It wasn’t until the images shifted to focus on the surroundings of the crime scene that Freyja began to recover. Nevertheless, she was still feeling badly jolted and wondered if this was what she had to look forward to if she became the Child Protection Agency’s police liaison officer. She had been witness to some terrible things in her job at the Children’s House, but only indirectly, through interviews with the kids involved. That had been bad enough without the addition of giant images of their sufferings. Perhaps she wasn’t suited to police work after all, though she would no doubt develop a thicker skin over time. The question was whether she wanted to.
Freyja stood up. She had waited for most of the others to leave the room as she was unsure what would happen after the meeting. The last thing she wanted was an altercation with Erla in front of everyone. Lína had hung back with her, probably for the same reason.
‘Do you have any influence on who gets to attend the interviews with Rósa’s friends and the other witnesses?’ Lína was staring straight into Freyja’s eyes from under her pale lashes. ‘I’d really like to be there.’
Freyja gave her a rueful smile. The chances of Lína’s wish being fulfilled were minimal if Freyja were to suggest it to Erla. ‘I have less than zero influence on that, I’m afraid.’
Lína shrugged. ‘No harm in trying.’ She hurried off, since there was clearly nothing to be gained from Freyja. Hopefully not every member of the team would share that opinion.
Freyja followed in Lína’s wake. Once she had left the meeting room, she saw that the team had returned to their desks, eager to get started on the jobs they’d been allotted. If cases could be solved by zeal alone, the murderer would be found by the end of that day, but sadly she knew it wasn’t enough.
After standing around awkwardly for a while, Freyja could feel her temper rising. When no one else was prepared to stand up for you, you had no alternative but to stand up for yourself. She wasn’t going to let Erla’s foul mood prevent her from doing her bit to solve the case. She stormed over to her office, knocked, then walked in without waiting for a reply.
‘Hi.’ Freyja didn’t bother with a fake smile. ‘You forgot to tell me what I can do to help. The interview with Tristan isn’t until after lunch, so I was wondering if you wanted me to run through a few things with the officers who will be present? Or perhaps I could read transcripts of the earlier interviews with him. You never know, I might spot something.’
Erla looked so sick when Freyja barged into her office that you’d have thought the next thing on her agenda would be to throw up in the bin under her desk. She stared back, pale and glassy-eyed, but didn’t say a word.
Seeing that Erla wasn’t going to answer, Freyja closed the door behind her, went over to the other woman’s desk and sat down. The office struck her as coldly impersonal, with bare walls and shelves of identically coloured folders. The coffee mug on the desk was a plain white, with no decoration or lame slogan on it. Not that different from Freyja’s own office, come to think of it. ‘Look, I get that you don’t like me,’ Freyja began, ‘but you’re a grown-up and you’re in charge of this investigation. Surely you can put aside your feelings for the duration?’ Freyja immediately felt better after this bit of straight talking. She should have done it a long time ago. They were never going to fall into each other’s arms and become best buddies, but they ought to be able to work together instead of behaving like school kids. Especially given the gravity of the situation.
Erla still didn’t answer. She clamped her lips shut and put a hand over her mouth. Freyja couldn’t tell if she was trying to stop herself from bawling her out, or if she had been rendered speechless by Freyja’s bluntness. But the woman’s unexpected reaction took the wind out of her sails. She’d been sure Erla would fly off the handle. ‘Do you want me to talk to someone else?’ Freyja asked, wrong-footed. ‘Huldar, for example – when he gets back?’
This did not go down well. Erla narrowed her bleary eyes and looked as angry as anyone can with half their face hidden. When she spoke through her fingers, her voice sounded muffled. ‘You talk to me. It’s just not a good moment right now.’ Closing her eyes, Erla drew a deep breath through her nose, then seemed to get a grip on herself. She opened her eyes, lowered her hand and swallowed audibly, then said, as if through clenched teeth: ‘Come back later. Have a coffee. Go online. See if you can get permission to tell us what’s in the files on Rósa. Surely you can look after yourself for an hour? We don’t hold people’s hands here, if that’s what you’re used to.’
