On A Small Island

by Grant Nicol

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘Jóhannes was murdered, Ylfa.’

  I had known exactly what he meant; I simply didn’t want to believe it. There was nothing but silence on the other end of the line, which was eventually broken by the sound of Grímur taking another drag from his cigarette.

  ‘It would be better if you came over, Ylfa. He’s been through a hell of an ordeal but he’s still refusing to go to hospital. The problem seems to be that he doesn’t want to leave the horses on their own. One of them was killed along with the boy last night and I thought that if you came over he might finally agree to see a doctor. If you were here to see to the horses he might feel better about being more cooperative. He’s had a nasty blow to the head but he’s being rather pig-headed about letting anyone examine him. The paramedics have bandaged him up but at his age a full check up at the hospital would be a good idea.’

  ‘I see what you mean. I’ll come straight over.’

  ‘Thanks, Ylfa. He may have a concussion – or worse.’

  ‘Tell him I’m on my way.’

  I hung up, rolled off the bed and threw on some clothes, all the time trying not to cry. I couldn’t believe Jóhannes was dead. Grímur’s words all made sense in my head but the reality of them was still some way off from sinking in. Who would attack such a sweet boy and kill one of the horses? What could they have possibly been after?

  There was nothing of any value on the farm except the horses. Maybe it had been a case of mistaken identity and they thought they were on someone else’s land. Maybe they had been out of their heads on drugs, looking for money to get their next fix.

  The blood pounded in my head as I ran through all the possible scenarios over and over again as I drove. No matter what I came up with, though, it failed to make the slightest bit of sense.

  By the time I saw the police car waiting at the entrance to the driveway I understood that it was all for real. Something had gone terribly wrong; there was no point in denying that now. The officer standing next to the car signalled that I should come to a halt and then stood directly in my way to make sure that I did as he wanted.

  When he was convinced I was who I said I was he allowed me to complete my journey up the driveway. For the last hundred metres or so the car seemed to crawl along as if my world had fallen into slow motion. The sound of the gravel crunching beneath my tyres sounded louder than I would have ever thought possible. All my nerves were exposed and poised for the ensuing trauma. This was where dreams would shatter and those nightmares I had been having would become reality. The overwhelming feeling I had was that forces beyond my control had begun to pull me in opposing directions, waiting now for me to snap.

  Grímur was leaning against his car smoking a cigarette. He was talking to the same technician I had seen walking into Inga Björk’s workplace with his serious-looking metal briefcase. He had the very same briefcase with him now and latex gloves on and it looked like whatever they were talking about was making him uneasy.

  He looked tense and I could tell he was talking faster than normal even though I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Grímur, on the other hand, looked considerably more relaxed than his colleague. Solemn, perhaps, but not uptight. When he saw me approaching he said something under his breath and their conversation ended. They both turned to greet me, making me even more nervous than I already was.

  I looked about for Dad but he was nowhere to be seen. Hopefully he had heeded their advice and got some himself some much needed medical attention. Grímur beckoned me to him and introduced me to his forensic technician, Björn Magnússon. He had seen something that hadn’t agreed with him and it showed all over his face. He wanted to speak but instead just stared at me as if unable to bring himself to say anything in case it turned out to be the wrong thing. Grímur cleared his throat and stubbed out his current cigarette.

  ‘He’s inside the house, Ylfa. Remember what I said about getting that concussion checked out. He’s not a young man any more.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll go see him now.’

  He simply nodded as if to tell me it was exactly what I should do.

  ‘We sent the ambulance away when it became clear he wasn’t going to play ball but we can get one back immediately if you can talk him around.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do. What about Jóhannes?’

  ‘His body’s been removed. Björn’s busy here with the forensic side of things and I will need to ask you some questions as soon as you’re ready. You should talk to your father first, though. He was hit hard enough to knock him out for a short while so even if he won’t go to hospital you will need to stay with him for now.’

  I looked towards the entrance to the stables, which was cordoned off by yellow and black Lögreglan crime-scene tape.

  ‘I have some questions for you, too,’ I told Grímur. An understatement of enormous proportions.

  He nodded again, ‘Of course, there is a lot for you to catch up on. Just as soon as you’ve talked to your father. We’re going to be here for a while so there’s no hurry.’

  I made my way into the house where I found Dad sitting in his favourite chair looking as white as a sheet with his head heavily bandaged. He had been shaken up badly all right.

  His usual rock-like exterior was looking rather fragile to say the least. He was holding his head gingerly and there were still traces of dried blood down the side of his face. All in all he looked in a sorry state.

  ‘I’m here now, Dad, are you all right?’

  He looked up at me seemingly lost for words. For a moment I wasn’t sure if he recognised me or not.

  ‘I’m a little the worse for wear, my girl.’ Another startling understatement if ever I’d heard one.

  ‘I would imagine you are. What happened to Jóhannes?’

