On A Small Island

by Grant Nicol

  ‘Well, when I saw the story in the newspaper about what had happened to your sisters and the boy on your father’s farm I started thinking about those notes that had been left behind for the police. When Diðrik rang to tell me you had been asking all those weird questions it suddenly came to me. The note that led you to Hella was pointing you in a specific direction but it isn’t a where, it’s a who.

  ‘That boy we played the trick on, he became a very angry person after what Diðrik did to him and it was all our fault. You know that Erla died less than a year after that. In that same barn. I know he set that fire. I don’t know how he arranged it but I know it was him.

  ‘I saw him once after she died when I was back in Hella to see Diðrik and Inga Rós not long before she killed herself and when he looked at me he smiled. It was the most evil smile I’ve ever seen in my life. He was telling me with that smile that he had finally got even with us and that he had won what we had started.

  ‘That boy’s name was Daníel. Just like the book in the Bible those notes were taken from. He lived around Hella somewhere with his foster parents. His name was Daníel Bergsson.’

  CHAPTER 23

  Halldóra had decided she was ready to drive back to Selfoss and left me sitting in the café to finish my coffee and ponder what, if any, significance Daníel Bergsson might have to my sisters’ dilemma. The connection seemed tenuous but there was no denying we had been led to Hella for some sort of reason. Maybe I had uncovered nothing more than a disparate collection of facts and the actual link between them and who had taken my sisters was still to be uncovered.

  The boy she’d described was certainly capable of great cruelty if her suspicions were correct but I would have to find out more about Daníel Bergsson before I could tell if I was on the right path this time around.

  I called Stefán Jón and filled him in on what Halldóra had told me and asked him to do as much digging as he could on anyone called Daníel Bergsson who would be in his mid-thirties by now and get back to me. He said he’d contact the Selfoss police as well to see if they had any information on the death of Erla Diðriksdóttir that might be of use to us.

  I told him I’d see him later when we could compare notes on what might be going on. Once again I toyed with the idea of getting in touch with Grímur but once again decided against it. Until I knew exactly what was going on, he could wait.

  By the time Stefán Jón had finished work I’d decided that we were wasting our time thinking that Daníel Bergsson might have anything to do with Elín and Kristjana. The fact that the boy had the same first name as one of the books of the Bible and used to live in Hella was not enough to make me think we’d cracked the case.

  I’d made a respectable effort to tidy the flat before Stefán Jón’s arrival and although he hadn’t said anything when he’d walked in I could tell from the look on his face that he was used to more organised surroundings. He was perched on one of my chairs trying to get comfortable when I came back in from the kitchen with a glass of wine for each of us.

  I tossed a cushion on the floor next to him and suggested that he might be more comfortable on it. I stretched out on the sofa and waited for him to tell me what he’d managed to find out about our friend Daníel. After weighing up the pros and cons of the cushion he decided to sit on it and stretch his legs out in front of him. It was going to take him a little while to get used to my cramped little flat.

  ‘I talked to a contact at Selfoss CID who has been there so long he actually remembered the case. He said they found Erla’s body propped up against the remains of a pole in the barn. She was horribly disfigured from the fire, burned beyond recognition. The strange thing was that she was still almost exactly in the middle of the barn. Not at one of the doors trying to get out but slumped in the centre of the inferno. Not only that but she was naked. What was left of her clothes was found in a pile not far from where she died. The fire had started from some cans of fuel that weren’t even supposed to be kept in that barn and Diðrik couldn’t remember at the time how they had got there.’

  ‘They didn’t think any of that was suspicious at the time?’

  ‘They thought it was odd, but they weren’t really looking at it as a murder scene. No one had any motive to kill the girl and it looked for all intents and purposes like a terrible accident.’

  I went over the story Halldóra had told me once again, mainly for my own good. It sounded as unlikely, as I listened to myself repeat it, as it had the first time. Nevertheless, there was something about it that rang true.

  The look on Halldóra’s face and the nervousness in her voice as she had told me about her friend’s death. She had been completely serious about the fact that a boy of fifteen had been responsible for such a terrible act of vengeance.

  ‘Even if the boy had something to do with her death it would be impossible to prove anything after all this time,’ Stefán Jón said, thinking out loud. ‘Giving him a motive after all this time isn’t going to give the police anything new to work with.’

  ‘Maybe that’s the point,’ I added.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Whoever has taken Elín and Kristjana left that note for me to find, right?’

  Stefán Jón just nodded as he tried to get his long legs comfortable once more and took another sip of wine.

  ‘So... ’ I continued. ‘Maybe he was pointing us towards a crime he knows we could never prove or maybe he’s just trying to scare us. Even if we knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was him, he figures he’s safe after all these years. He’s showing us what he’s capable of just to scare us even more.’

  ‘You think the same boy is responsible for slashing Jóhannes’s throat and kidnapping your sisters? The same guy who may or may not have killed this girl all these years ago? If you don’t mind me saying so, that seems pretty far-fetched.’

