“Me?” said the preacher.
“Yes. Have you got a shotgun?”
“No.”
“Where were you last Friday morning?”
“You mean when Fridrik was murdered?”
“Yes.”
“May God forgive you for asking such a question.”
“Where were you?”
“I was at home.”
“Can anybody corroborate that?”
“No, actually. I am not married, and I live alone.”
“I see,” Birkir said. He turned his gaze back to the picture. “Has the family gotten along well with this woman?” he asked.
The preacher replied quietly, “I would not say they have gotten on badly, but this young woman is on the wrong path in her life. Instead of following the teachings of the Lord, she lives in sin and lust. She shares a bed with another woman and has carnal relations with her.”
“How does that affect this particular household?” Birkir asked, looking at the widow.
The widow remained silent as the preacher continued to provide the answers. “The woman has fondled her companion physically in front of everybody, children as well as adults.”
“In what way?”
“They embrace each other and kiss.”
“Is there something wrong with that?”
“They kiss with the lips…and the tongue. It is a sin and a blasphemy.”
“I see. Who observed these…kisses?”
“Fridrik and the children. The worst part was that the children had to witness it.”
“Couldn’t their father explain to them that it’s just what grown-up people do when they’re fond of each other?”
“This is not normal fondness. It is the filthy lust of homosexuals. Fridrik bade me convert the woman.”
“Did that work?”
“The woman refused to accept the word and blessing of the Lord. She cursed my offer and uttered blasphemy.”
Silence fell, and Birkir waited for further explanation. None was offered, so he asked, “Did this result in any conflict between her and Fridrik?”
“No. As far as I know, they had no further conversation. I have visited here a few times in recent weeks, and we have, on these occasions, called upon God in front of the woman’s closed door and asked Our Father to grant her guidance. These children here have joined us in these moments of prayer, in order that they may gain understanding of the difference between good and evil in people’s lives.”
It took Birkir a moment to grasp what the preacher had said.
“Are you telling me that you’ve stood outside Hjördís’s apartment and prayed?”
“Yes.”
“With the children?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that taking things a bit far?”
“One can never go too far when the soul is at stake. God’s will is quite clear on that in the Good Book.”
The preacher opened the Bible at one of many bookmarks and read, “Epistle of Saint Paul to the Romans, chapter one, verse twenty-six: ‘For even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.’”
He turned to another page and read, “The First Epistle of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, chapter six, verse nine: ‘Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.’”
Closing the book, he said, “These words evince how God Almighty looks upon any kind of homosexuality and lust.”
“Right,” Birkir said.
“Are you a Christian in your heart?” the preacher asked.
“I was baptized and confirmed,” Birkir said.
“But do you possess living faith?”
“I try to treat others the way I would like them to treat me. I try to be kind to people, rather than treat them badly. I belong to Iceland’s national church, and I usually celebrate Christmas in some way. That is my living faith.”
The preacher put his hand on Birkir’s shoulder. “Do you think that this is enough to inherit God’s kingdom, if there is no prayer? Heaven is costly. It demands sacrifice. Man must reach out for God.”
Birkir loosened the man’s grip from his shoulder. “I think that God doesn’t mind whether or not we talk to him. There is no doubt, on the other hand, that he would like us to be kinder to one another. That we show tolerance in matters that harm no one. Beyond that, I think that God is only part of the physics of infinity.”
It was obvious that the preacher had no clue what Birkir meant by this last sentence, and indeed Birkir himself didn’t understand it. It had just popped out of his mouth all of a sudden.
“You need help to understand the word of the Lord,” said the preacher. “With my guidance, you can gain living faith. If you attend our assembly you will see the light.”
“Thank you for that. I think I would rather light a candle,” Birkir said.
13:30
Hjördís’s apartment was close by, just two floors up. Birkir rang the doorbell. He didn’t have to wait long before the door was half opened and Hjördís appeared. She was dressed in faded jeans and a white sleeveless T-shirt, her bare feet clad in gray sandals. Birkir remembered her being tall but was still caught by surprise at the sight of her looming in the doorway.
“Yes?” Hjördís looked questioningly down at Birkir. He took a step back.
He introduced himself and showed the ID pinned to his shirt.
“I’m from the detective division. You were a friend of Leifur Albert Rúnarsson, and we’re investigating his death.”
“Still? He disappeared last year.”
She opened the door further and stepped aside. “Please come in.”
She led the way into the living room and offered Birkir a seat on a small white sofa. She sat down cross-legged on the floor with her back against the wall, ignoring the chairs in the room.
Birkir sat and observed the young woman. Her face was pretty, but would probably have seemed masculine without the makeup she wore. Nevertheless, she possessed a kind of elegance and even an enigmatic sex appeal. She had a well-defined jaw and high cheekbones, and her mouth was small but full lipped. Her blonde hair was cropped short and had some striking red and black stripes on one side. Freckles peppered her straight nose, and her blue eyes were sharp.
