The Undesired

by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

  He lifted his eyes to the television again. Now one of the actors was crying and the other seemed at a loss as to how to stem the flow. The scene was so corny that it galvanised Ódinn to pull the shirt box towards him. He’d find the courage to read the post-mortem report eventually, but in the meantime surely the rest couldn’t be as harrowing. He found a police report compiled two days after the accident and decided he had to read it; he mustn’t be a wimp like the cry-baby on screen. It was all in the past, nothing could be changed now, and he couldn’t be too much of a coward to face up to the investigation report. Nothing could be worse than what Lára had been confronted with on her descent. Not even the post-mortem report. One thing at least was certain – if he could force himself to go through this he would be in a better position to help Rún deal with her loss. Well, he hoped so, anyway. If he kept ignoring the past he could hardly expect his daughter to work through it, as she so desperately needed to. Now his eyes had been opened he could see with sudden clarity much that he had overlooked. Clichéd as it sounded, it was like a revelation.

  The report consisted of police interviews conducted with Lára’s neighbours. The house contained four flats in addition to Lára’s attic rooms, but Ódinn only knew the old man in the basement. The other names meant nothing to him. People seldom stayed long in the building; they tended to buy their first flat there, under the impression that it only needed a fresh coat of paint, then, as the truth gradually dawned on them, they started plotting their getaway. Ódinn began with the man in the basement, but his statement was of no value; he had been out when Lára fell and seemed to have had next to no contact with the mother and daughter. He didn’t even know the little girl’s name, though they’d lived under the same roof ever since Rún was born. Ódinn had always found the man a bit odd: a secretive recluse, living down there, half underground, with no apparent interest in other people.

  Rather more had been gleaned from the other occupants. A young couple with a small child, who lived on the ground floor, had revealed the little they knew about Lára. That she was a single parent, worked as a bookkeeper and had a mother living in the same street, two doors down. They’d been awake at the time but hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. The husband had gone out jogging an hour before the accident. Everything had appeared normal when he left and again when he returned some forty minutes later. He hadn’t observed anyone in the stairwell or garden. Nothing unusual had occurred until they sat down to breakfast at their kitchen table and Lára fell past the window. Their child, who was facing the window, had in its innocence laughed aloud over its porridge – a macabre detail that made for uncomfortable reading. All the evidence indicated that the accident had come out of the blue, which was consistent with the facts as Ódinn knew them.

  The occupants of the first floor had been sound asleep, so they could be quickly dispensed with. But when Ódinn read the witness statement of the neighbours on the floor below Lára’s, the plot thickened. Their version of events did not tally with the young couple’s. They were sisters from the east of the country, who had moved to Reykjavík to study at the university. They’d been renting the flat, which was for sale, for six months. Reading between the lines, Ódinn got the impression that they were down-to-earth young women, but he could have been wrong. Though he regarded himself as a fairly good judge of character, it was one thing to read someone’s testimony, but quite another to meet them face to face. Nevertheless, he had no reason to doubt what they said, so their statement pulled the rug out from under his feet.

  The sisters claimed to have heard people moving about in the flat upstairs shortly before Lára’s scream rang out. There was the sound of something breaking and voices, though of course it could have been the radio. They couldn’t be more specific about the gender of the voices or whether they’d been arguing. Later, both retracted their statements, no longer sure they’d remembered right. The sounds had probably come from the street. One sister also thought she’d heard the door opening upstairs, though she added that she couldn’t be a hundred per cent certain. Naturally, she hadn’t been paying attention to background noises, since she had no reason to think that morning would be different from any other. What caused her to doubt she’d heard the door creaking was that the bell hadn’t been rung. She could be sure about that because the racket it made drove her up the wall; she’d been fed up anyway about having to wake up early to study, so she’d definitely have noticed the noise of the bell. For what it was worth, neither had heard anyone leaving the flat or hurrying downstairs after Lára fell, but that may have been because they had dashed over to the other side of the flat to see what was happening.