  ‘Of course it does. That’s why he’s done it. He’s convinced that if we were to tell anyone, they’d think we were crazy. He leaves me a note directing us to the scene of a crime that he committed all those years ago knowing that there’s no way he will ever be held responsible for it. He’s telling us that there’s no way he’ll ever be caught for these ones, either. He’s trying to tell us he’s just too smart to get caught.’

  ‘But what on earth would be the point of that?’

  ‘Everything he’s done so far has been to instil as much fear as he possibly could. Tying Dad up and making him watch; leaving those notes everywhere so that we knew it was the same person responsible each and every time; the phone call from Kristjana’s phone in the middle of the night with no one on the other end, knowing that I’d be sound asleep when it rang; waiting in a graveyard in the rain in the middle of nowhere for me to show up. If he had wanted to kill Dad, he would have done it the same night he killed Jóhannes. If he had wanted to kill me I’m pretty sure he would have done it already. We’re still alive because he wants it that way. He wants us alive and he wants us scared.’

  I finished my glass of wine in one go and went to find the rest of the bottle. Stefán Jón had stopped fidgeting around and was staring at the wall behind the sofa as though trying to burn a hole in it with his mind. I noticed he had finished his glass as well so I filled them both up.

  ‘So, what do you think? Am I crazy or am I making sense?’

  ‘I’d say there’s a good chance that you’re both.’

  ‘There’s a man, Ólafur, staying at Dad’s place at the moment who arrived out of the blue to see him. Apparently, they knew each other when they were kids in Höfn. I never even knew Dad grew up there. They haven’t seen each other in something like sixty years. Can you believe it?’

  ‘So why show up now?’

  ‘According to Ólafur, he saw something on the news about Kristjana and Elín going missing and decided to pay a visit.’

  ‘Do you believe him?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Apparently they were in a state-run home for boys all those years ago and now that the home at Br
eiðavík has made the news Ólafur thought he’d try to reconcile with some of his old buddies before it’s too late.’

  ‘I’ve heard stories about what went on in those places. What does your dad have to say about it all?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to relive those days all over again. He never told any of us about them, not even Mum. Let’s finish this wine and go to bed early. I want you to stay here tonight if that’s okay,’ I said, pleading with my eyes as I did so.

  ‘Of course it is,’ he nodded.

  ‘So what do we do about this guy next, then?’

  ‘We find out who Daníel Bergsson is and what he’s up to these days.’

  CHAPTER 24

  The next morning Stefán Jón set off for work after promising he would be in touch as soon as he found out anything about Daníel Bergsson. I’d got used to having him around in what felt like a very short period of time and didn’t want to contemplate him not being around, which it would be fair to say was totally unlike me. The circumstances that had brought us together had been far from ideal but that aside, there was definitely something about his relaxed manner that made him very appealing. I hoped that if I spent enough time around him a little of whatever it was that kept him so relaxed might rub off on me.

  As if to jolt me back from these thoughts, my phone rang. It was Baldvin. I had been meaning to call him to tell him that we wouldn’t be seeing each other any more but had decided that if he had been at all interested then he would have called. Before now, that is.

  I tried to sound as pleased as I could to hear from him but wasn’t entirely sure I’d pulled it off. At first I thought he might want to carry on where we’d left off. He wouldn’t have been the first man to cool things off a bit before resuscitating them on an even more casual basis. One that suited his needs, if you know what I mean.

  For some reason, men always shied away from telling you what they actually wanted. They were often too scared to tell you the truth in case they might sound bad. They preferred to lie first, then when things turned out the way they had expected them to and not the way they’d hoped, well, then it was time to tell you the truth. And then leave.

  As such, my expectations of the phone call were not great, pretty much from moment I saw his caller ID. Before I had even heard his voice I was planning some cunning way to get rid of him. Politely, of course.

  It wasn’t that I no longer liked him, it was just that I had found something else to be getting on with. Someone I could see a future with, even in what were undoubtedly uncertain times. Maybe that was what I liked about Stefán Jón. The worse things got, the more I saw of him. Not the exact opposite, as was so often the case.

  ‘Ylfa?’

  ‘Baldvin, what a surprise.’

  ‘I was just wondering if I left my watch at your place the other day. I’ve looked everywhere for it and it hasn’t turned up. The last time I remember wearing it was the day I posed for you. I think I must have taken it off then and forgotten to put it back on again. Would you mind having a look around the flat for me?’

  ‘Not at all, Baldvin,’ I said, shaking my head in desperation.

  I should have known it would be too much to expect for him to ask me how things were going. It really wasn’t worth the hassle of saying anything so I simply said I’d have a quick look around the living room for his watch. I hadn’t noticed it when I’d been tidying prior to Stefán Jón’s arrival but I hadn’t really been paying that much attention to what I’d been doing. I’d been frantically doing my best to rationalise the place from disaster zone to what I hoped was something more like bohemian clutter. Of course, to Stefán Jón, a mess looked like a mess. And that’s what it still was, no matter what name I chose to give it.

  After roughly thirty seconds or so of fruitless searching I started to lose what little patience I had left. He could have left his stupid watch pretty much anywhere.

  ‘Do you remember where you might have put it after you took it off?’ I asked him, no longer caring if it was found or not.

  If it had taken him this long to ring up about it then surely he could have been mistaken about wearing it that day.

