The Doll

by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

  The old chauvinist emitted a bark of laughter. Erla shot him a dirty look before turning back to Lína, who protested: ‘But I’ve been involved in a search before. When I was here on work experience, remember?’

  Erla pretended not to hear this. ‘I’ll see what I can do, Lína. It would certainly be useful for you to build up a range of experience.’

  Huldar smiled privately. Erla would do anything to avoid pleasing the old git, even if it meant doing Lína a favour, however much that must stick in her throat.

  ‘OK, first things first,’ Erla said. ‘We’ll start by talking to Fridrik Reynisson. There may not be any need for a search warrant, if he decides to cooperate. We should also bear in mind the possibility that Tristan was wrong or that he invented the detail about the mother’s colleague, or that Rósa lied to him. Let’s just hope we get more out of the boy when we interview him later. It’s possible he’s been sitting on information that he’s been unwilling to share with us up to now. But there are other urgent tasks too. There are no CCTV cameras showing the traffic along the road past Lake Hafravatn, so we’ll have to examine the footage from the nearest ones. It’ll be a hell of a job to piece them together, but, on the plus side, the post-mortem shows that Rósa was dumped in the lake in the early hours, when there’s little traffic. With any luck, we’ll soon be able to identify a suspicious vehicle and then at least we’ll know what make of car we’re looking for. That should make our job easier.’

  Erla waited to give her team a chance to ask questions but no one said a word: they had all seen how she dealt with those who did. So she carried on reviewing those lines of inquiry where the investigation was making progress and others where they were at a standstill. She outlined the tenuous connections between the three cases and also their link to a fourth – the abuse case currently being investigated by the Sexual Offences Unit, stressing that they couldn’t make any assumptions at this stage. Everyone was to focus on the task assigned to them and not waste any time on trying to work out the bigger picture.

  After handing out the assignments, Erla brought the meeting to a close. Gudlaugur was given the job of checking whether there had been any known links between Rósa and Bergur before she was placed at his home. Lína was to examine the British couple’s social media activity in the hope of finding some connection to Iceland or an Icelander. Huldar got off scot-free as he was to join Erla for the interview of Tristan.

  Huldar caught the looks his colleagues sent him when his name wasn’t called. Clearly they had put two and two together and made five. They reckoned they knew why he’d got off so lightly. No doubt the rumour mill would start up, insinuating that he and Erla were seeing each other again – as if their one-night stand had ever constituted ‘seeing each other’.

  Just wait until Erla’s pregnancy started to show. Then the whispers and gossiping would go into overdrive. His colleagues were as capable as his sisters of reading things into situations where there was nothing to know.

  But such worries would have to wait.

  The meeting room emptied as Erla turned off the computer and projector. Huldar waited to walk out with her, not giving a damn that it would provide even more material for idle tongues. He knew the battle was already lost. Yet in spite of himself, he spoke with a little more emphasis than usual, making sure his voice carried, when he asked if she wanted him to prepare for the coming interview with Tristan.

  Erla puffed out her cheeks, then exhaled. ‘Let me think … I’ll let you know.’ She went into her office and shut the door, leaving Huldar standing there with nothing to do.

  He soon got bored of sitting at his desk, awaiting orders from Erla that didn’t come. He went out twice for a smoke and fetched himself three coffees. He googled everything he could think of about Fridrik Reynisson, who was suspected of having sheltered Rósa, but it didn’t get him far. The man seemed to have passed almost invisibly through life: his name cropped up a few times in old track records from the Athletics Association; he turned up in two pictures taken at meetings of the Association of Small-boat Owners, and there was the odd mention of him in connection with the Marine Research Institute where he now worked. Very few results came up connecting him to the Transport Authority, where he had previously been employed at the same time as Rósa’s mother, Dísa. His name appeared under his mother’s death notice, along with the names of his brother and father, and also in the family details parts of her obituaries. The day he was forty, he earned a mention in the Morgunbladid newspaper as one of those celebrating landmark birthdays, and once he had been interviewed in a vox pop: No, he wouldn’t be going to the World Cup.

  A search of the Police Information System drew a blank. The man had never fallen foul of the law. He was a respectable citizen who kept a low profile and got on with his life without causing any ripples. All of which begged the question: what the hell had a character like that been thinking when he decided to shelter a runaway teen? The answer wasn’t to be found online, that much was sure.

  There was no point discussing it with Gudlaugur, who was absorbed in his own assignment. So far he hadn’t let out any victory cries, so presumably he wasn’t getting anywhere yet. The same applied to the rest of the team; every single person had their nose pressed to their computer screen but no one had come up with anything significant. Not even Lína.

  Huldar went over to her and sat on the edge of her desk. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Good.’ Lína smiled. Even in a nuclear war, he reckoned she would be one of the few to maintain her innate optimism. She would hold her head high as her fellow citizens crumpled around her, staring hopefully at the horizon, even as she counted the mushroom clouds. ‘I just don’t know how far back in time I should go. They’ve both been on social media for nearly ten years. And to make matters worse, they were on all the sites. Not equally active on all of them, but still.’

