by Grant Nicol
Inside was a large cool room with a single stainless steel table in the centre. The table held a body covered with a stiff, clean white sheet. The reality of the job Kjartan had been summoned to do finally hit home. He wanted to run to his daughter and take her in his arms even though he knew that to do so would be bordering on the insane. There had never been anything he hadn’t been able to protect her from, except herself maybe. Her worst enemy had been her need to do everything on her own. Grímur slowly lifted the sheet to reveal the ghastly face beneath. Her grotesque smile, if that’s what it was, would stay with her forever more, now that there was no longer anything left for them to smile about.
Kjartan reached down and touched the ruptured flesh of her cheek. He flinched when he felt the wound and hated himself for doing it. Even though she barely looked like his daughter anymore he still felt it was wrong to pull away like that.
‘What kind of sick bastard did this to you?’
He looked up at the detective, but Grímur didn’t have an answer either.
‘What did you do to your hair?’ Kjartan asked as if she were still capable of answering. ‘You used to have such pretty long hair.’
Her hair was very short and very blonde. There was a tiny amount of dark regrowth showing underneath so the dye-job was recent, a week old maybe but not much longer.
‘Why would she do that?’ he asked no one in particular. As he ran his fingers through her bleach-blonde hair a tear ran down his cheek and dropped onto the sheet. He tried to brush it away as if he had somehow soiled a pristine landscape.
‘There are many questions we are going to have to answer before we can understand what happened to her. We need to recreate the last months of her life. Then we may be able to get to the bottom of this,’ Grímur said.
Kjartan moved to pull the sheet off the rest of her body but Grímur placed his hand on it and wouldn’t let him.
‘That’s not necessary. All we require is a yes or a no. Is this your daughter?’
‘Of course this is my daughter. Do you think I’d still be standing here if it wasn’t? I want to see what else he did to her. Don’t think for a minute that you get to choose what I see today and what I don’t. You wake me up at six-thirty to tell me that you think my daughter’s dead. Don’t you dare tell me what to do! You will let me pull this sheet back and look at her or I will hit you so hard you won’t know what day it is.’
Grímur thought about standing his ground but then tried putting himself in Kjartan’s shoes for a moment. He dragged the sheet away to let him see the full extent of her injuries. She was covered with mutilations of every size and shape. There were small incisions that had been made at an angle to leave flaps of dangling skin. Some looked as though the exposed flesh had then been burned with a cigarette lighter or a match. Some were tiny and round and deep as if a screwdriver had been used. The cuts on her face went all the way through to her teeth. Even her gums had been cut in the killer’s fury. Whoever had done this to her hadn’t wanted to merely end her life, they had wanted her to leave the world kicking and screaming. Grímur pointed to one incision slightly larger than the others but otherwise indistinguishable from the rest. It lay near the top left-hand corner of her left breast.
‘An initial examination suggests that this may have been the wound that killed her but we won’t know for certain until after a full autopsy.’
He replaced the sheet over her face and tidied up the corners so she looked nice and neat again. Kjartan composed himself and then looked Grímur right in the eye.
‘Can we go now?’
Grímur nodded and led them out of the room. As they walked back upstairs a forensic technician in a white lab coat walked past them. Kjartan stared and wondered if that was the man who would be cutting his little girl open in a few minutes. The look he got back suggested that he would be.
Fifteen minutes later they were in Grímur’s office at police headquarters on Hverfisgata sitting on opposite sides of his desk. Kjartan had kept silent during the drive from the morgue and Grímur had allowed him the time to absorb the shock of what he’d just seen. He now wrapped his hands around a cup of coffee Grímur had fetched for him and stared intently at it. The last thing in the world that he felt like doing now was talking.
‘I’m going to have to ask you some questions about Ísabella. We could put it off for a few hours but the sooner we get it done the better.’
‘Bella, everyone just called her Bella.’
‘Okay, Bella it is. We need to put together a picture of the last few months of her life. Where she went, who she knew, that sort of thing. If we can talk to the people she was spending time with then we’ll have a much better idea of what might have happened. Can we start with the last time you saw her?’
Kjartan looked up at Grímur briefly but had to look away again to hide the embarrassment in his eyes.
‘We hadn’t seen her in six months. It makes me feel responsible for what happened to her, not insisting that she come home where she would be safe. She could be so stubborn, so much like me. When she got an idea in her head it was impossible to get it out again.’
He tried his coffee and set it down on the table again before continuing.
‘She had a fight with someone at her sister’s wedding, or at least that’s what we think happened. I guess we’ll never know one way or the other now.’
‘What happened after the fight?’
‘She disappeared. No note, not a word to anyone. We didn’t even get a phone call for a month and then she wouldn’t tell us why she’d run away or where she was. We always assumed it was Reykjavík but we never knew for sure until today. Her mother’s been beside herself waiting for… dreading that this day would come.’
Kjartan rested his head in his hands and took a moment to compose himself.
‘When was the last time you heard from her?’
