Blackout

by Ragnar Jónasson

  ‘I was never as well read as your grandmother was,’ Katrín continued. ‘She had a word for everything. As far as I was concerned, darkness was just darkness. But these days, like her, I don’t feel at ease in the dark anymore. I always feel that there’s something sinister on the prowl – something that keeps itself hidden when it’s light. But when the darkness falls … And that’s when that word always comes to mind, “blackout”.’

  26

  While Tómas went into the police station to pick up some papers, Ari Thór took the opportunity to put a classical piano CD into the stereo of the police four-by-four. He had no intention of listening to old-fashioned ballads from the herring years all the way to Akureyri.

  Tómas seemed to have a burning passion for these old dance hall tunes, and Ari Thór didn’t doubt that he’d taken his turn on the dance floor and had a few romantic assignations up in the valley at Hvanneyrarskál, above Siglufjörður, in his time. Maybe the music brought back memories of happier times. But now the car was filled with Chopin and Tómas didn’t say anything when he returned. He was in a dark mood, as he so often was these days.

  They would be in Akureyri in plenty of time. That suited Ari Thór perfectly, as he’d be able both to meet Natan and try to have a word with the poor man who had suffered at the former doctor’s hands.

  ‘I need to meet an old friend in Akureyri. Is that all right?’ Ari Thór asked courteously.

  ‘Of course. He can meet us over a burger.’ Tómas said.

  ‘I was going to go to his place, actually. I can get myself a sandwich on the way.’

  Ari Thór saw that the bald inspector fought to keep his eyes on the road, as if he were barely able to contain his disappointment.

  ‘Do what you like,’ he snapped.

  There was a chilly silence in the car until Tómas’s phone rang. It was Hlynur, his voice echoing from the car’s hands-free speakers.

  ‘Where are you?’ he asked without any preamble, his voice wavering and uncertain.

  ‘We’re on the way to Akureyri,’ Tómas answered.

  ‘Akureyri? What on earth for?’

  ‘There’s a conference about the murder case,’ Tómas said, hesitating slightly.

  There was a short pause. ‘OK,’ Hlynur said, and the call ended.

  ‘That’s very strange,’ Tómas said, running a hand through the little hair remaining on his head. ‘Extremely strange!’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘I told him that half an hour ago.’

  Hlynur sat and stared at the phone.

  He was alone at the station and he felt hot.

  It was mild outside. In fact, it was unusually warm for early summer and he felt himself sweating in the close, still air.

  With a flush of confusion, he realised that Tómas had told him where they were going before he and Ari Thór had set off. He shook his head as if to loosen his memory. He now clearly remembered looking up the computer when they had left, engulfed by a sudden sensation of discomfort … a strange feeling that he was completely alone in the world.

  He felt as if Ari Thór and Tómas had vanished without a word to anyone. He had stood up and paced the entire station, calling their names, wondering where they could have got to. People don’t just vanish, at least not in a little town like Siglufjörður.

  He had snatched at the phone in a frenzy, and called Tómas to see if he could reach him. And was soon put straight. He cringed with embarrassment and more than a little concern.

  What was happening?

  How could he have forgotten?

  He slumped onto the police station floor, deeply exhausted on every level; burying his face in his hands, thinking of Gauti.

  He told himself that he had to pull himself together. What was in the past would have to stay there and couldn’t be undone. He would have to make an effort, get a grip on himself and try to conquer the anguish that enveloped him.

  Hlynur remembered that the event at the primary school was about to start. Tómas had made it plain that he was to attend and ‘take some certificates’ with him.

  Maybe it would do him good.

  He took a deep breath, stood up and straightened his uniform. Outside, the brightness of the sunshine took him by surprise after the gloom of the police station. And the fresh air went some way to helping him clear his head as he made an effort to pull himself together.

  Before long he was standing at the front of a school hall crowded with youngsters.

  As he looked out over the faces in front of him, he was transported back in time.