  Ódinn put down the report and ran his fingers through his hair. No one had breathed a word to him about the possibility that it hadn’t been an accident. Either the information that Lára might not have been alone had gone no further than the police and the sisters, or they hadn’t wanted to tell him. The media, at any rate, had been silent on that score. And so had Lára’s mother. He felt a surge of anger. What was wrong with the woman? Hadn’t it occurred to her that this might have been important to him?

  To be fair, though, he’d been sitting on the files for months, so he could perfectly well have found this out for himself. Perhaps she’d been waiting for him to bring up the subject. Or she’d read in his eyes that he had enough on his plate coping with himself and Rún. He calmed down a little. Since the police hadn’t treated the case as murder, with the inevitable press furore, they must have had other information.

  Hearing mumbling from the bedroom, he automatically shoved a cushion over the shirt box. Ears pricked, he waited until he was sure Rún hadn’t woken up before he uncovered the box again. Luckily, she was a deep sleeper, which must have spared her from an even greater shock at the time of Lára’s death. It was one thing to wake up to the news that your mother had died in an accident, but something else altogether actually to witness her fall – it didn’t take a genius to work that out. And she might have tried to see what had happened to her mother, leant too far out of the window, and it was anyone’s guess how that might have ended.

  Ódinn didn’t envy Rún’s grandmother, whose task it had been to break the news to her. The young woman from the ground floor had rushed round to fetch her, because the door to the flat upstairs was locked and she hadn’t wanted to risk waking Rún, if she was home, by shouting and banging. The news would come better from a family member. Since Lára’s mother lived practically next door, she had reached the flat before the ambulance. Ódinn shuddered at the thought. Had she caught a glimpse of her daughter’s body as she ran to the front door, but forced herself to go on for fear that something might happen to her grandchild as well? He tried to imagine how he would feel if early one Sunday morning he had to race to the scene of an accident in a panic. It was hardly surprising that Rún’s grandmother had been a bit strange ever since. She’d always treated Ódinn with chilly reserve but on the rare occasions they’d met since Lára’s death she had cut him dead, refusing to look at or speak to him, even to say hello.

  He’d had little contact with her for years, so for all he knew she might already have been suffering from depression, but it seemed unlikely. It must have been her daughter’s death that changed her from an aloof person into something like a ghost. Lately, however, she had thawed a little and they could now speak about Rún on the phone, though their conversations never got beyond the superficial. The woman probably held him responsible for the fact that Rún didn’t want to go and stay with her, indeed could hardly be persuaded to visit her. But that was far from the truth; it was entirely Rún’s decision. He sympathised with his daughter: her grandmother was eaten up with bitterness, so he almost never put pressure on her to go round. As a result, Rún had only seen her grandmother a handful of times since her mother’s death. Hopefully it would be possible in time to increase the number of visits, but as long as she returned home miserable and out of sorts from her grandmother’s house, it was be
tter to keep their contact to a minimum. The woman was bound to pull herself together eventually.

  He heard Rún tossing and turning in bed, then all was quiet again. She must be dreaming. Although she hadn’t woken up, Ódinn was not entirely easy. He peered into the hallway leading to the bedrooms, as if expecting to see movement. He didn’t know why but he had the uncomfortable feeling that Rún was watching him from the shadows, aware that he was trying to get to the bottom of her mother’s fate, and unhappy that he wasn’t including her. But that was ridiculous; she was fast asleep, lost in those strange dreams or nightmares about her mother that seemed to afflict her every night. Which was exactly why he was sitting here now, re-opening old wounds. Their life had to change. At any rate, he had no desire to end up like the melodrama he was watching unfold on the TV screen. The actors were now engaged in a screaming match, involving great histrionics, which looked as if it could only end badly. Ódinn reached for the remote control and switched it off.

