The Legacy

by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

  Karl’s teeth were chattering so badly by now that he could barely answer. ‘Huh, I doubt it. Why should the cops employ a codebreaker? It’s not like Icelandic criminals go in for secret codes. Isn’t that more the kind of thing you get with international espionage? Who do you think would bother to spy on Iceland?’ Karl inserted the key in the ignition. The thought of going home made him so apprehensive that he was suddenly grateful for Börkur’s phone call. ‘Are you busy?’ The chances of Börkur being busy were so slim that the question was redundant.

  ‘No. Not really.’ Displaying an unusual degree of perspicacity, Börkur added: ‘Shall I drop round?’

  ‘I’ll be home in ten. See you there.’ Karl started the car and although the heater pumped out cold air, he knew it would soon warm up inside. Things could only get better.

  After hanging around in the car outside his house for ten minutes, Karl gave up. Börkur could turn up any moment or not until long after midday. It was impossible to predict and Karl couldn’t afford to leave the engine running in order to keep the heater on. He peered yet again at the big sitting-room windows, feeling himself stiffen in anticipation of seeing a movement. But the black glass presented a blank face to the world. Of course there was nobody inside, but Karl couldn’t rid himself of the notion that there was; that the person was standing just out of sight. He felt a momentary regret that he had thrown out the curtains.

  Squint as he might, he could make out nothing but glass and the faint reflection of the surroundings. It was ridiculous to be afraid of entering his own house. But even worse was the suspicion that the problem wasn’t about to go away and that it would be a long time before he could feel comfortable alone at home. This was how his mother had reacted after they had that break-in, just before she fell ill. Next to nothing had been stolen but the fall-out had been similar to what he was suffering now. His mother hadn’t felt safe and was constantly on edge in case the burglar returned. According to her, the worst part was when she arrived home and opened the front door. It made no difference that the policeman who came round had told her that burglars very rarely struck twice in the same place. Although Karl hadn’t been present at the time, he suspected that the officer had been referring to houses like theirs, which were hardly worth burgling once, let alone twice. He wished he had been more sympathetic to his mother instead of rolling his eyes whenever she brought up the subject of burglar alarms and three-point locks. He would have been grateful for those now.

  Pulling himself together, he turned off the engine. He had to stop being such a pussy. Chances were he would be living alone for the foreseeable future, so he had better nip his fear in the bud before it developed into a full-blown phobia. There must be a simple explanation for the knocking sounds and the bracelet materialising on his desk. There were no signs of a break-in and the door had been locked. He was just being pathetic. Steeling himself, he stepped out of the car, but took the precaution of slamming the driver’s door loudly to alert any potential burglars to his presence. The last thing Karl wanted was to come face to face with an intruder.

  ‘Hello?’ No reply, no sound of retreating footsteps. Karl stuck his head round the door and shouted again: ‘Hello?’ No answer. Aware that he wasn’t going to feel any more reassured than this, he stepped inside.

  He was met by the familiar smell. He was too used to it to be able to guess how it struck other people, nor could he work out its components. Yet he sensed that the odour of dusty curtains and dead pot plants, which had become noticeable after his mother died, had begun to recede. No doubt it would soon fade altogether. Karl chucked the keys on the chest of drawers in the hall. They landed with a rattle and clanged against an ugly china vase. The vase had only escaped the general purge because there had been no room for it in the last cardboard box and Karl couldn’t be bothered to assemble another one. The vase toppled over, and although he couldn’t care less if it broke, his eyes shot instinctively to the source of the noise.

  The vase rocked back and forth on its belly, between unopened envelopes and an old, half-empty can of Coke. The can didn’t fall over but it wasn’t concern about a spillage that drew Karl to it. Sweeping the envelopes aside he picked up the Coke can, the vase and several credit card receipts, a half-empty packet of chewing gum and other rubbish. But he couldn’t find what he was looking for – his mother’s keys, which he was sure had been lying there ever since she was admitted to hospital. He checked that they hadn’t fallen on the floor or slipped into a drawer. A search of the kitchen produced no results either, and he knew for certain, following the clear-out, that they couldn’t be in her bedroom.

  The keys had disappeared.

