Strange Shores de-9

by Arnaldur Indridason

‘Nothing.’

  ‘What do you mean, “where Ezra was working”?’

  ‘And there’s another thing,’ said Erlendur hastily.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Jakob was buried in Djúpivogur.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Where can I get hold of the names of his pall-bearers?’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘I need their names.’

  ‘Why?’

  Erlendur shook his head.

  ‘What on earth do you want with their names for?’

  He continued to regard Hrund in silence.

  ‘You’re not going to tell me?’ she said.

  ‘Maybe later,’ he replied. ‘Right now I’m not even sure myself what I’m doing.’

  Half an hour later he was seated at a desk in the town library, leafing through old newspapers brought to him by the helpful young woman librarian. Erlendur checked both the national and local papers around the time of the accident. He found two fairly detailed reports of the shipwreck in the local papers, which confirmed what he knew already but added little. The men who died were both described as single; one was from Grindavík, the other from Reykjavík, though his family originally came from the East Fjords. His funeral had been held two days after the accident.

  The second account was accompanied by a grainy picture of Jakob’s coffin being lowered into the ground. Erlendur couldn’t make out any of the faces, only the indistinct outlines of the four pall-bearers who were identified in the caption under the picture. Hrund had recalled the name of the relevant man correctly. Erlendur consulted the local records with the help of the librarian and soon tracked his family down.

  ‘His daughter lives in Djúpivogur,’ announced the librarian, after a quick search on the Internet.

  Erlendur started out immediately. The road followed the shoreline, threading in and out of one picturesque fjord after another, past endless ranks of mountains characterised by the distinctive sloping rock strata of the East Fjords. The small village of Djúpivogur was the southernmost settlement of any size in the region and when he reached it, after two hours’ driving, he had no difficulty finding the right house. He drew up outside a beautifully maintained period villa and switched off the engine. A light shone over the front door and another in a window that might belong to the kitchen, but he could see no movement inside. He decided to have another cigarette before disturbing the woman. He had been smoking far too much over the last few days: this was his third of the drive.

  As he walked up the short flight of steps and knocked at the door, he wondered how to explain his business or indeed how to introduce himself, deciding it would be best to stick to the local history story which had served him well so far.

  No one answered. Discovering a doorbell, he tried that instead. He could hear it competing with the sound of a television. He pressed the bell again and the volume of the TV was lowered. The door opened and a man in a red-checked shirt stood looking him up and down.

  ‘Is Ásta in, by any chance?’ asked Erlendur, wondering if this was her husband.

  The man looked bemused by his visit. It was not that late, thought Erlendur, surreptitiously checking his watch.

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ said the man and disappeared inside. The volume was turned up again and soon a small woman appeared. From her appearance, Erlendur assumed she must have nodded off in front of the television. Her plump figure was dressed in a comfy tracksuit and her sleepy eyes registered surprise at receiving a visit from a strange man at this hour of the evening.

  ‘Are you Ásta?’ asked Erlendur.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Daughter of Ármann Fridriksson, the fisherman?’

  ‘Yes?’ There was hesitation in her voice. ‘My father was called Ármann.’

  ‘I was wondering if I could take up a few minutes of your time?’ said Erlendur. ‘I wanted to ask if you’d ever heard your father talk about a shipwreck that happened in Eskifjördur in 1949.’

  ‘A shipwreck?’

  ‘And also about the funeral of one of the victims that took place here in Djúpivogur. I gather your father was one of the pall-bearers. The dead man was called Jakob Ragnarsson.’

  41

  After a second’s indecision, Ásta Ármannsdóttir invited him in, mainly out of curiosity. She suggested the sitting room but he said the kitchen would be fine and took a seat at the table. The flickering light of the television could be seen from the other room where Ásta’s husband, one Eiríkur Hjörleifsson according to the plaque on the front door, was ensconced on the sofa, glued to a British crime drama. Ásta made some good strong coffee for her guest and put a raisin sponge cake on the table. Erlendur took a slice to be polite, though he didn’t have much of a sweet tooth.

