He asked how many men there were in her life when she came back with her daughter, smiling as if it was an innocent joke. Later he mercilessly used her alleged promiscuity to break her down. He never called the daughter by her name, only nicknames: called her a bastard and a cripple.
She had never had many men in her life. She told him about the father of her child, a fisherman who had drowned in Kollafjördur. He was only 22 when the crew of four perished in a storm at sea. Around the time she found out that she was pregnant. They were not married, so she could hardly be described as a widow. They had planned to marry, but he died and left her with a child born out of wedlock.
While he sat in the kitchen listening, she noticed that the girl did not want to be with him. Normally she was not shy, but she clutched her mother’s skirt and did not dare let go when he called her over. He took a boiled sweet out of his pocket and handed it to her, but she just buried her face deeper against her mother’s skirt and started to cry, she wanted to go back out with the other children. Boiled sweets were her favourite treat.
Two months later he asked her to marry him. There was none of the romance to it that she had read about. They had met several times in the evening and walked around town or gone to a Chaplin film. Laughing heartily at the little tramp, she looked at her escort. He did not even smile. One evening after they left the cinema and she was waiting with him for the lift he had arranged back to Kjós, he asked her out of the blue whether they shouldn’t get married. He pulled her towards him.
“I want us to get married,” he said.
In spite of everything, she was so surprised that she did not remember until much later, really when it was all over, that this was not a marriage proposal, not a question about what she wanted.
“I want us to get married.”
She had considered the possibility that he would propose. Their relationship had effectively reached that stage. She needed a home for her little girl and wanted a place of her own. Have more children. Few other men had shown an interest in her. Maybe because of her child. Maybe she was not a particularly exciting option, short and quite plump, with angular features, slightly buck teeth, and small but dexterous fingers that never seemed to stop moving. Maybe she would never receive a better proposal.
“What do you say about it?” he asked.
She nodded. He kissed her and they hugged. Soon afterwards they were married in the church at Mosfell. It was a small ceremony, attended by hardly anyone other than the bride and groom, his friends from Kjós and two of her friends from Reykjavík. The minister invited them for coffee after the ceremony. She had asked about his people, his family, but he was taciturn about them. He told her he was an only child, he was still an infant when his father died and his mother, who could not afford to keep him, sent him away to foster parents. Before becoming a farmhand in Kjós he had worked on a number of farms. He did not seem curious about her people. Did not seem to have much interest in the past. She told him their circumstances were quite similar: she did not know who her real parents were. She was adopted and had been brought up in various situations in a succession of homes in Reykjavík, until she ended up in service for the merchant. He nodded.
“We’ll make a clean start,” he said. “Forget the past.”
They rented a small basement flat on Lindargata which was little more than a living room and kitchen. There was an outdoor toilet in the yard. She stopped working for the merchant. He said she no longer needed to earn herself a living. He got a job at the harbour until he could join a fishing boat. Dreamed about going to sea.
She stood by the kitchen table, holding her stomach. Although she had not yet told him, she was certain she was pregnant. It could have been expected. They had discussed having children, but she was not sure how he felt about it, he could be so mysterious. If the baby was a boy, she had already chosen his name. She wanted a boy. He would be called Símon.
She had heard about men who beat their wives. Heard of women who had to put up with violence from their husbands. Heard stories. She could not believe that he was one of them. Did not think him capable of it. It must have been an isolated incident, she told herself. He thought I was flirting with Snorri, she thought. I must be careful not to let that happen again.
She wiped her face and snuffled. What aggression. Although he had walked out he would surely come back home soon and apologise to her. He could not treat her like that. Simply could not. Must not. Perplexed, she went into the bedroom to take a look at her daughter. The girl’s name was Mikkelína. She had woken up with a temperature that morning, then slept for most of the day and was still asleep. The mother picked her up and noticed that she was boiling hot. She sat down holding the girl in her arms and started singing a lullaby, still shocked and distracted from the attack.
They stand up on the box,
in their little socks,
golden are their locks,
the girls in pretty frocks.
The girl was panting for breath. Her little chest rose and fell and a vague whistle came from her nose. Her face looked ablaze. Mikkelína’s mother tried to wake her, but she did not stir.
She screamed.
The girl was seriously ill.
Also by Arnaldur Indriason
Silence of the Grave
JAR CITY. Copyright © 2000, 2004 by Arnaldur Indriason. English translation © 2004 by Bernard Scudder. All rights reserved. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Arnaldur Indriason, 1961–
Jar city : a Reykjavík thriller / Arnaldur Indriason; translated from the Icelandic by Bernard Scudder.
[Mýrin. English.]
