Strange Shores de-9

by Arnaldur Indridason

  ‘Matthildur knew all about it,’ Ninna said, looking Erlendur straight in the eye. ‘I heard the story from her. But Ingunn didn’t tell her until too late. She didn’t speak out when she first learned they were seeing each other — probably couldn’t bring herself to — but you can imagine how she must have felt. At first I don’t suppose she wanted to believe it. Perhaps she hoped it wouldn’t last. It wasn’t until later that she summoned up the courage to send Matthildur a letter describing what had happened between her and Jakob.’

  Ninna glanced out of the window at the snowflakes drifting to the ground.

  ‘I never blabbed about this and I hope you won’t either,’ she said sternly. ‘Though I can’t imagine who’d be interested. Not many people knew them at the time and I don’t suppose anyone would remember them nowadays.’

  ‘You said Matthildur was distraught when she heard,’ said Erlendur.

  ‘Jakob had never told her about his relationship with Ingunn — I suppose it’s not surprising. He’d never been to the sisters’ house, so he didn’t really know the family. That business between him and Ingunn happened in Djúpivogur. Ingunn must have been horrified when she found out who Matthildur had married.’

  ‘Matthildur too, surely?’

  ‘Devastated. Told me so herself. When she confronted Jakob, he didn’t deny he’d known Ingunn but he refused point-blank to acknowledge the child.’

  ‘Could it have driven her to do something desperate?’

  ‘You mean did she kill herself over it? I don’t believe that for one minute. She wasn’t the type. She got the letter from her sister a year before she died, so she’d had plenty of time to recover. No, I think she meant to leave him.’

  ‘To divorce Jakob?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Over this?’

  ‘It’s all I can think of.’

  ‘Could there have been another motive?’

  ‘That’s the only one I’m aware of.’

  Ninna relapsed into silence and stared down at her gnarled hands. Then she sighed and began to tug absent-mindedly at her grey hair, as if from habit, apparently lost in reverie. Time passed. It was very quiet in the nursing home. Outside, the houses across the road were barely visible. Ninna’s eyes were trained on the window but she was staring past the snow, buildings and mountains to something far beyond.

  ‘I wonder if I’ll live to see the spring,’ she remarked distractedly.

  Erlendur did not know how to answer. He wanted to say that of course she would but knew he had no grounds for thinking so.

  ‘Haven’t we had enough?’ said Ninna. ‘Enough of these interminable winters?’

  ‘Do you think Ingunn might have sent the letter in a deliberate attempt to destroy Matthildur’s marriage? As a way of taking revenge on Jakob?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because I have reason to believe she wrote elsewhere that he was a bastard. She seems to have nursed a real grievance against him.’

  ‘Do you want to see her letter?’

  ‘Are you. . You mean you have it?’

  ‘Matthildur showed it to me and asked me to keep it for her. She was afraid Jakob might destroy it. See that chest? There’s a small box in the bottom drawer. Could you bring it to me? I’m a bit rickety on my pins these days.’

  Erlendur got up, found the carved wooden box in the chest, and brought it over to Ninna. She opened it and rummaged around among photographs and letters until she found what she was looking for. Putting the box down, she held up the letter and studied the address briefly before handing it to Erlendur.

  ‘I’ve kept it ever since,’ she said.

  He opened the envelope carefully. The letter consisted of a single sheet, written in a feminine hand, and dated in Reykjavík, a year before Matthildur’s disappearance.

  Dear Matthildur,

  What I have to tell you is something I never meant to reveal to anyone, and I wouldn’t do so now if it weren’t for the unusual circumstances we find ourselves in. You must have wondered why I was against your relationship with Jakob from the start. I’m afraid that what I have to tell you is not very pleasant. I do hope you can forgive me.

