‘I’m stopping work,’ she said, when the silence grew uncomfortable.
‘That was on the cards, wasn’t it?’ he said. ‘It’s not as bad as it sounds, you know. You’ll have more time for your hobbies, more time to enjoy life.’
He certainly knew how to do that, she reflected, allowing a moment of envy to sour her thoughts. As a doctor with a successful career behind him, he didn’t have to face any financial worries in his old age.
‘Yes, it was on the cards,’ she agreed in a low voice, ‘but not quite yet.’ Best to be honest with him, not try to embellish the facts. ‘To tell the truth, I’ve been given my marching orders. I’ve only got two weeks left. They’ve hired some boy in my place.’
‘Bloody hell. And you took that lying down? It doesn’t sound like you.’
‘Well,’ she said, mentally cursing herself for not having put up more of a fight when Magnús broke the news, ‘at least I managed to wangle one final case out of my boss, to finish on.’
‘Now you’re talking. Anything interesting?’
‘A murder … I think.’
‘Are you serious? Two weeks to solve a murder? You’re not worried you won’t succeed and that it’ll prey on your mind after you retire?’
She hadn’t thought of that, but Pétur had a point.
‘Too late to back out now,’ she said, without much conviction. ‘Anyway, it’s not a hundred per cent certain that it was murder.’
‘What’s the case about?’ he asked, managing to sound genuinely interested.
‘A young woman found dead in a cove on Vatnsleysuströnd.’
‘Recently?’
‘More than a year ago.’
Pétur frowned. ‘I don’t remember that.’
‘It didn’t attract much media coverage at the time. She was an asylum-seeker.’
‘An asylum-seeker … No, I definitely didn’t hear about that.’
Not many people did, Hulda thought.
‘How did she die?’ he asked.
‘She drowned, but there were injuries on her body. The detective who handled the case – not one of our best men, I might add – dismissed it as suicide. I’m not so sure.’
Feeling pleased with the progress she’d made that day, she gave him a brief account of her discoveries but, to her disappointment, Pétur looked sceptical.
‘Are you sure,’ he asked hesitantly, ‘are you sure you’re not building this up to be bigger than it really is?’
Hulda was a little taken aback by his frankness, but another part of her appreciated it.
‘No, I’m not at all sure,’ she admitted. ‘But I’m determined to follow it up.’
‘Fair enough,’ he said.
* * *
It was getting late. They had swapped their coffee for red wine a couple of hours ago. Pétur had stayed longer than anticipated but, far from complaining, Hulda welcomed the company. The rain clouds had finally departed, making way for the sun, and the sky was deceptively light outside, belying the lateness of the hour.
The wine hadn’t been Hulda’s idea. After finishing his coffee, Pétur had asked if she happened to have a drop of brandy, and she apologized but said she did have a couple of bottles of wine knocking about somewhere.
‘I like the sound of that. Good for the old ticker,’ he’d said, and who was she to question the word of a medical man?
‘It strikes me as a bit unusual,’ Pétur remarked warily, feeling his way, ‘that you don’t have any family photos on display.’
The observation took Hulda by surprise, but she tried to sound casual: ‘I’ve never been one for that kind of thing. I don’t know why.’
‘I suppose I understand. I probably have too many photos of my wife around the place. Maybe that’s why it’s taken me so long to get over her. I’m stuck in the past, quite literally.’ He heaved a sigh. They were on to their second bottle now. ‘What about your parents? Your brothers and sisters? No pictures of them either?’
‘I don’t have any brothers or sisters,’ Hulda said. She didn’t immediately go on, but Pétur waited patiently, sipping his wine. ‘My mother and I were never particularly close,’ she said eventually, as if justifying the absence of photographs, though there was no reason why she should have to make excuses.
‘How long ago did she die?’
‘Fifteen years ago. She wasn’t that old, only seventy,’ Hulda said, conscious of how scarily soon she would be that age herself: in just over five years. And the last five years had gone by in a flash.
‘She can’t have been very old when she had you,’ Pétur remarked, after doing some quick mental arithmetic.
‘Twenty … though I don’t think that would have counted as particularly young in those days.’
‘And your father?’
‘Never met him.’
‘Really? Did he die before you were born?’
‘No. I just never knew him – he was a foreigner.’ Her thoughts wandered back. ‘Actually, once, years ago, I did go abroad to try and trace him, but that’s another story…’
She smiled politely at Pétur. Though she tolerated these personal questions, she wasn’t keen on them. No doubt he expected her to respond in kind, by asking about his family and past life, to bring them closer. But that wasn’t going to happen. Not yet. She felt she knew enough about him to be going on with: he’d lost his wife and lived alone (in a house that was far too big for him), and, more importantly, he came across as a decent, kind man; honest and reliable. That would do for Hulda.
‘Yes,’ he said, breaking the silence, sounding a little tipsy now. ‘We’re two lonely souls, all right. Some people take the decision early in life … to be alone, I mean. But in our case, I think it was fate.’ He paused. ‘My wife and I made a conscious decision to put off having children – until it was too late for us to change our minds. Towards the end, we often discussed whether it had been a mistake.’ After a moment, he added: ‘I don’t believe in having regrets: life is what it is, it plays out one way or another. But having said that, I really wish I weren’t so alone at this point in mine.’
