Fjalar put his fists on the table, knife and fork clenched upright in each. ‘For Christ’s sake! You could have told us before, while I still had the chance to move the meal to another day.’
Frikki knew perfectly well why his brother was so annoyed. He didn’t want to be left alone with their drunk and maudlin father, having to endure his endless stories of long-ago hog roasts.
‘What the hell’s so urgent? Your work’s not likely to call you on a Sunday.’ Fjalar stabbed his fork into a chunk of meat and began violently sawing at it with his knife. ‘It’s not like you get weekend emergencies at the Marine Research Institute.’
‘It has nothing to do with work.’ Frikki cast around in vain for an excuse that would placate his brother. ‘Something came up that I need to take care of. It’s nothing I could have foreseen.’
‘What? A blocked gutter?’ Fjalar said with his mouth full, chewing as he spoke. He made no attempt to hide his displeasure, but then he never did. He had been an open book ever since he was a child. ‘You’ve got to take the car in to be cleaned?’
‘No.’ Frikki left it at that. Once Fjalar was in a bad mood, there was no going back. It didn’t matter what excuse he made, his brother wouldn’t listen. If he’d said he was on his way to hospital to donate a kidney to save a child’s life, Fjalar wouldn’t have accepted it as a valid excuse.
But Frikki wasn’t about to tell his father and brother the truth. They would be speechless if he confided in them that he was linked to the young girl whose body had just been found and whose name had now been released. If he started talking, there was a risk he wouldn’t be able to stop. It wouldn’t be fair to worry his father by telling him that he was afraid the police would soon be knocking on his door, asking why he had been sheltering the girl and hadn’t got in touch when they appealed for information about her. Or, worse, that he was terrified he was about to be arrested, suspected of being involved in her murder. The worry was killing him. How was he supposed to explain his relationship with Rósa to the police when he didn’t understand it himself? He supposed he had felt sorry for her and also in some way responsible for her psychological problems. If the doll had never landed in his net, Rósa might have found it easier to accept her mother’s accident. But the idea for the fishing trip had been his.
No, the police would never buy this explanation. They would take it as read that he’d had some perverted interest in the kid. It was about the most horrible thing you could be suspected of. He would never be able to clear his name. The moment the rumour spread that he’d had a sexual relationship with the girl, his reputation would be destroyed, even if the investigation subsequently revealed that it wasn’t true. The institute would find a pretext to sack him and he doubted he would ever be able to leave the house again.
No wonder his food tasted like cardboard.
Frikki excused himself and went to the toilet. He desperately needed to be alone for a minute to stop himself breaking down at the table. He stood in the little guest cloakroom, gripping the basin with both hands and staring down at the white china bowl. Focusing hard on breathing, he counted the round holes in the drain. Then he let go, raised his head and met his own gaze in the mirror. That was a mistake.
His pale, red-eyed face wasn’t exactly an encouraging sight.
He splashed cold water on his cheeks, blew out a long breath, then did his best to force his features into a more natural, unconcerned expression. It worked to some extent. He was still pale and his eyes were still bloodshot, but anyone who didn’t know him would think he was fine. It was just unfortunate that his present companions were the people who knew him best in the world.
Frikki emerged from the cloakroom. He didn’t care if his father thought he had a stomach bug and started bombarding him with unsolicited advice.
No sooner had he stepped out into the hall than the phone started ringing in his pocket. He wasn’t expecting any calls and when he saw a number he didn’t recognise, his stomach lurched with fear. It was bound to be the police, calling him in for questioning or informing him of his imminent arrest.
While he was staring transfixed at his phone, wondering how horrendous his life was about to become, it rang a second, then a third time. From the dining room his brother bellowed at him to answer the bloody thing. Closing his eyes, Frikki did so.
An involuntary giggle of pure hysteria escaped him when it turned out to be the security company that looked after his house. The caller was momentarily taken aback, then he recovered and asked if Frikki was at home. The alarm had gone off and the man wanted to know if he had forgotten to enter the code. Hearing that this wasn’t the case, he asked if Frikki would like the company to send round a security guard to check out the house.
