Again she heard a crunching in the snow. It didn’t matter one bit whether it was her imagination or something real that was threatening her, she couldn’t just stand there – but she couldn’t move, either. One, two, three. She resolved to shut out her surroundings and think about something else entirely. Pési. What was he doing now? Drinking hot chocolate and eating an apple, as he usually was when she picked him up early? Berglind shut her eyes and remembered how sweetly he’d smiled at her when she’d picked him up yesterday. He’d been sitting off to one side against the room’s back wall, while the other kids buzzed around the toy box. Their noise had subsided when he stood up and walked over to her; the children moving aside one after another as he walked through the group. Berglind had watched in surprise as they put down their toys, stood up and walked away. None of them said a word, and the rumpus that had met her ears on arrival seemed like a distant memory. Pési didn’t appear to be startled by this, and acted as if the children weren’t there. Berglind had been troubled; she’d been so preoccupied with her own problems that she hadn’t given any thought to how he might be doing in preschool. At first everything had gone smoothly; he appeared to have playmates, friends even, but when she thought back on it, things had changed. He was always alone when she collected him. Alone on a swing, dangling his feet; alone pushing sand around absent-mindedly in the sandpit; alone kicking up snow at the edge of the playground. Alone.
The preschool teacher had smiled at Berglind as if there were nothing more natural than other children being frightened of her son, and Berglind had bent down to Pési and asked him to go and put on his snowboots. Then she asked the young woman straight out what was actually going on and whether Pési was being bullied. The teacher had given her another smile, a rather sickly one, and said that kids were sometimes like that without meaning anything by it. There was no reason for their behaviour; it had started some time ago, seemingly for no reason, and showed no sign of stopping. They’d thought about contacting Berglind and Halli but decided to wait until parents’ evening at Easter, in case the situation should improve. But don’t worry, it’ll get better. Just give it a little time. Well, quite – this was exactly what she’d been told herself; she was going through a phase and just needed time to recover. When she pressed the teacher for answers, perhaps more zealously than she’d intended, the woman said that they’d tried to ask the brightest kids what was going on but hadn’t received any sensible reply, just something vague about how they were scared of the angry woman who followed Pési. They hadn’t been able to explain in any more detail which woman they meant, but as the teacher spoke Berglind realized that she was putting two and two together and was about to come up with five. She thought Berglind was the angry woman the kids were afraid of. Instead of telling the teacher the whole story, Berglind thanked her politely and left. She knew from experience never to discuss the subject with anyone she didn’t know well. Enough people knew about their misfortune as it was, and it was good to hold onto the faint hope that there were still a few who knew nothing about it.
Pési was waiting in the cloakroom, having put his left foot in his right boot and vice versa, obviously happy to leave preschool and go home. Never mind Berglind herself – her son deserved better. So instead of finding an outlet for her disappointment, she had bent down and smiled at him. Let’s go home; we can stop off at the baker’s and buy some doughnuts. He had shaken his head and said that he wanted to go straight back; he wanted to go to his room. Berglind knew why: home was his only refuge from the relentless and inexplicable bullying. As long as he didn’t go to the window … One, two, three. For Pési’s sake she had to go inside and get ready. The smell seemed to be subsiding again; it still lingered, but it wasn’t as powerful as it had been just a moment before. Perhaps that was a sign that she wasn’t in danger, and Berglind made her decision before she started having second thoughts. She turned around quickly.
The motion made the belt came off her dressing gown, which swung open. She stood there, exposed, facing the empty garden. Apart from the raven’s corpse there was nothing to see; no one stood there shuffling from one foot to the other in the snow, making it crunch; no one was taking a deep breath, about to blow down her collar. She wrapped the dressing gown back around herself and took the first step in the direction of the garden door. When nothing happened her confidence grew, and before she knew it she was back at the house, past the dead bird, grabbing the door handle with a clammy palm. For the first time since they’d moved into the house the door wouldn’t budge, and Berglind’s courage diminished with every fumbling, unsuccessful attempt to open it. She didn’t dare breathe through her nose in case the stench of decay had risen again, and the turmoil inside her as she scrabbled at the handle made her oblivious to the wind; she had no idea whether it was as warm as breath, or ice-cold. Suddenly the door came unstuck and opened just enough for her to squeeze inside. Panting, and with a pounding heart, she rushed into the warmth as she heard the crunching of the snow again behind her. With one movement she managed to slide the door shut again but she had to use all her strength, making the door slam loudly. Then she stood there for a moment trying to catch her breath, making sure to keep her eyes from the floor so that she wouldn’t look into the garden.
Once her heartbeat had returned to something resembling normality and the veins on the back of her hand had stopped trying to pop out of her skin, she reached for the floor-length curtain and pulled it shut. What was going on? Should she do something, say something? She hardly knew anything about Magga really, and even less about her death; her ori-ginal theory, that the girl’s confused spirit was trying to babysit Pési and complete the last task it remembered from its earthly life, didn’t fit, because right now she was alone here and Pési was at preschool. So what did it want, then?