Hulda hadn’t been expecting this level of candour. She didn’t know what to say, and after a brief silence Pétur went on: ‘I don’t know how you two ended up childless, and I don’t mean to pry, but that sort of thing, decisions like that, they have a profound impact on our lives. They matter, really matter. Don’t you agree?’
Hulda nodded, glancing discreetly at the clock, then at the bottle, and Pétur got the hint: it was time to say goodnight.
XI
No matter how busy she was, she always turned up punctually to visit her daughter. Twice a week without fail, never missing a day. However heavy the snow or fierce the storm. Not even illness could deter her, since the glass dividing them ensured that she couldn’t infect her baby. Twice now these visits had landed her in trouble with unsympathetic employers, and on the second occasion she had handed in her notice. Her daughter came first.
Physically at least, the little girl appeared to be thriving. Her second birthday was rapidly approaching and she was healthy and tall for her age, but there was a faraway look in her eyes that made her mother anxious.
Perhaps, deep down, she knew that too long had passed: that her visits weren’t achieving anything; that the invisible thread connecting mother and daughter had snapped at some point during these two years of separation. Maybe it had happened at the very beginning, on the day when, against her will, she had relinquished her daughter into the hands of strangers. Her parents, ashamed of their daughter for having a child out of wedlock and wishing to hush up the affair, had considered it for the best. They had presented her with a stark choice: either give the child up for adoption – something she would never dream of doing – or place her in an institution for infants ‘to start off with’.
She had been living with her parents when her baby was born and couldn’t afford to move into a place of her own, so for her the choice was simple: since giving up her baby for goo
d was out of the question, the second option had seemed the lesser of two evils.
After finishing her compulsory schooling, she hadn’t taken any further qualifications, and felt it was too late to make up for that now. In any case, her parents had never encouraged her to get an education, placing all their expectations instead on the shoulders of her younger brother, who was now at Reykjavík College.
But things were about to change. She had been working for two years, putting money aside, and, although she was still living with her parents, it wouldn’t be long before she could afford to move out into her own flat. And then she could realize her long-desired dream of reclaiming her daughter from the institution.
Her relationship with her parents had become increasingly strained. At first, too numb to stand up to them when she fell unexpectedly pregnant, she had allowed them to push her around. Now, she was afraid she would never be able to forgive them for parting her from her child. Looking back, she couldn’t understand how she had ever agreed to such a thing.
She only hoped her little girl would find it in her heart to forgive her.
XII
After saying goodbye to Pétur with a chaste kiss on the cheek, Hulda went back into the sitting room and reclaimed the old armchair. She was too restless to go to bed straight away, couldn’t face being alone in the dark with only her thoughts for company. There were too many of them circling, waiting to pounce, each more upsetting than the last.
The Russian girl was still uppermost in her mind, though she had pushed the thought of her away while drinking wine with Pétur. The wine ‒ good point: there was still a splash left. No call to waste it. Reaching for the bottle, Hulda tipped the dregs into her glass. The Russian girl … But thinking about Elena inevitably brought Hulda round full circle to the circumstances in which the young woman’s death had ended up on her desk: she had, to all intents and purposes, been given her notice today; told to clear out her office; swept out of the way like a piece of old rubbish.
In an effort to distract herself, she started to think about Pétur, but that was problematic, too, because she didn’t want to risk investing too much hope in the future of their relationship. His visit had gone well, but now they needed to take the next step. She didn’t want to lose him, and she was scared that if she took things too slowly she might end up closing the door completely. And, realistically, how many more opportunities would she get?
Caught in this dilemma, she sat gazing abstractedly into her glass, taking occasional sips of wine, until, creeping out of the dark recesses of her mind, came the figures she didn’t want to think about, the figures she never stopped thinking about: Jón and her daughter.
At long last, she felt her eyelids drooping and knew she was tired enough to go to bed, safe in the knowledge that she would be able to get off to sleep without being tortured unnecessarily by her inner demons.
For once, she switched off the alarm clock on her bedside table, the clock that had for so many years woken her punctually at 6 a.m. every weekday, almost without exception. Well, this time the clock could have a rest, and so could Hulda. Without giving it much thought, she also switched her phone to silent, something she rarely did, as her job was all important to her and she liked to be available day and night. You couldn’t always, or maybe ever, conduct complex police investigations within normal office hours.
Closing her eyes, she let herself float away into the world of dreams.
Day Two
I
Hulda was stunned to discover that it was nearly eleven o’clock. She couldn’t remember the last time she had slept so late. The light was on in her bedroom, as usual. She didn’t like sleeping in the dark.
