‘What about the daughter, Rósa? Have you had any dealings with her – either at the time or more recently?’
Salvör looked surprised. ‘No. I’ve only seen her once and that was at the funeral – her father’s funeral. She was only small. Five or six. It was desperately sad to see the poor little thing. I can’t imagine how she must have felt when she lost her mother as well. But of course I didn’t go to Dísa’s funeral. Like I said, I really didn’t know her.’
‘So you haven’t had any contact with Rósa?’
‘Contact? Me? No. I don’t know why on earth you’d think I would. I’ve had enough on my plate over the years with coping as a single parent and trying to look after my own kids. I don’t go sticking my nose into the lives of other people’s children.’
‘She’s missing,’ Huldar interrupted. ‘If you have any idea where she might be, we’d be very grateful for the information.’ He studied Salvör’s face, searching for tell-tale signs of concealment, but he couldn’t see any.
‘Missing? Is she the girl they sometimes put out notices about?’
When Huldar said yes, Salvör gave her head the tiniest shake, like people do when they hear something sad. ‘Oh, God. I can’t help you find her, I’m afraid. I really wish I could. That poor girl has had more than her fair share of grief. I do hope she turns up soon.’
Huldar asked his next question: ‘Have you any idea why Rósa might have wanted to visit Brynjólfur?’
‘Visit Brynjólfur? Did she visit Brynjólfur?’ Salvör’s astonishment appeared genuine.
Huldar nodded, without elaborating.
Salvör went on: ‘I wasn’t aware of that, and I’ve absolutely no idea why she would have gone to see him. In search of drugs, maybe?’
‘She’s not into drugs,’ Gudlaugur cut in, as if feeling compelled to defend the girl’s honour, though Salvör’s question had been perfectly natural in the circumstances.
‘Oh? Then maybe she wanted to talk to someone who used to know her father. That would be my guess, if she wasn’t after drugs. Perhaps she wanted to hear first hand about his accident.’
Naturally, this had occurred to Huldar as well. He thought her visit was highly unlikely to have been motivated purely by a wish to meet an old friend of her father for a general chat. The police had contacted Rósa’s paternal grandparents in Norway and her uncle as well, but apparently she had never been in touch with any of them to ask about her father. You’d have thought they would have been her first port of call, if all she’d wanted was to hear stories about him. If she’d wanted information, what would have been the point of going to see a man like Binni, who was off his head most of the time? Unless she was after something that no sober person would dream of telling a teenager – like how her father had come to drown. In that case, Binni would have been ideal.
‘Changing the subject, what happened to Brynjólfur’s belongings when he walked out? Did you throw them away or did he take them with him?’ On the short walk from the hall to the sitting room, Huldar hadn’t spotted any reminders of Salvör’s ex-husband. There were several photos on the wall in the hall but he wasn’t in any of them, not even in the ones where the children were small. Huldar guessed that Binni’s possessions had probably ended up at the tip, or been flung out of the window after him, like in the movies.
Salvör hesitated. ‘He didn’t take anything with him, except the clothes he was standing up in. And a half-empty bottle of rum. When it became clear that he wasn’t coming back, I packed his things into boxes, in case he wanted them later.’ She added, a little embarrassed: ‘Brynjólfur was very decent about the divorce. He didn’t make any fuss about my getting the flat, the car and almost everything else. Of course, I took on all our debts too, but he could have claimed his share of the flat and forced me to sell. I couldn’t have afforded to buy him out, although we’re not talking about a particularly large sum of money. Anyway, I didn’t feel I could pay him back by burning his belongings. I wanted to, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. So I packed his things in boxes and put them in storage.’
‘Are they still there?’ As he said it, Huldar felt Gudlaugur’s foot pressing against his. Presumably he didn’t want them to be lumbered with a load of old junk – yet another job for their understaffed department, which was bound to fall to him and Huldar.
When Salvör answered, ‘Yes, actually, they are,’ Gudlaugur increased the pressure, hard enough to move Huldar’s foot.
