‘I can imagine,’ Guðgeir said. He badly wanted to know more about these cases, but decided not to ask. He didn’t want to sound desperate. It would be better not to waste time, and to get to business, although he had the sudden intuition that his errand was trivial in comparison. This was just a waste of time compared to these big cases going on in Reykjavík.
‘I was going to ask if you could check out someone’s movements for me. It’s a woman who took a flight to Höfn on the twenty-seventh of February. The woman’s name is Sajee Gunawardena and she’s from Sri Lanka. Age thirty to thirty-five. She flew here and definitely didn’t get a flight back. The weather was terrible at the time and it’s uncertain how or if she got back to Reykjavík. She was pretty broke and not dressed for those conditions,’ he said, rapidly reeling off information. It was as well to get it out, now that he had begun.
‘OK. Picture?’
‘No pic.’
‘Description?’
Guðgeir hesitated.
‘Petite, with long black hair. She has a conspicuous cleft palate and uneven teeth. The airport supervisor drove her to a hostel here in the town and chatted to her on the way. He can’t remember exactly how she was dressed, other than that she was wearing jeans and there was something colourful about her that he can’t put his finger on. She had one case, which was a fairly large black suitcase that she couldn’t easily lift on her own.’
‘Is she missing?’ Særós asked.
‘Not exactly,’ her former boss said, sitting down again on the blue-and-pink sofa. ‘I’d like to be sure of her whereabouts.’
‘What’s the problem?’
‘The woman came out here believing she had a job to go to at a beauty salon on Höfn, and she showed Sveinn – that’s the airport supervisor – all the text messages she had received from something called Höfn Hair and Beauty and thought she’d be working for some big company,’ Guðgeir said, and paused, waiting for a chuckle that never came. ‘With all due respect to Höfn, that’s not a description that could be applied to any salon around here.’
‘Is this woman literate? Særós asked, quick as always.
‘Yes, at least, she can manage western letters.’
‘And the text messages? They tried to call the number?’
‘Repeatedly, but it’s out of service.’
‘Did he make a note of it?’
‘No. Sveinn said it hadn’t crossed his mind, and he found it weird, to start with. Anyway, he found her a place to stay. People are good like that out here.’
‘Sweet,’ Særós said in a neutral tone.
‘He dropped her off at a hostel here.’
‘Ah, and?’
‘Sveinn and I have been wondering if and how Sajee could have travelled south. She didn’t fly and she didn’t travel by coach.’
‘Then she must have hitched a ride,’ Særós suggested, and Guðgeir could sense that there were more pressing things on her mind than this vague request. Her tone changed, becoming distant. He knew the job himself and the pressures that came with it.
‘That’s unlikely,’ he said. ‘Hadn’t I mentioned that the weather was terrible just then? We’ve been asking around and nobody seems to know anything.’
‘Are you bored, Guðgeir?’ Særós asked suddenly, straight to the point as always. ‘You won’t have long to wait,’ she added encouragingly.
‘No, not at all. I’m fine,’ he said, against his better judgement. ‘What’s bugging us is that at the time the roads were as good as impassable and Sajee didn’t have any decent outdoor clothing. She was struggling to get around with this big black case and of course there’s the possibility that someone could have offered her a lift south,’ Guðgeir said, determined not to let any hint of loneliness upset him. ‘The strangest thing is nobody other than Sveinn appears to have been aware of this woman actually having been here.’
He stood up from the sofa, and shifted it to one side with his foot so that he could rest an elbow on the windowsill. Sometimes he felt like an animal in a cage in this flat, but by looking up, out of the window he could see the café across the street.
‘With one exception,’ he added. ‘There’s a woman called Linda working at a café here who reckons she saw Sajee one day when the weather was really bad, on the way up to the Lagoon with a man called Thormóður, who runs the hostel where Sveinn dropped her off. That’s quite a journey in foul weather. Well, I paid him a visit and at first he said he had no recollection of ever having laid eyes on Sajee, and did his best to wriggle out of it. When I pushed him a bit harder, he claimed to have driven her out to the airport. But there was no flight on the twenty-eighth, and she’s not on the passenger list for the following day.’
