by Moss, John
The photograph of Hulda, staring out from an oval frame, was pure genius as a parody of ersatz sentimentality. She unequivocally scowled, perhaps at herself in the mirror, but certainly at the tea connoisseur. She looked authentic, with the wattles, jowls, folds, creases, and glowering eyes of a real person.
“You like the tea?” Hannah Arnason asked, seeing his gaze fixed on the canister. “It is very good.”
Harry grimaced. He did like the tea; it tasted like Earl Grey with a hint of orange. He wondered if the woman beside him saw Hulda as a parody or simply as someone who had lived a demanding life and was unhappy approaching its inevitable end?
So much from a tea label, Harry. Why don’t you try reading the leaves?
“It is from a shop in Visby,” said Hannah Arnason, catching his line of vision. “Kränku. They have very nice things for sale. Teapots and dishes. No woollens. Have you seen Gotland sheep? They have black faces, yes. In the snow, sometimes you can only see their expressions. It is very comical.”
“I just arrived this afternoon. Yesterday, by now. I haven’t had a chance to tour the countryside.” He paused, then added, “Not in daylight.”
“So, Mr. Lindstrom. I need to ask you some questions. It would be to your benefit to give me good answers.”
Harry smiled at the subtlety. He wondered if good answers were the answers she wanted to hear? Or honest answers to the questions she needed to ask?
The woman shifted her chair around so that she could look Harry directly in the eye. At the same time, Sverdrup slid his chair back on the linoleum, stood up, and arranged himself ominously in the shadows at the farthest edge of Harry’s vision. Hannah Arnason leaned forward so that he caught the scent of her body and felt the warmth of her breath.
“Harry,” she said. “I want you to tell us,” she paused for effect. “Apart from Birgitta Ghiberti, how many people have you killed?”
Harry stared into her eyes. The lustre in their steely blue depths had turned black. He knew he was a puzzlement to the National Criminal Police, or at least to Inspector Arnason and her odiferous shadow. But Hannah Arnason was inviting him to confess to multiple murders. He had a choice, either to protest vehemently or to wait until she revealed more, giving him something to refute or dispute or ridicule. Hannah toyed with her cup and gazed back at him with her head lowered in a gesture of feigned intimacy.
“Harry, it is your turn to speak.”
She sat back a little and the air stirred between them in a subtle flourish of bodily scent and the aroma of controlled hostility. For the first time, Harry felt the cool edge of fear cut through his gut.
Perhaps he wasn’t afraid of death. He and Karen were not in agreement on that. But as Karen had put it with caustic understatement, he definitely feared being misunderstood. Almost as much as not understanding. To be abducted, even annihilated, in the midst of confusion, as a rational, moral, and responsible being in the world, struck Harry as bloody horrific.
“What would you like me to say? Where do I start?”
She unexpectedly smiled.
“Wherever you wish.”
This is a very strange interrogation, and it’s not over a bistro dinner. Be wary, Harry. She’s too cool for comfort.
Harry searched in his mind for a line from William Blake. Or was it Emily Dickinson? He tried to focus.
Good for you, Harry. You’re living proof of the bicameral mind.
“Let’s work backwards,” he said. He listened to himself, to make sure he was speaking out loud. “Inspector, start with the most recent corpse. I can explain why I was at St. Clemens. But I have no idea how you turned up just minutes too late. Or Mr. Sverdrup, minutes before me.”
“Exactly. We followed you and we were too late.”
“I did not kill Birgitta Ghiberti. Look at me: the only blood on my clothes is my own. If we weren’t sequestered like fugitives, you could check it against the blood on Sverdrup’s hands. Or on the bloody cadaver.”
Hannah Arnason nodded amiably. “You think we are fugitives?”
“I’m not sure what to think. We are not at a police station, we seem to have fled the scene of a very unpleasant crime, and I have been smacked on the side of the head.” He glanced around and realized his assailant had slipped out for a smoke. He and the woman occupied the room on their own, filling it the way a condemned man and his executioner occupy the space in a death chamber.
