhoea? Diseases like that had no place in his world. ‘All the same, we’ll have to look into the possibility. If memory serves, the majority of complaints that come before the surgeon general relate to obstetricians – whether they’re justified or not.’
‘I’ll look into it.’ Ríkhardur was staring unseeingly across the room. ‘It’s a good point. It must be terrible to lose a newborn baby or for it to suffer damage at birth that could have been prevented.’
Huldar ignored this, praying that the subject of Karlotta’s miscarriages wouldn’t come up again.
He had already endured a lifetime’s worth of stomach pain and anxiety over the whole affair. From November, when Ríkhardur had proudly announced for the third time that he was going to be a father, until the day when he quietly stated that Karlotta had lost the baby, Huldar had felt as though he was carrying around a weight in his own belly. Especially after he’d summoned up the courage to ask how far along Karlotta was, then calculated to his horror that he could be the father. Ríkhardur’s grief over the miscarriage had compounded Huldar’s inner turmoil – a combination of sympathy for the couple and relief at not having to live in fear that the child’s eyes would be brown like his rather than a celestial blue like its parents’. And, worst of all, the shame at having betrayed his colleague. They might not be bosom buddies but he’d worked more closely with Ríkhardur than anyone else on the force and that created a bond. The betrayal was unforgivable and, in retrospect, inexplicable, unless you factored in Karlotta’s outstanding attractions.
All she’d needed to do was gaze into his eyes with that mischievous smile and he had forgotten everything but his primitive urges. He knew she was alone; Ríkhardur was on a firearms course in the countryside that weekend, so the coast had seemed clear. An opportunity like that would never come his way again. What a fucking terrible mistake. Huldar cleared his throat to overcome a sudden hoarseness.
‘Yes. The surgeon general may have a list of patients who’ve made accusations or complaints about Sigvaldi.’
‘You think? I gather he has an unusually good reputation. Karlotta tried to get an appointment with him but he was booked up. Apparently you have to plan your birth years in advance if you want him to be your obstetrician. That wouldn’t be the case if he had a history of mistakes.’
‘Check it out, anyway. It’s a possibility we can’t ignore.’ Huldar straightened up. ‘If the girl’s right and the murderer has another woman in his sights, we need to get our skates on.’
‘Why would someone who murders a doctor’s wife due to a medical error resort to killing again?’ Ríkhardur came straight to the point as usual. ‘And anyway, wouldn’t he have murdered the doctor? Why kill his wife?’
‘I’m not saying the murderer definitely has a link to Sigvaldi, but we can’t rule it out, however far-fetched it may seem to you.’ An answer to Ríkhardur’s question belatedly occurred to him. ‘For all we know he may have intended to kill Sigvaldi but decided to attack his wife instead because he wasn’t home. Besides, it’s not only doctors who make mistakes. Maybe a nurse or midwife’s implicated. What do I know?’ Huldar hastened to change the subject. After all that had happened, it gave him heartburn to discuss childbirth with Ríkhardur. ‘What about the tax office? We need to examine all the cases Elísa was involved in. Perhaps someone was tipped over the edge by a heavy tax bill or penalties. That sort of thing can completely screw people financially, and money troubles are a well-known motive for murder. Incidentally, have you heard any news about how that side’s going?’
‘No, that’s not my responsibility. It was assigned to Andri and Tómas.’
Nodding, Huldar glanced across the office. Neither of the men was present. He hoped they were hard at work gathering data and statements from the staff at the tax office. His thoughts returned to what the pathologist had said during the post-mortem. ‘The vacuum cleaner would make sense in that scenario.’
‘How do you
mean?’
‘Well, I don’t know how plausible it sounds but maybe the murderer wanted to make the point that she’d hoovered money out of his account, so he paid her back in her own coin. By hoovering her life away.’
Ríkhardur looked sceptical. ‘Yes, right.’ He moved the mouse to wake up his computer and a picture of Karlotta filled the screen. The photo had been Ríkhardur’s wallpaper for as long as Huldar could remember. Since the screen was as tidy as his desk, the few icons on the desktop were arranged in a neat, vertical column on the left-hand side, which meant the picture was visible in its entirety. He quickly shut down his computer.
When Ríkhardur confided at the beginning of the year that Karlotta had left him, Huldar had been badly thrown. It had cast a dark shadow over his relief at learning of the failed pregnancy. His biggest fear was that Karlotta had left Ríkhardur in the hope that the two of them could get together, but a phone call to her had soon disabused him. When he asked, he was reassured by her dry laughter: the divorce had nothing to do with him; she and Ríkhardur simply weren’t meant to be together. But Ríkhardur clearly didn’t share this view and it wasn’t hard to see why. They were so obviously made for each other; she was just like him, always immaculately turned out, not a hair out of place. Huldar couldn’t remember ever seeing so much as a chip in the varnish on her pretty fingernails. Ríkhardur was unlikely to be so lucky second time around.
Ríkhardur carried on discussing the case as if nothing had happened. Yet he seemed unusually hesitant. ‘Are you sure we shouldn’t concentrate on investigating all the black men who could possibly have a link to Elísa or her husband?’ When Huldar had announced at the progress meeting that he didn’t think there was any reason at this stage to act on Margrét’s description of the killer – it was too vague and the picture would be clearer once they had spoken to her again – Ríkhardur and several of the others had objected.
The Legacy Page 11