  He resumed his reading but the material no longer exerted the same hold on him. He was briefly taken aback to come across a photograph of the kitchen after the accident. His dismay had nothing to do with blood or signs of violence but with the open kitchen window. Everything else was disconcertingly similar to how it had been before he walked out on his wife and daughter, as if time had stood still for Lára, while for him it had moved on. Dirty dishes were stacked by the sink and there was the same clutter of knickknacks on the shelf. Ódinn couldn’t help looking around and comparing it to his own flat, which was so obviously a bachelor pad that it was almost embarrassing. He’d spent his money on a music system and other gadgets. A good sofa and a coffee table sufficed for furniture. There were no vases or ornaments to cheer the place up, apart from the pottery bowl Rún had made at school, which sat on the TV cabinet. From the outside it looked quite good and was nicely painted, but on the inside it was covered in tiny cracks. Like his daughter, he thought, and immediately felt ashamed.

  He continued reading. It didn’t take long to discover why the investigation hadn’t focused on an uninvited guest. The police believed that Lára had gone down to the basement to put on a wash in the communal laundry. She had offered to wash some tablecloths for her mother, and these were still in the machine when the police checked. His former mother-in-law had confirmed this: her own machine was broken and she hadn’t been able to afford to get it mended because of a cashflow problem. Apparently she had asked for the cloths to be destroyed afterwards.

  The police concluded that the person the sister from downstairs had heard opening the door was no burglar or assailant but Lára herself. She had nipped down to the laundry and naturally hadn’t rung the doorbell when she went back upstairs. The police were of the opinion that she had gone straight to the window for a smoke, with tragic consequences. There was a brief note about a minor discrepancy between the time given by one of the sisters and the time the police believed the accident had occurred. The sister thought she’d heard the scream very shortly after the footsteps had entered the flat, but that was inconsistent with the time required for Lára to take up position, light a cigarette, knock over the flower pot, fetch the broom, clamber onto the windowsill again and try to retrieve the pot, before falling out herself. When the police conducted a second interview with the sister, she had retracted her statement, saying she couldn’t be sure how much time had passed between the door opening and the scream. There had been no sign of a visitor in the kitchen but the radio had been on, so that was probably the source of the voices the sisters had heard. A broken glass bowl had been found on the floor but the pieces had been swept into a pile. Since no unidentified fingerprints were found on the broom handle, it was assumed that Lára must have broken the bowl, perhaps when she knocked the flower pot out of the window, and swept up most of the fragments before attempting to rescue the pot. A half-smoked cigarette had been found under her body. It all pointed to the same conclusion: an accident. Ódinn wasn’t quite sure if this was a relief or not. Which was better, death by misadventure or murder? Did one feel better knowing that there had been an accident or that a loved one had been murdered, and, either way, why? The consequences were the same. He had no answer to this. But whatever had happened, it appeared that he had not been kept in the dark about any mysterious details.

  Towards the end of the same report, however, a fact emerged that was not in doubt. Shortly before her death, Lára had broken up with a man she had been seeing for two years and had even lived with for several months, and their decision to part had not been particularly amicable, according to police sources. Ódinn was completely wrong-footed. He’d had no idea. Lára had been in a serious relationship with a man for all that time and hadn’t said a word about it to him. Neither had Rún. Of course, Lára had been under no obligation to tell him about her private life, but Rún was another matter; he had been entitled to know about such a major change in his daughter’s circumstances. Why hadn’t Rún herself said anything? She must have realised that the man her mother was always meeting was her boyfriend; she was quite old enough to be aware of that. Even if they’d kept their relationship secret to begin with, she must have put two and two together when he moved his stuff in. She could hardly have thought the man sharing her mother’s bed was a lodger.

  He restrained the urge to charge into Rún’s room and start interrogating her. It would only drive her further into her shell. And now he came to think of it, Lára had said something ages ago about a new boyfriend, but he’d asked no questions. The thought of her with another man – and any discussion of the subject – had made him uncomfortable. Since she hadn’t referred to it again, he’d assumed the relationship was over; these things happened, as he knew from personal experience. Actually, he might even have seen the man, without realising, when he went to pick up Rún. He’d very rarely gone up to the flat; she generally waited for him on the pavement outside and the man might well have been standing nearby. His name, Logi Árnason, rang no bells.

