The Mist

by Ragnar Jónasson

  XIII

  Unnur was sitting in her room in the attic. It was late and night had fallen outside; the darkness was depressingly quick to return at this time of year after being absent all summer. She was still labouring away on her book and, although she wasn’t entirely sure that it was going in the direction she wanted, she reassured herself that she could always sort it out later. She had no intention of letting anyone read it yet, and anyway, there were only the two of them here. Erla’s husband, Einar, was still away in Reykjavík.

  ‘Anna,’ Unnur heard Erla call from the sitting room. ‘Anna, the coffee’s ready.’

  Unnur was a little disconcerted. Had a visitor arrived without her noticing?

  ‘Anna?’ Erla called again, a little louder.

  Unnur got up from the table to go downstairs, but hesitated. Maybe she should just stay where she was and ignore this, because she could have sworn there was no one else in the house.

  Erla called again: ‘Anna, are you coming?’

  Unnur left her room and went downstairs. When she reached the bottom step, she came face to face with Erla.

  ‘What were you doing up there?’ Erla asked with a puzzled smile. ‘Why weren’t you in your room?’ She was holding a cup of coffee and appeared perfectly normal.

  Unnur felt a prickle of fear down her spine.

  ‘Erla … I …’

  ‘Never mind, come and have some cake. Maybe we could play a game of cards? I’ve got a bottle of Coke in the fridge too. We should finish it up before your father gets home. It’s not good for his waistline.’ Again, that smile.

  XIV

  Unnur had given up trying to break out of the room, temporarily, at least. She was terrified of Erla: there was a weird, unstable glint in her eyes that suggested she might be capable of anything. For some inexplicable reason, Erla kept calling her Anna and freaked out every time Unnur tried to explain to her that she didn’t know who Anna was; her name was Unnur and she was just a girl from Gardabær doing a trip around Iceland.

  And then one morning Unnur had woken up to hear the door of her room being locked from the outside.

  ‘Anna, I can’t let you leave,’ Erla had said again and again.

  Unnur was clinging to the hope that Einar would save her, assuming he actually existed. Until he got back, she reckoned it would be best to placate Erla. She was allowed to eat and go to the toilet, but Erla had taken to carrying a knife in order to force her back to her room before locking her in again.

  It would be an understatement to say that this wasn’t what Unnur had planned. Her adventure of a lifetime had turned into a horror film.

  But Unnur was naturally resilient and had no intention of letting this break her down. She had to stay strong. She wrote furiously and her novel was really getting somewhere. With innate optimism, she kept telling herself that everything would turn out all right in the end, but underneath, she was terrified. It had occurred to her to make a break for it next time Erla unlocked the door, but she couldn’t be sure of getting away. The only way out of here was the road to the village, but that was too obvious and a tough farmer’s wife like Erla might well be fit enough to catch up with her. It wasn’t as if there were any neighbours within reach to turn to for help. Even though it was only autumn, the weather had turned grey and dismal, bringing day after day of relentless cold rain. She was in the middle of nowhere, and if she struck out into the surrounding wilderness, she was terrified of getting lost and dying of exposure.

  She had decided, just to be on the safe side, to write a letter to her parents. She still had plenty of paper in her notebook and several envelopes in her bag, as she’d been intending to write to them regularly during her trip. Once she’d finished it, she put the letter in an envelope and hid it between the books on the shelf where she hoped Erla wouldn’t find it. If her worst fears were realized, perhaps it would reach her parents one day …

  XV

  Hulda breakfasted at the guesthouse with her colleagues from Forensics, and Jens joined them, sipping black coffee while they ate. They sat there in silence for most of the meal, only occasionally commenting on some aspect of the case. Hulda had a strong suspicion of what they would find in the ground behind the farmhouse but wanted to avoid putting it into words, as if that way she could delay the inevitable.

