by Grant Nicol
I had finally had enough. I couldn’t understand all the fuss over one torn note. They had three others I knew of and not one of them had done a damn bit of good. Both my sisters were gone and no amount of standing around talking about it was going to bring them back.
I excused myself and stepped outside for some fresh air. Grímur told me not to take too long and Stefán Jón may have argued with him about that as well. The noise in the flat faded as I closed the door behind me and immersed myself in the tempest that was baring its teeth outside. I felt safer in the freezing wind than I had indoors.
One of the mountain rescue men had made it onto the roof and was fastening himself to it with some sort of rope and harness. I watched him as he methodically made himself fast to the roof and then slowly, carefully went about dragging the corrugated iron back to safety in spite of the gale blowing around him.
Stefán Jón came outside to see how I was doing. I told him I was feeling a little off colour and that I would stay out in the fresh air until I was feeling better. Grímur apparently still wanted to talk to me but was okay with me taking a little time to compose myself. The urge to flee was rising inside me the way bile rises in your throat. I told him that I’d be back inside in a few minutes knowing full well that there was no way I’d be stepping back into that flat. They’d been in there, whoever they were, and that meant that the place had been poisoned.
I was going to be next, surely. I looked up and down the street to see if there was anyone watching me. The only people around were the mountain rescue team, who were too busy to be paying any attention to me. The atrocious weather had cleared the street of all other forms of life.
As I stood there studying the street warily another police car arrived and the officers in it began the task of knocking on all the neighbours’ doors one by one to ask if anyone had seen anything unusual recently. Could someone possibly have seen my sister being dragged from her home? I told Stefán Jón that I would be back in the flat in a minute or two and he disappeared back into the warmth.
Eventually Grímur appeared outside to seek me out as well. It must have sunk in that I wasn’t returning to answer his questions so he had come to me instead. I apologised for having destroyed the note and told him that I was slowly going out of my mind. He now seemed more concerned for my wellbeing than he had before, when it appeared that all he cared about was the note. He suggested that some officers keep an eye on me in case I was the next target. Grímur had a more paternal look about him now but he did have a warning for me.
‘Ylfa, I don’t want to scare you but whatever is going on here now unquestionably has a pattern to it. I would be very wary of staying anywhere on your own. If you have to go home to get a few things, do so. But I would recommend staying somewhere else until we know what is going on.’
I nodded and told him that I would go home briefly but then I would be going to see Dad.
‘I don’t think he should be alone now either. If we’re together it will be more difficult for anything else to happen.’
I didn’t wait for a response and launched myself headlong into the windstorm. Apologising yet again to Stefán Jón for leaving in such a hurry was going to have to wait for another time. It was the second time in a day I had run out on him but I just had to get away, and I had to see Dad. I could feel something circling our family. Something as wild and as dangerous as the storm sweeping through the city.
The men across the street were making good progress repairing the roof. They were used to searching their part of the countryside for lost walkers and tourists but were just as capable in the city when they were needed. My own street had become a wind tunnel and the force of the storm almost kept me from crossing the road and making my way the short distance down the hill to my flat. I very quickly grabbed a few things and threw them in the car.
As I made my way out of the city there was no mistaking just how much work the mountain rescue boys had on their hands. The police were out in serious numbers as well, taping off dangerous buildings and closing off streets wherever necessary. I turned on the radio to listen to what was happening elsewhere. In the centre of town, the main shopping street, Laugavegur, had been closed by the police to park a giant crane next to a building. It also had lost its roof, which was hanging so far off the building that it had become a danger to pedestrians and traffic alike. The crane was being used to hold the roof in place as it dangled above the street until such time that workers could safely get onto the roof. The height of the building meant that the wind speed at the top was too dangerous to make the ascent just yet.
Down at the cargo terminal a shipping container had been blown from the top of the stack it was perched on and onto the wharf below – a height of about ten metres.
People were being told to take great care if they had to go out anywhere in the storm and to stay indoors if they didn’t have to be anywhere important. The winds would be around for at least another twenty-four hours until they had made their way across the country and towards the Faroe Islands.
In the south east of the country drivers were being told to stay off the roads as the wind was whipping up giant ash clouds, which would reduce visibility to practically nothing in some places. Meanwhile, out in the middle of all that chaos and pandemonium both my sisters had gone, perhaps never to return.
CHAPTER 17
Our property appeared to have escaped any serious damage from the weather, possibly as it was far less exposed than a lot of the city. I was going to tell him about Kristjana as soon as I walked in the door but he already knew. He had been watching the news on television and had seen a short bulletin regarding her disappearance and the possible link to what had happened to Elín. Stefán Jón and his journalist friends had obviously wasted no time alerting the various stations to the breaking story.
