The Darkness

by Ragnar Jónasson

  Dóra had short brown hair and a businesslike manner. Although her smile was friendly enough, her gaze was disconcertingly sharp. ‘Of course, no problem,’ she said. ‘I’ve got an office round the back.’

  She got up without another word and led the way briskly down the corridor, with Hulda following on her heels. The office was small and impersonal, with dark blinds over the windows and a single overhead bulb casting an unforgiving glare over the meagre contents. There were no books or papers, nothing but a laptop on the desk.

  They sat down and Dóra waited, still without speaking, for Hulda to state her business. Casting around for the right words, Hulda began: ‘The reason I’m here is … I’m investigating the death, a little over a year ago, of a woman who was one of your residents.’

  ‘Death?’

  ‘Yes. Her name was Elena. She was an asylum-seeker.’

  ‘Oh, her. I’m with you. But…’ Dóra frowned, puzzled. ‘I thought the case was closed. He rang me – you know, the detective; I’ve forgotten his name…’

  ‘Alexander,’ Hulda supplied, picturing him as she said it: sleazy, overweight, with a blankness behind the eyes that never failed to set her teeth on edge.

  ‘Yeah, Alexander, that was it. He rang to tell me he was closing the case because the investigation was inconclusive and, personally, he thought it was an accident. Or suicide, maybe – Elena’d been waiting ages to hear the result of her application.’

  ‘Would you say she’d been waiting an abnormally long time? It was my understanding that she’d been here four months.’

  ‘Oh no, not really – that’s not unusual ‒ but I guess the waiting affects people differently. It can be stressful.’

  ‘Did you agree with him?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, you. Do you believe she drowned herself?’

  ‘I’m no expert. I’ve no idea what I’m supposed to think. It wasn’t like I was the one investigating. Maybe he – whatsisname…’

  ‘Alexander.’

  ‘Yeah, Alexander. Maybe he knew something I didn’t.’ Dóra shrugged.

  I very much doubt it, Hulda thought, suppressing the temptation to say it aloud. ‘But you must have wondered.’

  ‘Well, sure, but we’re very busy here. People come and go all the time: she happened to go like that. Anyway, I don’t have time to waste on wondering about that sort of thing.’

  ‘But surely you knew her?’

  ‘Not really. No more than any of the others. Look, I’m running a business here. This is how I make my living, so I have to focus on the day-to-day management. It may be a question of life or death for the residents, but I’m just trying to run the place.’

  ‘Is there someone else here who might have known her better?’

  Dóra appeared to think about this. ‘I doubt it. Not any more. Like I said, people come and go all the time.’

  ‘So, let me get this straight: you’re saying that none of your current residents would have been here when Elena was alive?’

  ‘Oh, well, there’s always a possibility…’

  ‘Would you be able to check?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Dóra turned to the laptop and started clicking away. Finally, she looked up. ‘Two Iraqi guys – they’re still here. You can meet them in a minute. And a Syrian woman.’

  ‘Can I meet her, too?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘She’s out and about somewhere. Her lawyer came by earlier and I think they went into Reykjavík. There’s been some progress on her case, which is just as well, seeing as all she does is shut herself away in her room and wait. She hardly even comes down for meals. That’s all I know – the lawyers don’t tell me a thing, of course – but I guessed from looking at them that something was up. Let’s hope it’s good news, though you can never be sure.’

  ‘Tell me about Elena. How did she behave? What was her situation?’

  ‘Haven’t a clue.’

  ‘Did she have a lawyer working on her case?’

  ‘Yes, I assume so – though I can’t remember who it was, if I ever knew.’

  ‘Well, do you have any idea who it might have been?’

  ‘It tends to be the same people,’ Dóra said, and reeled off three names, which Hulda duly noted down.

  ‘Would it be possible to see her room?’

  ‘Why are the police looking into this again?’ Dóra asked.

  ‘Look, could you just show me her room?’ Hulda snapped, her patience running out.

  ‘All right, all right,’ Dóra said huffily. ‘It wouldn’t hurt to show some manners, you know. It’s no joke getting mixed up in this sort of thing.’