‘Has this Sajee committed any crime?’ Særós asked.
‘Not as far as I know,’
‘How did she get here?’
‘No idea. But I understand she speaks reasonable Icelandic so she must have lived here for a few years,’ he said. ‘It’s as if she’s just disappeared into thin air. It shouldn’t be possible to just vanish in a little community like this. This man she was seen with has links to an isolated farm called Bröttuskriður. I went over there and had a very strong feeling that there’s something about the place that’s not quite right.’
‘Do you want us to put out a public request for information about her?’ Særós said, and he sensed that her interest was growing.
‘Not right away, at any rate. Let’s wait and see.’
‘Any suspicion that she might have been trafficked?’
‘Who knows?’ Guðgeir said. ‘I’m going to check on this Thormóður, the guy who runs the Hostel by the Sea. It’s pretty small and I’m wondering if it might be a front for something else…’
‘Yes. Looks like he’d be worth checking out more closely,’ Særós agreed. ‘But how are you going to get close, considering you’re on indefinite leave from the police?’
‘I’ll find a way, and I’ll take care.’
‘Can you give me a more detailed description of Sajee, or more info?’
‘Unfortunately, Sveinn just remembered she said she had rented a place with some Chinese women in Reykjavík.’
‘Names? Address?’
‘Nothing precise but somewhere central,’ Guðgeir said. ‘That’s what Sveinn recalled, and I’m sorry I don’t have more details.’
‘Very helpful,’ Særós said, a little coldly. ‘But as we have a name we should be able to find something out.’
‘It seems most likely she had worked as a cleaner. Svenni said she had mentioned cleaning houses.’
‘All on the black, then?’
‘Probably,’ Guðgeir said. ‘That’s the way it usually works, isn’t it?’
‘I’ll look into it. Probably best to start with the Directorate of Immigration,’ she said. ‘I’ll ask around in Asian shops and restaurants.’
‘Thanks, Særós,’ Guðgeir said gratefully. ‘You’re a true friend.’
‘There’s not much I wouldn’t do for you,’ Særós said, ready to end the conversation. ‘I’ll give you a call as soon as I have anything for you.’
‘Hold on a moment. I heard you dropped in over at Fossvogur.’
‘I did. Everything’s fine. But I reckon you ought to sell that place. It would relieve the tension for you and Inga, and for the children. I could feel it the moment I walked through the door, and I’ve never been the over-sensitive type, as you well know. So my advice is, sell it and start fresh somewhere else. You two belong together, and you belong here at the station with us. A security guard, Guðgeir. Really?’ Særós sniffed. ‘You working as a security guard is just completely off the stupid scale.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with being a security guard,’ he said, suddenly defensive.
‘No,’ she said seriously. ‘There’s nothing wrong at all with that. Except that Guðgeir Fransson shouldn’t be doing a job like that. You could just as well be at home trying to become a poet.’
; He laughed at the thought.
‘It’s great to talk to you, Særós,’ he said with warmth. ‘It’s done me no end of good. And would you be up for asking around online? Maybe pretend to be looking for a cleaner, you’ve heard of a girl from Sri Lanka who’s supposed to be good at that kind of work. Not sure of her name except that it starts with an S?’
‘Why don’t you do it yourself?’
‘Well, I thought it would be more convincing coming from a woman,’ Guðgeir stammered, and Særós snorted.
‘All right. I’ll put something up on Facebook and a few other places. I’ll ask people to send me a PM and we’ll see if anything comes of it.’
‘Thanks for helping me out. And please say hello to everyone at the station, especially Leifur in the tech department,’ Guðgeir said.
He realised as he ended the call that this was the first time he had sent his former colleagues his regards.