  I don’t know how best to put this into words, so I’ll just come straight out and say it: Jakob is the father of my son. He’ll deny it but it’s true. It happened when I was in Djúpivogur over the summer. When I realised I was pregnant with his baby I told him, but he questioned what I said as if I was some kind of whore and insulted me in ways I can never forgive him for. So I moved here to the city and met Halldór. He’s a lovely man and I have a good life with him. I didn’t tell Mum or the rest of you at the time but since then I’ve confided in Jóa. She’s been a real brick. Jakob’s son is a bouncing boy who takes after his father.

  I’m not one to tell tales but I felt I had to let you know the truth. Jakob made such ugly threats against me that I’m afraid of him. Since then I’ve heard that he beat up a woman he was seeing in Höfn in a fit of jealousy. He told me that if I didn’t leave him alone he would spread all kinds of filthy lies about me, and I know he’d already started before I left. He threatened to batter me too and used words I shan’t repeat here.

  Dearest Matthildur, you can hardly imagine my shock when I heard that you two had got together. I couldn’t believe my ears and maybe I’ve dithered for longer than I should before telling you the whole story. I suppose I’m still ashamed of letting him seduce me. I’m still angry with myself. I wish I had some advice for you but I don’t know what to say. Maybe he’s changed, but I doubt it. Matthildur, dear, I’m so sorry to have to tell you that Jakob is not an honourable man. He’s not a good man.

  Please forgive me for this terrible letter.

  Your loving sister,

  Ingunn

  Erlendur folded the letter again, replaced it in the envelope with care and handed it back to Ninna.

  ‘Did she show this to Jakob?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course she did,’ said Ninna. ‘He denied it, as I told you. Denied the whole story, then and always.’

  ‘Matthildur must have been in a real quandary. Did she want to leave him?’

  ‘I think that became obvious as time went by.’

  ‘But perhaps not in the way she did?’

  ‘I couldn’t say.’

  ‘I gather Jakob didn’t have a very good reputation around here,’ said Erlendur. ‘Do you think it could have been because of this? Because the secret had got out?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue,’ said Ninna. ‘Look, I’m getting rather tired of this. It’s high time you were leaving.’

  ‘Just a minute. Jakob and Ingunn’s son — where is he now?’

  ‘He used to live here in the east. I gather he’s in a home in Egilsstadir now, since losing the sight in one eye. He’s called Kjartan after the girls’ father.’

  ‘Kjartan Halldórsson!’ exclaimed Erlendur, his mind leaping to the old man in Egilsstadir who had allowed him access to his mother’s trunk.

  ‘He adopted his stepfather’s patronymic,’ explained Ninna. ‘Naturally, Ingunn didn’t want the boy to be named after Jakob. Have you met him?’

  ‘Someone I know sent me to see him and now I understand why.’

  19

  In one of his more lucid spells, he recalls reading about a simple method of diagnosing hypothermia. It gives him an odd sense of déjà vu, although he can’t recollect ever having put it to use before.

  He tries to touch his little finger with his thumb, but can’t do it. He tries again. His hand won’t respond; his claw-like fingers are lifeless. None of them will move, let alone touch one another. He can’t even raise an index finger. The message has frozen somewhere on the neural pathway from brain to hand. He quickly abandons the attempt, unable to remember at what stage of hypothermia he would become incapable of this movement.

  There are three stages. He has often read up on hypothermia and how exactly it causes unconsciousness, which is followed by a slow death as the brain gra
dually shuts down.

  The loss of one or two degrees Celsius of body heat triggers involuntary shivering and numbness in the hands. He can’t tell if he has gone beyond that stage. He tries to focus his fuzzy mind on the question as he struggles in vain with the simple action of touching his little finger to his thumb. The capillaries in the outer layer of his skin have contracted to reduce heat loss in a classic defence mechanism. Goose pimples are another such mechanism.

  He remembers having gooseflesh, as if it were weeks ago.