  Karl’s anxiety returned with renewed force. When had he last seen them? The bunch had included a key to the outhouse on the basement level, from which he had fetched the winter tyres just before Christmas. He hadn’t needed his mother’s keys since then. But they had been lying here. A week ago. Two weeks ago. He could have sworn.

  When the doorbell rang his insides seemed to turn to stone. He was so shaken that he didn’t care what Börkur thought but asked warily before opening: ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Whoa! You expecting the bailiffs?’ Börkur was shivering out on the steps. He was hopelessly underdressed for the wintry weather, in a windcheater that would hardly have kept out a summer breeze. ‘Aren’t you going to let me in?’

  ‘Sorry. I don’t know why I asked.’ Karl pointed at the chest of drawers. ‘Do you happen to remember seeing a bunch of keys on here? Last time you came round or any time recently?’

  Börkur gaped at the chest. ‘Keys? There’s a bunch there now.’

  ‘Yeah, I know, those are mine. I’m looking for the spare keys. They’re on a ring with all kinds of fobs. A lion – Leo, you know, like the zodiac sign. And a whistle. The kind you blow.’

  Börkur shook his head with an enquiring expression. ‘Nope. Haven’t seen them. Ever, as far as I can recall.’

  There was no need to attach too much importance to this. Börkur wouldn’t have noticed the key ring if it had been dangling from the end of Karl’s nose.

  In no hurry to go down to the basement, Karl dragged Börkur into the kitchen instead. He didn’t care what his friend thought of the house now that it had been stripped bare of clutter; in fact, he wondered why he had ever been worried about his opinion in the first place. It wasn’t as if Börkur was exactly classy or had a palatial home. He still lived with his parents in a high-rise that could have done with redecorating ten years ago. Karl had rarely been invited in but on the few occasions he had he’d hung around in the dark entrance hall while Börkur was getting ready, surrounded by countless shabby coats and an acrid smell of cigarette smoke that permeated every nook and cranny. Inside he could glimpse a threadbare, swirly-patterned carpet. The hoarse smokers’ voices of Börkur’s parents as they called after their son matched the seedy surroundings. In comparison, Karl had no reason to be ashamed.

  Börkur sat down at the kitchen table while Karl was making coffee. He’d found an ancient, open packet during his tidy-up. It would have to do. The resulting brew turned out to be stale and flavourless, and it didn’t help that the milk Börkur asked for had run out. As they sat sipping the bitter sludge, Karl confided in Börkur that someone had entered the house the previous night. It was unclear from his reaction whether Börkur believed him.

  Nor could Karl interpret his expression once they were down in the basement. ‘This is the bracelet.’ Karl indicated the desk where he sat on the rare occasions when he opened his textbooks. He watched Börkur examining the piece of jewellery.

  ‘Whose is it? The burglar’s?’

  ‘Unlikely. All I know is that it’s not something my mum would’ve worn, so it can’t have been put here by her or me.’ Karl stared at the bracelet as Börkur deftly toyed with it, the gaudy beads slipping through his fingers like a rosary. Suddenly Karl remembered the phone that had turned up in his car. ‘Could you get that phone to work?’

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nbsp; ‘Oh, shit! I plugged it in to charge, then totally forgot about it.’ Börkur put the bracelet down. The bright colours clashed with Karl’s gloomy mood. ‘I’ll try and remember to check later. Though it’s bound to be password protected, so don’t get your hopes up. Maybe you should advertise it on Facebook.’

  Karl struggled to suppress his irritation. It wasn’t as if passwords were a new invention. Why hadn’t Börkur mentioned this snag in the first place? The phone would probably be back with its rightful owner by now if Karl had advertised it straight away, or rung his mother’s closest friends and asked them about it. No chance of doing that now as he’d disposed of her tacky clamshell phone containing her list of contacts. Still, no point wasting breath on talking about things that couldn’t be changed. ‘Well, be sure to let me know, or bring the phone back. Then I’ll see what I can do myself.’

  It was just past the hour. Karl switched on the Collins shortwave receiver, glad to have his dopey friend there, for all his shortcomings. It was much pleasanter than listening alone. Even the knocking had ceased in his visitor’s honour. ‘Let’s hope we hear something. Then I can record it on my phone so I have some concrete evidence if I do decide to call the police.’