The air suddenly cooled and once again she was covered with goose bumps. The cold seemed to radiate from the sliding door, creeping up the curtain and drifting through the room like invisible smoke. Rage suddenly coursed through Berglind and she swept the curtain back, the expensive material ripping right up to the track as she did so. Under normal circumstances she would have yelped at the damage to the curtain, which now hung slackly from one hook; they almost certainly couldn’t afford to repair it and would have to look out into the murky garden for what remained of the winter. But for the moment this thought was far from Berglind’s mind; now she stared open-mouthed at the glass, which was covered, on the outside, with frost from top to bottom. Through it, it was as if she saw the shadow of someone outside, but then it disappeared. Traced on the frosty glass, she read: O81NN. Or was it OBINN? She couldn’t be certain. Neither meant anything to her and she retreated from the garden door without checking to see whether whoever had written it had left behind any tracks.
Chapter 16
Monday, 11 January 2010
The snow on the windowsill had melted in the unseasonal afternoon weather, but turned into ice again after sunset. Although it was a short distance to Thóra’s home from the law firm, she was apprehensive about driving on the ice and regretted having dropped Matthew off at home after their visit to Fanndís. She’d been expecting a client, which meant Matthew would have had to keep Bella company in reception for the duration, watching her perform her secretarial work with her usual good grace. It wasn’t as if there was a shortage of work to be done at home; they still had to find space for some of the things from the garage and Matthew had offered to sort it out, though he knew he would be working to a soundtrack of his father-in-law’s ceaseless whistling and his mother-in-law’s endless questions about whether or not he wanted some cod liver oil. Matthew had managed to adapt to many aspects of Icelandic society, but taking cod liver oil was the exception. Thóra allowed him to skip it – he had enough to put up with from her friends, who had all come up with the same idea when Matthew and Thóra were invited to dinner or a party: to ply him with cured shark and brennivín. Now that he’d done the rounds of her friends and gamely played the
naive foreigner, gaping in mock-astonishment at these Icelandic delicacies, the invitations had all but dried up, as though it was unclear what else could be done with such an exotic guest.
Before they parted, Matthew had told Thóra everything he’d heard from the daughter, Lena, in the driveway. She was adamant that the truth concerning her brother’s death should be brought to light, but feared her mother was trying to whitewash the image of the community residence, its staff and residents, damaging their investigation. She told him that her mother was fixated on everything being neat and pleasant and that she wore rose-tinted glasses. Of course it was impossible to judge whether either one of them was telling the truth; perhaps they’d had different experiences of the place, but Lena confirmed at least that the atmosphere at the home had been unpleasant, the staff quite unfriendly and the residents noticeably despondent. This was consistent with Jakob’s admittedly slightly odd account, but Lena hadn’t explained things to Matthew in any more detail, except to say that the residents didn’t seem to want to live there, and few of them seemed happy. Lena did recall Jakob from the residence, and according to Matthew had shrugged her shoulders when he asked whether she thought he was guilty. I don’t know, he seemed all right, you know? I never saw him start a fire or even heard him talk about doing it. She’d then tried to get Matthew to reveal why Jakob’s guilt was now in question, and seemed very interested in whether any of the residents or staff were suspects. She said the latter had been incredibly strict and were capable of anything, apart from some of the younger staff members who’d been OK. Matthew thought he had skilfully deflected the girl’s questions, while still encouraging her curiosity.
Another thing she’d mentioned was her parents’ differing opinions about Tryggvi. They’d argued about how best to take care of him and had had different expectations of his improvement. Her father had long ago given up all hope, but her mother had been very interested in his therapy and was always reading about the newest miracle treatments. About a year before Tryggvi had moved to the centre, her mother had found some charlatan, transparent to everyone but her, who claimed to be able to cure autism. That had been the last straw, and her father had put his foot down and declared that things had gone far enough. They’d had a blazing row after this man’s visit, which Lena didn’t describe in any detail other than to say that it had been awful, and that afterwards her mother had started to succumb completely to her conviction that though trapped behind the bars of autism, Tryggvi was of completely sound mind. At the end of the argument her father had demanded that Tryggvi be placed somewhere where specialists could take care of him without her emotional state affecting his treatment. Six months later Tryggvi was moved into his new apartment. Lena had wanted to make clear to Matthew that her father was a good man. He had made the decision out of concern for Tryggvi’s well-being, not a desire to get him out of the house. After her brother was moved away from home her parents’ relationship had improved greatly and Lena had felt hugely relieved. He wasn’t a bad person, but he wasn’t like, really alive, do you know what I mean? You couldn’t tell that he had any feelings, he was just like a robot. You know, badly programmed.
Lena hadn’t said any more, as far as Matthew could remember, but before he went into the house he asked whether Thóra could call her to ask her a few more questions. She mustn’t call me, Lena had told him, but she can send me a text and I’ll call her back. I really don’t want my mother to know that I’m talking to you. She can be so weird. Thóra wasn’t sure whether she’d get in touch with the girl; she still had so many other people to speak to and she knew from personal experience that teenagers’ viewpoints could be coloured by strong emotions. Of course, it could be that Lena was the only one who would speak to her completely honestly. Whatever the case, Thóra didn’t need to make a decision about it tonight. It could wait.