Dad said that Aron Steingrímsson had been mentioned on the programme. They said he had been questioned by police about his possible knowledge of Elín’s whereabouts and stated only that he knew Elín but not how. After his questioning he had been released with no further action by the police expected.
I marvelled at the treatment money could buy you. If it hadn’t been Aron Steingrímsson with his army of lawyers, the real story would have been plastered all over the tabloid publications by now. A man such as him had to protect his reputation; the public couldn’t be allowed to find out what the people running our country were really like. I imagined the questions he’d faced at home could well have been more uncomfortable than the ones that had been posed by the police.
I hugged my father and asked him what was going on. He held me tighter than I had expected and told me he didn’t know either.
‘It’s as if our whole world is coming apart,’ he whispered.
I let go of him and tried to read what emotions if any might be passing across his face. It wasn’t a complicated face, he just looked miserable.
I thought about what Stefán Jón had said to me about how everything that had happened so far, in one way or another, revolved around the man standing in front of me right now. It was hard to imagine why anyone would pick such a fight with a cantankerous old sod like him but you never knew. He had been known to rub people up the wrong way.
I met with little in the way of an argument when I told him I would be staying at the house for the foreseeable future. In many ways, it was what he’d always wanted.
Later that evening, after we’d spent as much time tending to the horses as we could manage in the conditions, we decided to call it a day and retreat once more to the living room. As the dutiful daughter I cooked dinner for the two of us while Dad watched television. At my behest we were to avoid all news programmes while I was in the house, a stipulation that my father didn’t seem to mind meeting. By the time I had the food ready I found him watching a documentary set mainly in the Westfjords. I had expected a wildlife programme of some sort but it couldn’t have been more different.
The documentary was about something that had ver
y rarely been talked about in Iceland until quite recently. The boys in it were all grown men now but they all had one thing in common: they had all been removed from their families, sometimes just single parents, in the 1950s and taken to a home for wayward boys in Breiðavík at the very western tip of the country. Breiðavík was out on the furthest tip of the Westfjords, far removed from any towns or cities. In the 1950s there hadn’t even been a road to the place. Everything had been transported in by boats and offloaded onto dinghies before being rowed ashore. They had been as isolated as anyone could possibly be. It had proved to be a recipe for disaster.
Many of them had been abused while in care there and had struggled to deal with the remainder of their lives after the place was shut down in the 1970s. They found adapting to what we would call normal life again all too difficult and soon turned to lives of crime.
Some even found life in prison preferable to having to look after themselves on the streets. At least in there they didn’t have to worry about looking after themselves. It was better than sleeping rough and begging for money on the streets. I found their stories extremely sad and thought it was inexcusable that such things could happened in a seemingly modern society, albeit many years ago.
I was just about to ask Dad what if anything he had heard of these homes when I noticed he was crying.
‘Dad, Are you okay?’
He didn’t answer me but he did look as though he was about to say something.
‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘Did you know some of those boys?’
He would have been just the right age but as far as I knew he had been raised on the other side of the country.
‘You’re looking at one of those boys. Not from Breiðavík but somewhere just like it. A long time ago now but sometimes it feels as if I’m still there after all these years.’
He shook his head and wiped the tears from his face. I didn’t know what to say; I had never seen him look so vulnerable, so utterly human.
‘Why have you never told us about this? How come Mum never mentioned anything?’
‘I never said a word to your mother. It was a part of my life that existed long before I met her. I thought I’d just leave it where it belonged. In the past. It wouldn’t have helped anything if she’d known. Quite the opposite, in fact. People always say they want to know everything about you but they never do. Not really. It was easier to carry that with me in silence than it would have been to speak of it.’
‘Those places, like Breiðavík, I mean, were they as bad as this programme makes them out to be?’
He put his plate down on the coffee table and pulled himself up from his chair with what looked like considerable effort. He turned without a word and headed towards his room.
‘Dad?’
That stopped him in his tracks but he still wouldn’t turn around. He couldn’t or simply wouldn’t face me.
‘No, Ylfa, they were worse than you could ever imagine. They were places filled with a certain kind of horror that destroyed young boys’ lives.’
I watched him slowly disappear down the corridor to his room. How could anyone keep something like that to himself for what must have been at least sixty years? It made me wonder what else there might be in his past that he hadn’t deigned to share with any of us. Not telling us children was one thing but the fact that Mum had never known was something else altogether. Maybe I was just naive but I couldn’t imagine being married to someone all that time and not telling them something like that. He had said he thought that she wouldn’t really want to know but how could he be sure? He simply hadn’t had the necessary faith to share an enormous part of his life with her. He hadn’t trusted her and that was the saddest thing of all.
A troubled night’s sleep ensued and wasn’t helped by my phone ringing at some ungodly hour. I fumbled around blindly in the dark for it but only succeeding in knocking it to the floor where it continued to bleat relentlessly for attention. I reached down under the bed and found it with the tips of my fingers but by the time I’d pulled it to my face the caller had given up. Almost as an afterthought I checked the caller ID.