  He also recalls being assailed by a bizarre impulse to tear off all his clothes, but how long ago that happened is a mystery to him. He associates this urge with progressing from the first to the second stage of hypothermia. It felt as if the heat were rushing to his skin and extremities, making him suddenly boiling hot, though this could have been a delusion. He has read about cases where the victims stripped themselves, convinced they were suffocating. There are two theories explaining the symptom: one is that the region of the brain that regulates body temperature malfunctions and sends out the wrong messages to the skin; the other is that the muscles which cause the blood vessels to contract in order to prevent heat loss and ensure the blood supply to essential organs, such as the brain, simply stop working. This releases a flow of blood to the skin and as a result the victim experiences an unexpected hot flush.

  During this second stage, when the body temperature can drop by as much as four degrees, the lips, ears and fingers turn blue.

  During the third stage, the body temperature falls below thirty-two degrees Celsius. Shivering ceases, speech and thought are impaired and the victim feels drowsy. The skin turns blue and mental functioning and sensations become increasingly irrational. Eventually, the organs fail and clinical death ensues. Yet brain death is not instantaneous as the cold impairs cell deterioration, slowing the damage to the cerebral tissue.

  He has read studies about the human ability to endure cold; about victims of shipwrecks in the Arctic winter who managed to survive the most extreme conditions; about people who were given up for dead after being lost in Iceland’s frozen interior but survived against all the odds. And now he has proof that such accounts are true. In recent days he has seen with his own eyes how the will to live can exceed all expectations.

  He tries once again to touch his little finger to his thumb, but to no avail. He can’t even feel his hand, let alone see if it is turning blue and developing frostbite.

  Some of what he knows about man’s ability to endure the most hostile conditions is linked to the missing-person case he has been investigating since he came out east. His knowledge of the subject has progressed as he has dug up more about the locals, about their strange family ties, friendships, lies, and Matthildur’s fate.

  Earlier he could see the sea of stars spreading over the night sky. Now he can see nothing.

  He knows that the scratching he can hear from below the ground is imaginary; the distant cries that reach his ears exist only in his own mind. He knows where they come from and is not afraid of them.

  His consciousness fades out again.

  Other sounds assail him: his own words uttered an eternity ago that have stayed with him ever since. Words he should never have spoken.

  Words at once so trivial and yet so immeasurable.

  20

  He drove back the same way, once again avoiding the tunnel between Fáskrúdsfjördur and Reydarfjördur. The going was slower than it had been that morning but his four-wheel drive negotiated the road over Vattarnesskridur without any difficulty. He was aware that the drop to the sea in these parts was known, appropriately enough, as Manndrápsgil, or ‘Death Gorge’. Below him, he could just make out the islands of Skrúdur and Andey.

  Daylight was fading and the misty radiance from the smelter site cast a ghostly light over Reydarfjördur Fjord. He wondered if he should visit Hrund now, while Ninna’s information was still fresh in his mind, and decided there was no reason to delay. As he drove up to her house, however, he noticed that she was not at her usual post by the window.

  He approached the front door, knocked, waited, then knocked again. Hrund was not at home. Not daring to barge straight in again, he did a circuit of the house, trying to peer in through the windows. No lights or movement were visible. When he returned to the front door and gripped the handle, he discovered that it was unlocked, so he stepped cautiously inside, calling Hrund’s name. No answer. Closing the door behind him, he groped his way to the sitting room where the chair stood by the window, then suddenly got cold feet, struck by the fear of appearing rude. Hrund had probably just gone out to the shops and would be back any minute: he did not want to be caught in her house. Returning to the front door, he opened it and was about to make a quick exit when he happened to glance down the hall to the kitchen. In the faint glow from the street lights, he saw Hrund’s legs stretched out on the floor. Hurrying into the kitchen, he found her lying on her side, her eyes shut. He laid his fingers on her neck and detected a weak pulse, then located her phone and dialled the emergency number. Afterwards, he fetched a blanket from the sitting room and laid it over her but was afraid to touch her otherwise. She was unconscious. The door had been unlocked when he arrived but he had not been aware of anyone else near the house and did not suspect foul play.

  Hearing a weak moan, he knelt beside her.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked.