  ‘If?’ Börkur lost interest in the bracelet and flopped down on the sofa. The rickety frame creaked in protest. ‘You’ve got to call them, man.’

  Before Karl could answer, the tinny notes of the musical box began to echo round the room. The receiver was still tuned to the same station as yesterday evening but he seemed to have turned it up much louder than usual. Karl reached for the button to lower the volume but snatched back his hand when the familiar female voice began the recital. He took out his phone in readiness but forgot it as he listened. The same series of numbers was repeated over and over. No letters, no minuses or pluses. Seventy-four, one, sixty-eight, ninety-nine, one, thirteen, three. It sounded so familiar yet Karl couldn’t place it. He listened again. And again. Seventy-four, one, sixty-eight, ninety-nine, one, thirteen, three.

  Sixty-eight. Sixty-eight. Sixty-eight. A light dawned on Karl. He put down his phone, ran to his desk and started scribbling down the numbers. Seventy-four, one, sixty-eight, ninety-nine, one, thirteen, three. Think. Think. Think.

  Slowly he wrote down the letters he thought the numbers signified. He mouthed the result to himself, then gasped.

  ‘Börkur. Have you heard from Halli at all?’

  ‘Er, no.’ Börkur was bemused by his actions. ‘Aren’t you going to record it?’ The broadcast abruptly went silent, as if by pre-arrangement.

  ‘When did you last hear from him?’ Karl didn’t wait for an answer. He selected Halli’s number with trembling fingers. The phone rang but nobody answered. The voicemail announced that the owner of the number was unable to take his call at present but please leave a message. Karl hung up. He turned back to Börkur.

  ‘Where’s Halli?’

  Chapter 26

  Huldar noticed out of the corner of his eye that an automatic message from Accounts had popped up on his computer screen. He withdrew his attention momentarily from Ríkhardur and Erla: You have 12 invoices awaiting authorisation. Damn, why had he let himself be distracted? There was no time to deal with this now and he would only receive the same prompt tomorrow with the addition of several new invoices. The inquiry was top priority. He wondered why on earth the invoices couldn’t be offloaded onto the senior officers who were currently spending their days exploring the outer limits of the worldwide web. And while they were about it, they could also take over responsibility for the staff appraisals, which were the latest addition to his to-do list. Egill had briefed Huldar on how to help his team set their objectives and come up with ways of realising them. He had produced a list of questions that Huldar was supposed to fill in for each member of the team, before comparing his version with the answers provided by the relevant employee. After that he was to hold a meeting with each team member to discuss the outcome.

  Huldar had never heard such a nonsensical idea. He pictured himself suspending the investigation in order to sit down with Ríkhardur and compare their answers about where he saw his career heading in five years’ time.

  Personally, Huldar hoped that by then he would still be finding ways of dodging the necessity of authorising invoices and scheduling objectives meetings. Perhaps that was the solution: to hold the interviews in five years’ time and save himself the bother of speculating about his team’s future prospects. By then they would be obvious.

  Egill had shown Huldar no mercy when he pleaded that the timing was extremely unfortunate. He had merely bared his blindingly white teeth and handed him a thick bundle from HR containing his team’s CVs, an overview of their timesheets for the year and other relevant information.

  This had included a document comparing the employees’ and previous manager’s responses to last year’s objectives forms, which Huldar was to compare with this year’s comparisons.

  He was still wondering if he had heard right.

  Shaking his head, he turned back to Ríkhardur and Erla. ‘Do either of you know how to switch off automatic reminders from Accounts?’

  Erla was quickest off the mark. ‘No. Ask Almar. He helped me stop the reminders about timesheets.’

  Ríkhardur tipped back his head and made a face. He achieved the sudden movement without disturbing a hair on his head or creasing his shirt. ‘I’ve a better idea. Why not just fill in your timesheets? It only takes five minutes at the end of the day.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ Erla smiled, banishing her habitual harsh expression and resembling once more the young woman who had joined CID three years ago. It occurred to Huldar to call her in for a performance review and ask why she was so hell-bent on emulating the grumpy old gits at the station. But he checked the impulse and let her continue. ‘At the end of the day. The end. When every minute counts. I don’t know about you but I look forward to going home after work.’ The moment she had blurted this out, she realised. ‘Oh, shit. Sorry, you know what I mean.’