  ‘Well, isn’t it about time we started making tracks?’ Jens asked, without haste. It was already past eight, more than an hour since Hulda had been woken by his phone call. At that moment she heard the phone ringing in reception and had a sinking feeling that it might be for them.

  She nodded, although she felt an extreme reluctance to return to the crime scene after learning of this latest development. ‘Yes, I suppose we should get moving. Have they started the search for Haukur Leó yet?’

  ‘I reckon they must have. No doubt they’re still digging at the farmhouse as well.’

  ‘Excuse me, Jens. Phone call for you,’ said the owner of the guesthouse, who had crept up behind them without their noticing.

  ‘For me?’ Jens scraped his chair back noisily and got to his feet. Hulda remained seated but could hear the sound of his voice in reception.

  He came almost straight back.

  ‘They’ve found a body, behind the house,’ he announced.

  Hulda didn’t say a word. She already knew what was coming next.

  ‘They think it’s the missing girl, Unnur.’

  Hulda was hit by a wave of despair.

  She had been staking everything on the hope that she could somehow save Unnur, though subconsciously she must have known all along that this was nothing but a fantasy. Yet, despite that, the news felt almost like a nightmare repeat of what had happened at Christmas.

  Someone had murdered Unnur, Hulda was sure of it, but she had a hunch that whoever had done it had already paid the price.

  When Hulda and Jens arrived at the farm, they learned that the initial examination of the girl’s remains had uncovered evidence of injuries consistent with a violent death.

  There had been no let-up in the snow and, if anything, the wind was even stronger, making it impossible to stand around outside for long.

  The house seemed different in the morning light but, despite the cold, Hulda felt a deep reluctance to go back inside if she could possibly avoid it. She had been shown the remains and the shallow grave, the soil creating a dirty stain on the surrounding snow. The body had now been taken into the house to protect it from the elements.

  So Unnur had been lying all these months in an unmarked grave, in a place where it would never in a million years have occurred to anyone to look for her.

  Hulda wondered if she could have done anything different during the investigation last autumn. Were there stones she had failed to turn over that could have put her on the trail? Or had the whole thing been futile all along because the girl had already been dead by the time the inquiry began?

  She reminded herself that there must have been some clue she had missed, though, since Unnur’s father had found his way here.

  How in God’s name had he known?

  Hulda wondered if he could have been involved somehow in her death. It was all she could think of at this stage.

  ‘This just keeps getting worse and worse. I’ve never known anything like it,’ Jens muttered as they thawed out in the police car. He sighed heavily. ‘On my patch too.’

  The doctor who had arrived with the ambulance had told them that, in his professional opinion, the girl couldn’t possibly have died at the same time as the couple. Her death must have occurred weeks, if not months, earlier. They should be able to establish a more accurate time-frame after further analysis. For the moment, then, Hulda had ruled out a scenario in which Haukur Leó had murdered all three: Einar, Erla and his own daughter. The idea was absurd anyway since, logically, he must have come here searching for her.

  Hulda also had to factor in the spade that had been found abandoned in the vegetable patch behind the house. Someone had plainly been
trying unsuccessfully to dig there, but the spade alone would have made little impact on the frozen ground.

  A story was slowly taking shape in her mind. Unnur, who had been planning to spend a year travelling around Iceland, must have stumbled upon this remote farm, with no suspicion of anything other than a pleasant stay. Hulda recalled what Inspector Jens had said about the couple sometimes taking in young people who worked in return for board and lodging. For some unknown reason, her visit had come to a tragic end.

  ‘The poor girl,’ Hulda said at last, after a long silence.

  ‘He was looking for her, wasn’t he? The man in the Mitsubishi. Looking for his daughter …?’

  Hulda nodded.

  ‘And the result was a bloodbath.’

  ‘Perhaps the couple refused to tell him where she was,’ Hulda conjectured, ‘or …’ She trailed off, thinking, then went on, speaking more to herself than Jens: ‘Perhaps they admitted that they’d killed his daughter and told him where she was … It’s impossible to predict how someone would react to news like that. You know, Jens, even perfectly ordinary people can … can lose control of themselves in extraordinary circumstances like that.’