“In fact,” he continued, “I was planning on contacting you in the morning. Birgitta told me she murdered the girl in the park and the one in Toronto.”
“Really? She confessed! How unexpected. How convenient for you that she is dead.”
She’s not being ironic, Harry.
“She was quite open about it.”
“That is most interesting. She does not have a reputation for murder, of course, only for making unpleasant accusations. We have circumstantial evidence connecting you to the girl in Stockholm, not her. Remember your wife’s ring. And what if I were to tell you we can prove it was you who killed Ilsa Jóhannesdóttir.”
“Ilsa, the girl from Gimli—don’t be absurd. Call Toronto, Miranda Quin can clear this up.”
“Mr. Lindstrom, apparently this will come as a surprise, but it was Superintendent Quin who contacted us. It was her idea that you were involved with the girl’s death. I was told she came from Gimli; it is famous as a settlement during the Icelandic diaspora.”
Harry took a deep breath. Miranda Quin was his only real friend in the world. He could think of nothing to say beyond a forlorn and meaningless expletive: “For God’s sake.”
“She has proof,” Hannah Arnason explained without emotion.
He drew in a deep breath. “Circumstantial,” he said.
“A brown scarf, yes. It is yours.”
Harry exhaled through clenched teeth. Birgitta was still a force to be reckoned with. He was being swept into some looming disaster by the machinations of a dead woman.
“It was a plant,” he said. He took a breath so deep his ribs ached. “Miranda talked to you about this?”
“Yes.”
“Damn bloody hell.”
Hearing his own voice so strongly uncertain made him shudder. Images of powerlessness swarmed through his head, images of water that turned violent and coalesced around the deaths of his children. He felt like he was losing everything all over again.
He reached out to touch the woman’s hand. She moved it away.
He swallowed, his ribs ached miserably.
“You can’t really believe I murdered those girls. Does Miranda believe I murdered them?”
“Yes.”
“For the sake of God almighty, I didn’t.”
She leaned forward again, into his personal space as a challenge, not to connect. “I am disappointed, Harry. I thought you would make this easier. Let us move our discussion to the third victim.”
“She’s still alive,” he protested, but at this point nothing was certain. “She was with Birgitta before she died.”
Inspector Arnason glanced away then back with a penetrating glare.
“I do not know who you mean. I’m talking about the girl from last summer.”
Harry slumped in his chair. The cuffs bit into his wrist, the pain felt good. It was a reminder there was a real world that made sense, even if it seemed to be slipping away. He twisted against the steel until he could feel blood spurt through the opened wound. He tried to focus on the warm blood draining down his wrist into the palm of his hand.
“Harry, pay attention.” For a moment, he thought it was Karen, reeling him in, but the voice belonged to the policewoman leaning so close the warm scent of tea on her breath washed over his face before he passed out from the pain, from his concussion, from the terrible absurdity of his entire life.
Gradually he seemed to emerge out of blackness. Karen was with him. They were in a different kitchen, exploring an abandoned farmhouse on the Sanctuary Line near Granton. He knew he was somewhere else at the sam
e time. He couldn’t think where or when.
The Granton house was structurally sound. The floors were broad pine planks, filthy but in good repair. The plaster had pulled away from the lath in places, exposing rough-cut joists and jigsaw views from the kitchen into the living room with its massive fieldstone fireplace. The ceiling plaster had collapsed and lay in rubble under foot. The exposed beams were hand-hewn and solid. He and Karen had driven out to Lucan in search of St. Patrick’s cemetery on the Roman Line. They had taken faculty positions at Huron College in London and wanted to explore the territory. In those parts, that meant searching out the tombstone of the Black Donnellys. Disappointed to find the original pink granite obelisk erected by William, the surviving son, had been replaced because it featured the word “murdered” five times over and attracted tourists, they drove out of the Irish settlements and into Scottish country around Granton. An abandoned farmhouse on the Sanctuary Line caught their eye. Neither of them was experienced in building; they were both academics, and Karen had grown up as a wife-in-training in the Niagara region before rebelling and pursuing her doctorate. But they bought the dilapidated ruins and a couple of acres, and over the next decade, through the births of two children, they restored the house to rustic beauty.