  The faces of former classmates appeared from the crowd, and, yet again, a chilling discomfort swept through him. He caught glimpses of Gauti’s pale eyes staring at him from the back of the hall. But when he looked harder, they would be gone, only to appear again somewhere else in the throng of schoolchildren in front of him.

  He felt someone tap his shoulder and turned to see it was the headmaster. Hlynur realised he had frozen.

  He did his best to get through the ordeal that the award ceremony quickly became without making a mess of everything, then hurried from the hall without a word; the ghosts of his past life had come all too palpably to life before his eyes. He headed straight for the nearest toilet and threw up.

  27

  Not in service read the illuminated signs on the buses that had driven past the waiting Ari Thór during his student years. After he had moved in with his grandmother following the deaths of his parents, Ari Thór had regularly travelled by bus. He had never had to do anything for himself while his parents had been alive, but once they were dead he had decided to make every possible effort to stand on his own two feet.

  It was the contradiction in the bus signs that puzzled him. The bus wasn’t servicing any route, but it shot past him, clearly on its way to somewhere.

  He had been feeling just that way himself these past few months – constantly busy but without any obvious destination. Kristín had always been the lodestone that had kept him on track. Why the hell had he let her go?

  ‘Have you seen Kristín? How is she?’ he asked Natan as soon as they met. In some ways, he didn’t want to hear the answers, but he couldn’t stop himself from asking. They were in Natan’s old Volvo, a vehicle that should by all rights have been on its last legs but which still seemed to be in working order.

  Natan didn’t answer right away.

  ‘I meet up with her for a coffee now and then. She’s doing all right,’ he said, concentrating on the road, apparently reluctant to give anything away.

  ‘Still single, then?’ Ari Thór asked, hoping to sound uninterested but suspecting he hadn’t managed it.

  ‘Like I said, she’s doing all right.’

  ‘And what does that mean?’ Ari Thór demanded, then immediately apologised for his abruptness.

  ‘Since you clearly want to know, I’ll tell you: she’s been seeing some guy,’ Natan said, just as abruptly. ‘It’s plain that you’re still smitten, but you’ll have to try and get over her. Don’t you have enough on your plate right now, anyway, with dead people and whatnot?’

  ‘It’s my business what I get over, or not,’ Ari Thór snapped back. Then he took a deep breath and made an effort to control his temper. ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered again.

  ‘Get over her, will you?’ Natan said amiably. ‘There are plenty more fish in the sea. Aren’t there any pretty girls in Siglufjörður?’

  ‘Yes, unfortunately.’ His thoughts suddenly turned to Ugla. He regretted what had happened between them. Their relationship had destroyed what he had with Kristín. Even that smallest taste of forbidden fruit had been full of danger.

  ‘So who is this guy?’ Ari Thór asked. Who’s this bastard? was what he had wanted to ask, but he restrained himself.

  ‘I’ve never seen him, but she speaks highly of him. She met him playing golf. He’s older and his wife died. I’ve never figured out what women see in older men. I almost take it personally when I see a woman my age on some old g
uy’s arm.’

  Natan pulled the car into the side of the road.

  ‘We’re here.’

  Natan waited in the car while Ari Thór knocked at the widower’s door. He lived in what had once been a farmhouse on the outskirts of the town, an old-fashioned, high-roofed wooden building clad in rusting steel sheeting, the garden around it unkempt and neglected, full of weeds and overgrown grasses. It must have been a prosperous farm in its day, but that wasn’t the case any longer. There wasn’t even a dog waiting patiently to run a check on unexpected guests.

  When the old man opened the door Ari Thór quickly explained the reason for his visit and realised straightaway that the man, who seemed to be close to eighty, had no objection to airing his strong and unfavourable opinions on the doctor.

  They sat at one end of the building in the warmth of the evening sun, on an old blue bench that was as rusty as the house. The abundant long grass couldn’t have been cut for a long time. In fact, the house, the bench and the land around them all seemed to have been treated badly by the passing years, as had the old man himself. His gaze remained on the lush, waving grass the whole time they talked. His eyes never once met Ari Thór’s.