After meeting her client, Thóra contacted the relatives of some of the other residents. She’d been apprehensive about these phone calls and had put off making them, but now that she’d visited Fanndís there was no sense waiting. There was a danger that Fanndís would get in touch with them before she did, since it seemed likely that the parents had all got to know each other while their children were living under the same roof, and had kept in touch in the wake of their shared tragedy. Ideally Thóra’s calls would catch the relatives off-guard. People replied differently if they’d already mentally prepared themselves, even if it was only to make sure they came across satisfactorily.
No one seemed to have known about her or to have expected her to call. She actually spent a large part of each conversation rattling off the same spiel about the reason for her call, and convincing people that her aim wasn’t to free a guilty man but an innocent one, but she’d expected that. Few parents would be overjoyed to hear from the lawyer of a man believed to have killed their son or daughter, and Thóra was actually surprised she’d been able to hold a conversation with relatives who were still grieving. Perhaps it was because Jakob had been acquitted of criminal charges, even though this was because he was unfit for trial.
Thóra had her work cut out digging up the right names of the victims’ parents, because it transpired few of them had been questioned by the police or called as witnesses in court. But with the help of the obituaries she eventually managed to make a list of the requisite names. However, no obituaries appeared to have been written about Natan Úlfheiðarson, and of the three Úlfheiðars in the phone directory, only two were old enough for him to have been their son. In the end, Thóra found his mother by Googling the boy’s name. Her search brought up a blog to which Natan’s aunt had uploaded photos of a family reunion, and in one of them Natan, his mother, and his maternal uncle were named in the caption. Thóra spent some time looking closely at the young man in the photo, as well as at his mother. She couldn’t escape the thought that perhaps this was a picture of the man who had had sex with Lísa, although in the photo he looked as innocent as could be. He and his mother sat at a cloth-covered table with white coffee cups and matching plates in front of them. Natan’s mother, Úlfheiður, appeared slightly older than Thóra, and if the photo was anything to go by, she was quite a solemn person. Her brother didn’t seem any livelier; neither of them looked like the life and soul of the party, and the empty chairs on either side of them seemed to confirm this. Perhaps the entire family was cast from the same mould.
Natan was more difficult to work out than his mother and uncle. The helmet on his head made him look a bit odd, even before you got to the huge grin that stretched from ear to ear – in marked contrast to his tablemates – or noticed that he only had one eye open. Thóra’s understanding of epilepsy was limited, but the helmet was probably meant to protect his head if he suffered a seizure. The young man’s expression suggested that he was also developmentally impaired, either as part and parcel of his epilepsy or yet another burden that he’d been born with. Of course it was also possible that the photographer had told a joke the boy found hilarious, then had clicked the shutter at an unfortunate moment. Natan’s jolliness was incongruous, anyway, against the sadness on his mother’s and uncle’s faces.
Finally Thóra had drawn up a list containing the phone numbers and addresses of the relatives of the four residents who’d died in addition to Tryggvi. In one case it appeared that the parents were divorced, since the mother and father of Sigríður Herdís Logadóttir lived in separate locations.
The overwhelming feeling she experienced once she’d called everyone on the list was fatigue. Fatigue and sadness, though she wasn’t sure why since none of the parents had complained about either their lot or that of their child, and they all seemed to be bearing up remarkably well. Their stories of painful struggles with the system as they sought decent housing for their child were without exception told with a complete lack of self-pity, and Thóra wondered whether rejection and obstacles strengthened people and helped them to deal with things more stoically. Úlfheiður, Natan’s mother, was the only one who’d sounded rather
cold. The photograph did indeed appear to have captured her character rather well. She didn’t seem bothered that the wrong man might have been held responsible for her son’s death, leaving the guilty party still on the loose. She described her son’s illness to Thóra as if reading the text off a sheet of paper, betraying no emotion, but seemed happy to speak at length about him. At first Natan had appeared normal, but before he’d even left the maternity ward he had started having seizures and had remained behind in hospital when she went home. The nerve cells in his brain didn’t work as they should have; they were overactive, according to his mother, and he was among those unlucky epileptics for whom medication wasn’t very effective. He then underwent an operation, but it was unsuccessful, leaving him with the possibility of suffering a seizure at any time. He lost the sight in one eye when he was eight, after hitting his face on the edge of a table during a fit.
By this point in her story the woman sounded tired of going over it all again. She began to talk faster, telling Thóra how each fit had further damaged Natan’s brain, and by the last one he’d been in a very bad way. Since Úlfheiður was a single parent and worked day and night to make ends meet, she couldn’t afford to have him at home any longer, especially as the economy declined. He was subsequently moved to a facility for seriously disabled children, coming home only for occasional overnight stays, as well as two weeks in the summer. He’d lived there for around fifteen years, at which point he’d passed the age limit for that home, had moved to the new residence and died. Although Úlfheiður’s account seemed callous, Thóra doubted that she’d always been like that; ori-ginally she must surely have been besotted with her child, like other mothers were. Obviously her circumstances had forced her to let go of her son and along the way her soul must have got damaged. Unless she was just naturally cold-hearted.
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