When the kitchen in Gotland swam into view again, it was distorted. He was spread-eagled face-up on the linoleum. The handcuffs were off. Sverdrup was kneeling over him, applying a damp towel to his right temple. The man seemed to notice that Harry’s eyes were open, but he ignored him as he proceeded to bandage his lacerated wrist. Sverdrup rose to his feet and disappeared out the door into the shadows, returning with a small chunk of ice, which he wrapped in the blood-soaked towel and applied to Harry’s forearm.
Harry realized he must have strained his arm when he collapsed off the chair onto the floor. He couldn’t move his fingers through the pain.
Hannah Arnason remained seated at the table, watching Sverdrup’s activities with apparent disinterest. Their roles had reversed. Patience gradually turned to annoyance. Her assistant had strung out his ministrations long enough, and she began to breathe stiffly though flared nostrils. Sverdrup was clearly accustomed to reading her signals and helped lift Harry to his feet and back onto a chair. He didn’t bother trying to secure him. Harry wasn’t going anywhere.
“Now, then, welcome back,” said Hannah Arnason. “Let’s start with the girl on the glacier.”
“What bloody girl on what bloody glacier?”
“You were in Iceland?”
“Last week.”
“Last year.”
“In the summer,” he mumbled. “Yes.” He could see where this was going.
“And you toured a glacier.”
“I toured several. With guides.”
“Always with guides?”
“When I was on the glaciers. Otherwise, I trekked around on my own.”
“Think back, Harry. Think about visiting Sólheimajökull Glacier.”
“I was there last week with your cousin, Chief Constable Arnason. He took me to Seljalandfoss Waterfall, then to the glacier. We got out of the car to smell the scent of snow drifting down from the ice field, but we didn’t go up onto the slopes.”
“Not last week. But in August you did.”
“No, that wasn’t one of the glaciers I toured. You can check.”
“We already have, Harry.”
“And while you were trekking, the girl disappeared.”
“And later you found her dead.”
“So you admit that?”
“I didn’t think you were making up corpses.”
He looked at Hannah like she was one of his former students who had just come up with a familiar idea as if it were brand spanking new. He proceeded to clarify:
“I admit to knowing where you’re going with this. I certainly do not admit to abduction or murder. I don’t even recall any fuss over a missing girl while I was in Iceland.”
“Do you read Icelandic?”
“No.”
“And you do not speak Icelandic.”
“No.”
“And she was only missing, not dead. She was found in a crevasse. She was not discovered until after you left.”
“Chief Constable Arnason would have had no reason to suspect me.”
“Perhaps not until Miranda Quin called when you landed in Reykjavik. Perhaps then he made the connection with Ilsa Jóhannesdóttir from Gimli.”
“But if Miranda thinks I’m a killer, why would she call me at all?”
“To prevent you from killing again? It is possible. It is not my concern.”
“The chief constable gave no indication I was in trouble.”
In trouble, Harry!
“My cousin suspected you did not kill the girl on the glacier. Suspicion is open-ended, Harry, it leaves room to be affirmed or refuted.”
“Your cousin conducted an investigation over Guinness and interrogated me during a tour of the geographic wonders of Iceland. He found me innocent.”
“He found you ‘not guilty.’ We both know that only means a substantive case could not be made. Now it is different, perhaps. I informed him about the girl in the Haga Park with your silver ring.”
Harry raised himself in the chair. He said, “I think I’d rather be in Toronto, dealing with Quin. You and your cousin, it must be a family thing—his methods are almost as devious as your firelight chats.”
“There was no fire at the bistro.”
“Candlelight, there were candles.”
“Yes.”
“And Superintendent Quin asked you to look out for me. Literally, as it turns out. That’s why you’re here on Gotland.”
“It is more complicated than that.”