  ‘Are you mixed up in it?’

  ‘Oh, you know what I mean. Her room’s upstairs, but there’s someone else using it now. We can’t just barge in on him.’

  ‘Could you at least check if he’s in?’

  Dóra flounced out of the office, along the corridor and up the stairs, with Hulda hastily following. After passing several doors, Dóra came to a halt by one and knocked. A young man answered and Dóra explained in English that the police wanted to see his room. Clearly alarmed, the man asked haltingly: ‘They want send me home?’ He repeated the question several times before Dóra could reassure him that the police visit had nothing to do with him. Almost tearful with relief, he nodded reluctantly, though Hulda knew he wasn’t legally obliged to let them in. Then again, it was unlikely the poor man would have dared to insist on his rights to the representative of a foreign police force. She felt a little ashamed of herself for putting him through this. Still, the ends justified the means. She didn’t have much time.

  ‘Did she speak English?’ Hulda asked Dóra, once they were inside the room. Its current occupant remained standing awkwardly outside in the corridor.

  ‘Sorry?’ Dóra glanced round.

  ‘The Russian girl. Elena.’

  ‘Very little. She could maybe understand a bit, but she couldn’t carry on a conversation in English, only in Russian.’

  ‘Was that why you didn’t get to know her?’

  Dóra shook her head, looking amused. ‘Oh no, I don’t get to know any of them, regardless of what language they speak.’

  ‘There’s not a lot of room in here.’

  ‘I’m not running a luxury hotel,’ Dóra said.

  ‘Did she have the room to herself?’

  ‘Yes. And she wasn’t much trouble, as far as I can remember.’

  ‘Not much trouble?’

  ‘Yes. Didn’t make a fuss – you know what I mean. Not all of them can handle the waiting. It can be tough.’

  The narrow, cell-like room contained a bed, a tiny desk and a wardrobe of sorts. There were few personal items, apart from a pair of tracksuit bottoms lying on the bed and a half-eaten toasted sandwich on the desk.

  ‘No TV?’ Hulda remarked.

  ‘Like I said, this isn’t a luxury hotel. There’s a TV down in the lounge.’

  ‘Any chance she might have left some of her belongings behind?’

  ‘Can’t remember, I’m afraid. If people vanish and don’t show up again, I usually chuck their things out.’

  ‘Or if they die.’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was little to be learned from the room, at first glance, anyway. Hulda took another quick look around her, if only to try to put herself in the shoes of the dead girl; get an impression of what her life must have been like during those last few months, cast adrift in a strange country at an unfriendly hostel where no one spoke her language. Trapped within the four walls of a small room, just as Hulda sometimes felt like a prisoner in her own flat, all alone, no family, no one to care for her. That was the worst part – having no one who cared.

  Just for a second, Hulda closed her eyes and tried to breathe in the atmosphere, but all she could smell was mushroom soup wafting through the building from the kitchen.

  VII

  Before she left, Hulda had
a brief word with the two men from Iraq. The one who did the talking spoke quite good English. They had been living in Iceland for over a year and were obviously grateful for the chance to speak to a police officer, apparently regarding her as a representative of the authorities. Before she could ask the questions she wanted, Hulda was forced to listen to a stream of complaints about the way their cases were being handled and the treatment they’d had to put up with. When she was finally able to get a word in edgeways, she established that they did remember Elena, though mainly because of her sudden death. It turned out they had never actually spoken to her, as they didn’t know a word of Russian, so there was very little to be gained from the conversation.

  On her way out through reception, Hulda thanked Dóra and asked her to get in touch when the Syrian woman turned up, in the faint hope that she might know something. ‘I’ll do that,’ Dóra promised, but Hulda wasn’t under any illusion that she would make it a priority.

  Three quarters of an hour later, Hulda was back in Reykjavík. She parked outside the police station but had no real intention of going inside. Instead, she set about trying to find out which lawyer had been handling Elena’s case. It took no more than a couple of phone calls to establish that the man she wanted was a middle-aged solicitor who had worked for the police for several years before leaving to set up his own firm. He remembered Hulda immediately.

