The Mist

by Ragnar Jónasson

  ‘And the storm? When did that hit?’

  ‘The weather was pretty bad during Advent – with a heavy snowfall but no actual blizzard. It was manageable, you know. Then a severe storm blew up at around the same time as the electricity went.’

  ‘Could anyone have reached this place on foot in those conditions?’

  ‘No, I’m absolutely sure they couldn’t,’ he said with conviction. ‘It would have been impossible. There was an emergency storm warning. The wind was so strong you could barely stand up outside and there was a total white-out – zero visibility.’

  ‘And it lasted until the twenty-sixth, you say? That’s when the power came back on?’

  ‘Thereabouts, yes.’

  ‘So their visitor must have arrived by the twenty-third at the latest.’

  ‘Yes, either then or after Christmas.’

  ‘Hardly, since they were already dead by then. Their Christmas presents hadn’t been opened.’

  ‘Oh, yes, right. Now you mention it,’ he said, wrongfooted.

  ‘Could we drive back now?’ she asked.

  ‘Back? But your colleagues haven’t finished.’

  ‘They’ll be fine. We’ll pick them up later.’

  ‘Where do you want to go?’ he asked.

  ‘Just to the point our mysterious visitor could have reached in the days before Christmas. To where he’d have been forced to leave his car.’

  ‘OK, yes, sure, we can drive there. Though I didn’t notice any car by the road.’

  ‘We weren’t specifically looking, though.’

  ‘But surely it wouldn’t still be there? He’d have made his getaway.’

  ‘Maybe. But, who knows, there might be signs that a vehicle was parked there. Frozen ruts under the snow, for example.’

  ‘True,’ he said. ‘OK. I’ll just go and tell the boys where we’re going.’

  They drove for a while without speaking. Jens had obviously learned his lesson and Hulda had nothing to say to him. Nevertheless, after a few minutes she began to find the silence burdensome. The moment her attention wandered, Dimma would be there, waiting. Hulda had failed her. She had realized too late. The knowledge was searing, agonizing. She could feel herself developing a splitting headache as her daughter’s name echoed louder and louder in her mind, until, unable to bear it any longer, she had to say something.

  ‘Have … have you lived here long?’

  ‘What, me? Never lived anywhere else. You get the hang of village life; it’s addictive, really. There’s always something to keep you occupied, you know – hobbies, and so on …’

  From his tone, Hulda gathered that he was waiting for her to ask him more about his hobbies. She supposed it could do no harm to oblige him.

  ‘Oh, I see, like what, exactly?’

  ‘Well, music, obviously.’

  ‘Er, obviously?’

  ‘Yes, you know, my song.’

  She hadn’t a clue what he was talking about but didn’t like to ask.

  Seeing her puzzlement, he looked embarrassed. ‘Oh, sorry, I thought maybe you’d know it. Most people do, though I say so myself.’ He mentioned a popular hit from the early seventies, a song Hulda was certainly familiar with.

  ‘Was that you?’

  ‘Indeed it was – the sins of my youth, and all that. I was the original one-hit wonder. But people are still always asking me to sing it.’ He laughed. ‘On the unlikeliest occasions. And at most get-togethers, you know. I usually give in – belt it out and strum along on the guitar.’

  Looking at the stout, middle-aged man beside her, Hulda had trouble picturing him as a pop star. To her extreme annoyance, the chorus was now stuck in her head.

  ‘I’ve got a sort of deal going with the restaurant in the village too. Well, restaurant’s putting it a bit strong, it’s more of a glorified petrol-station café really, where people go if they want a burger and chips, that sort of thing. If there’s a good crowd in, I sometimes sing for the diners and, in return, I get a free meal – singing for my supper, you know!’ He chuckled. ‘No doubt you’ll pop in there yourself when you get a moment.’

