Strange Shores

by Arnaldur Indridason

  They resume their journey, their father in front, Erlendur in the middle and Bergur bringing up the rear, fiddling with the little car inside his glove and trying to keep up. Their father sets a steady pace, lifting his binoculars from time to time and heading first one way, then another. Before they know it they have reached the high moors. To a half-comprehending child’s eye, everything then happens very fast. Events arrange themselves into a series of brief snapshots. Their father glances at the sky. Beggi is lagging behind. Snow has been falling for some time but now heavy, black storm clouds pile up with alarming speed over the mountains. The sky grows dark. Their legs sink into the snow and Erlendur, who has paid scant attention to the weather, now feels a cold breath of wind on his cheek. He can no longer see down to Eskifjördur Fjord through the thickly falling flakes. Bergur is some distance behind and Erlendur calls out to him but he doesn’t hear. Erlendur goes back to fetch him and loses sight of their father when out of nowhere a blizzard strikes, reducing visibility to zero. He shouts again to Bergur, who has fallen over in the snow, then yells his father’s name, but receives no answer.

  Beggi gets up again but drops his glove which is immediately snatched away by the wind. He starts off after it with Erlendur in pursuit. The glove is lost in an instant in the blinding snow but they do not give up the chase. Erlendur comes close to losing Bergur who is oblivious to everything but his glove. Their mother has taught them to take good care of their clothes. He grabs hold of Bergur’s jacket to slow him down. Bergur is holding the toy car in his bare, raw hand and stops to put it in his pocket.

  ‘I want my mitten!’ His cry is whipped away by the wind.

  ‘We’ll find it later,’ Erlendur tells him.

  He has to yell to make Beggi hear. He heads back in the direction where he thinks he left his father. Running after the glove like that has muddled him, but he is fairly sure he knows the way. It is terribly difficult to make any headway against the wind and freezing pellets that sting his face. The force seems to intensify with every step he takes until he can scarcely open his eyes. He doesn’t seem to be moving at all and can see nothing but whiteness. Everything happened so rapidly that he hasn’t even had time to feel frightened. It’s a comfort to know his father is nearby. He shouts and Beggi joins in, but there is no reply.

  He no longer knows which direction to take, can’t tell if he is going up or down. He believes he is climbing towards where he last saw his father, but perhaps this is wrong? Perhaps he shouldn’t look for him at all but try to get back to the farm, concentrate on saving Beggi and himself?

  He begins to feel afraid now and Beggi senses it. ‘Will we be all right, Lendi?’ he asks. He has to shout into his older brother’s ear.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Erlendur reassures him. ‘We’ll be home soon.’

  He takes off one of his own gloves, intending to give it to Beggi, but fumbles and drops it, and it disappears in the storm. Beggi takes hold of his hand.

  Erlendur doesn’t have a clue where he is going. He hopes he is heading downhill but is too disorientated to be certain. He tries to persuade himself that the weather will improve once they get low enough. Beggi keeps tripping over in the snow, slowing them down, but it doesn’t cross Erlendur’s mind to let go of his hand. Their fingers are numb with cold, yet Erlendur takes care not to lose his grip on his brother.

  The blizzard pummels them from all sides, buffeting them to and fro, knocking them down into the snow and making it ever harder to stand up again. They can’t even see their hands in front of their faces and before long both boys are exhausted and freezing. Erlendur keeps hoping they will bump into their father, but in vain, and they are making no progress in descending to the farmlands.

  Then it happens. He can no longer feel Beggi’s hand in his own frozen one, as if they had been parted some time ago without his noticing. His fingers are locked in the grip he had on his brother, but he is holding thin air. Turning round, he tries to run back but stumbles into a drift. Rising, he yells Beggi’s name over and over, but is knocked down again, still shouting and screaming. He is weeping now and the tears freeze on his cheeks.