  Hrund opened her eyes and looked around in confusion.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  She tried to sit up but he told her to lie still; he had rung for an ambulance and it would be here very soon. He asked if she had a pain in her chest or head but she indicated that she did not.

  ‘Diabetes,’ she croaked.

  ‘You mustn’t try to talk,’ Erlendur said. ‘You’re burning up. Where can I find sugar?’

  ‘In the cupboard. .’

  He stood up.

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to. . go to hospital. .’

  Erlendur found a sugar lump and fed it to her, then fetched a cushion from the sofa, placed it under her head and tucked the blanket better around her. He went outside in search of the ambulance. Though the regional hospital was thirty kilometres away in Neskaupstadur, with any luck they would have an ambulance stationed in the village because of the construction work.

  Hrund was still in the same position when he came back. She asked him to help her up off the floor and he was hesitant at first, unsure if he should move her. Eventually, at her insistence, he helped her to sit up on a kitchen chair.

  ‘I should have known. It starts like the flu, then just gets worse. All it takes is the slightest scratch and I end up with blood poisoning.’

  ‘They should be here shortly. What can I do to help?’

  ‘Why do you keep coming here?’ she asked, her voice low and breathless, drained of all strength.

  ‘Perhaps you should lie down till they arrive,’ Erlendur suggested.

  ‘Tell me what you’ve found out,’ she persisted weakly. ‘You haven’t stopped sniffing around, have you?’

  ‘No,’ he admitted.

  ‘Ah. . I thought not. What’s the latest?’

  ‘Isn’t there someone I could call?’ asked Erlendur. ‘Don’t you have any family?’

  ‘They’ve all moved away.’

  ‘Friends?’

  ‘There’ll be plenty of time for that. Tell me what else you know.’

  Headlights lit up the house and blue flashes bounced off the walls. Erlendur went outside to meet the ambulance. Two men, dressed in thick, reflective overalls, climbed out and followed him into the house.

  ‘Diabetes again, is it?’ one of them asked Hrund.

  ‘I’m such a blasted nuisance,’ she said, trying to stand.

  ‘Easy now,’ said the man. ‘Haven’t you been doing your injections regularly?’

  ‘Yes, I have, but I think my leg’s infected. I burnt myself on the oven door the day before yesterday, then started feeling very ill, and the next thi
ng I know he’s found me on the kitchen floor,’ she said, gesturing at Erlendur.

  The men fetched a stretcher, eased her onto it and carried her out. It had stopped snowing and she lay staring up at the stars until they slid her into the back of the ambulance. Erlendur stood by and watched as they closed the doors, then climbed into the cab and drove off. But they had not gone far before he saw the reversing lights come on as they backed up to the house again. One of the men jumped out.

  ‘Can I ask who you are?’ he said.

  ‘Does it matter?’ asked Erlendur.

  ‘She wants you to come with her.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘There’s plenty of room.’

  ‘All right,’ said Erlendur and, climbing into the back, perched on a seat beside Hrund who had apparently fallen asleep. When they set off again, however, she opened her eyes and studied his face.

  ‘Why won’t you give up?’ she asked huskily.

  ‘Give up what?’

  ‘Stirring up ghosts that have nothing to do with you.’

  ‘Do you want me to stop?’

  Hrund did not answer.

  ‘They’ll give me antibiotics,’ she said at last. ‘As soon as I get to hospital. A massive dose to kill all the infection in my body. That’s how they beat it. Otherwise I’ll die. Not that I should care, really. I’m old and tired and ill, and I don’t suppose anyone’ll miss me. But it’s not a tempting thought. Not for me. I may be an old cripple but I don’t want to let go. I really don’t want to let go.’

  The ambulance skidded and bumped over a snowdrift that lay across the road. Erlendur was thrown off his seat, almost falling against the rear door.

  ‘Sorry,’ called the driver from the cab. ‘It’s like a skating rink.’

  ‘Why are you investigating Matthildur’s story?’ asked Hrund, returning to her theme. ‘What have you found out?’