  Silence descended again after the confessions of the one-time pop star. Hulda contemplated the inhospitable landscape. The sky was threatening more snow. However picturesque the mountains and valley looked in their winter costume, she would never have dreamt of living out here. It might be a good area for hiking in summer, though.

  It occurred to her that she hadn’t been hiking in a long time. Perhaps that’s what she needed: to head into the mountains and heal her wounded spirits in the great outdoors instead of being cooped up at home or working herself into the ground. There was no chance of that now, though. She needed to solve this case first, preferably with distinction.

  Recalling a remark the inspector had made earlier, Hulda said: ‘You mentioned that no one had been able to get hold of them on the phone, which was why you decided to come up here yourself to check on them. Was their phone working, did you happen to notice?’

  ‘No, it was dead when I tried to ring them, as if there was something wrong with the phone or the line. But I forgot to check if there was a dialling tone while I was at the house.’

  ‘Could you look into it later?’

  ‘Of course, will do.’

  ‘This is where the road usually gets blocked.’ The inspector pulled up and they both got out of the car.

  Hulda turned in a slow circle, taking in their surroundings.

  ‘There, look,’ she said after a moment, pointing off to one side. ‘There’s a vehicle of some kind. Looks like a big four-wheel drive.’ The car was parked some way from the road.

  ‘Yes, damn it, you’re right. I didn’t notice it before. The driver’s taken a strange route, but … well, now you mention it … maybe …’

  ‘Maybe what?’ Hulda asked impatiently.

  ‘Maybe it’s understandable. I’ve often driven this way in winter. The road usually gets closed by heavy drifting at this point and they don’t bother to plough any further. But a stranger to the area might make the mistake of thinking they could get round the blockage if they took a detour to the left. You can drive off the road here, if you’ve got the right sort of vehicle, because the ground is usually swept fairly bare by the wind. But it’s deceptive. Our man would soon have got into trouble, I can swear to that. He’d have been stuck fast before he knew it.’

  They both set off at a smart pace over the firm snow-crust towards the car. It was white, which had made it all the harder to see against the snowy backdrop, and Hulda couldn’t immediately recognize the make, not from a distance. The inspector was quicker.

  ‘Looks like a Mitsubishi. I’ve always wanted one of those myself.’

  Hulda was just reflecting that she was quite happy with her Skoda when she did a double-take and, glancing at the inspector, saw that he had been struck by the same thought, almost in the same instant.

  ‘What the hell!’ he said. ‘It can’t be …’

  ‘A white Mitsubishi off-roader. My God!’ Of course, they would have to confirm that it was the right licence number, but it couldn’t be a coincidence.

  ‘My God!’ Hulda repeated. ‘That’s the very last thing I was expecting.’

  IV

  For obvious reasons, Hulda had never got round to returning the phone message from the parents of the missing girl on Christmas Day. She hadn’t liked to disturb them that morning and at midday she had gone home, to be confronted by a scene of such unspeakable horror that her world had been turned upside down and she felt as if her life had effectively ended.

  After the tragedy, it had naturally fallen to someone else to ring Unnur’s parents back, if anyone had ever actually bothered. Later, though, when she started paying attention to the news again, Hulda guessed what the phone call had been about. It had transpired that Unnur’s father had gone missing just before Christmas, without a word to his wife. His car had gone too. Hulda had been listening to the news in the distracted way she did
everything these days, but this had caught her attention, since it had been her case. The father’s disappearance, following that of his daughter, had caused quite a stir. All the evidence suggested that he had deliberately walked out. There was no reason to suspect foul play and no other obvious explanation. Hulda had drawn her own conclusions and assumed that her colleagues had done the same: the only logical explanation was that the father had been responsible for his daughter’s death and that, unable to live with what he had done, he had taken his own life. The press hadn’t said this in as many words but speculation about the case had been quietly allowed to die down, as if by consensus that this was a family tragedy and it would be inappropriate to delve too deeply.