  Utterly bewildered, he squats in the snow, overwhelmed with fear for himself, for his father but most of all for Beggi. He feels it is somehow his fault that Beggi ever came with them on this journey, and can’t shake off the thought that if he hadn’t interfered, Beggi would have stayed at home.

  The roar of the storm has intensified by the time Erlendur gets up on hands and knees and begins to crawl, rather than walk, confused and aimless. He has read about people caught in bad weather and knows that an important survival technique is to dig yourself into a drift and wait for the worst to pass. And you must on no account fall asleep in the snow because if you do you may never wake up again. But he can’t bear to abandon his search for Beggi. He hopes fervently that Beggi has managed to get down from the moors and is on his way home or even now in their mother’s arms. When he reaches Bakkasel, no doubt Beggi will come to meet him with their father, and everything will be all right when their mother flings her arms around him. He’s worried about her, knowing she must be desperately anxious.

  He has lost all sense of time. It feels as if night fell hours ago. His strength is rapidly flagging. Yet refusing to give up, he toils on through the falling snow, half crawling, half walking, in the feeble hope that he is heading in the right direction. The cold pierces his clothes but his teeth have ceased their chattering and the involuntary shivering that had seized his whole body has also stopped by the time he finally topples headlong and doesn’t move again.

  He falls asleep the moment he hits the snow.

  The last thing he remembers is Beggi battling through the storm, placing all his trust in his big brother.

  ‘Don’t lose me,’ Beggi had shouted. ‘You mustn’t lose me.’

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ he had said in reply.

  It’ll be all right.

  55

  ON HIS LAST morning at Bakkasel he woke up after a bad night’s sleep, unable to feel his extremities, so he hurried out to the car and switched on the heater. He had brought the Thermos and cigarettes with him and once he had warmed up a little, he poured coffee into the lid of the flask and lit up. He stayed there until he had got the blood back into his limbs. The box containing the bones lay beside him on the passenger seat. Daníel had given it to him in parting, saying he had no idea what to do with all his father’s junk and repeating that it would be best to set fire to the garage. Erlendur had thanked him and brought the bones back to the croft.

  Judging by the label on the lid, Daníel senior had stumbled upon them while walking across the north flank of Hardskafi, a considerable distance from the spot where Erlendur had been found in a state close to death. Bergur must have strayed further north than anyone would have believed possible – assuming these were his brother’s remains. But they weren’t necessarily proof that he died on the mountain. The remains could have arrived there in the mouth of a fox, for example. The bones themselves couldn’t tell Erlendur much, lying in a cardboard box in a garage in Seydisfjördur, but it was enough. He was convinced they were the chin and cheekbone of a child, and immediately felt a powerful intuition that they could only belong to his brother.

  During the night he had considered sending them off for tests. He could have them dated and get an expert opinion on how long they had been at the mercy of the elements. But the process would take time and it was uncertain what the results would show. He came to the conclusion that he didn’t need the help of science. He was sure in his own mind, and soon an idea began to form about what he should do with the bones.

  Having finished the coffee and smoked two cigarettes, Erlendur started the car and drove slowly away from Bakkasel along the track to the Eskifjördur road, then headed in the direction of the village. Turning off just before it, he parked by the gate of the graveyard. Once there he remained in the car for a while with the engine running, still savouring the blast of w
arm air from the heater. He picked up the box, opened it and inspected the two bones. If there had been any more, surely Daníel would have picked them up too? Erlendur had been plagued by such questions all night. He knew he would have to climb the north flank of the mountain, not necessarily in search of further remains, as he had no idea where the bones had been found or how they had got there. No, he must go there for other reasons.

  He stepped out of the car, box in hand, and fetched the spade from the boot. He wouldn’t need to dig nearly as deep this time, merely scratch the surface of his mother’s grave.