“The Akureyri police talked to me last year,” Hjördís said when the silence had become awkward. “I’m not sure if I can tell you anything new.”
Birkir said nothing and looked around the room. On a high worktable stood two computers, one with a large flat-screen monitor that displayed a slide show of photographs featuring special effects—sometimes they shattered like glass, sometimes they dissolved and dripped fluidly down the screen, sometimes they turned into white snow that blew away. Then a new picture emerged. There was a large printer on the floor, and various examples of graphic art were piled up on the floor or stuck on the wall. Fixed up along one side of the room was a prominent display of the alphabet; the large black letters appeared in order from A to Z. Each letter had its own page with uppercase and lowercase side by side. This was not a living room; it was a studio.
Hjördís continued. “I could not explain Leifur’s disappearance last year, nor can I now. He was not an unhappy man. On the contrary.”
“How did you and Leifur meet? Why did you become friends?”
“Do you think that story will help you explain his death?”
“Any information we get helps us create a more detailed picture o
f him. I don’t know whether that will lead to some sort of breakthrough.”
“Well, okay. Since you’re here, I’ll try to help you.”
After a pause, she began. “I’ll have to tell you a bit about my personal circumstances to explain our friendship. It began when my family moved to Akureyri from Boston when I was sixteen. My dad had done graduate studies in medicine in New England and had worked there for a few years after. Then he got a job as a consultant in one of the departments of the district hospital in Akureyri. This was a terrible upheaval for me at a difficult age. I was born in Iceland, and my family often came back to visit while we were living abroad. We also always spoke Icelandic at home, so the language was not a problem. But to move from a big American city to a tiny Icelandic town like Akureyri was a bit of a culture shock. I went to a really big high school in Boston, and anything you can think of was on offer in terms of classes, sports, and the arts. There was always something going on, and I had loads of friends.”
Abruptly, she stood, got a bottle of water from the worktable, and took a sip from it. Still standing, she spoke again. “It wasn’t just that I lost my friends when we moved to Iceland. There was something else that made my life more difficult to deal with.”
She hesitated. “I’d started to have serious doubts about my sexual orientation. During my adolescence in America, it hadn’t bothered me that I was never attracted to the guys like my girlfriends were. I just thought that it would happen later for me. In Akureyri, being interested in boys was even further from my mind. Compared with my classmates in Boston, the Icelandic boys rated really badly for manners; they were clumsy and sometimes just plain rude. Their posturing just didn’t appeal to me, but they were always trying to get my attention.”
She shook her head and smiled faintly. “Oh, yes, they tried. You could easily describe most of their behavior as sexual harassment, but that’s another story.”
She took another sip of water. “After a while, I met and became friends with a girl who was very much into all types of sports in Akureyri—team handball, soccer, and swimming, to name just a few. She was a glamorous, athletic girl, a year older than me and almost as tall. I suddenly realized I had a crush on her, and, my God, what a shock that was. I completely stopped seeing her and shut that part of myself off. My parents were very worried about me for a few months, but finally, my courage began to come back. I avoided girls, though, because I found any hint of those unwelcome romantic feelings very uncomfortable. I had a good relationship with my parents, but I didn’t dream of discussing this with them, nor with anyone else.
“Then I met the ‘twins,’ as they were called: Leifur and his best friend, Jóhann. Back in Boston I’d done gymnastics in high school—they had fantastic facilities. I did very well, but being so tall held me back. It’s not an asset in that sport, and I knew I was never going to reach the top ranks. Everyone wanted me to take up basketball because of my height, but I could never learn to hit the basket.”
The memory brought a smile to Hjördís’s face. “When I came to Akureyri, I gave up gymnastics and got into working out. I could do it on my own and didn’t need help in the gym. I already knew many of the strengthening exercises and stretches from gymnastics, and I liked improvising, too. I enjoyed losing myself in a workout when I was feeling really low; the exertion relaxed me and brought a feeling of well-being that I experienced all too rarely. The guys, the ‘twins,’ were always in the gym as well, and we began to get to know each other. They were, of course, just as dumb as the other guys in town, but they were always together and that made them easy to handle—neither tolerated any harassment or lack of respect toward me from the other. We began to work out together and then became friends outside of the gym. I didn’t need to worry about other guys, because Leifur and Jóhann kept them away from me.”
She took another sip from the water bottle and put it aside. She looked intently at Birkir. “I assume that you’re heterosexual. You can try to put yourself in my place by imagining that you can’t go out on the town without most of the men constantly hitting on you. That felt just as abhorrent to me as it would to you. I just shrink from the idea of touching a man in a sexual way. I had no heterosexual experience, and I didn’t want to contemplate a situation where it might be forced on me. Leifur and Jóhann ensured I didn’t need to fear anything like that. I could have fun with any interesting guy, but if he became too fresh, all I had to do was to give my friends the sign and they were there. Then he’d leave me in peace.”