  He apologised for turning up unannounced and explained that he had a particular interest in shipwrecks in the East Fjords. One had occurred in 1949 when the vessel Sigurlína from Eskifjördur had gone down with all hands. On researching the story he had noticed that Ásta’s father Ármann had known Jakob, one of the men who died, and helped to carry the coffin at his funeral. Ásta recognised the name.

  ‘Did he ever discuss the incident with you or your brothers?’ asked Erlendur. He knew from the records that Ásta had two brothers.

  ‘They both live in Reykjavík,’ she said. ‘You can ring them if you like but I don’t know if it’ll help. As far as I can remember, Dad didn’t talk much about the accident. At least, not to us kids. Actually, I wasn’t even born at the time. He might have discussed it with his friends but he wasn’t much of a talker.’

  ‘How did your father know Jakob? Any idea?’

  ‘They crewed a boat here in Djúpivogur for several years. Then Jakob moved away but they still caught up from time to time.’

  ‘Do you know if your father was badly affected by Jakob’s death?’

  Ásta shrugged. ‘The fishermen here often used to go out in bad weather. Some of them didn’t come back. That’s life in a fishing village. I don’t think my father allowed himself to get sentimental — it wasn’t done in those days. Is it my father you’re interested in?’

  ‘No, not particularly,’ said Erlendur. ‘But do you remember him mentioning any unusual details about the incident?’

  ‘I can’t say I do.’

  ‘Nothing about the funeral?’

  ‘No, I don’t know. What are you getting at?’

  ‘I was discussing all this with some people from Eskifjördur, including a woman who dimly remembered your father saying he’d heard — or thought he’d heard — a noise coming from the coffin as it was being lowered into the ground.’

  The woman studied Erlendur. ‘Nobody’s ever told me that,’ she said eventually.

  ‘No, I’m not surprised. It sounds like an old wives’ tale that got going after what happened to Jakob. He lost his wife, you see, and there were rumours that she haunted him. So that’s probably how the story started.’

  ‘Well, it’s the first I’ve heard of it. I knew Jakob’s wife had died but Dad never said a word about this. Not as far as I know, anyway. Are you sure it was Dad?’

  ‘I expect the story’s got a bit garbled. It could have been somebody else, or more likely pure invention.’

  ‘But you don’t think so?’

  ‘Oh, of course I do,’ said Erlendur quickly. ‘It’s just a minor detail of the incident. I thought I’d ask you in case it sounded familiar.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t.’

  ‘Did he ever talk about Jakob and his wife Matthildur?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Are any of your father’s friends still alive?’

  ‘Not these days. Well, apart from old Thórdur.’

  Thórdur lived with his son and daughter-in-law about two minutes’ walk from Ásta’s house. After obtaining his address, Erlendur rose to his feet and said a hasty goodbye, adding, in a belated attempt at courtesy, that he didn’t want to keep her. He was keen to avoid sowing any unnecessary seeds of suspici
on. Her husband was still sitting in front of the TV. There was a noise of gunshots and shouting. Unfortunately, Erlendur’s clumsy departure only served to make Ásta more curious about the purpose of his odd visit and request, and he was forced to answer or else dodge a barrage of questions about her father, Jakob and his wife Matthildur, about the shipwreck and exactly why Erlendur was so concerned about the incident and those involved. He sensed she was having misgivings about talking to him and before he knew it her suspicions were being directed specifically at the connection between Matthildur and her father. He couldn’t work out where this development had come from and tried unsuccessfully to clear up the misunderstanding as he paused in the doorway. But he left the woman standing at the entrance to her house, wearing a baffled expression.

  Thórdur was eighty-five years old and existed in a world of silence. He was deaf as a post and no hearing aid could help him now. All he could hear was his own internal monologue, which he did not hesitate to share. In fact, he wasn’t in the least shy about talking and had a tendency to shout, as if he wanted to be sure no one would miss what he said, even if he couldn’t hear it himself. He lived in a small basement flat that his son had converted for him in his house. The son showed Erlendur downstairs and left them alone together. Erlendur had explained about his research into shipwrecks and repeated this to Thórdur who seemed pleased by the unexpected visit. His flat was nothing more than a large room containing a decent-sized bed, a TV, a desk and a washbasin. Books were piled wherever there was space.