  Glancing at the clock, Ódinn saw it was not yet midnight. He grabbed the phone and called Kalli, who’d kept in touch with Lára after she and Ódinn split up, not because he was especially considerate but because his wife Helena was Lára’s cousin. Their old circle of friends had been torn apart by the divorce. The men with wives or girlfriends had stuck with Lára; the few who were single had remained loyal to Ódinn. After Lára died, some of those who had almost disappeared from his life had got in touch again, but it was all rather awkward and he didn’t know if it would last. Still, he was grateful for the fact now because it meant he could ring Kalli without his call coming entirely out of the blue.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me Lára was living with someone?’ Ódinn launched straight in with no time for polite chit-chat or apologies for ringing so late. He merely announced himself and got straight to the point. Then, realising how bad this sounded, especially since he had to keep his voice down because of Rún, he added belatedly: ‘Sorry. Did I wake you?’

  ‘No.’ Kalli didn’t exactly sound pleased. ‘But if you’d rung ten minutes later I’d have been asleep. Are you out of your mind? Because that’s what it sounds like. Anyway, what on earth was I supposed to tell you?’

  Ódinn couldn’t be bothered to keep apologising. ‘I don’t know – inform me that my daughter was sharing a roof with a strange man? You didn’t say a word.’

  He thought he heard a sigh at the other end. ‘Are you kidding?’

  ‘No, I’m asking: why didn’t you say anything? Any of you? I can’t believe you were the only one who knew.’ This was grossly unfair but he didn’t care. When he met up with his friends, they had talked about anything but Lára.

  ‘Look, Ódinn, I wasn’t the only one in the know. And if you think digging up the past will make you feel better about yourself and your daughter, I’m afraid I can’t help you. The guy was no one special. His name was Logi or Láki…’

  ‘Logi Árnason.’

  ‘Right. Logi. He’s an artist or
something – not my kind of guy. I met him a couple of times but Lára gave up inviting us to dinner with him when she realised we didn’t hit it off.’ Kalli took a deep breath, perhaps to stop himself badmouthing Logi any further. ‘Anyway. When they moved in together it was only Helena who went round; I was allowed to stay home, thank God. Then after they broke up I heard from Helena that the guy had been a total shit. I just said yes and no in the right places – mainly yes, or I’d have been in the firing line myself. You know what it’s like when women go on about their exes.’

  Ódinn didn’t know, but he could imagine how Lára and Helena must have talked about him back in the day. With Kalli nodding along. But he wasn’t going to ask about that. ‘Was he violent? Did he knock her about?’

  Kalli laughed. ‘No, I’d definitely have heard if he had. I expect he was just an ordinary bloke – a bit more of a tosser than usual, but ordinary enough. Lára did get mixed up with one idiot after the divorce and she’d never have put up with that again. She sent that guy packing after the first slap. She was no fool, you know.’

  ‘So Logi wasn’t the first?’ The moment the words were out of his mouth he realised how crass they sounded. Lára was a young woman with the same needs as him. Just because she’d been left alone with Rún didn’t mean she had to live like a nun. He hadn’t exactly behaved like a monk himself. But the difference was that since the divorce he hadn’t managed to form another relationship that progressed as far as living together.

  ‘Uh, there were a few. Not many. You almost certainly got more action than her, if that makes you feel better.’

  ‘No. I don’t care. I’m glad she had boyfriends.’ Ódinn felt the need to explain himself to Kalli; he couldn’t afford to lose his friendship or give him the impression that he was cracking up. ‘It’s just that I’ve been looking through the police reports and thought at first there was a chance Lára might have been pushed, though there turned out to be no evidence for that. But when I read that she’d recently gone through a bad break-up with some bloke, it occurred to me that it might not have been that simple. He could have been involved. I’m probably talking bullshit, though. I’m not in a very good place at the moment.’