Guðgeir sat for a while with his phone in his hand before he went to the kitchen to switch on the kettle, standing over it until the water had boiled and he could fill the big mug that held almost half a litre. It had been a present from his daughter Ólöf, who said that a smaller mug was no use for a man with such big hands. He felt the heat seep into his hands as he held the mug with the tea bag in it. He took it with him to the computer and started searching.
Thormóður seemed to be more common a name than he had expected. He was able to exclude some people quickly as there were sometimes numerous references to the same individual. He had scrolled through sixteen pages of search results and had almost emptied his mug when he chanced on an article from a magazine that had folded a few years ago. The name of the interviewee, Kristín Kjarr, who had been prominent for a while in the art world, caught his eye. Guðgeir hadn’t heard mention of her for a while and told himself as he hunched over the screen that this was most likely because he hadn’t paid attention. The name he was looking for didn’t appear until some way into the article, but it sparked his interest. Kristín recounted a pivotal course she had attended a few years previously, run by a man who called himself Thor. He had claimed to be Canadian, although she later found out that he was from Iceland but had been brought up in Canada. Her opinion was that his real name was Thormóður Emilsson, and that he had a rare talent for persuasion. She said that back when she had first heard of him, she had been searching for something after struggling to find her way in both life and art.
She had been plagued by self-doubt, battling to set her own internal rhythm and to follow her own intuition. On top of that were the financial headaches. Despite the fact that she worked shifts at a hostel for the disabled and spent every Saturday mopping floors in a block of flats, she found it hard to make ends meet. Kristín first heard of Thor at a college party where a lecturer and a well-known critic discussed him approvingly in low voices. A month or so later she heard more tales of the man’s unbelievable spiritual energy. Wild, exciting rumours circulated everywhere. Those in the know spoke in muted tones of their experience, so that Kristín felt even more strongly that she was out of the loop. Then a young actress, who had enjoyed a great deal of early success, invited Kristín to join one of Thor’s seminars, and from that point on there was no turning back.
The man’s personal magnetism and the vibe around him fascinated her, enough for her to persuade her parents to guarantee a loan for her so she could join a twenty-day retreat held in a remote rural location. The subsequent months were expensive ones, but she lived in the hope that her life was about to change for the better.
In the interview Kristín described how those taking part would sit in a circle, except for one who occupied a chair in the centre to be cross-examined by Thor as he stopped at nothing to drag their deepest secrets out into the daylight. If there was any resistance, the rest of the group would join in to pile on the pressure, backing up the leader. These sincerity circles, as he liked to call them, could last for hours, and everyone took part, in the innocent belief that they were liberating the individual at the centre by relieving them of their inner burdens.
Kristín said that she had confessed to things that she wasn’t sure had ever occurred or that had any basis in her emotional life, but the whole time she had been at the retreat she had been starved of sleep, hungry and her nerves in tatters, in addition to the pressure to make confessions. The rationale behind the process had been to achieve spiritual purification, because Thor decreed that this would be the fundamental step in the individual being able to make a fresh start in beginning a new life. Although the retreat was expensive, everyone slept on thin mattresses and there was little to eat. They hardly stepped outside the whole time, but were encouraged to work off inner anger by beating their mattresses. According to Kristín, the atmosphere had become highly charged in a few days. Undoubtedly some of them had harboured doubts, but had been reluctant to call the Emperor out for having no clothes.
Kristín admitted that she had been quickly drawn into the groupthink that smothered any doubts. In spite of a number of shortcomings, their group ethic had been strong, and afterwards she realised that Thor had fostered a ‘them and us’ attitude, a recognised method of bringing a group together by identifying a shared enemy. She concluded that this would be the one and only time that she would agree to speak about this experience, because two years on, she had barely regained her mental and physical stability. The retreat had affected her badly, leading to a breakdown and a spell in psychiatric care.