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-9498-9
PT7511.A67 M9713 2005
839′.6935—dc22 2005048417
More by
Arnaldur Indriason
Award-Winning, International Bestselling Author of
THE ICELANDIC THRILLERS
Read the first chapters of every book in The Icelandic Thrillers series on
Arnaldur Indriason’s Facebook fan page
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Silence of the Grave
Winner of the CWA Gold Dagger Award
www.picadorusa.com/silenceofthegrave
Inspector Erlendur returns in this gripping Icelandic thriller.
When a human skeleton is discovered half-buried in a construction site outside of Reykjavík, Inspector Erlendur finds himself knee-deep in both a crime scene and an archeological dig. Bone by bone, the body is unearthed, and the brutalizing history of a family who lived near the building site comes to light along with it. Was the skeleton a man or a woman, a victim or a killer, and is this a simple case of murder or a long-concealed act of justice? As Erlendur tries to crack this cold case, he must also save his drug-addicted daughter from self destruction and somehow glue his hopelessly fractured family back together.
Like the chilly Nordic mysteries of Henning Mankell and Karen Fossum, Arnaldur Indriason delivers a stark police procedural full of humanity and pathos, a classic noir from a very cold place.
Voices
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Inspector Erlendur returns in this award-winning international bestseller.
The Christmas rush is at its peak in a grand Reykjavík hotel when Inspector Erlendur is called in to investigate a murder. The hotel Santa has been stabbed to death, and Erlendur and his fellow detectives find no shortage of suspects between the hotel staff a
nd the international travelers staying for the holidays. As Christmas Day approaches, Erlendur must deal with his difficult daughter, pursue a possible romantic interest, and untangle a long-buried web of malice and greed to find the murderer. Arnaldur Indriason’s Voices is a brutal, soulful noir from the chilly shores of Iceland.
The Draining Lake
Inspector Erlendur returns in this international bestseller
Following an earthquake, the water level of an Icelandic lake suddenly falls, revealing a skeleton. Inspector Erlendur’s investigation takes him back to the Cold War era, when bright, left-wing students in Iceland were sent to study in the “heavenly state” of Communist East Germany. Teeming with spies and informants, though, their “heavenly state” becomes a nightmare of betrayal and murder. Brilliantly weaving international espionage and a chilling cold case investigation, The Draining Lake is Arnaldur Indriason at his best.
Arctic Chill
www.picadorusa.com/arcticchill
Inspector Erlendur returns in this icy, intense Icelandic thriller
On an icy January day, the Reykjavík police are called to a block of apartments where a body has been found in the garden: a young, dark-skinned boy is frozen to the ground in a pool of blood. Erlendur and his team embark on their investigation and soon unearth tensions simmering beneath the surface of Iceland’s outwardly liberal, multicultural society. Meanwhile, the boy’s murder forces Erlendur to confront the tragedy in his own past.
Master crime writer Arnaldur Indriason's Arctic Chill renders a vivid portrait of Iceland’s brutal, little-known culture wars in a taut, fast-paced police procedural.
Hypothermia
www.picadorusa.com/hypothermia
Inspector Erlunder has spent his entire career struggling to evade the ghosts of his past. But ghosts are visiting him, both in the form of a séance attended by a dead woman and also in the reemerging puzzle of two young people who went missing thirty years ago. And there’s the ghost of the detective’s disastrous marriage, which, despite the pleas of his drug-addled daughter, he is unwilling to confront. In addition, he’s still obsessed with the disappearance of his brother, who vanished without a trace when they were boys.
He can only run from his ghosts for so long, and, when they finally catch up with him, Erlunder is forced to face the heart shattering truth of his past. One of the most haunting crime novels readers are likely to encounter this year or any other, this is classic story that belongs on the shelf of every serious reader of suspense fiction. Hypothermia will chill you to the bone.
Coming soon:
Operation Napoleon
Prepare for sizzling action in a riveting stand alone thriller from Arnaldur Indriason, the award-winning author of the Inspector Erlunder series.
Why is the US Army trying to secretively remove a plane from an Icelandic glacier, and why are they threatened by a young Icelandic rescue volunteer who manages to contact his sister Kristen before disappearing off the face of the earth? Kristin, who will not rest until she discovers the truth of her brother's fate, soon is in great danger herself, leading her on a long and hazardous journey in search of the key to the riddle about Operation Napoleon.
Flashback to 1945, when a German bomber flies over Iceland in a blizzard. The crew have lost their way and crash on a glacier. Puzzlingly, there are both Germand and American officers on board. One of the senior German officers claims that their best chance of survival is to try to walk to the nearest farm and sets off, a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist, only to disappear into the white vastness.
Exceptional prose meets nonstop action in this spellbinding standalone by Arnaldur Indriason.
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