Avoiding his eye, Huldar asked if they could possibly go through the stuff. A fleeting expression of anger crossed Gudlaugur’s face, but he managed to rearrange his features before Salvör noticed.
‘Well, I don’t know what use it would be to you. It’s only clothes and books. A few other bits and pieces, but nothing that could possibly explain what’s happened – either with Binni’s murder or the girl’s disappearance. Trust me, I packed the things up myself.’
‘Even so, it would be good if we could have them,’ Huldar said. He had no intention of backing down. ‘We need to examine quite a few things in the course of our enquiries that might seem strange to the public.’
Gudlaugur cleared his throat, but before he could say it was fine, they didn’t really need the boxes, Salvör replied: ‘I’ll have to fetch them. I hired a storage unit for them back in the day. I wanted to be able to send Brynjólfur there if he ever came back for his junk. I didn’t want him setting foot in my new place.’ Her gaze wandered round the room. ‘I moved once the divorce had gone through. I wanted a change of scene and to be free of the old memories and ghosts. At the time, this area was perfect. It was too new to have any memories associated with it. A fresh start.’ Salvör’s eyes dropped to her Fitbit. ‘I’m afraid I can’t do it today, though. I’m going to use the rest of the afternoon for something more enjoyable. But I can fetch the stuff at the weekend, or after work on Monday, if the miserable forecast turns out to be wrong and the good weather lasts a bit longer. I don’t suppose the delay will make any difference to you.’
She didn’t offer them the key, which would have been simpler, and Huldar didn’t ask for it, for fear that she would change her mind. He’d never be able to persuade Erla to apply for a search warrant for the storage unit; she was bound to side with Gudlaugur in the matter of the boxes. So he told Salvör that would be fine. Shortly afterwards, when it became clear that there was nothing else to be gained from their visit, the two men rose to their feet, said goodbye and returned to the car.
Gudlaugur wasn’t as quiet on the way back as he had been on the drive there. ‘What were you thinking of?’ he complained. ‘Who’s supposed to go through all that crap? You?’
‘Actually, I was wondering if we could borrow Lína. She’s on work experience in Sexual Offences at the moment. They had her go through the lost-property items from the care home.’
‘They won’t let her go. They’re as short-staffed as we are.’
‘Come on, Gudlaugur, this is Lína we’re talking about. Be honest. Wouldn’t you have lent her out like a shot if another department had requested her? Even if only to get a break from the endless commentary?’
Gudlaugur didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. They both knew he’d have jumped at the chance.
‘You never know what might emerge from those boxes.’
‘Nothing but moths, I expect,’ Gudlaugur said gloomily, then relapsed into silence until they got back to the station.
Salvör watched the policemen pull out of her drive and take the wrong turning – if they were hoping to exit the estate, that was. It was always happening. She waited at the window until she saw the car reappear, going in the right direction this time. Only then did she go back and sit down in her chair, thinking back to the day when her husband had walked out. She remembered how she had swept the things off Brynjólfur’s dressing table, emptied out his desk drawers and tossed everything that belonged to him into cardboard boxes without even bothering to sort through it. What would have been the point? At th
at moment she had severed the connection with her husband, so cleanly that there wasn’t a single tie left between them. For her, the clear-out of the house had been like disinfecting the hospital room of a dead patient who had been a complete stranger to her. As far as she was concerned, Binni had to all intents and purposes been dead already. It hadn’t required a knife to finish him off.
There was no doubt in her mind: she would have to go through the contents of the boxes before turning them over to the police. No way was she going to hand them over without knowing what was inside them. What if there was something incriminating in there that would completely destroy Brynjólfur’s reputation? Hadn’t the children been through enough? Hadn’t she been through enough?
Outside, the only gorgeous day in what had been a wash-out of a summer awaited her. Was she really going to waste it in a storage unit, rummaging through dusty boxes? No. That could wait until tomorrow or Sunday, when the forecast was miserable again.
Right now she was going swimming. Salvör got up, fetched her costume and headed outside into the sunshine.