  ‘I doubt there’s much I can tell you,’ he said in a friendly voice, ‘but you’re welcome to drop by. You know where we are?’

  ‘I’ll find you. Can I come over now?’

  ‘Please do,’ he said.

  * * *

  The solicitor’s office turned out to be a modest affair in the city centre that didn’t even run to a receptionist. Albert Albertsson, who had come out to greet Hulda in person, seemed to read her mind: ‘We run a tight little outfit here,’ he explained. ‘Don’t waste any money on frills. We all turn our hand to whatever needs doing. Anyway, it’s nice to see you again.’

  Albert had always had an easy manner and spoke in the warm, well-modulated tones of a congenial late-night radio host chatting to listeners against a background of soothing music. By no stretch of the imagination could you call him good-looking, but he had the kind of face that inspired trust.

  The office Albert showed her into couldn’t have presented a greater contrast to Dóra’s bare, soulless little workspace at the hostel. The walls were hung with paintings, there were photographs lined up on the shelf beside the desk and towering stacks of papers on every available surface. Hulda found it slightly overwhelming. It felt a bit over the top, like an attempt to cover up the fact that maybe Albert didn’t actually have that much to do. All the photographs and paintings would have been better suited to a home than a workplace. Unless this was all the home he really had?

  ‘Have you taken over the case?’ he asked, once they were seated.

  Hulda barely hesitated: ‘Yes, for now.’

  ‘Any developments?’

  ‘Nothing I can comment on at present,’ she replied. ‘Did Alexander speak to you in the course of the original inquiry?’

  ‘Yes, he did. We had a meeting, but I don’t think I was able to help him much.’

  ‘Did you handle Elena’s asylum application from the beginning?’

  ‘I did. I take on a lot of these human-rights jobs. Alongside my other work, of course.’

  ‘Could you fill me in on the background to her case?’

  ‘Well, she was claiming asylum in Iceland on the grounds that she’d suffered persecution at home in Russia.’

  ‘But her application was unsuccessful?’

  ‘What? No, on the contrary, we were making good progress.’

  ‘How good?’

  ‘They were about to allow her claim.’

  Hulda was completely wrong-footed. ‘Hang on a minute: you’re saying they were going to grant her asylum?’

  ‘Yes, it was in the pipeline.’

  ‘Was she aware of this?’

  ‘Yes, of course. She heard the day before she died.’

  ‘Did you tell Alexander?’

  ‘Naturally, though I don’t really see how it’s relevant.’

  Alexander had ‘forgotten’ to mention the fact in his report.

  ‘Well, it reduces the likelihood that she’d have taken her own life,’ Hulda pointed out.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Albert argued. ‘The whole process puts the applicants under a huge amount of strain.’

  ‘How did she strike you – in general, I mean? Was she the cheerful type? Or inclined to be depressive?’

  ‘Hard to say.’ Albert leaned forward over his desk. ‘Hard to say,’ he repeated, ‘since she spoke very little English and I don’t know any Russian.’

  ‘You used an interpreter, then?’

  ‘Yes, when required. The process generated quite a bit of paperwork.’

  ‘Maybe I should talk to the interpreter,’ Hulda muttered, more to herself than to Albert.

  ‘If you think it’ll help. His name’s Bjartur. He lives in the west of town, works from home. But it’s all in the files. You can borrow them, if you’d like.’

  ‘Thanks, that would be great.’

  ‘She was musical,’ Albert added suddenly, as an afterthought.

  ‘Musical?’

  ‘Yes, I gather she loved music. My partner keeps a guitar in the office and Elena once picked it up and strummed a couple of tunes for us.’

  ‘What else did you know about her?’ Hulda asked.

  ‘What else…? Nothing much,’ Albert replied. ‘We never really learn much about the asylum-seekers we represent, and I try not to get too personal. They usually get sent back, you know.’ He was silent for a moment, then added: ‘It was all very sad. The poor girl. But then, suicide always is.’