  XVI

  ‘Erla, you’ve got to tell me what happened to her,’ Leó said, and she could hear the fear and desperation in his voice.

  Yet Erla was the one who ought to have been afraid, who was deeply afraid.

  ‘What … what …?’ She couldn’t seem to articulate the words, couldn’t even shape a coherent thought in her head. The cursed mist that lay over her mind made it impossible to think straight.

  ‘You know what I’m talking about, Erla. This has got to stop! I’ve got to find her! You must, you have to tell me, Erla!’

  She just stood there, her body rigid. When he released his grip, she backed a few steps away but knew she was helpless, cornered like a caged animal.

  ‘It … it spun out of control, do you understand?’ Leó said. ‘I never meant to … to hurt your husband.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ she said tonelessly, and felt the tears trickling down her cheeks again. The words weren’t really for Leó’s benefit; she needed to say them aloud to remind herself that it had happened, to try to distinguish between reality and delusion. Einar was dead. That was real – she knew it now. And Anna … Anna … She was dead too. It was as if a veil had been lifted and she could remember everything with a sudden clarity. The tears were for both of them.

  ‘Yes, but it was an accident, Erla. I didn’t mean to hurt him. He had a knife and I was scared. The whole thing got out of hand. I was terrified he was going to stab me … I’ve never done anything like that in my life before but it was in self-defence, purely in self-defence …’

  Erla nodded dully. Nothing would ever bring Anna and Einar back now.

  She had to face up to the consequences of what she had done. Perhaps it would be best to answer the man’s questions while she could, while her memory was clear … Because now, all of a sudden, she could recall everything that she had done her best to forget. Standing there in the dark cellar, she had no choice but to face up to the truth.

  ‘Is it her you’re looking for – Unnur?’ she asked, her indecision suddenly gone.

  ‘Yes, yes! For Christ’s sake! I’m looking for my daughter. And you know where she is, don’t you?’

  ‘She came here, to work.’

  ‘I know. She sent me a letter, but it didn’t arrive until a couple of days ago. It must have been the letter your husband said he’d found and put in the post.’

  Erla nodded and said: ‘That’s right. I didn’t know about it. I had no idea …’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘Einar never knew. There was no need to kill him.’

  ‘It was an accident, I swear it!’

  ‘And I didn’t mean to hurt her, I –’

  He grabbed her again, by the throat this time. She didn’t resist, even when she felt his fingers tightening until she was gasping noisily for breath. In a weird way, she welcomed the pain. She didn’t want to have to face up to anything any more …

  ‘Erla, tell me, tell me! Is she alive?’

  Her gaze met his, although she was close to losing consciousness. There was a gleam of hope in his eyes. He loosened his hold slightly.

  But she extinguished it: ‘No, she died. I’m sorry.’

  His hands tightened again.

  ‘I didn’t want her to leave.’ Erla was choking in his throttling grip. ‘She was going to leave me, Leó. Again. Leave me again. My Anna.’

  ‘What do you mean, Anna? Are you crazy? Why would you think Unnur was her?’ He relaxed his grip again, enough for her to talk.

  ‘Anna was my daughter,’ she croaked. ‘Unnur was sent to me because my Anna had gone. They were so alike. I kept getting confused and thinking Anna had come back – in fact, I was sure of it. I thought I’d been given another chance and it made me so happy, though I couldn’t really understand what was happening. Einar was away, you see. And sometimes I can’t cope with being alone here, I lose my grip on things … so I thought she was my Anna. But then she told me she was leaving …’ Erla’s voice cracked. When she continued, the words emerged in a thin, mewing sound: ‘She was going to leave me again, but I couldn’t lose her a second time. I refused to let her go.’ She drew a gasping breath. ‘It just happened. There was a struggle, I remember that, and then, somehow, she was dead. She died and left me again. I seem to remember there was some blood, but everything’s so hazy … I threw her rucksack in the sea later, as soon as I got a chance. When I went to the village to borrow more books from the library …’

