It struck Freyja that Huldar was unusually relaxed compared to how he normally behaved when she met him at work. She attributed this to Erla’s absence. Apparently she was on a boat in Faxaflói Bay, searching for more bones. She certainly had the perfect weather for it: sunshine, not a cloud in the sky and a flat calm. It was as if the summer had finally realised it was late to the party and had determined to make up for it by pulling out all the stops for this one day. Rain and wind were forecast again for tomorrow.
‘Do you know what happened to Rósa’s father?’ Freyja glanced at the clock and saw that she would need to get herself down to Sexual Offences in a few minutes to attend the next round of interviews.
‘I have to admit I haven’t looked him up. All I know is that he died in an accident.’ Huldar glanced at Gudlaugur who was back at his desk. ‘Do you know anything about him?’
Gudlaugur shook his head. ‘Same here. I only know that it was an accident. A long time ago. I can’t see what he has to do with our search for the girl. We’ve got enough on our plates without investigating long-dead family members.’
Freyja felt compelled to justify her interest. She was used to being taken seriously at work and was miffed at having her question dismissed as a waste of time. ‘It just occurred to me that she might be drawn to places associated with him, to feel closer to him perhaps.’ Lame as this sounded, it was the best she could do.
Huldar and Gudlaugur both looked at her dubiously.
‘Places associated with him? What do you mean?’ Huldar couldn’t suppress a smile. ‘The place where her parents met or something?’
‘No.’ Freyja felt herself backed into a corner. ‘Not necessarily that kind of thing. I don’t know where exactly, because I know nothing about the man. I read the obituaries but they were the usual stuff: people scraping around for inoffensive anecdotes about the deceased to illustrate his character. They never tell you the whole story, as Rósa’s mother might have told it. Or the man’s parents.’
‘So you’re suggesting … what? That we call his parents?’
‘No, that’s not what I’m suggesting,’ Freyja retorted, her voice becoming shrill. ‘Look, it was just a thought, OK? It’s not like you’re having much success at tracking her down with the methods you’re using. Which are what, by the way? Hoping to run into her by chance?’
Neither man answered this and an awkward silence fell. The most embarrassed of the three was Huldar, who now sat down at his computer and started tapping hurriedly on his keyboard.
‘I’ll see what I can find. Seeing as he died in an accident, he’s bound to be in the system.’
Freyja felt ashamed of her emotional outburst and wondered what had come over her. She would hardly be suited to the job of police liaison officer if she reacted so badly to the slightest disagreement. This wasn’t a psychology clinic where contact with her colleagues was limited to the kitchen. This was a police station, where the staff knew their job better than she did. But before she could apologise, Huldar found what he was looking for.
‘Here’s a brief summary.’ Huldar read for a moment before relaying the contents to them. ‘OK. There’s nothing suspicious about the accident, at any rate. The man drowned while salmon fishing in the Öxarfjördur area. He’d been drinking and waded out into a river he wasn’t familiar with. He was planning to fish in a deep pool, which was easier to get at from the other side, so he tried to wade across the shallows below it, where the riverbed was rocky and the current was very strong. He lost his footing, his waders filled with water and he was carried downstream. There was nothing the witnesses to the accident could do. His body was found several hundred metres further down.’
Gudlaugur grimaced. ‘That’s grim. Was his wife there?’
‘No. It’s only a summary and doesn’t name the witnesses but there seems to have been two of them and they’re both referred to as male. One was a friend. He saw what happened. Then there was a stranger who was fishing nearby. In other words, there were two witnesses, one of them independent. It wasn’t murder, like the girl claims.’
‘Presumably there was an inquest?’ Freyja regretted her question as soon as it was out of her mouth, since it sounded as if she was querying Huldar’s version of events. But all she wanted was to be absolutely sure there was no hint of anything untoward. If it happened the way Huldar had described, Rósa couldn’t have got the wrong end of the stick about her father’s death due to some unexplained detail in the series of events. Besides, she had only produced her theory when she was fifteen, no longer a credulous little girl as she had been at the time of her mother’s death.