  The police investigation had drawn a complete blank, as if the man had vanished off the face of the earth. Hulda had guessed he’d probably driven his car off a cliff, but, as she’d been on compassionate leave at the time, she hadn’t been party to the details of the case. At any rate, nothing had been seen or heard of him since.

  Until now.

  The father had driven off in a white Mitsubishi.

  And now here they were, in the middle of nowhere, confronted with a car of that description.

  ‘It has to be the right vehicle, doesn’t it?’ Hulda asked aloud, though she already knew the answer.

  ‘Yes, it has to be. I got orders just after Christmas to keep an eye out for a white Mitsubishi – like all the other police stations in the country. I remember doing a circuit of the village, just in case, but I didn’t spot anything and nothing I’d heard led me to expect the man to turn up on my patch. I’ve had no reason to come out this way until now … What on earth could he have been doing out here?’

  ‘Well, that’s far from clear, but I suppose it could –’

  The inspector broke in: ‘It has to be connected to his daughter, doesn’t it?’

  Hulda stood still, staring at the car.

  What in God’s name had Unnur’s father been doing here?

  ‘Yes, I think it must be,’ she said at last.

  ‘But she went missing on the other side of the country …’

  ‘Yes, she was last heard of just outside Selfoss, which is certainly a long way from here … I really don’t understand this.’

  ‘Me neither … And now I’m bound to get a rap over the knuckles for not having combed the area better at the time,’ said Jens gloomily, more to himself than to Hulda.

  She didn’t have the patience to reassure him. Her mind was entirely focused on the case at hand. Or cases, perhaps? Because surely this must constitute a proper lead at last in relation to Unnur’s disappearance?

  She scraped the snow off the windows and peered into the car, careful not to touch anything. Others would need to carry out a proper examination. But she was at least able to satisfy herself that there was no one inside. And there was nothing immediately obvious that could shed light on what had happened.

  ‘Do you think he could have been with the couple over Christmas?’ the inspector asked eventually.

  Hulda thought about it. ‘It has to be a possibility, though I can’t begin to imagine why. But no one would have had any reason to come out this way, would they, except to visit them?’

  ‘No, absolutely none. That would suggest that he walked from here to the farm. It’s quite a hike, but not too difficult, as long as the visibility’s OK.’

  ‘Even if you don’t know the area?’

  ‘Yes, I’d say so. The road goes straight up to the head of the valley from here.’

  ‘But it would be easy to go astray if there was a blizzard, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘I should think so. There aren’t many landmarks to help you if you wander off the road, and there are plenty of old stories about travellers dying of exposure in these parts. Ghost stories, and so on. I wouldn’t want to be caught here on foot myself if a storm blew up, I can tell you.’

  Hulda started walking back towards the police car, deep in thought, and the inspector followed.

  She hauled herself up into the passenger seat and, once the inspector was behind the wheel, she said: ‘The man has to be around here somewhere … assuming this is his car. And I think we’ve pretty much established that he’s not at the farm, don’t you agree?’

  ‘He can’t possibly be there,’ Jens confirmed, then added: ‘Do you think he murdered the couple?’

  Hulda didn’t say anything for a moment. It was the only logical conclusion and yet she couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud. She’d met the man several times in connection with Unnur’s disappearance and had liked him. He’d come across as a polite, personable lawyer, a concerned father. And yet … there had been something in his manner that had made Hulda uneasy; she had sensed that in certain circumstances he might be capable of anything, that he was unpredictable. Could he in fact have murdered his daughter and then the couple on the farm? But why? It didn’t make sense, didn’t make sense at all …

  ‘I don’t think we can rule it out,’ she said at last. ‘That he’s responsible for what happened here at Christmas, I mean.’

  ‘Of course, there’s always a chance …’ Jens said slowly, pondering. Hulda waited impatiently for him to finish the sentence: ‘… a chance he’s at the other house.’

  ‘The one we drove past earlier?’

  ‘Yes, no one lives there.’

  ‘And what … just left his car sitting here all this time?’