  His fingers tightened convulsively again. Fighting for breath, she added, in a strangled voice: ‘I knew you were looking for her. I sensed it when you arrived. Although I’d buried the whole thing. Couldn’t bear to remember it …’

  ‘Where’s my daughter? How could you kill her? How could you?’ Leó’s voice broke and the last words came out guttural with tears: ‘Where is she?’

  ‘I buried her behind the house, in the vegetable garden. There was nothing else I could do. I had to stop Einar finding out.’

  The deadly grip tightened round her throat again and she could feel her consciousness ebbing away.

  She couldn’t take any more.

  XVII

  Hulda saw a man she didn’t recognize, in the orange uniform of the rescue team, come running through the thick haze of snowflakes towards the police vehicle. She nudged Jens, who hadn’t noticed him, then opened the passenger door and stepped outside.

  The man’s voice sounded agitated when he could finally speak through his panting.

  ‘We’ve …’ He caught his breath and resumed: ‘We’ve found him, or at least I think we have.’

  The first thought to pass through Hulda’s mind was: How can I tell his wife? How can I tell her that we’ve found her husband and her daughter – that they’re both dead?

  She dreaded the conversation so much that it briefly occurred to her to ask someone else to take care of it. She couldn’t cope with any more tragedy or grief herself.

  ‘Dead?’ she asked, though it was obvious.

  ‘What? Yes, of course – the body of a man. I’ll take you there. It’s not that far from the farm so we reckon he must have got lost and gone in the wrong direction. Maybe walked in a circle. That’s common when people are inexperienced.’

  Jens had got out of the car as well.

  ‘We’ll follow you,’ he said to the rescue team member, his voice unusually decisive.

  Hulda stood, screwing up her eyes against the snow, intensely grateful that she was with the rescue team since, had she been alone, she would never have found her way back to the farmhouse. The air was thick with teeming white flakes in every direction. It would be frighteningly easy to get lost in conditions like this. No doubt that was how Haukur Leó had met his fate.

  Alone in a blizzard, far from civilization.

  Almost certainly with two murders o
n his conscience.

  His body was lying in the snow, his backpack not far off.

  Tragic as it was to think of his poor wife waiting at home, there was no getting away from the fact that if he’d lived, he would have found himself charged with double murder.

  The man had been a virtual stranger to Hulda, though she had met him several times in connection with the investigation, at a difficult time in his and his wife’s life. Yet she felt as if, on some deeper level, she had known him well. Staring at his lifeless body, she experienced a powerful surge of feeling. He had, in short succession, suffered an unspeakable tragedy, found himself caught up in these traumatic events, then lost his life without ever finding his daughter, though it appeared that he had suspected where her body was buried.

  Even if he had murdered two people, she didn’t get the feeling that this was the body of a cold-blooded killer.

  Life wasn’t that simple; the line between good and evil wasn’t that well defined.

  ‘There are two or three things we need to show you,’ Hulda’s colleague from Forensics told her. Haukur Leó’s body had been removed and taken away for further examination, along with his rucksack. The police were now sitting in the dead couple’s house. Evening had fallen, bringing a slight improvement in the weather; although the wind was still gusting strongly, the snow had at least stopped.

  ‘We found a bloodstained knife in his backpack.’ The man showed her the weapon, which was now sealed in a clear plastic bag.

  ‘I suppose the chances are high that this was the knife used to kill Einar,’ Hulda said.

  ‘Well, of course, we need to carry out tests,’ the man replied, ‘but, between you and me, I think there can be no doubt, in the circumstances.’

  Hulda nodded.

  ‘He had a bunch of keys too, to this house.’

  ‘And the third thing you mentioned?’