  ‘You think the murderer may have made a mistake? He really meant to send that evil doctor off to the next world?’ he asked Ari Thór, his voice faint.

  ‘It could be. We aren’t sure of anything yet,’ Ari Thór replied.

  ‘What he did can never be forgiven,’ the old man said firmly. ‘That’s my opinion as a God-fearing man. He was drunk at work, and that is shameful. I miss her every single day, especially on a sunny day like today. She was my sunshine,’ he said slowly. Clearly he was in no hurry to get rid of Ari Thór.

  ‘Have you had any contact with … Ríkhardur, after everything that happened?’

  ‘No, and I wouldn’t want to,’ the old man replied. ‘We were awarded some damages,’ he added with a sigh. ‘But what am I supposed to do with compensation at my age?’

  Ari Thór could see no way that this gentle man would plot murder, least of all such a brutal killing.

  ‘Do you know if he was ever threatened?’

  ‘No, my friend. I have no idea. I’m not saying I haven’t thought about doing it myself. Your thoughts wander in all kinds of directions, you know? – take you to places you’d think you’d regret going. But I don’t regret thinking like that, not at all,’ he said and lapsed into thoughtful silence.

  Ari Thór waited patiently for him to speak again.

  ‘She deserved better. Such a warm-hearted person, thoughtful and kind, much cleverer than I am. She was the philosopher in this house. She had worked out the purpose of life, or so she thought. Her idea was that there was no simple answer. Every one of us needs to find their own purpose in life, what makes us happy. That’s just as well, don’t you think? If there was just one aim for each of God’s children then we’d all be doing the same thing. That would be a dull sort of world, wouldn’t it?’

  He stared into the grass, seeming to welcome this opportunity to talk about his late wife.

  ‘I’m afraid I have to be on my way,’ Ari Thór said at last, standing up. He knew only too well what – or rather, who – brought him happiness in life. But he had made a mess of that opportunity to experience joy. Yet he couldn’t get Kristín out of his mind. It had long been his hope that they would be together again, but today that seemed to be even further out of his reach than ever. He had lost his chance.

  ‘Thanks for the talk,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks for coming. It’s a shame that the victim wasn’t Ríkhardur. That would have been some very welcome news.’

  28

  Ari Thór sat through the meeting in Akureyri in a daze. He tried to listen, but his thoughts remained firmly on Kristín the whole time. There was no tea on offer, so he drank the thin coffee and nibbled at the biscuits.

  Helga, a young detective on the Akureyri force, explained that Elías had travelled to Nepal just a few days before his murder, with a stopover at Kastrup airport in Copenhagen. Previously, they had believed he had spent several days in Denmark. There was as yet no explanation for the Nepal trip.

  The atmosphere in the incident room was heavy. The murder had attracted considerable attention and the press had been following it closely.

  Still stunned by the news that there was a new man in Kristín’s life, Ari Thór could hardly remember what the old man at the farmhouse had told him. But it was clear that he was no killer. Ari Thór was on the point of abandoning his theory that there was an angle that could involve Ríkhardur Lindgren, at least for the moment.

  He made his best effort to follow the rest of the meeting and control the jealousy he felt rising inside him; but it was an emotion that he had not always been able to keep in check.

  He thought back to the first time it had got him in trouble. How old had he been? Seventeen? Eighteen? He had started going out with a girl from another school. He thought he was in love, but the relationship lasted only three weeks, coming to a tumultuous end at a party.

  The girl had gone without him, so Ari Thór had decided to surprise her. He started the evening at a different party, with his classmates, drank too much punch and then took a taxi to meet his girlfriend at her party. He remembered the house – a smart villa in Hafnarfjörður, full of weighty, old-fashioned furniture that gave the place a gloomy, dark feel, although his memory may have been coloured by what happened next.

  He couldn’t see her right away and searched for her in the living room and the kitchen. He asked for her by name and someone jerked a thumb towards the passage. ‘Down that way somewhere.’ He peered into one room after another and in the last one he found her, enveloped in someone else’s arms.