Hjördís fell silent as she recalled this and then said, “Other girls found my two friends very attractive, and, little by little, I learned to enjoy the company of beautiful girls without blushing in embarrassment. But it never occurred to me to take things any further in that direction. That didn’t happen until last fall, when I moved to New York to go to design school, where I met a woman and ended up in love and in a relationship.”
“Where is she now?” Birkir asked.
Reaching across to one of the computers, Hjördís hit a key to stop the slide show and selected a file with the mouse. A photo of a muscular black sprinter appeared.
Hjördís said, “This is Rose. She’s in New York right now training. She’s a heptathlete.”
Soon the picture disappeared and the slide show started up again. Many of the images were Hjördís’s family photos. Birkir saw her whole life on show: baby pictures, toddler birthdays, everything up to the present. Each picture stayed on the screen for a few seconds.
“I don’t have picture albums and I don’t hang photos on the wall,” Hjördís said. “I just have them as a screen saver, so I can always see them. That way, they’re with me wherever I go and wherever I’m living.”
“How many are there?” Birkir asked.
“There are about a thousand on this loop. It shows ten a minute, so it takes a hundred minutes to go around. I’ve got more sets.”
In one of the photos that came up, Birkir recognized Jóhann standing next to a young man who looked a lot like him.
“Leifur and Jóhann. Tell me more about them,” Birkir said.
Hjördís had spotted the picture, too, and froze it on the screen with a keystroke. She was silent for a bit and then said, “Although they were quite unrelated, they looked incredibly alike. Like twins, actually. And not just in appearance, their mannerisms were almost the same.”
She restarted the slide show.
“What do you mean, almost the same?” Birkir asked.
“Leifur was just a bit more of everything. He was usually more proactive in their escapades, and he always went just that bit further. He was more of a leader. But it wasn’t obvious, and I didn’t realize it until I’d known them for a long time.”
“Tell me more about them.”
“Well, they both left school early, but they weren’t stupid—far from it. Perhaps just a bit immature in some ways. It was obvious that their main interests lay outside of school. They read all kinds of literature but they weren’t interested in lesson plans. They were into philosophy and history books and they read novels. They even listened to New Age music—at Jóhann’s instigation, I remember. They practiced all kinds of extreme sports and spent all their money going on trips abroad. They turned everything into a competition. Sometimes they would spend days playing computer games—not PlayStation-type stuff, but serious games on the Internet that had participants from all over the world. The same game would sometimes go on for days and they’d take on a huge number of competitors. They’d take turns playing their opponents, working in shifts. I was never involved in this particular hobby; I found other things to do.”
“How do you spend your time? Apart from the gym?”
“Graphic design,” Hjördís replied quickly. “I’ve always been good at drawing, but I wanted to improve. I was forever reading design magazines and stuff like that. I’m really into typography—at the moment I’m designing a new headline font for an American architectural magazine. It’s a very interesting a
nd demanding project.”
Hjördís pointed at the pictures on the walls.
“Is it something you’re studying?” Birkir asked.
“Yes. I enrolled in a very interesting school last fall. I got lucky, because at first they placed me on the waiting list. Then someone dropped out and they offered me the spot. That’s why I went to New York so suddenly last year. I couldn’t even attend Leifur’s memorial service.”
“Your friends, did they have any enemies?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you know of anyone that might have wanted to do them harm?”
“No.”
“When was the last time you saw Leifur?”
“The three of us were together in Spain last August, but I flew home before they did to check out study options for the coming winter. I’d applied to several schools and had to follow up. We didn’t see each other at all during these weeks before I went to New York. That chapter of my life was over, and I didn’t need them anymore. I felt terrible, though, when Leifur disappeared.”
“What about Jóhann?”
“He came to New York last fall, but we didn’t spend much time together. He was a bit funny, of course, when I introduced him to my girlfriend. I’d never explained my leanings to him and Leifur, or to anyone, for that matter. I was completely in the closet during the years I was friends with them.”
Birkir mulled things over. Then he said, “I understand that Fridrik, your neighbor, poked his nose into your private affairs—that is to say, your sexual orientation.”
“The guy who was murdered?”
“Yes.”
“Do we have to talk about that?”
“He harassed you, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, he did. What about it?”
“That must have been unpleasant?”
She shook her head. “No. It doesn’t disturb me having people standing out in the hallway mumbling prayers. They’re entitled to their opinions, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t need their consent to live my own life. It’s much worse when people hide their prejudices and pretend to be well-meaning but then are offensive behind your back.”
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