  ‘Suicide?’

  ‘Yes. Wasn’t that what Alexander’s investigation concluded?’

  ‘Yes, quite. Alexander’s investigation.’

  VIII

  ‘I thought the case was closed.’ The interpreter, Bjartur, settled himself in an office chair so old and rickety it must have dated back to the eighties. ‘But, if not, I’d be glad to offer any help I can.’

  ‘Thanks. Did Alexander talk to you at the time? Were you able to provide him with any information?’

  ‘Alexander?’ Bjartur’s face was blank under his handsome blond mane. He was well named. Bjartur meant ‘bright’. They were sitting in a converted garage, attached to a small detached house in an affluent suburb in the west of town. Surrounded by sea on three sides, the location was pleasant, if windy. When Hulda arrived, she’d rung the bell by the front door and an elderly lady had directed her round to the garage ‘where Bjartur has his office’. There was no chair for visitors, so Hulda made do with perching on the edge of an old bed that was buried under books, many of them in Russian, or so she deduced from the lettering on the spines. Although she had called ahead to warn him she was coming, Bjartur seemed to have made no effort to tidy up. The floor was littered with piles of papers, walking boots and pizza boxes, and there was a heap of dirty clothes in one corner.

  ‘Alexander’s a colleague of mine from CID,’ she explained, a bad taste in her mouth. ‘He was in charge of the investigation.’

  ‘Oh, well, I never met him. You’re the first person who’s ever spoken to me about this.’

  Hulda felt the bitter resentment flaring up inside her again. If she’d been promoted above Alexander, as she’d deserved, she’d have given him his marching orders long ago.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Bjartur, breaking into her thoughts. ‘Has something new come to light?’

  Hulda resorted to the same answer she had given the lawyer earlier: ‘Nothing I can comment on at present.’ The truth was that she had nothing to go on apart from a gut feeling, but there was no need to admit the fact. Besides, the conviction had been steadily growing inside her all day that her decision to reopen the inquiry had been the right one: whatever the cause o
f Elena’s death, it was obvious that the original investigation had been disgracefully slack. ‘Did you meet her often?’

  ‘Not that often, no. I take on these jobs when they come up. They don’t involve a lot of work and the pay’s pretty good. It’s hard to live off translation alone.’

  ‘But you manage?’

  ‘Just about. I do quite a bit of interpreting for Russians, some of it for people in the same situation as … um…’

  ‘Elena,’ prompted Hulda. Not even Bjartur could remember her name. It was extraordinary how quickly the girl’s presence in Iceland was fading from people’s memories: no one gave a damn about her, it seemed.

  ‘Elena – of course. Yes, now and then I interpret for people in her situation, but I mainly work as a tour guide for Russians, showing them the sights. Some of them are rolling in it, so the pay’s not bad. Apart from that, I translate the odd short story or book, even do a bit of writing myself ‒’

  ‘What was your impression of her?’ Hulda interrupted. ‘Did she seem suicidal at all?’

  ‘Now you’re asking,’ Bjartur said, thwarted in his desire to talk about himself. ‘Hard to say. Maybe. As you’d expect, she wasn’t exactly happy here. But wasn’t it … I mean, surely it must have been suicide?’

  ‘Probably not, actually,’ said Hulda, with unwarranted confidence. She had a hunch that the interpreter knew more than he was letting on. The trick was to avoid putting too much pressure on him: all she had to do was be patient and allow him to open up in his own time. ‘Did you study in Russia?’ she asked.

  He seemed a little thrown by this abrupt change of subject. ‘What? Oh, yes. At Moscow State University. I fell in love with the city and the language. Ever been there yourself?’

  Hulda shook her head.

  ‘It’s an amazing place. You should visit sometime.’

  ‘Right,’ said Hulda, knowing she never would.

  ‘Amazing, but challenging,’ Bjartur went on. ‘A challenging place to be a tourist. Everything’s so alien: the language, the Cyrillic script.’

  ‘But your Russian’s fluent, isn’t it?’