It looked as if Freyja’s original assessment had been correct; that Rósa had serious psychological problems. This did nothing to allay her concern about the girl’s disappearance and failure to turn up.
‘Yes, of course. The Thórshöfn police dealt with the incident, according to what it says here.’ Huldar paused. ‘Strange they didn’t send any officers from Húsavík. I’d have thought that would have been closer and the station there is bigger.’ He looked up, adding apologetically: ‘I come from the east myself, so I know the north-eastern region quite well.’
‘Do you think there’s something dodgy about it, then?’ Freyja couldn’t picture a map of the area. She had never actually travelled right round Iceland; never got any closer to this remote region than Akureyri, the capital of the north.
‘No. It doesn’t make that big a difference in terms of distance. But still.’ Huldar fiddled with the mouse, frowning at the screen. After a while he turned back to Freyja. ‘Ah. Here it is. Apparently the Húsavík force were busy dealing with a fatal road accident involving a child. That explains it. These country police stations aren’t very big outfits. A serious incident like that would have required all their manpower – if you can use that term for a police team of two or three officers. Anyway, regardless of who was in charge of the investigation, there’s no doubt that Rósa’s father’s death was an accident.’
Huldar reached for his mouse again, saying: ‘Don’t look. I’m going to open the photos from the scene of the accident. You definitely don’t want to see those.’
Warnings and prohibitions only make things more intriguing, and Freyja moved round behind Huldar so she could watch over his shoulder. He raised his eyebrows but didn’t chase her away. Perhaps he thought she was still offended and didn’t want to risk riling her any further.
He scrolled quickly through the photos from the riverbank and its immediate surroundings. It was evident from the colour of the vegetation that they had been taken in autumn. The grassy banks overhung the water and many of the pictures would have been suitable for a tourist brochure were it not for the body in the foreground. Rósa’s father was lying on his back several metres from the river, presumably after being dragged onto dry land by his friend and the witness. His arms and legs were splayed out, as if he were making a snow angel. He was clean shaven and looked younger than in the bearded photo that had accompanied his obituary. As a result, his gaping mouth was clearly visible. Freyja guessed someone had tried and failed to give him the kiss of life. His eyes were fixed wide open in a permanent stare. Freyja averted her gaze as a close-up of his face flashed up on screen.
‘Bloody hell.’ Huldar peered closer. ‘I’ve seen him before.’ He pushed back his chair, reached for the cardboard box by his desk and pulled out a plastic bag containing a picture in a frame. He laid the bag on the desk and smoothed out the clear plastic. ‘Look. Isn’t that the same man?’
Freyja bent down to examine the picture as Gudlaugur came round to join them. The photo showed three men in angling gear, each holding a salmon. And, yes, she could have sworn that one of them was Rósa’s father.
Chapter 19
Friday
The framed photograph lay on the coffee table, still in its plastic evidence bag. Seated in a circle around it were Gudlaugur, Huldar and Salvör, ex-wife of the late Binni, who had invited them to take a seat in her tidy sitting
room. Huldar had called Erla with the news that Binni had known Rósa’s father, but as she was still at sea, searching for more bones, she had delegated the interview to him. It had been his decision to take Gudlaugur along. He wasn’t in the mood for the company of any of his other colleagues that afternoon, or indeed any afternoon, but particularly not on a Friday.
At first, Salvör had been rather short with him on the phone, protesting that her ex-husband’s death had nothing to do with her: she and Brynjólfur had separated for good when he walked out on her and the kids ten years ago. When Huldar explained that they wanted to ask her some questions about her husband’s life before he went off the rails, she had reluctantly agreed, on condition that she didn’t have to come into the station. She would rather they came round to hers instead. Huldar had jumped at the excuse for him and Gudlaugur to escape the Friday-afternoon torpor in the office.