‘Her sister talked to her about a week ago. They argued and blamed each other for what happened. I think Bella was angry at all the attention that was lavished on Abelína at her wedding but what are you supposed to do when one of your children finally gets married? If we’d waited for someone to ask Bella…’
Kjartan struggled to get the words out as they stuck in his throat
‘Take your time.’
Kjartan stared at his cup of coffee as if it could somehow answer the questions for him. He was holding it so tight that his knuckles had gone white.
‘Then of course Abelína got mad after the wedding because all the attention was suddenly on Bella and her disappearing act. That was probably her plan all along. Her way of turning the tables on her sister. She was pretty talented at that. Never one to be bested in a fight, again just like her dad.
‘Bella accused her sister of being selfish and not being able to see anything from anyone else’s point of view. Which was true I guess. But Abelína had seen her big day overshadowed by her sister running off and was upset. They said a few things that they shouldn’t have and that was the last we ever heard from her.
‘As you can imagine, Abelína’s a mess. The last thing she told Bella was that she wished she was dead. You’ve no idea when you’re saying things like that that they might be the very last words you say to someone.’
Grímur leaned back in his chair and wondered how he’d feel if it were him on the other side of the desk. He didn’t want to push Kjartan for answers but they had to put together a picture of what she had been doing if they were going to solve her murder.
‘So you have no idea who she might have been socialising with here or where she might have been spending her time?’
‘None whatsoever. She became something of a mystery. I got the feeling the only reason she rang from time to time was to let us know she was still alive and that there was no point in looking for her. I guess I just hoped she would come to her senses sooner or later and come home. Like when an angry child runs off and finally has to head back to the only place it knows when it gets hungry and tired. Only she
never got lonely or hungry. Well, she never came home anyway.’
‘Let’s take a moment to gather our thoughts. I think we could both do with a break.’
‘No, it’s okay. I want to get this out of the way. Ask your questions and let’s get this over with. I don’t want to have to go through this twice.’
‘I understand. Did she ever mention any friends, a boyfriend perhaps?’
‘No, nothing like that. We were completely in the dark as to what she might have been getting up to here. That’s why it hasn’t come as that much of a surprise. I had a feeling that she would get herself into trouble. You have these feelings about your children, don’t you?’
Grímur furrowed his brow a little as he took a moment to answer.
‘I suppose you do.’
‘You don’t have any children of your own?’
‘No.’
‘The only thing they’re guaranteed to do is break your heart. Do you have any suspects yet?’
‘There was a man found at the scene.’
‘So you’ve got the guy already?’
‘We’ve arrested him and he’s in custody at the moment but we’re still waiting to interview him.’
‘What the hell are you waiting for?’
‘He will be questioned shortly when a lawyer is available. I don’t want you to get your hopes up though, it’s not as open and shut a case as we might have hoped for.’
‘What exactly do you mean by that?’
‘Although he was found at the scene with your daughter’s body there is no physical evidence linking him to her death. We’ve searched his flat and nothing inside indicates she was killed there. He says he was on his way to work when he came across her and that part seems to check out but the rest of his story is odd to say the least.’
‘What do you mean by odd?’
‘Apparently he has these episodes where he blacks out briefly and then comes around again a few minutes later feeling disorientated and confused. He told us that there’s fifteen minutes he can’t account for just before we found him with her.’
‘You’re kidding me, you’re actually going to believe that crap?’
‘Right now I don’t know what to believe. I’m taking it one step at a time so we don’t get ahead of ourselves. I suggest you do the same. He says he didn’t know your daughter, but that part was less convincing.’
‘But you’re happy to believe the rest of the rubbish he’s told you?’
‘Like I said, there’s plenty we need to explore.’
‘Don’t give me that wishy-washy shit.’
Kjartan was leaning across the table now as if by doing so he could will the answer he wanted out of Grímur. Grímur held his hands up as if to signal that enough was enough.
‘We’ll need to have a much clearer picture of what happened before the prosecutor will consider charging anyone. We will hold him until such time as that decision has been made. I assume you will be heading back to Leirubakki now. We may well need to get in touch with you again shortly. It would be good for us to know where you are.’
Kjartan took his seat again rather reluctantly and stared across the table. The colour had returned to his cheeks with a vengeance, he was flushed with anger.
‘No, I’m going to be staying here in Reykjavík for a while. There’s some things I need to attend to. Can I see where she was living?’
‘Not at the moment, for now it’s got to be considered a crime scene but we’ll let you know when we can release her belongings to you.’
‘My family are going to need to know what happened to her and as soon as possible. We haven’t seen her for six months and now...’
He threw his arms up in the air in exasperation before slamming them down on the table.
‘This is one puzzle that absolutely cannot go unsolved. I need answers to take back with me.’
‘I understand that and you’ll get them, but we need time. I can phone you and your family as soon as we know anything. There’s no reason for you to stay here.’
‘I’m not going anywhere until I know what happened to her.’