  ‘Sometime in the middle of the night I heard the horses making a racket in their stalls. They never do that so I knew something was wrong. They were very agitated about something. While I was trying to calm them down I was hit from behind and knocked out for a little while. Not too long, mind you. When I came around I was sitting on the floor tied to a pole with something over my head. I could hear him moving around me but when I called out to him to untie me and face me like a man he just kept on doing what he was doing. A strange smell started to work its way inside the bag. I’ve spent enough time on farms to recognise what it was. Blood, and lots of it.’

  ‘What did he do?’ I asked, not at all sure that I wanted to hear the answer.

  ‘He had been working with a knife. When he finally took the bag off my head and I was able to see what he’d been up to, he was gone. What I saw in front of me was something I wish I’d never ever had to see. He had taken a knife to Jóhannes and laid him out on top of Magga. On his back with his hands over his eyes. They had both had their throats cut and bled to death in front of me. They just lay there bleeding all over the place until they could bleed no more. Neither of them moved once, not even a little. There was nothing I could do to help, Ylfa.’

  I tried to imagine what it must have felt like watching them die like that and being unable to do anything about it. There was no way it could have been a case of mistaken identity. Whoever had done this had wanted Dad to suffer as much as possible. The only question was whether he or Jóhannes had been the primary target of the criminals, and why? Had they wanted to scare my father half to death or had Jóhannes paid terribly for some mistake? I had trouble imagining that anyone could hold such a grudge against either of them.

  ‘Who did this?’

  He just shook his head, ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘The detective says you should go to hospital, Dad. Will you do that for me?’

  He shook his head again, quite determinedly.

  ‘Now that you’re here, though, I will lie down for a bit. You’re going to have to see to the horses. They’ll need to see a familiar face. They know that something awful has happened just as you and I do.’

  ‘Okay, but if there
’s any sign that you’re not improving I’m driving you to the hospital myself.’

  He put his free hand up in a sign of surrender. For once in his life he didn’t look keen for a fight. If someone had wanted to hurt him, they sure knew what they were doing. Neither Jóhannes nor our favourite horse could ever be replaced. The way Dad looked now it was hard to imagine him recovering, but he was a resilient man and had surprised me before with his powers of recuperation. I helped him up from his chair and walked him to his bed. After he had lain down and closed his eyes I sat and watched him as he tried to rest. I was in no hurry to see whatever state the stables were in and chances were I wouldn’t be allowed near them for a while.

  Eventually, Dad’s breathing settled and he looked slightly more comfortable. I held his hand until I could tell that he was asleep. Only then did I pull out my phone to call my sisters.

  I called Elín first and thankfully the call went straight to voicemail so I left a concise message telling her the facts as I knew them and reassuring her that Dad was okay. She wouldn’t be interested in any of the emotions surrounding what had happened, just the chain of events. Those she could digest in her own good time without the need to inject any unnecessary sentiment into the equation.

  The next call was always going to be much more difficult. Kristjana was the emotional infant of the family and she was going to deal with this the same way she always dealt with stressful situations – poorly.

  There would inevitably be a million questions from her regarding what had happened and I still didn’t really know the full story myself. Even if Elín had answered her call, her indifference would have precluded her from asking too many questions. You could always depend on her to not to care too much about anything. She was good like that.

  As I stood at the front door staring at my phone I saw Grímur waving at me. I took this to be a sign that Kristjana’s call could wait for the time being and walked the short distance across to the stables. He pulled his jacket tightly around his chest as the wind began to pick up. The very strength of it had taken the temperature down well below what had been forecast and it didn’t feel as if it was going to ease up anytime soon. Its icy fingers worked their way in under my jumper as I approached him. Grímur took me by the arm and pulled me close in a gesture that had conspiratorial overtones. The look on his face was serious even by his usually sincere standards.

  ‘You will need to brace yourself for this. Both the boy and the horse were incapacitated before the attack with drugs of some sort. They both bled to death after they were cut and the amount of blood involved is significant. The poor lad who found them lost his breakfast all over the ground just here. It’s not for the fainthearted. You don’t have to look at this if you don’t want to.’

  Even as he was talking, the smell hit me for the first time. A nauseating, metallic odour that I instantly knew would linger in my senses for some time to come. The power of it made me want to pull away but I resolved to be stronger than that and forced myself to enter the stables.

  I had readied myself for any eventuality but the truth was that there was no way I could ever have been prepared for the sight that confronted me when I saw what had once been Magga’s stall.

  Our beloved Magga still lay where she had died. Her beautiful brown face had lost all remnants of its kindness and sat awkwardly in a pool of her own blood. Grímur had been right about the amount of blood on the floor; it was indeed everywhere. A lake of crimson had settled across what looked like the entire floor. She had been cut along the length of her neck by what must have been an extremely sharp blade. The wound was enormous. It was a particularly sad way to say farewell to a dear friend.

  ‘When we arrived your father was still tied up here. The delivery boy had been unable – or unwilling – to get the knots undone.’

  He waved a hand at a pole close to Magga’s stall. The rope used to fasten Dad to it was still attached, hanging limply as a haunting reminder of the morning’s events. From his position he would have had a perfect view of the death of his two beloved companions.