Salvör lived in a fairly new estate near Lake Ellidavatn in Kópavogur, the town immediately to the south of Reykjavík. The neighbourhood had sprung up about a decade before and spread out in a pattern of streets so confusing that it was impossible to find one’s way around. Huldar, who was driving, had to rely on the satnav once they’d left the main road. Gudlaugur, yawning away in the passenger seat, had little to say. It was no coincidence that night shifts were paid at a higher rate, given the way they sapped people’s energy.
Salvör lived in a modest, low-rise white building. The woman herself turned out to be as modest and unassuming as her flat. She was unusually petite and slender, with wavy, shoulder-length ginger hair and a fringe so short, it looked as if she’d had an accident with a pair of scissors. Her face was covered in large, light-coloured freckles, made up of clusters of countless smaller ones, and she wore no make-up apart from black mascara, which had smudged on one eyelid. Her black lashes and the smudge were very conspicuous against her otherwise pale face.
After letting them in via the entryphone, she had met them at the door in the carpeted corridor. Her greeting wasn’t exactly effusive: they shook hands and introduced themselves, though they already knew each other’s names from the phone call. She had then invited them in, with the comment that today was the last day of her summer holiday and this wasn’t at all how she had envisaged spending it. Neither Gudlaugur nor Huldar saw any reason to apologise for their visit since she still had the whole weekend ahead of her, though admittedly it didn’t look as if the good weather would last.
‘I’ve got coffee but no milk. I’m lactose intolerant.’ Salvör was sitting stiffly upright in her chair. ‘Would you like some anyway? I’ve got water too, of course. But no Coke or anything like that.’ When they both declined her offer, she leant back, looking a little less tense.
‘We won’t detain you long; we just need to ask you a few questions about Brynjólfur. Nothing uncomfortable or embarrassing, though.’ Huldar smiled. ‘Shall we just get started?’
‘Yes, please do.’ Salvör glanced at the Fitbit on her wrist, clearly intent on making sure that they stuck to their promise of getting it over with quickly.
Gudlaugur gestured at the picture lying on the coffee table. ‘We’d like to begin by asking you to take a look at this photo and tell us if you recognise any of the men in it. We believe it was taken while you were still married.’
The woman wrinkled her brow as she reached for the evidence bag. ‘Can I take it out?’
‘No. I’m afraid you’ll have to look at it through the plastic.’
She smoothed out the bag and peered at the photo, then put it back down. ‘That’s Brynjólfur with two of his friends. One was called Thröstur. He’s dead. He drowned on one of their endless fishing trips. Binni was there and the accident did nothing to help his problems with alcohol, as you can imagine. His drinking got completely out of hand afterwards.’
Huldar nodded. After talking to Freyja and reading the summary, he had tracked down the files on the accident. When he read the witness statements, he had discovered that Binni had been the anonymous friend referred to in the summary. Yet so far this information had got them no further with regard to Rósa. He pointed now to the other man in the photo in the evidence bag. ‘What about him – do you recognise him?’
Salvör shook her head. ‘I know the face but I can’t remember what he was called. He used to go by a nickname. Sibbi – I think that was it. I assume it was short for Sigurbjörn or something like that.’ Her eyes darted back to the bag. ‘But it’s such a long time ago, and I didn’t have much to do with that group of friends. They mainly met up to organise their trips, which were always men-only affairs – us wives were never invited along. I only remember Thröstur’s name because of the way he died. It was such a horrible shock and Binni took it terribly to heart. Perhaps he blamed himself. Because he was too drunk to save him, maybe. Who knows? He wouldn’t discuss it with me. Any more than his other problems.’
The conversation was getting off track. They hadn’t come here to talk about the state of Salvör’s marriage to Binni. ‘Were they childhood friends?’ Huldar asked, getting back to the point. He felt that he was better placed to question her about an all-male group of fishing mates than Gudlaugur, who had absolutely no interest in that kind of thing and simply shook his head whenever Huldar invited him along. This was disappointing, as his own group could have done with some new members. Recently, numbers had been thinning out at such a rate Huldar would soon be the only one left. The others were slowly but surely being swallowed up by the world of coupledom and kids. ‘School friends, maybe?’