This was more like the reaction Freyja had been expecting from Erla. She actually felt relieved. It was always a bit disconcerting when people you couldn’t stand reacted normally or showed their better side. The world was simpler when people reverted to type. Freyja smiled and this time it was sincere. ‘No problem. I’ll sort myself out.’ She prepared to stand up. ‘I’ll need somewhere to work, though. A computer, a desk and a chair. The sooner the better.’
Erla rolled her eyes as if she’d never heard such effrontery. Then she blenched and gestured furiously at Freyja to get out, muttering that she’d sort it. Her voice sounded strangled and odd. In fact everything about her behaviour had been downright strange ever since Freyja had entered her office.
Freyja still hadn’t been allotted a desk by the time Huldar appeared. Instead of being able to sit down and get on with something useful, she had been reduced to wandering aimlessly round the department, stopping briefly to speak to Lína, who hadn’t even tried to disguise her lack of interest. Her gaze had kept sliding back to her computer screen and when she smiled it was brief and fake. Freyja had given up and continued her wandering, eventually finding a chair by the wall to perch on. She had moved it nearer to a socket, plugged in her almost batteryless phone and embarked on an unsystematic and ultimately fruitless online search.
Huldar couldn’t have arrived at a better moment.
Noticing that he looked almost as off-colour as Erla, Freyja wondered if there was some virus going round CID. But his face lit up when he saw Freyja rise to her feet and practically fling out her arms with pleasure at seeing him.
‘How was it?’ She glanced at the clear plastic sleeve he was carrying. It contained some papers but she couldn’t see what they were as the page facing her was blank.
Huldar gave an involuntary shudder. ‘It’s over, anyway. The report won’t be completed until tomorrow but most of the conclusions are already available.’
‘Such as?’
‘Rósa was dead before being dumped there. The cause of death was strangulation and she probably died just after midnight, in the early hours of Saturday morning.’
Freyja blew out a breath. ‘None of that is particularly helpful for the investigation, is it?’
‘Sure it is. Or it will be later. But it won’t solve the case – not that anyone was expecting it to.’
‘So she didn’t have any hair or skin under her nails? Nothing to help you trace the killer or prove it was him when he’s caught?’ Freyja had seen her share of crime series on TV.
‘No.’ Huldar shook his head. ‘Even if there had been anything, it would have been washed away by the water, though she probably hadn’t been in the lake for more than six or seven hours, tops. Unfortunately, there were no fingerprints on her neck either.’
‘What about evidence that could explain where she’s been hiding for the last few days?’ Freyja tried to remember all the questions that had been raised at the meeting earlier. It distracted her from thinking about Rósa and prevented Huldar from marching straight off to see Erla. Freyja was fed up with being sidelined and ignored.
He shook his head again. ‘No. Nothing obvious. She had her phone in her coat pocket but had taken the SIM card out. It was in her other pocket. Which explains why her phone hasn’t appeared on the system since she went missing.’ Huldar perked up a little. ‘But one thing did come to light.’
‘What?’
Huldar turned the plastic sleeve round and ha
nded it to Freyja. She examined the printout of a photo showing a painfully thin wrist. The whole arm appeared to be covered in bruising. She couldn’t immediately work out what was so interesting about the picture. ‘The bruises?’
‘Nope.’ He took the plastic sleeve back. ‘Those aren’t actually bruises, by the way. The skin turns that colour when the blood pools in the body after death. No, I meant the bracelet.’
Freyja looked at the brown loop tied around Rósa’s wrist. Two coloured glass beads dangled from the ends, triggering a fleeting memory that she couldn’t pin down. ‘I know I’ve seen it before but I can’t think where. Go on, where’s it from?’
‘It’s the one Tristan was wearing when we had him in for questioning. I swear it’s identical. If I’m right, it means they must have met recently. I’m hoping they didn’t both have matching ones but I doubt it. It looks homemade, not like it was bought in a shop.’
