‘Here.’ He handed her another plastic evidence bag. ‘There was this letter. I’m sure you’ll find it enlightening.’
XVIII
Dearest Mum and Dad,
I’m so frightened. I wish I was at home with you.
This letter may never arrive, but I don’t know how else to get a message to you. I’m going to hide it in here, between the books.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to take it with me if I get out of here alive.
She’s locked me in. Her name’s Erla and she lives here. I’m in the east of the country. I’m enclosing the advertisement I found at the petrol station in Kirkubæjarklaustur, which includes information about how to find the farm. It’s in the middle of nowhere, and the woman has lost her mind.
I’m locked in a room in the attic.
She keeps calling me Anna and won’t let me leave. I don’t know why. I haven’t done anything to her.
I know you didn’t want me to go on this trip and I regret not having listened to you now. I daren’t try to escape, as she keeps threatening to kill me, saying she doesn’t want to lose me.
Of course, I know you’ll probably never see this letter, but I feel a little better just from writing it. I feel as if you’re both so near and that somehow you’ll save me.
XIX
Haukur Leó believed he’d found the most likely spot. Behind the house, under the snow, there appeared to be some kind of vegetable garden.
He had set out on this journey in search of his daughter, afraid he wouldn’t find her but even more afraid that he would receive confirmation of her death. But he had to know the truth and so did his wife … They had talked of nothing else since Unnur disappeared but their desperate need to know what had happened.
They had assured each other that it was better to know the worst than to fear it, but now he wasn’t sure they had been right. Now he knew, or believed he knew, that Unnur wasn’t only dead but had been murdered, the knowledge was so horrifying that he couldn’t think straight or work out what to do. It was as if the ground had been pulled out from under his feet, as if he had turned into a different person. He was a good person, or had been, but despair had changed him … When the letter arrived in the post, he hadn’t been able to believe his eyes. He had been at home when it fell through the letterbox. He had started working from home more often because he found it so hard to be around other people at the office. When the letter from Unnur arrived, just before Christmas, it had seemed utterly unreal.
For an incredulous moment, he had believed Unnur was alive and the nightmare was over; that her disappearance had been deliberate and she was now writing to let them know she was safe. He had been about to leap to his feet and run to the phone to ring his wife at work when he saw the date on the letter.
Time had stood still. Feeling faint, robbed of all his strength, he hadn’t been able to read any further at first, but when he did, he discovered that the letter was a cry for help. When she wrote it, though, Unnur had had no way of posting it.
It was plain that Unnur had been terrified. Haukur Leó had read and reread the letter, seized by an uncontrollable rage and hatred towards the woman called Erla. The letter had been dated early last autumn, not long after he and his wife had lost contact with their daughter. Since then, they’d had no further news of her.
He remembered Einar mentioning, carelessly, that he had posted a letter in the belief that it had been accidentally left behind by some boys who had been staying on the farm last summer. But it must have been Unnur’s letter. It became clear to him that Einar had been innocent of any wrongdoing, completely unaware that Unnur had ever stayed in his house.
After reading the letter, Haukur Leó had made up his mind to go and find her. He hadn’t even stopped to think. And now he knew that the decision had been a disastrous one. He should, of course, have gone straight to the police. Instead, he had got out his rucksack and packed his hunting knife, just to be on the safe side, as he didn’t know what kind of reception he’d get, and a compass and some cash as well. His daughter had enclosed a leaflet with detailed directions for how to find the farm. Thus prepared, he had roared off in his Mitsubishi, on the long, dark drive across Iceland, without a word to his wife. But then their relationship was increasingly characterized by silences. They had so little to talk about these days.
Thinking back to it now, he wondered what on earth had come over him. Well, for one thing, he hadn’t wanted to raise any false hopes in his wife and, for another, he had felt a burning desire to get even with the woman on the farm. He had been so angry. He still was. Full of a bitter rage. Words were inadequate to describe the intensity of his hatred. He no longer recognized himself.
The journey east had gone better than he could have hoped, in spite of the wintry weather. He had driven recklessly, breaking the speed limit the whole way, taking his life in his hands on the single-track road that unrolled before him, heading endlessly eastwards. Perhaps it would have been better if he had been pulled over by the police, since then he would have been forced to tell them where he was going and would no doubt have come to his senses.
But it was as if everything had conspired to speed him on his way. Hour after hour, fuelled by fury and hope, he had followed the ribbon of road through the long winter night, across the empty wastes of the glacial plains, only occasionally passing the lights of remote farms, until finally he hit snowy weather in the east and was forced to slow his headlong pace. The morning was well advanced and a grey dawn had broken by the time he reached the turn-off. The road conditions, which had been reasonable up to now, worsened dramatically as soon as he left the Ring Road. Eventually, the way ahead became blocked with impassable drifts and, foolishly, he had tried to drive around them, only to get the car stuck. After that, there had been nothing for it but to continue on foot.