‘Partly. But some of them got involved with the group through fishing. They were all around the same age, though. There were more of them than in that picture. Probably about seven or eight in all.’
Huldar pulled out a notebook in anticipation of her answering his next question. ‘Do you know any of their names?’
‘There was one called Siggi, if I remember right, and a Raggi. Then the Sibbi in the picture. And Thröstur. I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the others. I hardly knew them, as I said. I got the feeling they deliberately kept wives and girlfriends out of it. That way they could be sure there would be someone at home when they went on their trips and no hassle about having to find a babysitter. I don’t suppose they wanted us tagging along, anyway. They could drink themselves silly without getting any stick from us. I wasn’t surprised when Thröstur had his accident. They used to take such stupid risks. I made sure Brynjólfur knew what I thought about it but he didn’t listen to my warnings. Any more than the others did.’
There was an unmistakeable hint of schadenfreude in Salvör’s face; the satisfaction of someone whose warnings had gone unheeded for years but who had finally been proved right. I told you so.
Huldar waited until the expression had faded before putting his next question. ‘Do you know if Brynjólfur stayed in touch with his mates after he ended up on the street?’
‘I have no idea. We went our separate ways. He walked out and that was that. It didn’t occur to me to try and persuade him to come home again. Thröstur’s death affected him so badly that it finally sent him over the edge, but it wasn’t like he was a model husband one day and a homeless drunk the next. It had been a long time coming. I just can’t understand why I didn’t throw him out before.’
Misfortune had a way of insinuating itself almost imperceptibly into people’s lives, which was why a situation had often become unbearable before they finally did something about it. Salvör wasn’t alone in looking back and not being able to understand why she had put up with so much crap for so long. ‘So you didn’t see Brynjólfur again after he walked out?’ Huldar was careful to keep the disbelief out of his voice. But the fact was, they had split up ten years previously and it was almost impossible that their paths wouldn’t have crossed in a town as small as Reykjavík.
‘Of course I saw him after that. But only when I had no choice, or by accident. For example, I had to track him down to get him to sign the divorce papers. And I occasionally bumped into
him in town. In fact, I deliberately stopped going into the centre, to avoid running into him.’ Salvör paused. ‘I don’t understand what you’re after. Am I a suspect in his murder?’
‘No. You aren’t,’ Gudlaugur said firmly. Perhaps a little too firmly, given that they had no real suspects as yet. ‘Although it was a long time ago, it would be helpful if you could think of anyone who might have had it in for Brynjólfur.’
‘I know nothing about the people he associated with after he left me. And I can’t believe you think someone would have been harbouring a grudge for a decade and only got round to attacking him now.’
Huldar and Gudlaugur waited with studied patience for her to answer the question.
‘Well, if you’re really asking me that, then I’ll have to disappoint you because I don’t remember any sworn enemies or anyone who had it in for him. Brynjólfur hadn’t fallen out with anyone – except me, that is. But if I’d wanted to kill him for being a bloody awful husband and father, I’d have done it ten years ago – and spared my kids the humiliation of seeing their father in the gutter.’
Gudlaugur steered the conversation back on course. ‘To return to the men in the picture, were you acquainted at all with Thröstur, the man who drowned? Apart from knowing his name and how he died, obviously.’
‘No, not really. I seem to remember that he was an aircraft mechanic. But I assume you already know all that if you’re interested in him. He can hardly have killed Brynjólfur, though, seeing as he’s been dead for years.’
Huldar ignored her sarcasm. ‘Did you know his wife? Her name was Dísa Högnadóttir.’
‘No. I only met her twice, as far as I remember. The second time was at her husband’s funeral. Us wives were allowed to come along on that occasion.’ Salvör snorted. ‘The next thing I heard, she was dead herself. I saw the obituaries and recognised her from the photo. It was all terribly sudden.’
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