It had happened before, more than once. Frikki had left a window open and the neighbour’s fat Norwegian forest cat had squeezed in and set off the alarm. After the cat’s first break-in, Frikki had agreed to a visit by a security guard and paid a fortune for the service. Ever since then he had said he would check on the situation himself.
The call had come at the perfect moment. Now he would have a genuine excuse to leave. Too bad he hadn’t waited a few more minutes before announcing that he had to be off. Perhaps it was a sign that he shouldn’t expect the worst. Perhaps the police wouldn’t contact him after all. The thought cheered Frikki up a little.
Fjalar didn’t look up when Frikki came back into the dining room with the excuse that now he really had to leave because his burglar alarm had gone off. But his father looked worried and opened his mouth, no doubt to share some advice about how to avoid visits from unscrupulous thieves. Frikki hastily forestalled him. ‘It’s probably just the neighbour’s cat again but I’ll have to go and see, all the same.’ He went over to his brother, who was attacking his steak as if it was to blame for everything. Frikki laid a hand on his shoulder in an attempt to make peace. ‘Thanks for the meal, Fjalar. Sorry about this. It won’t happen again.’
Fjalar snorted. ‘Yeah, right.’
Frikki didn’t want to leave his brother like this. It would be trickier to make peace with him over the phone, but having their father on the sidelines, constantly interrupting, didn’t make it any easier now. ‘Could you walk to the door with me?’ He gave Fjalar’s shoulder a light slap and a squeeze. It was probably the closest physical contact they’d had since they’d hugged at their mother’s funeral. The hug hadn’t lasted long but they’d managed nevertheless to slap each other on the back a few times while it did.
Frikki’s ploy seemed to work. Fjalar put down his knife and fork and got up. Frikki said a hurried goodbye to his father, then hastily left the dining room before the old man could get in another word.
‘Sorry. Again.’ Frikki hovered by the door to the hall where his coat was hanging on a peg.
‘Yeah, yeah. Whatever.’ Fjalar was still pissed off but didn’t seem quite as angry as before. ‘Another raincheck then?’
‘It’s my turn next.’ As he stood face to face with Fjalar, Frikki felt a sudden wave of affection for his younger brother. In spite of their differences, they were connected by blood. ‘Should we maybe set up a joint Tinder account? Brothers in search of sisters?’
Fjalar grinned, and with that the barriers were down. ‘Yeah, right. Then you might be in with a chance at last; you could get off with the older sister of some chick who’s crazy about me.’
‘Or vice versa.’ Frikki grinned back. The chances of this were slim. If he was arrested, they would be non-existent. But he could at least allow himself to enjoy the prospect while there was still hope. ‘Next time you invite me to a party, I promise to chat up a girl.’
Fjalar gave him a brief smile. Everything was all right again between them. Yet Frikki still felt a bit melancholy. Behind every joke there was a grain of truth. They were standing beside a shelf on which Fjalar had placed framed photographs of himself; pictures he wanted his guests to see. From these it was apparent that Frikki wasn’t the only one who ached for
a long-term relationship. His brother had put up pictures of the only two women he had lived with in his life, though both relationships had been over a long time ago. His other girlfriends hadn’t been accorded the same honour. But perhaps they would be relieved, because there was something a little disturbing about the way the pictures of the two women had been placed among Fjalar’s most successful kills: Fjalar with a metre-long salmon, Fjalar with the carcases of eleven geese, Fjalar with a redfish weighing at least twelve to fifteen kilos, Fjalar with sixteen ptarmigan, Fjalar with a giant cod. Fjalar with Gudrún. Fjalar with Emilía.
Frikki was a little hurt that there was no picture of the brothers together. Or of their father and mother. Fjalar might as well have been an orphan. But then he was no different himself: he didn’t put up pictures of his family at home or at work. Nor did any of the other men he worked with; only the occasional woman would have little framed photos of her children on her desk or as wallpaper on her computer. But the pictures were never of her husband.