He was shocked by the force of the wind when he got out of the car, but he was well equipped and knew roughly how much further it was to the farm. All he had to do was follow the road markers. This proved easier said than done, however, since they were widely spaced and the wind was blowing up clouds of loose snow, almost as if the flakes were falling from the sky. If the weather had been any worse, he might have gone astray, but the luck that had brought him safely this far had held good. First, he had come upon another house. For a while, as it grew steadily nearer, he had believed it was the farm he was looking for, but once he got closer he saw that it was abandoned and realized that he hadn’t walked nearly as far as he had thought. There had been no need to fake his exhaustion by the time he finally reached the farmhouse. It had appeared round a bend in the road, light streaming from its windows across the snow as if it were on a Christmas card, but he had known better. He knew that something appalling had happened there. The only thing he wasn’t sure about was whether Unnur was still alive. That was the big question. So he had been forced to approach the occupants warily and try to scout out the place before revealing why he had come. Before the confrontation. In his haste, he had thoughtlessly given his correct name, his middle name, by which he was usually known. Presumably he’d got away with it, though, since his daughter’s patronymic had been Hauksdóttir, not Leósdóttir.
The woman, Erla, had been suspicious from the start. No doubt the bloody bitch had guessed why he had come. She knew that sooner or later her monstrous crime would be exposed. She had kept a close eye on him, making it hard for him to search the house for clues. Nevertheless, he had managed, during the night, to sneak up to the attic, where he had found the room Unnur had presumably been staying in, only now there was nobody there. As he stood in the room, he had broken down in tears – he who never cried – because he had sensed then that she was dead. That he had come far too late.
He’d found it harder to figure out the man, Einar. Did he know what had happened to Unnur? And what exactly had happened in this house, which appeared so ordinary? It gave the impression of being cosy and welcoming, with the Christmas tree in the sitting room and the pre
sents arranged underneath, the crackling hiss of the radio in the background; an old-fashioned Icelandic country home. The lies he told had been poorly thought out: he had got lost, yet no one was looking for him. He hadn’t seen any other buildings … One foolish mistake after another. The moment he got a chance he had disconnected the phone in the sitting room, trying to do it as neatly and inconspicuously as he could. He had needed more time to assess the situation and hunt for evidence.
Then, somehow, the whole thing had spiralled.
Without warning, he had found himself in the same predicament as Unnur, locked up in the very same room as her. Perhaps Einar had known or suspected something and acted to protect his wife. Haukur Leó had tried to break down the door by brute force, but although he was much stronger than his daughter, he had failed. How must she have felt, being held prisoner here by a madwoman? His rage had intensified until Einar had entered the room holding his knife, and then things had turned violent. Haukur Leó had tried to wrestle the knife off him, afraid for his own life, and the tussle had ended in disaster, though he himself had been lucky enough to escape unharmed. He hadn’t felt an ounce of remorse for Einar’s fate. He had killed a man, but it had been in self-defence and, anyway, his own daughter had been killed while staying in this house. The whole thing had seemed so unreal: the blood, the body on the floor. Haukur Leó had stood there for a while, feeling oddly detached, and watched Einar’s life ebbing away as he bled to death.
Then, coming to his senses, he had run downstairs to find Erla, only to discover that she had vanished. It had taken a good deal of trouble to hunt her down but, in the end, he had cornered her and heard her confession; listened as she described how she had senselessly killed his daughter. It had been the act of a deranged person. The girls had looked alike, his daughter and Erla’s. It had been as simple as that. He had seen a photo in the spare room of a girl who presumably was, or had been, Anna. And it was true that there had been a resemblance; in fact, they had been strikingly similar, with that flaming red hair, and even a certain look about the eyes.
He had searched in the cellar for a heavy-duty spade and tried to dig, chipping and scraping at the hard-frozen ground. But to no avail. How long had he been out here?
He was so cold and exhausted he had completely lost track of time and had no thoughts left in his head now but to find Unnur. It was beginning to come home to him, though, that this wasn’t going to work. He would either have to find another way, a more powerful tool, or get assistance. Perhaps simply call the police …
He had killed two people.
The first time it had been an accident, but the second time it had been cold-blooded murder; he had to face the fact. He had deliberately murdered the bloody bitch, squeezing her throat until she stopped breathing. And it had felt good. He had been avenging Unnur. But then, a few seconds later, he had woken up to the full horror of what he had done. There was no going back. Everything had changed. But now that he had lost Unnur, perhaps it didn’t matter. He hadn’t even decided whether to try and hide his crimes. They seemed of little importance in the great scheme of things. His daughter was dead.
It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this.
He kept trying to scratch at the iron-hard ground, it was all he could think of to do, but he could barely even penetrate the snow to expose the soil underneath. It was like being in a nightmare, knowing she was buried under his feet but unable to get to her. He could hardly breathe. And all the while, the storm continued to scream around him. He was so cold and so deathly tired. But again and again, he felt a surge of new adrenaline coursing through his veins when he thought of Unnur lying there under the frozen earth. Even so, he couldn’t go on like this much longer. He would have to rest, then make a decision about whether to seek help. Of course, he could fetch the police, confess to the killings and beg them to find his daughter. He was prepared to take the consequences himself but shuddered when he thought of the effect this would have on his wife. She would be alone, with Unnur dead and him in prison … Maybe he would get off, though; maybe the judge would take the mitigating circumstances into account and decide not to punish him. But even as he thought this he knew how implausible it was.