  He found his parents’ plot and stood there in the raw air, thinking about the years that had passed since the accident, since they had lived in the east. His mother had coped well with the bustle and traffic when they moved to Reykjavík, but his father had never been happy, finding the city brash, noisy and alien. At the time new suburbs had been springing up almost overnight. These were now old and established, yet districts were forever being added to the city to cater for incomers from the countryside, who didn’t all adapt easily to their new circumstances. And so the years passed, time crawling on inexorably into a future that no one from the obsolete past would recognise.

  Like his father, Erlendur had never settled into the new environment, never understood what he was doing there or adjusted properly. All he knew was that somewhere on his journey through life time had come to a standstill, and he had never managed to wind the mechanism up again. When he stood there with the bones in his hands, he had experienced no elation, no sense that his suffering was at last over and he had received answers to the questions that had dogged him ever since his brother’s disappearance. Any hope of happiness was long forgotten.

  Erlendur raised his eyes to the mountains. Snow was falling on their slopes.

  He shifted his gaze to the cemetery, to the rows of headstones and crosses. Born. Died. Buried. Beloved wife. Blessed be your memory. Rest in peace. Death above and all around.

  Death in a small box.

  Looking again at the bones, he knew in his heart that he had recovered two tiny fragments of his brother’s remains. For years he had been trying to envisage how he would react if he ever found himself in this position. Now an answer of sorts was at hand. But he felt numb. Empty. These little fragments of bone couldn’t satisfy his questions. It was impossible to say exactly where his brother had died and it would always be a mystery how his bones had ended up on the northern slopes of Hardskafi. Nothing would alter the fact that he had died in a blizzard at the age of eight. The discovery of his bones brought Erlendur no fresh insights. It was merely confirmation of what he already knew. After all these years, however, it did bring some small sense of closure, however paltry. What remained was a feeling of emptiness more desolate than anything he had ever experienced.

  His gaze wandered among the graves and crosses, and somewhere in his mind a year and date registered as familiar, as significant. He went back over the inscriptions, trying to work out which was nagging at his memory. The year 1942 caught his eye.

  He walked over to the headstone of weathered granite that projected a metre above the snow. It turned out to be the year that a woman called Thórhildur Vilhjálmsdóttir had died. She had been born in 1850. Erlendur did some quick mental arithmetic. She had been ninety-one when she passed away. She had been born on 7 September in the mid-nineteenth century and died on 14 January 1942, in the middle of the Second World War.

  He considered the date again. She had died on 14 January in the year Matthildur went missing. Thórhildur had died a week before the storm in which the British servicemen came to grief. A week before Matthildur vanished.

  He frowned down at the woman’s grave. No doubt the stone had been erected some time after her death, maybe years or even decades later. It was impossible to tell. But one could be fairly confident that not much more than a week would have elapsed between her death and funeral. The storm of 21 January might have occasioned a delay but it was also possible that Thórhildur had been buried before it struck.

  Erlendur stood, lost in thought, concentrating on the date. January 1942. He considered the storm that had been raging, and Matthildur’s death, and Ezra. But most of all he focused on Jakob and the options that would have been available to him. He realised that he would need to consult a copy of the parish register.

  After receiving directions to the vicar’s house from the staff at the petrol station, he drove straight round and rang the doorbell. A middle-aged woman answered and he asked to see the vicar. The woman explained that he had gone on a short trip to Reykjavík but would be back in a couple of days.

  ‘Do you know where I could get hold of the parish registers dating back to the Second World War?’ he asked, making an effort to hide his impatience.

  ‘Parish registers?’ repeated the woman. ‘I’m afraid I don’t. You mean the old ones? I expect they’re kept at the Regional Museum in Egilsstadir. That would be my guess. Though no doubt my husband Rúnar could help you if he was here.’

  Erlendur thanked her, drove back to the petrol station and borrowed their phone to ring the museum. He hadn’t charged his mobile once since arriving in the east. He was informed that the Eskifjördur parish registers were indeed in their archives and he was welcome to consult them if he wished. He had noted down Thórhildur’s dates before leaving the graveyard, so he got back in his car and made the now familiar journey up the Fagridalur Valley to Egilsstadir.