  The emotion that gripped him was so strong, so unnervingly powerful, that he tried to avoid recalling it. But now, thinking about Kristín with this mysterious man, he felt much the same overwhelming urge to use his fists – and this time he was as sober as a judge.

  The girl had looked up as he entered the room, had untangled herself from the boy’s arms and looked at Ari Thór. She had said nothing, but the expression on her face was somewhere between ‘sorry’ and ‘that’s life’.

  Ari Thór had lost control, there was no other way to describe it. He hurled himself at the boy and punched him. More by luck than judgement, the punch landed so strongly the boy fell sprawling back and hit his head on the headboard of the bed. Blood seeped from the cut. Ari Thór got out quickly, before the boy could get his bearings.

  He never spoke to the girl again. What really surprised him, though, was that the boy didn’t press charges. Maybe he had a guilty conscience? You don’t steal another guy’s girlfriend, or covet your neighbour’s wife. Everyone knew that. It was one of the Ten Commandments, wasn’t it?

  29

  It was late in the evening and Ísrún wasn’t feeling at her best. True, she was exhausted after the long drive from Reykjavík, but there was something else. She couldn’t blame the cheap guesthouse, which was fine for what it was: a tidy bed, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers that contained nothing more than a Bible.

  Perhaps it was the memories that snapped at her heels now that she was back in Akureyri. She was disappointed in herself – she had thought she would be stronger than this. She had chosen a guesthouse even though she could undoubtedly have stayed for nothing with old friends. But she maintained nothing more than occasional contact with those friends in Akureyri since she had moved back south. And she’d left at very short notice, giving only weak excuses for leaving and without a single word to anyone about the real reasons for her hasty departure. Those facts she kept strictly to herself.

  She drew the curtains shut and lay down to sleep. It wasn’t late, but she wanted to make an early start in the morning, beginning with a visit to Elías’s apartment, which, it turned out, was actually owned by his former wife. Then she would move on to Siglufjörður, a place she had never visited.

  She was already as
leep when her phone rang. A good news journalist never switches the phone off; news comes first. But she swore as she reached for it, telling herself that sometimes it would be worth breaking journalism’s life rules to get a decent night’s sleep.

  Kormákur was on the line. He came straight to the point.

  ‘You’re in Akureyri?’

  She rubbed her eyes and mumbled something into the phone that could be interpreted as a yes.

  ‘Were you asleep? Get yourself up,’ he chattered excitedly. ‘There’s a meeting at the County Sheriff’s office about the murder case.’

  ‘They’re holding a press conference?’ she asked, still dazed with sleep.

  ‘No, nothing like that. Nobody knows about it except us – I have a contact. Get yourself down there.’

  Ísrún sat on the bed, amazed, not just at the news that Kormákur had shared with her, but that he had such a reliable source in Akureyri. It was unbelievable what the man could come up with.

  ‘I’m on my way,’ she said. ‘Do I get a cameraman?’

  ‘He’s on his way too. We’ll cover his call-out fee.’

  ‘And can I take him to Siglufjörður in the morning?’

  ‘You seriously expect Ívar to agree to that?’

  There was no mistaking the disbelief in Kormákur’s voice. He was right, she couldn’t imagine that.

  She forced herself to her feet, although ever fibre in her body fought against being dragged out of bed. She longed to pull the covers up over her head and close her eyes, but instinct told her that news had to come first and a lead had to be followed up, even if it was likely to take her nowhere.

  The cameraman, who doubled as the local stringer, was waiting for her outside the County Sheriff’s office.

  ‘Nobody’s come out yet,’ he said.

  They waited for half an hour for something to happen. A slight night-time chill had descended on the town. Ísrún shivered. But, looking up into the sky she found it bright and cloudless. No trace of ash here. She laughed grimly to herself, thinking how shrouded in mystery and shadows this case seemed to be. She glanced at the glass doors of the building. Did everyone inside feel like they were groping through the darkness too?