Frikki felt an impulse to ask his brother if he had ever considered trying to get back together with Emilía or Gudrún, but this wasn’t the right moment. If Fjalar was sad about losing them, Frikki didn’t want to give the impression that he was rubbing his brother’s nose in it.
They said goodbye and promised to be in touch but didn’t make any firm plans.
Frikki drove home as fast as he could without breaking the speed limit. He didn’t want to risk being stopped by the police; if he so much as heard a siren the stress would kill him. The cops would be sure to suspect him of being on drugs if he opened the window, all sweaty and shaking. It did nothing to help his anxiety that he had taken a swig of beer earlier, when he was flustered.
When he finally pulled up in his drive, he heard the wail of the burglar alarm that the security guard had said he would leave on. If the culprit was a thief rather than an overweight cat, he would be more likely to flee if the alarm continued its screeching.
Frikki hurried inside and switched off the deafening noise. But the oppressive silence that followed was no more comfortable. He tried calling the cat but couldn’t hear its bell or any sound of mewing. When he glanced into the sitting room, he saw the reason why. Someone had smashed the glass in the garden door, reached in through the gap and opened it.
Seeing that the door was still ajar, Frikki froze. He stared open-mouthed at the broken glass scattered all over the parquet floor. This could hardly have been the work of the cat. It wasn’t what he had been expecting at all and he now regretted having turned down the offer of a visit from a security guard. He wondered if he should go back out to the car, ring the security company and say he’d changed his mind: he wanted a man here straight away. Although he was more than a match for a large cat, he was unlikely to be able to overpower a crazed burglar.
On second thoughts, nothing seemed to have been touched. His laptop was still on the coffee table where Rósa had left it. The TV and music system were in their usual place. The rest of the stuff in the sitting room was hardly worth anyone’s while to cart out of the house and try to flog. Perhaps the thief had had second thoughts; broken the glass, opened the door, then legged it when the alarm went off. That must have been it. The only thing that didn’t fit with this scenario was the fact that there was a large sticker advertising the security company on the door, so the ear-piercing wail of the alarm shouldn’t have come as a surprise.
Perhaps it had been an inexperienced thief. A kid.
Frikki listened but all he could hear was his own breathing. Nevertheless, he tiptoed towards the open-plan kitchen and picked up the marble kitchen-roll stand from the island which divided the kitchen from the living room. Taking off the kitchen roll, he gripped the cold marble cylinder. The stand had been a Christmas present from his employer. He doubted that the person who had wrapped it in festive paper would have envisaged it being used as a weapon, but its heft in his hand gave him a feeling of security. He peered round the island to check there was no one crouching on the floor behind it, then went into the hallway, moving as softly as he knew how.
He started with his own bedroom, having read in the papers that this was where thieves generally concentrated on searching for jewellery and cash. But everything was just as he had left it. The unmade bed, the open book on the bedside table, the clothes hanging over the back of the chair by the window. The wardrobes were closed and the television was still in its place on the wall facing the bed.
The same was true of the bathroom. Nothing had been touched in there.
But when he opened the door of the bedroom Rósa had been using, it was a different story. The place had been turned upside down.
Frikki clung to the doorpost, tightening his grip on the kitchen-roll stand. What did it mean? Who knew she’d been here? Rósa had always sworn that no one was aware she hid out with him, and he’d believed her since the police had never come looking for her. Perhaps her killer had forced her to reveal where she had been hiding. If so, the person in question must know about him too. Frikki sent up a fervent prayer that whoever it was had found what he was looking for. Judging by the mess, however, that seemed unlikely. Frikki’s heart missed a beat when he realised that this could result in another visit. The killer probably thought Frikki was the most likely person to know the whereabouts of whatever it was he was after.