  ‘Now that I think about it, I might have accidentally kicked it under your couch when I grabbed my clothes to get dressed again. Could you just check there for me?’

  Muttering obscenities under my breath I got down on my hands and knees and peered under the couch. It was something I had avoided doing for quite some time now and as soon as I stuck my head under it I knew why that was.

  Underneath it I found a collection of dirty cutlery, paintbrushes and chocolate wrappers, even an empty pizza box. I cursed again as I realised that from his vantage point the night before Stefán Jón must have had a perfect view of my poor housekeeping habits.

  Baldvin heard me swearing and asked if everything was all right. I ignored him and rolled my eyes in further frustration as I came across his watch underneath the far end of the sofa. I brushed aside an empty container of fruit-flavoured skyr, with the foldable plastic spoon still protruding through its crumpled foil top, and plucked it out. The watch was a nice one, chunky and expensive-looking.

  ‘I’ve got it. It was under the couch just like you said.’

  ‘Fantastic. I was worried sick about it. Do you mind if I pop over tonight and pick it up?’

  That was not something I wanted so I had to quickly come up with an alternative plan that didn’t sound too much like he was no longer welcome to just pop over whenever he felt like it. Even though he most definitely wasn’t.

  I realised that I’d never known where he lived, which hinted at a total lack of interest on my part. I could find out and then pretend I had other business to attend to and drop it off on my way. Just as long as he didn’t live somewhere ridiculously out of the way, that would work fine.

  ‘I don’t know about that, Baldvin. I’ve made other plans for tonight. How about I drop it off to you while I’m out and about this afternoon? That might be easier.’

  The silence on the other end of the phone suggested that he understood what I was getting at. His little plan to weasel his way back into my bed wasn’t going to work. It probably wouldn’t stop him trying another angle, though. They always did.

  ‘Okay,’ he said rather reluctantly. I could almost hear his brain ticking over as he tried to find another excuse to drop over to Vesturgata.

  ‘Baldvin,’ I was losing patience with him and wanted the conversation brought to an end.

  ‘How about...’he tried once more.

  ‘Listen, why don’t you just tell me where you live and I’ll drop it off this afternoon? I’m seeing someone else now and don’t want you dropping by any more. I hadn’t heard from you and just assumed you weren’t interested.’

  I had no idea why I was trying to justify myself to him. If he had wanted anything more than just a casual screw then he would have put way more effort into it. Once again his silence loomed over the phone like heavy cloud cover. I really hoped that he wasn’t going to make this difficult.

  ‘It’s Álftamýri 26, apartment 18. I’ll be home all day if you want to swing by. I hope you’re not mad, Ylfa. I thought we were just having a bit of fun together.’

  I didn’t really want to get into what we had been doing together. Whatever it had been, it was no more; that was all too clear now.

  ‘I’ve got some errands to run but I should be over sometime in the next two hours.’

  I didn’t want to sound too keen to get rid of the watch but I would have quite happily driven straight over there and dropped it through his letter box if I thought I could have got away with it.

  ‘No problem, I’ll see you then. And thanks, Ylfa. I really appreciate this.’

  You’d bloody well better, I thought and hung up. It was going to be an unnecessary distraction that I hadn’t bargained for in my day, but when I stopped to think about it, I didn’t have that much else to be getting on with. It was more the thought of having to go out of my
way for him when I’d hoped that things between us were done and dusted. Realistically though, I was always going to have to make some time to see him again. He wasn’t to know I’d met Stefán Jón and had moved on in such a short space of time. I was in danger of making a big deal out of nothing if I wasn’t careful.

  Álftamýri was on the way to Dad’s place so I decided to use him as an excuse to get out of any plans that Baldvin may have dreamt up in the two hours I had conveniently given him. Hopefully the knowledge that I was seeing someone else would have removed any such ideas from his head but you could never be too sure. He’d been on to a pretty good thing when it came to no-strings-attached sex with me over the last few weeks and chances were that he’d become a little accustomed to it. I was fully expecting him to make a one-for-the-road play of some sort for some more.

  His flat was in one of three identical concrete apartment blocks opposite a primary school. The only distinction between the rows of buildings was their colour schemes. One block was yellow, one was red and one was blue. Baldvin’s was the blue one. His 4-wheel drive was parked outside looking as though it could do with a good wash. I found the front door and made my way inside and up the stairs towards apartment 18.

  On the way up I came across an elderly lady struggling with her heavy shopping bags. I offered to help and after a quick visual appraisal of me she readily accepted. She told me that she had just seen a young man collapse in the car park outside the Kringlan shopping mall. She had waited there until the ambulance and a police officer had arrived to see if he was going to be okay. The man had been disorientated and had needed help to get into the ambulance.

  She said that he had been young enough to be one of her grandchildren and had looked like one of those ‘silly young drug-users’, as she put it. She grumbled that life was so easy for young people these days that they had to go out of their way to make it as difficult as they could. In her day there would have had been better things for them to worry about. I didn’t doubt her for a second. My father, too, was of the opinion that most young folk had far too much time on their hands, as were most people of their generation, I suspected.