  Ríkhardur didn’t answer and the walls seemed to close in on them. What was it about this divorce that had them all walking on eggshells? Erla turned red and Huldar became suddenly very interested in his stapler. He wouldn’t be discussing Ríkhardur’s personal affairs when and if his objectives meeting took place, that much was certain. Though the bugger of it was that the guy was bound to know precisely which areas were supposed to be covered, including the employee’s well-being and life outside work. Huldar felt as if his mobile was burning a hole in his pocket from the text message he had received from Karlotta just before Ríkhardur appeared in the doorway: I need to talk to you. Call me. If he hadn’t known better he’d have interpreted it as a come-on, now that she was single. But the snatches he could recall of their sexual encounter gave him no reason to believe she would be desperate for a repeat performance. In every scene that paraded before his mind’s eye, they were clumsily banging into the partition between the cubicles. Really it was a wonder it hadn’t collapsed on top of them. Still, what did he know? Perhaps it had been a refreshing change from her fastidious sex life with Ríkhardur.

  Putting down the stapler, Huldar cleared his throat. ‘Right, back to business.’ Although the digression had ended in awkwardness, the thought of bringing the conversation back to the case filled him with gloom. He had hardly thought or spoken about anything else for days. The worst part was their total lack of progress. They were no closer by the end of the day than they had been first thing that morning. He let out a long breath, trying to marshal his thoughts and focus on essentials. He had lost sight of the big picture – of who was doing what – and needed to rethink the order of priority. Up to now they had been following routine procedure for a murder inquiry but they had hit a dead end and he had no idea where to go from here.

  They had scrutinised every detail of Sigvaldi’s work record, spoken to the Director General of Public Health’s office and the senior consultant in the gynaecology/obstetrics depa
rtment at the National Hospital. Neither had received any complaints about Sigvaldi’s performance. Assuming their information was correct, no women had died in childbirth and no one had held him responsible for any stillbirths. They were still awaiting a response from the Karolinska sjukhus in Sweden where Sigvaldi had completed his specialist training six years ago, but Huldar doubted this would provide them with any leads. It was too long ago and the majority of the patients would have been Swedish. Sigvaldi had confirmed that Margrét didn’t understand Swedish as she had only been one when they moved home, so logically the murderer must have been speaking in Icelandic.

  The police had gone through the list of everyone with conceivable links to each of the two victims and Sigvaldi to find out how many had a motorbike registered in their name. Very few, as it turned out, and again none with links to both women. They had also checked whether anyone in Elísa’s, Sigvaldi’s or Ástrós’s circle of friends, relatives or work colleagues had a criminal record for violence. Six names came up, all but one of whom had been charged with assaulting other men. The sixth had been charged with rape ten years previously but had watertight alibis for the nights of the murders.

  The job of combing through these lists had been extremely time-consuming since Elísa had worked for a large organisation and came from a large family as well. The same applied to Sigvaldi. Added to this were a host of friends and acquaintances, especially in Elísa’s case. Ástrós’s list had been much shorter. Huldar didn’t like to think how many hours had been squandered on this effort.

  Whichever way they turned, they drew a blank. No forensic evidence had been recovered from the crime scenes: no fingerprints, no DNA, no clues. Nothing of interest had emerged from interviews with friends or from the paperwork they had obtained. The police had knocked on doors in both victims’ neighbourhoods but nobody recalled noticing a motorbike at around the time the women were killed. Elísa’s phone still hadn’t turned up; either it had been destroyed, was lying around somewhere with an empty battery, or was still in the murderer’s possession. The SIM card used to send the texts to Ástrós’s phone turned out to have been sold at a hotel in the town centre and the police had managed to trace the person who bought it – a British citizen called Mike Linane who not only existed but acknowledged purchasing the card while holidaying in Iceland. He claimed his phone had been lost or stolen on the last day of his stay. Since it had been an old model and the card would have been no use to him outside Iceland, he hadn’t bothered to report the theft, if theft it was. A trip to the Blue Lagoon had proved more tempting than a visit to the police station. If necessary, his friends who had been travelling with him could back up his story. As the man had not left Britain in the intervening period, their confirmation would not be required.