The interview covered three pages, and in a separate column at one side of the page was all the information the journalist had been able to find about Thor. The man had an unbelievable career behind him and Guðgeir cursed when he saw there wasn’t more information there. The interview opened with a large portrait of Kristín, and further down was a grainy image of man who sat like a teacher facing a group of people.
He enlarged the picture but the man’s face remained indistinct. Guðgeir dropped the computer onto the sofa and hurried to the bedroom, where he found the magnifying glass on the shelf above the bed.
Staring through it at the man’s forehead, there was no doubt in his mind. Just below the roots of his hair was the dark patch of a birthmark. Guðgeir took a deep breath and enlarged the picture still further. At Thormóður’s side sat a young man, fair-haired and with dark eyebrows, who looked remarkably like Ísak at Bröttuskriður.
30
Spring was in the air as Særós stepped out into the stillness of the morning. Along the garden wall lay a wafer-thin layer of snow which would melt later in the day. A few daffodils had flowered and stretched towards the morning sun as heralds of the coming summer. They could have flowered yesterday, or the day before that, but it was only on this bright, warm morning that Særós had noticed them.
She was in a good mood. After all the pressure she had been under, she was ready to get to grips with reality again. The last few months had not been easy ones, as not all of her colleagues had been supportive when she had stepped at short notice into Guðgeir’s role. It had been a difficult time for the police, but things had improved and she was looking forward to a little stability.
Særós hummed to herself as she dumped her sports bag on the back seat. As she drove through the city, she noticed that pedestrians, people waiting for buses and others heading for their cars seemed more upright. The chill of winter seemed to be leaving people’s bones at last, and straight backs had returned now that nobody needed to lean into the wind. There was hope as well as spring in the air.
She felt full of optimism, and as a woman who liked to have clear aims, she told herself that she ought to smile more in the next few days. That ought to put a few things right at the station. She strode into the building, cheerfully greeting everyone she met along the way and handing out a few compliments as she passed. She left a few puzzled looks behind her. Pleased with herself for making a positive start to the day, she shut her door after asking for no disturbances unless absolutely necessary.
She
didn’t take a break until she had spent three hours reducing the swamp of emails almost down to zero. She stood up, took a few paces, stretched and checked her phone. Her request for the renowned Sri Lankan cleaner whose name began with an S had come to nothing, even though she had been through plenty of groups on Facebook that had some kind of domestic connection. There had been a number of responses, she’d been pointed towards foreign women who cleaned houses for a living, but all had turned out to be false trails. She dropped to the floor and took a few press-ups, telling herself that this was the kind of trouble she would put herself through for Guðgeir alone. His hunches were normally on the right track.
Back at her desk, she saw a new message from someone called Ragnhildur who had employed an au pair called Sajee who had come from Sri Lanka. Her message included her phone number and an invitation to call for more information. Særós tapped the number into her phone immediately, but the line was busy. Særós tried to go back to her work before calling again, but found herself unable to concentrate.
31
It was a weekend at home in Reykjavík for Guðgeir and he had dropped by to see her the night before. Særós had gone over everything with him and they compared notes. She agreed with him that something was wrong, but it was difficult to pin down exactly what was happening. Now they knew that Thormóður had a dubious past, and after unsuccessfully trying to reach Kristín Kjarr, they managed to track down the journalist who had written the article Guðgeir had come across online. The man had lost his job when the magazine had gone bust, and instead turned to making a living as a gardener, which he described as being better for both his wallet and his mental health.
The former journalist remembered the Thormóður angle clearly as the story had sparked his interest, and he was willing to share what he knew. He had even put together a detailed dossier of information, intending to write a series of articles that were supposed to have appeared in the weeks following the interview with Kristín. The magazine’s bankruptcy ended those plans, but he described for them how Thormóður had been brought up in the Westman Islands, but at the age of eleven had moved to Canada with his mother. There he had had come under the influence of a stepfather who was a member of a religious cult that clung to a set of beliefs not far removed from scientology.
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