But the thought of Brynjólfur and the way their life together had ended, all those years ago, cast a shadow over the beautiful day. A downpour would have been more in keeping with her mood.
Chapter 20
Friday
Freyja couldn’t ignore her aching calves any longer. She heaved a deep breath and focused grimly on her block of flats that was so near yet still so terribly far away. The sun was blazing down and she had a free hour before she had to collect Saga from nursery school. Without even thinking about it, she had pulled on her tracksuit and running shoes and headed out. This summer she had found it worked best to switch off her brain before going for a run or to the gym. If she paused to think, it wouldn’t happen. Even so, she had let things slide for the last three weeks and was paying for it now with her burning calves.
It wasn’t as though she’d broken any records for speed or distance either. She’d run round the Seltjarnarnes Peninsula, following the footpath along the northern shore, with a panoramic view of the mountains – Esja, Skardsheidi and Akrafjall – across the gleaming waters of Faxaflói Bay. Having reached the westernmost point, stopping just short of the lighthouse at Grótta, she had turned south and run to the golf course, before following the gravel bank of Bakkagrandi along to Sudurströnd, then home. She’d lost count of the birds she had seen watching her from the air, land and sea as she jogged past, all of them looking equally baffled by the vagaries of human behaviour. Molly, in contrast, gave every sign of being highly satisfied as she loped along at Freyja’s side without even panting. The dog could easily have done several more circuits of the peninsula, whereas it took every ounce of Freyja’s will-power not to give up and drop to a walk for the last hundred metres.
She felt better when she met two women walking along in their running gear, both scarlet in the face and gulping down water from their bottles, obviously shattered. It was good to know she wasn’t the only one. Everyone else she’d encountered had seemed so focused: cyclists acting as if they were taking part in the Tour de France; lean, fit runners pounding along, eyes fixed purposefully on the horizon.
With one last inhuman effort, Freyja made it to the car park in front of her building, before bending over with her hands on her knees, panting in great, tearing gasps. Molly watched in disgust and turned her head away when Freyja finally straightened up and limped the last few metres to the front door. Perhaps that was the advantage of having a snake as a pet: it only had the one expression and never judged you. Probably because it was too busy contemplating where best to bite you.
The hot shower performed its usual miracle and when Freyja stepped out, reinvigorated, the taste of iron, the burning lungs and sore calves were no more than a distant memory. By the time she’d dressed and had a coffee, the memory had disappeared. Instead, her head was buzzing with ideas about the case. She allowed her mind to pursue them at will, as in this rejuvenated state it was easier to think things through properly. When she was tired, her thoughts tended to drift aimlessly until they hit a rock.
This time, her mind was occupied with Tristan rather than Rósa. Another batch of interviews had been completed, but still nothing had emerged to corroborate the young man’s story. Even the boys Freyja had expected to back up his allegations with similar experiences of their own had denied having any problems of the kind. They had shaken their heads, adamant not only that no one had laid a finger on them but also that they hadn’t noticed any inappropriate behaviour towards the other kids. When Freyja had intervened with questions for those who’d reported having trouble waking up in the mornings, they had responded that they’d always found it hard to wake up and still did. One couldn’t even remember having said it.
The terrible suspicion that Tristan might be lying was growing ever stronger. Yet he’d seemed so convincing when they’d questioned him. Perhaps Bergur had only abused the one boy. She had searched for academic studies on patterns of abuse by paedophiles to see how common it was for them to be content with a single victim, but had found frustratingly little on the subject. Most of the research was concerned with what happened to child abusers after they had been released from prison, which had no real bearing on the case she was investigating. The offenders in question knew what would happen if they didn’t toe the line. It didn’t help that most of the articles originated in America where sentences were much longer than those in Iceland and prison conditions considerably harsher. She doubted that Icelandic sexual predators would shake in their shoes at the thought of a spell in Litla-Hraun.