Freyja ran a hand through her hair, which still felt strange from the nit shampoo. ‘Are you going to ask him about it?’
‘You bet I am. But first I want to see if he’s still wearing his bracelet. Clearly, we need to bring his interview forward. There’s no way I’m hanging around until this afternoon. The bloody little idiot probably knew all along where Rósa was hiding. If he’d opened his trap sooner we might have been able to avert this tragedy.’ He added: ‘Don’t go anywhere. I need to talk to Erla but I’m sure she’ll agree with me. I assume she’ll have the boy brought straight in, so you’ll need to be prepared.’
Freyja nodded, then blurted out: ‘Could Erla be coming down with something, Huldar? She looked almost green earlier. Can the interview go ahead if she’s not there?’
At this, Huldar looked oddly shifty. ‘She’s fine. Don’t worry.’ He strode off in the direction of Erla’s office without elaborating.
Chapter 28
Monday
Tristan had been shown into the meeting room. This change of venue was because the usual interview rooms weren’t big enough to accommodate all those who needed to be present. The police hadn’t seen any reason to transfer the pot plant, picture and armchair as well, though Huldar couldn’t ever remember having seen such a crowd turn up for the taking of a witness statement. He was there to assist Erla, who would lead the questioning; Freyja was there to represent the Child Protection Agency; Hafthór the Sexual Offences Unit; Gudlaugur as a witness; and a lawyer, an older man by the name of Bjarni Einarsson, was there on behalf of Bergur, the accused in the care-home case. Finally, there was a young man from IT who was responsible for the audio-visual recordings of the proceedings. He was a silent participant and did his best to melt into the background.
But that wasn’t all, because outside in the corridor there were two more people: Tristan’s mother, Berglind Sigvaldadóttir, and a lawyer called Magnús Eyvindarson, who had announced that he would be accompanying the boy. He had not been permitted to enter the room, however, since witnesses were not entitled to have a legal adviser present during questioning. As far as the police could discover, Magnús was there on standby in case Tristan’s status changed during the proceedings. This had done nothing to diminish speculation about the boy’s possible involvement in the case, but the lawyer wasn’t giving anything away.
Tristan’s mother had presumably come along to provide moral support, but she wasn’t allowed to go in with her son either since he was over fifteen. In fact, it was hard to see how her presence was supposed to help him since she appeared barely capable of looking after herself. Apart from mumbling a greeting as she avoided eye contact, she hadn’t spoken at all. Anyone could see that she was in a bad way and that this wasn’t simply due to anxiety about her son. The woman looked ill. She was skeletally thin, with glazed eyes, a blotchy red face and entrenched dark circles under her eyes that reached right down to her prominent cheekbones. Her hair hadn’t been washed for days and her badly cut fringe straggled over her eyes. She was clutching one of her arms and kept rubbing it repeatedly through her shabby anorak. The nature of her ailment was blindingly obvious to anyone familiar with addicts. Next to the stout, formally dressed lawyer, Huldar thought she looked like the little match girl.
He had got his way and the interview had been brought forward, despite the logistical difficulties of assembling all the people who needed to be there. The first obstacle had arisen when Tristan announced that he wasn’t coming. The police had tried to stop the media getting hold of the story, particularly the part about Rósa’s death being treated as murder, but they must have failed since Tristan had obviously got wind of it. Until now he had turned up punctually to interviews.
Erla couldn’t compel him to attend, as he wasn’t a suspect. When friendly persuasion failed to do the trick, she informed him that if he didn’t turn up, he would be summoned before a court and made to give a statement there. And if he failed to turn up for that, he would be in contempt of court and could be arrested. Tristan, who was no fool, realised he was beaten. Refusing to speak to the police now would only be postponing the inevitable.