Disbelieving, she checked her alarm clock again, but there was no doubt. Her accumulated tiredness must have caught up with her. She lay there for a while, luxuriating in the fact that she wasn’t in a hurry for once, and as she did so, snatches of her dreams came back to her. Elena had turned up: Hulda could remember travelling back to Njardvík, to that comfortless little cell at the hostel. She couldn’t recapture all the details, only the sense that the dream had been disturbing, though nothing like as bad as the one that recurred almost nightly, which was so terrifying that she sometimes woke up gasping for breath. Terrifying, not because her imagination was running riot but, on the contrary, because it was in every detail a recollection of real events that Hulda could never, however hard she tried, forget.
Sitting up, she took a deep breath to dispel these phantoms. What she needed now was a cup of good strong coffee.
It occurred to her that she might actually be able to get used to not working. No commitments, no alarm clock. A comfortable if monotonous life as a pensioner in a fourth-floor apartment.
Except she had no intention of getting used to it.
She had to have a purpose in life. In the short term, she needed to solve the case of Elena’s death, or at least give it her best shot. She knew a success like that would allow her to leave her job in a cloud of glory, but, more than that, she felt an overwhelming urge to achieve some kind of justice for the poor girl. In the long term, she wanted to settle down with someone, escape the loneliness, and maybe – just maybe – Pétur was the one.
It didn’t occur to her to check her phone until she was halfway through her first cup of coffee because, unlike the current smartphone-obsessed generation, she wasn’t in thrall to her device. The younger members of CID could scarcely tear themselves away from their screens for a minute, whereas if she had the choice, Hulda would prefer never to have to look at hers at all.
So it came as a surprise that someone should have tried to ring her, twice, from a number she didn’t recognize. A call to directory enquiries revealed that the number belonged to the hostel that had featured so prominently in her dreams.
The phone was answered by a young man.
‘Good morning, this is Hulda Hermannsdóttir. I’m calling from the police.’
‘Right. Morning,’ he replied.
‘Someone was trying to reach me from this number at about eight o’clock this morning.’
‘Oh, yeah? From this number? Could’ve been Dóra, but then it could have been anyone, really. Wasn’t me, though,’ he said, running his words together in a barely audible mumble.
‘What do you mean by “anyone”?’ asked Hulda.
‘Well, you know, all the residents have access to this phone.’ He qualified this: ‘Only for domestic calls, though. International numbers are blocked, or you can bet the phone bill would be sky high.’ He laughed.
Hulda was in no laughing mood. ‘Is there any way of finding out who called me? Or could you just put me through to Dóra?’
‘Dóra? Sorry, no can do.’
‘Why not?’ Hulda asked, her patience wearing thin. Clearly, half a cup of coffee wasn’t enough.
‘She was on night shift so she’s asleep now. And there’s no point bothering her, as she’ll have her phone turned off.’
‘But this is urgent,’ Hulda protested, though for all she knew it might not be. ‘Just give me her landline, would you?’
The young man laughed again. ‘Landline? No one uses a landline any more.’
‘Well, then, can you just ask her to ring me?’
‘OK, I’ll try and remember. On the number you’re calling from now?’
‘Yes,’ said Hulda, then belatedly remembered something. ‘You’ve got a girl from Syria staying and I need to talk to her. Is she there?’
‘Syria? I wouldn’t know. I’m new, you see, don’t know anyone yet. Dóra would have a better idea.’
Hulda abandoned the struggle. ‘Never mind,’ she said curtly. ‘I’ll ring back later.’
‘OK. Should I not bother to pass on the message then – about giving you a call?’
‘For God’s sake, yes, please ask her to ring me. Thank you.’
Hulda hung up with an exasperated sigh and poured herself more coffee.
II
The first day in their new hom
e: a tiny basement flat so small that the word ‘flat’ was pushing it a bit, but it was a big day, nonetheless.
She had finally, belatedly, moved out of her parents’ place, bidding them a fond farewell while silently promising herself never to go back. Next, she had gone to collect her daughter, a little uncertain of her reception or indeed of whether she would be allowed to take her away.
Her worries had proved groundless. The matron in charge had remarked that two years was an unusually long time for the girl to have been living with them: normally, children spent only a few months there. She’d also warned that the change would take her daughter a while to adjust to, but wished them both all the best. She’s a good girl, she said.
And, God, it had been tough. The child had howled and howled, refusing to let her mother pick her up, refusing to go with her. This wasn’t the reunion the mother had been dreaming of for so long.
When they were finally ready to leave, the matron had added: ‘She sometimes has a bit of trouble getting to sleep.’
‘Trouble getting to sleep?’ the mother had queried. ‘Do you have any idea why?’
The matron looked doubtful, apparently wondering how much it would be wise to reveal about the girl’s time in their care, but in the end she had reluctantly admitted: ‘We had a child staying with us earlier this year who used to’ ‒ She hesitated ‒ ‘apparently used to amuse himself by poking the other children in the eye while they were sleeping.’
A shiver had run down the mother’s spine on hearing this.
‘At first, we thought it was a one-off,’ the matron had continued, ‘but in the end we were forced to intervene. Your daughter’s a sensitive child, so it affected her more than most. She’s had trouble sleeping ever since; too afraid of the dark to close her eyes. Frankly, it’s been a real nuisance.’
The Darkness Page 5