She needed to know how likely it was for a sexual offender, who had never been caught, to turn over a new leaf of his own accord. Needless to say, there were no articles devoted to this subject since, by the nature of the crime, only the perpetrator and the victim would be aware of what had happened. All she found were statistics about the number of paedophiles who had only one, historical crime behind them at the time they were charged, and these had more to do with criminology than psychology. Since she’d failed to unearth a single study or abstract on the subject, she would simply have to trust her own common sense, which told her that nothing could be ruled out. Tristan could be telling the truth, in which case Bergur was guilty, or the boy could be lying or misremembering, in which case Bergur was innocent. Perhaps things would be clarified when the police tracked Rósa down, but this couldn’t be taken for granted.
At any rate, on the basis of what had emerged so far, there wasn’t much likelihood of charges being brought, or of Bergur being found guilty if they were. For that, they needed more substantial evidence. But the chances of that were diminishing with every interview that failed to come up with the goods. Even a statement from Rósa that Tristan had confided in her several years ago was unlikely to weigh particularly heavily. For the case to be watertight, she would need to have witnessed the assaults.
Freyja looked at the clock. There was just time to ring Yngvi at the Child Protection Agency to give him the daily update. He listened to her report but had little to contribute when she shared her thoughts on the findings so far. Although she hadn’t been expecting him to have a firm view on whether Tristan or Bergur was more likely to be telling the truth, she had hoped that his experience of similar incidents might provide a little insight. Then again, maybe he didn’t have any experience. The situation was highly unusual, after all.
The phone call wasn’t an entire waste of time, though, because Yngvi informed her that she’d been authorised to listen to recordings of the children’s sessions with therapists. After warning her that there were fewer interviews than he had been expecting, Yngvi added that the recordings had been uploaded to the agency’s server, and she could access them there. He had also uploaded all the existing interviews with Rósa, including those dating from before her residence at the care home, since Freyja had seemed so interested in her during their last phone call, and so concerned about what might have happened to her. With any luck, t
hey might provide some clues that could help to track her down. Freyja then listened obediently as he mechanically recited the relevant privacy and confidentiality laws and reminded her of the ethical rules by which psychologists were bound. Although she knew it all off by heart, she let him finish before confirming that she would observe the rules in everything. As always.
Before ending the call, Yngvi asked if Freyja had made up her mind whether to apply for the police liaison position. She said she’d been giving it a great deal of thought but hadn’t yet decided. The truth was that she’d hardly thought about it at all. It was a big decision, and when you had a lot on it was all too easy to put decisions about the future on the back burner. Hopefully she’d manage to sit down and make up her mind before the future became the present, or even the past, and the opportunity had slipped through her fingers.
Freyja threw on her coat and went to fetch Saga.
At the nursery school she was handed a note containing a message that nobody wanted to hear: THE NITS ARE BACK! The exclamation mark implied this was something to be celebrated but the small print underneath made it clear that it was anything but. Parents and guardians were kindly requested to start the necessary treatment immediately, and brief instructions followed. Freyja felt a momentary impulse to chuck the note away and run for the door; leave Saga behind, phone Baldur and tell him to ditch his tourists and come back for his daughter. She could feel her scalp crawling at the mere thought of headlice and the nursery school teacher who handed her the note had no difficulty in interpreting her horrified expression.
‘It’s nothing serious.’ The woman folded her arms. ‘It happens from time to time. Especially in autumn. If the golden plover is the traditional herald of spring, nits are the herald of autumn.’
Freyja couldn’t smile at this. She couldn’t say a word. The woman carried on talking, describing how nits spread and the importance of everyone taking the treatment seriously. With every word, the itching grew worse. It was a relief when the woman finally shut up, but the respite was brief, since she added that Freyja should remove everything from Saga’s peg and take it home to wash. Freyja glanced round in vain for a pair of rubber gloves but all she could see was a plastic bag lying on one of the benches. Picking it up, she turned it inside out and put it over her hand for protection. As she was stuffing the clothes one-handed into Saga’s bag, she took care to stand as far from the wall as she could, for fear that lice would drop on her from the other kids’ hats and coats.
The Doll Page 20