  ‘In there we not only found the horse exactly as it lies now but the young lad, Jóhannes as well. He had been positioned on top of the animal in what appeared to be a deliberate and thought-out pose. He and the horse both had their throats cut and bled to death where they lay.’

  I looked at him for further explanation but none was forthcoming. Björn walked in on our conversation and joined the uncomfortable silence. He looked at Grímur and then back to me before speaking.

  ‘It appears they were both incapacitated by the assailant. I found puncture wounds similar to those that would be left by a large bore needle on both the boy and the horse.

  I will need to wait for some blood tests but it is likely that they were both injected with a tranquiliser that paralysed them completely. Then the assailant went about cutting through some fairly large blood vessels so they would bleed to death.

  ‘At that point they would still have been alive, although not still conscious. That’s why there is such a large amount of blood. Their hearts would have just kept pumping until they were empty.’

  ‘Would they have felt anything?’ I had to ask.

  ‘No,‘ Björn said. ‘They would have both been completely anaesthetised.’

  ‘I suppose that’s something,’ I said.

  ‘Is there anyone you can think of who might have wanted to kill Jóhannes or scare your father like this? Do either of them have any enemies that you know of?’ Grímur asked. ‘Anyone they might have owed money to, for instance?’

  I didn’t have to think very hard about my reply. I couldn’t think of anybody who would have any cause to do this to Jóhannes or my father and I told Grímur so. The two men looked at each other before Björn announced that he had work to be getting on with back at the lab. As he made his way to his car a freezing cold rain started to fall from the now leaden sky.

  ‘Should I be worried about whoever did this coming back?‘

  ‘To be honest, I don’t know. I’ve sent the K-9 Unit out through the surrounding countryside; they will be very thorough. If the criminals are still in the immediate area we’ll find them but I imagine they’re long gone by now.’

  ‘But for how long?’

  ‘Without knowing why this happened it’s very difficult to predict what might happen next. Too much work went into this for it to be a random attack. My first thought is that your father might have been the target.’

  ‘Then why kill Jóhannes?’

  ‘Maybe someone wanted to teach him a lesson. One he would be unlikely to forget.’

  There was a muffled snuffling from one of the horses. They had been keeping very quiet, almost as though they didn’t want to draw any attention to themselves. I couldn’t blame them.

  ‘If anything comes to you once you’ve had a chance for this to all sink in, give me a ring straight away.’ He handed me one of his cards.

  ‘When I leave, the officer you met at the bottom of the drive will stay just outside the stables here with a clear view of the house. If you need a hand with anything, don’t hesitate to ask him for help. The house will have someone stationed outside it twenty-four hours a day for as long as you think is necessary.’

  And with that he turned away and forced his way through the driving rain. The presence of a police officer on the property was supposed to reassure me but it only served as a reminder of how close you can be to a thoroughly gruesome end.

  As soon as he was gone I changed into my rubber boots and got to work. By the time I had hosed the last of the blood out of the stables I finally started to cry for real. The tears had been building up within me ever since I’d laid eyes on Magga’s remains. I covered her with an old plastic tarpaulin. Since sundown the temperature had fallen even further and the arctic tempest outside was showing no signs of abating anytime soon.

  As I made my way back to the house through what was quickly becoming a gale, I waved at our police sentinel through the dark.
There was no way of knowing whether he had seen me or not. The inside of the car was as black as the night that surrounded us. It was probably just as cold too; the poor man was probably freezing in there. I had become chilled right through my clothes despite the work I’d been doing. Chilled not only by the freezing night air but also by the thought that out there somewhere was a man with visions more terrible than any I could ever have imagined.

  CHAPTER 6

  I could tell Dad had regained much of his personal conviction when I made my way through the kitchen the next morning to investigate the hubbub coming from outside the front door. Despite the furious wind and near horizontal rain, there he was standing outside the stables waving his arms furiously at the poor young man who had been commissioned to protect us all through the night. I couldn’t hear what was being said but the conversation, such as it was, didn’t seem to be going too well for the young officer.

  He was probably as yet to experience anything in his short time with the police that could match the bitter determination of my father first thing in the morning. It could be a brutal part of the day at the best of times but when you found yourself on the wrong side of Einar Dagsson, it was sometimes hard to find the courage to carry on. The rest of the day suddenly lost much of its previous promise. This appeared to be the dilemma presently facing the young officer of the law. Instead of resolutely carrying out his duty to protect us from whatever danger lurked in the darkness of the surrounding countryside he was re-evaluating who he might be able to call upon to protect him while he performed a tactical withdrawal from our property. Dereliction of duty had never seemed so appealing.

  As the standoff didn’t appear to be reaching any sort of satisfactory conclusion on its own I grabbed my phone and called Kristjana. The night before I had been so tired that I had lost all interest in dealing with her. Now, though, she presented a speedy solution to the struggle unfolding before my eyes in the dim morning half-light. Her desperate need to talk to Dad as soon as I told her our awful news would be the perfect remedy to the skirmish unfolding before me.