No sooner had they managed to talk Tristan round than they’d got a call from Bergur’s lawyer, Bjarni Einarsson, who insisted on being present when the boy’s statement was taken. Erla had given his request short shrift, pointing out that the interview had nothing to do with the boy’s allegations of abuse, whereupon Bjarni claimed to have information to the contrary. Hafthór, the head of Sexual Offences, had mentioned to him that he would be attending. The only way the lawyer could interpret this was as an indication that his client’s case was likely to come up. Bjarni added that he had it on good authority that the police believed the two cases might be linked, though he refused to reveal his source. Perhaps he had simply put two and two together. After all, Rósa had been a resident at his client’s care home and was therefore a potential witness in his case.
Erla had told him curtly that she would be in touch, after which the lawyer’s demand had gone on to create waves on almost every floor in the building. But Erla couldn’t prove that the man’s presence would be prejudicial to the investigation or cause problems for Tristan. Nor did she succeed in convincing her superiors that the interview would be restricted to matters relating to Rósa’s death, since this clearly wasn’t true. Rósa and Tristan had met at the care home: it would be almost impossible to question the boy about her without touching on the home and what had allegedly taken place there.
In the end, the top brass had concluded that refusing the lawyer’s request wouldn’t be worth the risk. It wasn’t the first time Bjarni had asked to attend Tristan’s interviews, though Erla hadn’t been aware of this, since it had been handled by Sexual Offences. But now that he had stepped up his demands, the Commissioner’s office had decided to give in. No watertight evidence sufficient to secure a conviction had turned up in the abuse case, and the police couldn’t afford any irregularities if it went to trial. If a single mention was made of the care home during the interview, Bergur’s lawyer would pounce on the fact and use it to his advantage. He would complain bitterly to the judge that he had asked to be present, as was his right, only to be refused, and judges invariably took a dim view of that sort of thing.
Erla had no sooner reluctantly informed the lawyer that his request had been granted than a new problem raised its head. There was a second lawyer on the phone. This one introduced himself as Magnús Eyvindarson and explained that he was Tristan’s legal adviser. Erla was taken aback. Tristan was a witness in Rósa’s case and there was no reason for him to hire a lawyer. Not yet, at any rate. Magnús reminded Erla that, as the victim in the care-home abuse case, Tristan had every right to employ an advocate at his own expense. Magnús would naturally also assist the young man in any dealings he might have with the police arising from other matters. Erla had to concede this point but stressed nonetheless that Magnús would not be permitted to attend the interview about Rósa. A witness was not entitled to have a lawyer or advocate present when their statement was taken and that was final. Magn�
�s had then tried to get Erla to review Tristan’s status, reminding her that if she had the slightest doubt about whether the boy was a witness or a suspect in Rósa’s case, it would be more natural to interview him as a suspect. Erla put her foot down, insisting that, as matters stood, Tristan’s status was not in doubt and Magnús would have to remain outside the room. The lawyer was plainly eager to get his feet under the table, presumably to stop his client if he showed signs of becoming too talkative.
But fate had kept the worst till last. Erla had also had to field a phone call from Rósa’s grandfather, who had learnt of her death via the media. Unsurprisingly, the man had gone ballistic. She had sat there, scarlet in the face, enduring a storm of vitriolic abuse so loud that it carried to those sitting nearby, who also turned red. Whenever Erla could get a word in, she had tried to explain that there had been a misunderstanding: the police had assumed that children’s services would inform the next of kin since Rósa had been their responsibility at the time of her death. CID had therefore reported the matter to the Child Protection Agency, but either the message hadn’t been passed on because it was the weekend, or somebody there had slipped up. Rósa’s grandfather had treated these excuses with contempt and finally hung up on Erla, after threatening to sue. Though exactly who he wanted to sue was unclear.
After all this, Erla still had to prepare for the interview itself and make sure that she and the Sexual Offences Unit were on the same page. This was done in a rush as it was almost time to start.
Some days were nothing but hassle.
Erla began the interview with the formalities. She noted the time and informed Tristan that a statement was to be taken from him as part of the inquiry into the death of Rósa Thrastardóttir.
Huldar kept his eyes trained on the boy’s face as Erla was speaking. Tristan swallowed hard and began to gnaw at his upper lip. He didn’t ask any questions or show any signs of surprise, so Rósa’s death obviously wasn’t news to him.
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