During supper at Fjalar’s, Frikki had thought the worst that could happen was that he would be found to have been sheltering a runaway teen. A young girl. But now the situation was far more dire than that.
From the sitting room he heard a familiar miaow. That bloody animal must have seized the chance to slink in through the open door. A sudden pungent odour of cat pee wafted into the hallway.
Just when he’d thought things couldn’t get any worse.
Chapter 27
Monday
The briefing, which had been going on for more than an hour, had finally ended. The police officers filed out, one after the other, in silence. The mood in the room was gloomy. Apart from Erla, who had called the meeting, hardly anyone had spoken. They all seemed angry, not with Erla but with the person who had murdered a teenage girl; the person they were now grimly determined to catch. Freyja wasn’t surprised at their reaction. She herself was seething with violent hatred for the killer. He didn’t deserve any pity, whoever he was. Nothing could justify what he had done.
Little of what had been discussed was relevant to Freyja. Mostly they had talked about the assignment of tasks and reviewed what the police already knew, which was worryingly little. It seemed they didn’t have any theories, about the motive, the killer, or the exact time or cause of death. The post-mortem was in progress and Huldar was apparently in attendance. A few people emitted dry chuckles at this news; obviously some in-house joke that Freyja didn’t get.
Apart from Erla and Freyja, there was only one other woman present, a young redhead called Lína, whom Freyja vaguely remembered meeting before. She had taken the seat beside the young woman. Huldar wasn’t there, Gudlaugur was nowhere to be seen either and Freyja felt she could use a friendly face, not least because Erla had made no secret of the fact that she didn’t want her there. Before the meeting began, she had actually told Freyja this to her face. It was lucky no one else had heard. Freyja wasn’t particularly keen for everyone to know that she had been imposed on them by orders from on high, directly contrary to the wishes of the officer in charge of the investigation.
Freyja’s presence had been required because a number of teenagers acquainted with Rósa were due to be interviewed, top of the list being Tristan. Freyja needed to be across the latest developments in the case if she was to be of assistance to the investigators, both during the interviews and afterwards, when they were being processed. In the current atmosphere, however, she doubted Erla would accept any help beyond what the police were obliged to request. Still, there was a chance Huldar might avail himself of her help after the interviews.
Her neighbour, the young L�
�na, who seemed supremely confident that she already knew everything that mattered in life, was unlikely to turn to anyone for help. She was one of the few people who had ventured to ask any questions during the meeting, but Freyja wasn’t in a position to judge whether they were sensible or a waste of time. Erla had reacted with impatience, but Lína didn’t seem to take it personally, or if she did, she hid it well.
Freyja and the redhead were not so different in that respect. Freyja had schooled her face not to show any emotion while Erla was going through harrowing images from the crime scene, with Rósa’s body in the foreground. The photos were upsetting, horrible, unspeakably, unbearably sad, but Freyja had managed, with an effort, to freeze her facial muscles into an impassive mask. The glances Erla shot her every time she changed the photo on the big screen were an extra incentive to demonstrate self-control, since Freyja sensed that the other woman was hoping to see her wince or avert her eyes. Well, she was in for a disappointment.
Even so, it wasn’t easy to play the cold, detached professional with those images blown up on the screen. Freyja would have found it less of a challenge if she’d been viewing them on her phone, but projected on this scale, the horror magnified so that no one could miss a single detail, it was almost worse than having been at the scene in person.
At one point Freyja nearly betrayed herself with an involuntary gasp. That was when Rósa’s body had been turned over and her death mask first came into view. The pictures of Rósa’s father that Freyja had seen on Huldar’s computer screen had been nothing in comparison to this. Yet the girl’s face wasn’t distorted or marked in any way. It just looked oddly rigid and her open eyes might have been the painted eyes of a doll. At that moment Freyja was completely in sympathy with the thick miasma of anger emanating from the other people in the room. What had once been Rósa was Rósa no more. She had gone; her husky voice had been silenced for good. All that remained was a lifeless corpse. An empty carapace.
The Doll Page 26