  Communicating with the deaf old man turned out to be perfectly simple. On his desk were paper and pencils, and anything Erlendur wanted to say or ask had to be written down and passed to Thórdur who answered instantly.

  ‘I see you’re a reader,’ was the first comment Erlendur wrote once he had established who he was and the reason for his presence.

  Thórdur smiled. Apart from his deafness, he gave the appearance of being fighting fit and sharp as a tack. His head was totally bald, his nostrils were black with snuff and he pronounced his ‘r’s in a strangely throaty manner.

  ‘Quite right,’ he boomed. ‘I’ve collected them for years. But I doubt anyone’ll care to keep them after I’m gone. Most of them will probably end up at the dump.’

  ‘Pity,’ wrote Erlendur.

  Thórdur agreed. ‘I remember the accident clear as day,’ he added. ‘And I remember other much worse ones more recently.’

  ‘Do you remember the funeral in ’49?’ wrote Erlendur, keen to keep Thórdur on track.

  ‘No,’ said Thórdur. ‘I wasn’t around. I was crewing a boat out of Höfn, where I lived at the time. But of course I heard all about it. The weather must have been appalling — a northerly gale and bitter frost. They were sailing so close to land that people could see the terror on their faces. If I remember right the engine of that rust bucket cut out at the worst possible moment and the boat was smashed to smithereens. The two men were thrown overboard. I doubt they could even swim — not that it would have helped them. People must have been able to hear their cries for help from the shore. Of course they did everything in their power to save them but conditions were so bad they had to give up. In the end, the cries stopped.’

  Thórdur picked up a tin of snuff and offered it to Erlendur, who pinched a few grains between his fingers and sniffed them up his nose. Thórdur sprinkled a thick line on the back of his hand and snorted it up both nostrils.

  ‘It must have been ghastly to watch,’ he said, fiddling with the tin as if he liked to keep it nearby. ‘Utterly horrible. I mean, not being able to help in any way.’

  Erlendur nodded encouragingly.

  ‘Anyway, the bodies were washed up on the beach, as you’d expect when a boat goes down, and they were taken to the ice house in the village. They were laid out on planks like stretchers, I believe. The idea was to keep the bodies straight when rigor mortis set in. At least, I think that was why.’

  ‘And they were certified dead?’ wrote Erlendur.

  ‘Oh yes. I gather there was some locum in the village at the time. He only had to look at their eyes to confirm they were dead. Then they were put in coffins and one of them was buried in the churchyard.’

  ‘Where did you learn all these details?’

  ‘Fellow named Ármann. Used to live here in Djúpivogur. Good friend of mine. Died years ago. Lung cancer. We both knew one of the men — Jakob — though Ármann knew him much better than me.’

  ‘How did you know Jakob?’ wrote Erlendur.

  ‘Used to bump into him out on the town when we were young. Though I never got to know him well. Never had much time for that sort, frankly. He was born in Reykjavík. Thought a lot of himself too. Quite the womaniser, and used to brag about it like young men do. Got into trouble over some of the girls he seduced. Didn’t want anything to do with them once he’d had his wicked way. But woe betide them if they dared look elsewhere. Then he could turn very nasty.’

  ‘Ármann was one of his pall-bearers,’ wrote Erlendur.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. They clubbed together for a gravestone later on. One of his friends, Pétur I think his name was, organised a whip-round among the fishermen and boat owners in the village.’

  ‘Ármann’s supposed to have heard a noise,’ wrote Erlendur, ‘from the coffin.’

  ‘Ah, so you’ve heard about that, have you?’ said Thórdur, suddenly lowering his voice. ‘It wasn’t widely known. People found it embarrassing. Ármann stopped talking about it after a while, but it gave rise to all sorts of ghost stories linked to Jakob’s late wife. That she’d got into his coffin with him and so on.’