  When he asked to see the Eskifjördur church records dating back to the war, the museum curator, who turned out to be the man who had answered the phone, couldn’t have been more obliging. Having shown Erlendur to a table where he could peruse the ledger at his leisure, he went and fetched it.

  Erlendur turned the pages until he reached the beginning of 1942. There had only been the one funeral between New Year and March. He recalled Ezra telling him that he had encountered Jakob in the cemetery in March, two months after Matthildur went missing, and that he had been digging a grave at the time.

  Thórhildur had been buried on 23 January, two days after the storm. Nine days after she had passed away.

  The vicar’s brief, cryptic marginal note came as no surprise to Erlendur.

  Gr. d. by Jak. R.

  Grave dug by Jakob Ragnarsson.

  56

  TWO HOURS LATER he was standing beside Thórhildur Vilhjálmsdóttir’s grave again. He had already dug up one coffin recently and was not at all sure he wanted to repeat the experience, but he could not confirm his suspicions by any other method. He was feeling fairly certain of his theory after turning the matter over in his mind all the way back from Egilsstadir.

  This time, however, he didn’t believe he would need to dig as far to find the evidence. It was unlikely he would have to disinter Thórhildur’s coffin or excavate underneath it. Jakob would presumably have taken the easiest course, especially as he wouldn’t have had much time in which to act. In any case, there would have been little risk that anyone would ever want to re-examine the body of a woman in her nineties. The longer Erlendur stood over her grave, the more convinced he became that he would need to dig no more than a metre to find what he sought.

  The light was already failing, so he decided to wait until it was fully dark. He got back into the car, switched on the heater and settled down to listen to a radio station playing modern jazz that he didn’t recognise but found relaxing. He tried to unwind, tried to stop himself brooding on Ezra, Matthildur and Jakob, on his brother and the box of bones, and all that he had discovered during his few days’ leave in the East Fjords. He hadn’t thought about home once, so preoccupied had he been with his investigation. The case had gnawed at him for years. In fact, he had toyed with the idea of looking into Matthildur’s disappearance before now, but it was that chance encounter with Bóas on the moor that had provided the impetus. He hadn’t really needed to think twice before going to visit Hrund. He longed to know more. To find out why. Someone had told him it didn’t matter any more,
that the passing years and time’s destructive power had erased all need for any investigation. It would change nothing; it only had relevance for a handful of people now. This was true up to a point. There was no danger: only one person had any interests to protect. But Erlendur knew better. When a loved one went missing time changed nothing. Admittedly, it dulled the pain, but by the same token the loss became a lifelong companion for those who survived, making the grief keener and deeper in a way he couldn’t explain.

  His thoughts turned to his daughter and their last meeting, when she said she had forgiven him for all the years of neglect since he divorced her mother. And his son, who never made any demands on him, and Valgerdur who simply tried to make his life easier. And Marion Briem who had died such a lonely death. His colleagues too, Elínborg and Sigurdur Óli. The cases they had investigated, the years they had worked together.

  Night fell rapidly and when he felt it was dark enough to enter the cemetery with lantern and spade, he stepped out of the car. As he made his way towards Thórhildur’s grave, he thanked his lucky stars that there was so little traffic in this part of the village. Putting down the gaslight, he began to shovel snow from the plot, then sliced off a sizeable patch of turf to uncover the bare earth.

  He worked methodically. The question of what to say if he was caught in the act gave him a moment’s pause but no more. He could always wave his police ID if all else failed. His superiors would not look kindly on a private investigation of this kind but at least his intentions were good. All he was doing was solving an old crime. That was why he had permitted himself to disinter Jakob and was now hacking his way into Thórhildur’s grave.

  Placing the lantern nearby, he dug carefully but was not aware of any hindrance. He picked up the light and shone it into the hole but could see nothing unusual. He stretched his back.