‘I think your family would probably like to see you again, Kjartan.’
‘My family will be expecting answers and that’s just what they’re going to get. You say you understand that. Well, do you? Do you really know what that means? They’ll be expecting me to come home with our baby girl so we can bury her in the family plot and they’ll be wanting to know why she’s dead, who killed her and what’s going to happen to him. I can’t see how it could take you too long to find out those things for us even if you do need to wait for his lawyer to get out of bed this morning. No one came to hold my hand today. No one came to tell me everything was going to be all right. And do you know why that is? It’s because everything is not all right. It is not going to be all right. In fact it will never be all right ever again. What has happened to us cannot be undone.
‘I’ll be going home with my daughter in a coffin in a couple of days and you’d better have those answers for me by then. You have the guy you need in custody so do your job before I do it for you.’
Kjartan threw his coffee cup across the room and watched it disintegrate against the wall behind Grímur before marching out of the room.
#4
Grímur was distracted as he entered the interview room and took a seat opposite Gunnar Atli. He put two coffees down on the table and tried to remember which one was supposed to be his.
‘Is one of those for me?’ Gunnar Atli asked.
Grímur nodded as he realised he should have just put sugar in both of them. He eventually gave up trying to remember which was which and slid one of the cups slowly across the table.
‘Here you go, we’re having a short delay with your lawyer but she’ll be here soon. I thought we could start without her though, just have a chat until she gets here. That’s okay, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know if that’s such a great idea,’ Gunnar Atli said and took a sip of his coffee. He grimaced slightly and put the cup down again. ‘I do want to start off by telling you that I didn’t kill that girl. I want to be very clear about that.’
‘You’ve already told the officers who arrested you that you don’t remember coming down the stairs of your building, how you got to be standing over her body, or for that matter any of the fifteen minutes leading up to your arrest. If that is the case then how do you expect me to believe that in spite of you having no recollection of events for a full quarter of an hour, that you’re certain you had absolutely nothing to do with her death?
‘I just know.’
‘You just know? But if I am to believe what you’re telling me then, even if you did kill her, you probably wouldn’t remember anyway, right?’
Grímur tried his own coffee and silently cursed the lack of sugar. He wished his memory was a little more reliable than it was. It was just the little things that annoyed him, like putting the ice cream away in the fridge last night instead of the freezer. They weren’t the end of the world but they reminded him he was no longer a young man and that was probably the one thing he no longer needed to be reminded of. He contemplated suggesting they swap coffees but that would involve admitting he’d made a mistake and no matter how trivial it was he wasn’t about to do that with a murder suspect.
‘Wrong, look at my hands,’ Gunnar Atli said. He held both hands up so Grímur could get a good look at them. ‘Don’t you think that if I’d killed her I’d have blood all over them?’
Grímur had to admit the lack of forensic evidence linking Gunnar Atli to the crime was a concern. As they spoke, Björn Magnússon was going through Gunnar Atli’s first floor flat with instructions to call the moment he found anything that might suggest she had been killed there. When he’d first heard from the arresting officers about what they found he’d hoped they might have this one in the bag before the evening news. Those hopes were fading, and fading fast.
‘How do I know you didn’t clean yourself up? Maybe you washed
your hands and don’t remember that either?’
Gunnar Atli was about to reply with a sarcastic remark of his own when he reminded himself that he might come to regret it later and kept his mouth shut. He picked his coffee up again and took another sip. He might not have said anything but it was clear what he was thinking from the contemptuous grin on his face. This guy was no idiot, Grímur could see that. That was what made him so sure they had the right man. Unfortunately the onus was firmly on the police to prove that their case was anything more than circumstantial. At the moment it wasn’t and both he and Gunnar Atli were aware of that.
Nína Andrésdóttir entered the room and took a seat next to her client without uttering so much as a word. She didn’t acknowledge either of the men until she’d opened her briefcase and pulled out everything she might need and even then it was nothing more than a business-like smile as she straightened her jacket and put a stray hair back in its place.
‘Hello, Grímur. Do you think it might be possible to have a minute or two alone with my client?’
‘Sure, take your time,’ Grímur said.
He had to go find some sugar for his coffee anyway so he excused himself and left them to it. He’d only just found the bag of sugar in the lunch room when his phone rang. It was Björn calling from Gunnar Atli’s flat on Leifsgata.
‘What’s the news?’
Björn cleared his throat before answering.
‘The news is, unfortunately, that there is no real news to speak of,’ he said. ‘If she was killed here he’s managed to remove any trace of the deed whatsoever and in my opinion that’s just not possible. Either you’ve got the wrong guy or she was killed somewhere else and then dumped outside the flats. It looks like we’re back to square one. Maybe he did just come across her on his way out the door like he said.’
‘But why make up all this rubbish about not remembering coming down the stairs? Does he seriously expect us to believe that there’s fifteen minutes he just can’t account for, and on the one day he happens to come across a dead girl on the way to work? Give me a break.’