She looked ominously inscrutable. He decided to seize the initiative.
“The girl in Hagaparken had black on her fingertips. What about the body in the glacier? Did she have manicured nails? Were they cut very short? Were they blackened?”
“It would have been difficult to tell. She died very slowly, in excruciating stages. Her fingers were frozen before she expired. She’d tried to claw her way out. The flesh was shredded and caked with blood, the nails had been torn away, some of the finger bones were exposed.”
“She must have been frantic.”
“Desperate, frozen to insensibility.”
“Was she naked?”
“No, of course not. She was found in a glacial crevasse.”
“And yet her fingernail parings turned up in Toronto. Did you know that? No, well they did. That means they were cut off before she plunged into the crevasse. Painted black after, apparently. She didn’t just slip. It wasn’t an accident; she wasn’t pushed on a vicious whim. It was all planned out.”
“That could be taken as a confession, Mr. Lindstrom.”
Slate, you’re tired, you’re in pain, you’re fed up and confused. Do us both a favour, be humble, stop talking.
But Harry ignored the advice.
“It seems that I’ve been refining my modus operandi: first, bodies clothed, gentle deaths, then a violent push, then wrapped in a blanket, then stark naked.”
“The girl in the glacier, she was my cousin Judith.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I really am.” Suddenly the dead girl was real. “Not the chief constable’s daughter, I hope?”
“No, he is alone. He has had three wives but no children. I did not know her well, not since we were small.”
“She was your age?”
“She was like me, in her early thirties. Very old for your victims, Harry. But it was Judith’s death that connected you to us. And now we have caught you in the act.”
“The brutality of Birgitta’s death doesn’t fit anyone’s pattern.”
“No, it does not.”
“Does it occur to you that forensic patterns are like constellations; they exist entirely in the eye of the beholder?”
“Constellations exist because there are humans to observe them. What is your point, Harr
y?”
“That is my point! They’re how we describe what we see, and we end up thinking they’re real. Those small points of light, some are stars and some are galaxies filled with a billion stars. We draw lines between them and say they are the hunter, Orion, or Ursa, the bear. We do that, sometimes, we connect the dots with flyspecks and think we’ve seen the truth, when all we’re seeing is flyspecks and dots.”
Hannah Arnason listened. She seemed fascinated with how a man so apparently absurd could be a killer.
“Do you know where you are?” she asked.
“No, not really.”
“Do you have any idea why we have brought you here?”
“None at all. I’d feel more comfortable in a Visby jail.”
“And does your mysterious situation not make you afraid?”
“Vulnerable, not afraid.”
“You are very inconsistent, Harry.”
“Real people are.”
16 ROGUE JUSTICE
IN THE LAST FEW HOURS, HARRY HAD BEEN HORRIFIED, anxious, baffled, intrigued, frustrated, angry, defiant, and proud. He had been wounded, insulted, and taken prisoner, apparently as a victim of rogue justice. He had been fearful, at times, but never afraid. That’s what he told himself. Fear was a survival mechanism, a visceral response demanding resolution through action or a change in attitude. To be afraid, however, was a debilitating state of mind. He intuitively shifted his attitude to counter the fear of being afraid. It was about the only thing he could do that was under his own control.
He was inconsistent, as Hannah Arnason explained. That was both disconcerting and gave him comfort. Cold comfort; reassuring distress. Word games. A compound oxymoron.
Get it together, Harry! She’s more inconsistent than you are. She’s warm, she’s cold, she’s passive, then aggressive. A friend one minute, an adversary the next. What’s she got to be afraid of?
He scrutinized his abductor. She watched him watching her. Suddenly, she got up and motioned Sverdrup to follow her. She strode out onto the porch, letting in a rush of cold air before the door swung shut behind them.
Harry surveyed the room. Two doors led into the rest of the house. Not promising avenues of escape. Escape to where? He knew the farmhouse was isolated by the diminishing number of lights flashing against the car windows when he had been sprawled semi-conscious in the back seat.