He stopped scraping with the spade and glanced up a moment. The gale lashed him with icy pellets and he could hardly see more than a few metres in any direction. He was trapped in a maelstrom of snow, alone, no one knew where he was, and he was at the end of his tether, both mentally and physically, crushed by the news of how his daughter had met her fate. And every now and then the thought surfaced that he was a murderer. Him! Though he’d been a perfectly ordinary person until his daughter went missing.
Perhaps he could go inside the house for a bit and recover his strength. But although he urgently needed a rest after more than forty-eight hours without sleep, he dreaded the thought of lying there brooding about Unnur and her fate, about Erla and Einar, the people he had killed. He had to find a way of completely emptying his mind. He just couldn’t cope with it all.
He tried to carry on digging, then, overcome with a wave of exhaustion, he dropped the spade on the ground and set off back towards the house, telling himself he would return later and try again. He wasn’t going to give up on his daughter.
The door was locked, but Erla must have had a key. He hurried down the steps to the cellar and stepped into the gloom. There she lay, just visible in the dim light that filtered from the doorway. The woman he had murdered. He felt his gorge rising and almost threw up but heaved a deep breath and concentrated on what he had to do – find the keys. There they were, in her pocket. He hurried out and up the icy steps again, round to the front door. His hands were so cold and weak that it took him a long time to wrestle with the lock, but at last he was in. When he entered the hall and then the sitting room, it was as if nothing had happened, with everything still ready for Christmas, as if no one had been killed, no one was lying in a pool of blood upstairs … Haukur Leó was overcome by dizziness and had to fight to stop himself fainting. The thought of the man in the attic was too much. He couldn’t stay in this house, let alone sleep here.
He went to the spare room, where his rucksack was lying on the bed, its contents now strewn all over the floor. With trembling hands, he stuffed them back into the bag, then, snatching it up, he fled back outside.
It was like running into a wall. He stood stock still for a second, buffeted by the wind, blinded by the snow. It was too cold. No way could he go on digging in this. But he couldn’t bear to go back inside the house either. He was so confused, his ability to think sapped by so many hours without sleep. What was he to do? He didn’t know how to dig up his daughter, couldn’t decide whether to confess the whole thing to the police and face the consequences. He couldn’t think any more.
As if his legs had taken the decision for him, he started walking, head down, pushing against the storm, his only thought now to get back to his car. Once back in the Mitsubishi, he could gather his strength, warm himself up with the heater, then try to make a decision about what to do next.
He had found the way to the farmhouse when he arrived, so it stood to reason he ought to be able to find his way back. Or so he tried to convince himself, though the weather was far worse now. After all, the route had been fairly straight, with markers here and there to show the course of the road. Yes, he had no alternative.
He remembered more or less how far it had been to the next house and from there to his car. That should help him get a sense of how far he had gone. The most important thing was to keep going straight ahead, following the road that was buried in drifts somewhere beneath his feet.
Haukur Leó tramped along, keeping up as steady a pace as he could, aware that it was a long way and that he had to move briskly to keep warm. He mustn’t give in to the cold. He believed he had enough energy left to see him through, if only he could stave off his fatigue for a little while longer.
He waded through the drifts, undaunted, refusing to give way before the
battering gusts of wind. He had to keep his head down, couldn’t look straight ahead because of the stinging snow, but he was on the right track, he was sure of it.
XX
Where was the abandoned house? He needed to find it to be sure that he was on the right road back to his car.
Had he passed it?
Was that possible?
Perhaps it was the blizzard, the poor visibility, that had caused him to miss it.
Haukur Leó had been walking for what felt like a long time and he was sure he should have reached the house by now. Yes, he must have missed it.
Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen a marker for a while, but then he remembered that there had been a few gaps between them. He sensed instinctively that he was on the right track and that it wasn’t far now to his car. He should be able to make it, though he couldn’t deny that he was terribly cold and so tired he hardly had any strength left, as if he had used up his last reserves of energy.
But he had to make it to the car.
He was going to drive back to Reykjavík; yes, everything seemed clearer now. He was going to go home to his wife, sit her down and tell her the truth. She must be frantic with worry after the way he had vanished without a word before Christmas, like a complete fool. She deserved better.
He would break the news to her about Unnur; tell her what those vile people had done. His wife was a strong person; she wouldn’t let it crush her. Then he would tell her how his journey to the east had ended: in the couple’s deaths and the discovery that their daughter was buried in the garden behind the farmhouse. Then he would ask his wife what he should do. She would advise him to give himself up and he knew she would be right.
Erla and Einar were dead, yet he was still filled with a bitter, churning rage.
He was moving more slowly now, the adrenaline that had fuelled him to begin with was running out. Halting for a moment, he peered around, but the view was the same in every direction: a white wall. Finally, he acknowledged to himself that, for all he knew, he might have walked in a circle, because he hadn’t a clue where he was.
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