What I saw on the screen made me gasp and I dropped the phone again and once more it bounced under the bed. This time, on my hands and knees, I made sure I got a good grip on it before returning the call. It rang and rang as I cursed it for not being answered. The call had been from Kristjana’s phone and I had missed it.
I so badly wanted to believe she was all right that for the time being I was willing to put all other alternatives out of my mind. Some little part of my brain told me I was better off having not answered the call. I checked the time, it was 4.45 a.m. Whoever it had been, they must have known I would be asleep. That’s why they had chosen to ring at that hour. To build my hopes up so they could be destroyed once again.
I dialled Grímur’s number and waited impatiently for him to answer. It took some time as I expected it might. And he sounded none too pleased when he finally did so. He had probably taken a moment to check the time and the tone of his voice suggested he was none too impressed.
‘She’s just tried to call me. I just got a missed call from Kristjana’s phone. She hung up before I could answer it and when I rang back there was no answer. We’ve got to do something, haven’t we?’
‘I can try to find out where the call was made from. Try to call the phone again and if anyone answers try to find out who it is. Give me some time and I’ll have someone trace the mast that the phone was connected to when the call was made. Just be aware that if someone does answer that phone it’s quite possible it won’t be your sister. Don’t get your hopes up too high. The fact that someone called you is a good sign but it may not necessarily be good news. If anyone besides her answers, find out who they are and what they want. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can.’
He hung up leaving me wondering exactly who it might have been on the other end of the phone. If it had been Kristjana she would have answered straight away when I called back. Whoever it had been was toying with me. I called her number again but the phone had been switched off.
I considered waking Dad up but decided it could wait. Finally telling me the truth about what sort of a place he had grown up in should have brought us closer together. After all, being honest with the people you love is what it is all about. This time, though, it had driven tiny doubts into my mind and made me worry that there might be something else in store for us. Something else hidden away that I was yet to discover. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for any more surprises just yet. The best thing to do was to put my head back down on the pillow and wait for morning. Either I would get another call or I would ring Grímur again as soon as I woke. If I could back to sleep, that was.
When I did wake after what might have been an hour or so of very light sleep I crept out of the house leaving Dad a note on the kitchen bench.
Dad, someone called me in the middle of the night using Kristjana’s phone. I’ve gone into town to see the police. If I get any news I’ll let you know. We need to talk more later. Y.
The wind was still blowing mightily but it seemed to have lost some of its intensity. Hopefully we had been through the worst of it. I was stopped at a set of traffic lights on Suðurlandsbraut when Grímur called. He sounded as if he’d had even less sleep than me, possibly even none. He did, however, sound as though he had been putting his time to good use.
‘We’ve traced the location of the phone when it was used to call you last night. We can’t be precise about where it was but we have an area to focus on that it was used in. It was only switched on for a very short period of time and has been off again ever since. The masts it was connected to at the time suggest it was very close to this station.
We’ll continue to monitor the number just in case the phone is switched back on again. I would suggest to you again that you not spend any more time on your own than is absolutely necessary. If you would like me to send an officer back to your father’s place I will.’
I could s
till picture the last poor officer who had been on the receiving end of my father’s early morning tirade and decided against that idea. Things were tense enough at home as it was without a stranger becoming a permanent addition to the household even if it was to be just in the driveway.
‘No thanks, Grímur, that won’t be necessary.’
There was a slightly uncomfortable silence on the other end of the line.
‘We’re doing all we can, Ylfa. The main problem we have is that we don’t know what we’re dealing with here. If we could find out why this is happening then I’m sure we’d be able to figure out who it is pretty quickly. Until then I can’t stress strongly enough that you need to take care. Have someone with you whenever possible. That will make you a much more difficult target for anyone wanting to do anything stupid.’
It was an interesting choice of words. Not dangerous, or deadly or completely life altering, but... stupid. In his world people only did clever things or stupid things. If they only ever did clever things he would be out of a job.
Day after day he was obliged to track down and arrest the ones who were stupid and from what I had heard, he was good at it.
I thanked him for the call and headed into the city centre to find a coffee. If I was going to get through this day in one piece I was going to need one, and soon. After parking outside my flat I walked back down the hill to Austurstræti and got a double cappuccino and the latest edition of Fréttablaðið in my favourite bookshop. It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for. I wanted to see what Stefán Jón had been doing with himself.
Another Religious Note Left Behind At Crime Scene
Reykjavík CID are now investigating a fourth crime scene at which a quotation from The Book of Daniel has been left. Another woman is thought to have been taken, this time from her apartment on Stýrimannastígur. She is the sister of a woman who also disappeared recently from an office building on Borgartún, where another of the notes was found.