  ‘No, well, I don’t know.’

  Although Hulda wasn’t convinced, it would be worth making absolutely sure.

  ‘Shall we drive over and check it out?’ the inspector asked hesitantly. Hulda was pleased to find him submitting so completely to her authority.

  ‘Yes, let’s do that,’ she said firmly.

  V

  The blue paint was weathered on the walls and roof, and even under the quilt of snow it was apparent that the garden around the house had been left to run wild. When Hulda and the inspector tried the front door they found it unlocked, so there was nothing to stop them pushing it open and stepping inside.

  There was no sign that anyone had been there recently, though the house was still fully furnished, with a sofa and armchairs in the sitting room, and a table and crockery in the kitchen, as if the last occupant had been intending to come back.

  ‘There’s only a single storey, but I think there’s a cellar as well,’ said Jens. ‘I’ll take a quick look down there, but it seems pretty clear to me that he can’t have been here.’

  Hulda nodded without speaking, and Jens vanished from view.

  There was an odd atmosphere in this house, with its mute witnesses to the past, to a life someone had lived there not that long ago, yet not that recently either. A thick layer of dust coated all the surfaces. Hulda wandered from room to room and found that they all told the same story. There was a single bed in the bedroom, but no personal items. It could have been a guesthouse, waiting for visitors. She went back into the kitchen and opened the fridge, but it was empty and unplugged. When she pressed the light switch by the kitchen door, to her surprise, the bulb came on. The radiators turned out to be lukewarm as well, not enough to heat the house so you would notice but enough presumably to stop the pipes from freezing while the place was unoccupied. Clearly, this was a house with a history, perhaps an interesting one, but any curiosity she felt about that would have to wait. For the moment, the priority was to find out what had happened to the couple on the neighbouring farm and, no less important, what had become of Unnur’s father, the lawyer Haukur Leó, known to his friends and family as Leó.

  After they had found the abandoned Mitsubishi, Jens had radioed from the police car to get confirmation that it was indeed the vehicle the police had been searching for. The discovery had turned the whole case upside down – both cases, in fact: the tragic events at the farm, on the one hand, and the disappearance of Unnur and her father on the other. It stood to reason that there had to be a link, if only Hulda could work it out.

  �
�The cellar was locked, but I took the liberty of forcing the door,’ Jens told her. ‘It wasn’t very difficult. I’ll see that it’s repaired later.’

  ‘Did you find anything?’

  The inspector shook his head. ‘Not a thing. Where the hell is this guy?’

  ‘We’ll have to organize a search,’ Hulda said, aware that time was working against them. The trail had long gone cold and she would have to do everything in her power to blow life back into any faint embers that could possibly light her way. Her primary concern, though, was to find Unnur, the girl she’d been searching for since the autumn. If there was any hope, however faint, that she could still be alive, Hulda had to save her.

  Or at least do her level best.

  VI

  Unnur didn’t make it any further than Kirkjubæjarklaustur that first day.

  This was exactly how her journey was meant to be, a mixture of uncertainty and adventure. But she had no particular desire to get stuck in this quiet little south Iceland town, located in the green oasis between the two great icecaps of Mýrdalsjökull and Vatnajökull. She was after a different kind of experience, one which involved seeking out remote places and dramatic scenery, not holing up in a town or village. At present she was sitting in a small café attached to a petrol station.

  The driver of the BMW who had picked her up hadn’t been going any further for the moment. He had turned out to be a foreigner, a friendly, middle-aged German office worker who had long dreamt of visiting Iceland. They had chatted all the way. Since she loved meeting new people and gaining an insight into their lives, she was very satisfied with her journey so far.

  The question was, where next?

  She thought she’d take the bus but didn’t know where to yet, except that it would have to be east. She didn’t want to retrace her route west towards Selfoss and Reykjavík as it would feel too much like a backward step, like throwing in the towel. Instead, she felt compelled to go on, into the unknown.