  ‘People said she haunted him.’

  ‘That’s right. Caused the accident too. I don’t know why she was supposed to have wanted to take revenge on him, though.’

  ‘What exactly did Ármann hear?’ wrote Erlendur.

  ‘I’m really not sure,’ said Thórdur. ‘He was a bit vague.’

  ‘I gather it was some kind of moaning.’

  ‘No, that’s nonsense. It was nothing like that. I asked him once, shortly before he died, but he was very unwilling to say. I have a feeling he regretted ever mentioning it. No, it was more like gas.’

  ‘Gas?’

  ‘As if the body had some gas left inside, which is quite possible given that the man was buried so soon after he died. That’s what Ármann thought he’d heard. Not moaning. That’s a ghost story that was invented later on. And there were others who claimed the body had shifted in the coffin.’

  Erlendur frowned. ‘Ármann’s daughter didn’t seem aware of any of this.’

  ‘Ármann told me he’d have done better to hold his tongue at the time,’ said Thórdur. ‘Of course she doesn’t want to admit it. She wants to hush it up.’

  ‘Maybe,’ wrote Erlendur.

  ‘I’ve never heard about any moaning,’ said Thórdur. ‘It would’ve taken inhuman strength to survive all that.’

  ‘Yes, it would,’ Erlendur blurted out aloud.

  ‘Mind you, there are stories of people surviving in cold like that,’ said Thórdur. ‘I once heard of a shipwreck out west, not unlike this one. Three men fell overboard from a rowing boat close to shore. The bodies were hauled out of the sea and locked up overnight in a warehouse in the village. The weather was freezing, but when they went to check on the bodies next day it turned out that two of the men had managed to climb down onto the floor during the night, though that’s as far as they got. But the third, who’d lived longest, had made it all the way to the door before he’d finally frozen stiff.’

  42

  Erlendur drove slowly back to Eskifjördur. He was so preoccupied that he soon pulled over and stopped on the side of the road, where he sat in the car contemplating what to do. He lit the inevitable cigarette and drank some tepid coffee from the flask. It was virtually the only sustenance he had taken all day but he was not hungry. Instead, he was filled with a restless tension that he knew he would have to satisfy sooner rather than late
r.

  There was one obvious course to take. He didn’t like it, but however much he racked his brains for an alternative, he always came to the same conclusion. He wanted clear answers but he also wished to protect the interests of those who had put their trust in him. He had seen no reason so far to involve the local authorities in his investigation, in spite of the evidence of blackmail and murder he had uncovered. Erlendur had always felt that some crimes might remain hidden, so long as this was not contrary to the public interest, and this was one such occasion. He would avoid making his findings official for as long as possible. After all, it was not a formal inquiry. Innate curiosity and an obsession with missing-persons’ cases had led him to delve more deeply into an ancient incident than he had ever intended, but he hadn’t been seeking out a crime: in this instance the crime had found him. If he hadn’t gone around following up suspicions and rumours, the long-accepted story of Matthildur, Jakob and Ezra would have stood unchallenged, a closed book, to himself and others. Erlendur was only too aware that if he wanted to act on his suspicions and do what he believed was necessary, he would have to pursue the matter through official channels, which would mean persuading one authority after another of what he knew, without any substantive proof. His request would be put before innumerable committees and judges, he would be forced to attend endless meetings and engage in the sort of persistent wrangling that he simply couldn’t face. Even if he informed the local authorities of everything he had uncovered and his request passed unhindered through the system, he was convinced that he was still unlikely to receive an official go-ahead.

  Gradually it had dawned on him that he was investigating not one crime but two, and that they differed in two significant respects. Of course they were related, there was no doubt: the first had given rise to the second. The first was based purely on the testimony of one man, Ezra, and would be nigh on impossible to prove. There was no witness to confirm his claim, no tangible evidence, no body had been found and no one knew its whereabouts. The second case was different in that there was no witness testimony, no certainty that a crime had in fact been committed; only a vague suspicion. But in this instance Erlendur believed he knew where the evidence was buried. All he had to do was lay hands on it.