  ‘My advice would be to concentrate on the latest posts. Work backwards. I doubt their school days will have any relevance to the inquiry.’

  Lína pushed herself away from the desk. ‘It’s a weird assignment. I’m looking at photo after photo of young people who are dead. Smiling faces one day, dead the next. They look as if they were so happy.’

  Huldar folded his arms across his chest, wondering if he should state the obvious: ‘You know social media isn’t a window into people’s real lives, Lína. You’re not exactly peering through the keyhole. This is more like watching a play that you might call: “My Life as I Wish It Was All the Time”.’

  ‘I do know that, Huldar.’ Lína shot him a glare that could have been borrowed from Erla’s arsenal. ‘But it’s still very sad.’

  He was quick to agree. All the cases they were dealing with were sad: Rósa, the young couple, Brynjólfur. Their fates were all pretty tragic. Tristan’s too.

  ‘Can I see?’ He got off her desk and came to stand beside her. ‘It would be helpful to be able to picture something other than bones when we’re discussing these people. I’ve only seen the one photo of them.’

  Lína rolled her chair back to the desk and reached for her mouse. ‘Do you want to see Instagram or Facebook? They don’t have any selfies on Twitter.’

  Huldar shrugged. He knew little about social media. ‘You decide.’

  ‘OK.’ Lína opened a picture that showed the young couple in swimming costumes, seated on a plastic sun lounger. They were leaning together. The man had his arm around the woman and they were smiling brightly for the camera. It was a selfie; her bare arm could be seen stretching out of the frame. In the background was a basic-looking swimming pool and a scattering of other hotel guests, either on the side or in the water. At first sight, the couple appeared as happy and carefree as you’d expect holidaymakers to be. But on closer inspection you could see that their smiles looked forced; the young woman’s face was scarlet, although they were sitting under an umbrella, and the young man’s forehead was beaded with sweat. Clearly they were sweltering.

  ‘Is that her last p
icture?’ Huldar thought the caption underneath the photo matched the final entry they had been told about.

  ‘Yes. Taken in Spain, just before they vanished.’

  ‘Are there any other photos from there?’

  ‘Yes. She posted a lot. He mostly put up pictures of shelves of bottles in the hotel bar or the beer cooler. Not selfies of them, like she did. Neither of them posted photos of food, which I interpret as meaning they didn’t eat anything that would look good in a picture. Maybe only cheap junk food like burgers.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Huldar agreed. ‘They were broke.’ The hotel and its garden looked to him like pretty basic budget accommodation. He nodded at the screen. ‘Any more pics of them?’

  Lína ran through the young woman’s photos from the Spain trip. One after the other they filled the screen, all more or less identical: Abby and Leonard on the side of the pool, Abby and Leonard on the balcony, Abby and Leonard in the evening in streets packed tight with restaurants and bars. That was the only picture in which their smiles appeared genuine and there wasn’t a drop of sweat to be seen on either of them.

  Yet another photo of the swimming pool area appeared on screen. Abby was alone in the foreground, her sunglasses sliding down her sweaty nose. The caption just said: ‘Hot.’ Perhaps it was supposed to have a double meaning.

  The picture was so large that the people in the background were clearly visible. Huldar immediately spotted Leonard. He was sitting on a high stool at a small swimming-pool bar, which was no more than a counter really, with a straw roof. On the bar in front of him was a tall beer glass, half full – or half empty, depending on your attitude to alcohol. Behind Leonard was a man with a beer-gut, holding his wallet in the air, no doubt placing an order for the same.

  ‘That’s the first picture she took in Spain. Apart from one at the airport. Do you want to see that, or his pics?’

  ‘No. That’s fine. Thanks, Lína.’

  Out of the corner of his eye, Huldar saw Freyja appear with Hafthór from Sexual Offences. So the meeting must be over, though Hafthór’s expression suggested it hadn’t achieved much. If Tristan withdrew his allegation, their case was as good as dead for want of corroborating evidence. No meeting could change that fact.

  ‘Ready for action?’ Huldar managed to scoot over and catch up with Freyja and Hafthór just as they reached the door to Erla’s office. He tagged along with them, telling himself it was to make sure that Erla didn’t start any funny business with Freyja in Hafthór’s presence. It wouldn’t do Erla’s reputation any good. Nor would it help if they caught her with her head in the waste-paper bin, throwing her guts up. He darted a glance through the glass wall and was reassured to see her face looking its normal colour.

  ‘Yes and no,’ Hafthór said soberly. ‘We’ll see. We’re trying to prepare ourselves for the fallout. It’s all we can do. After what happened last time, there’s no telling how this interview’s going to end. Is Erla in?’

  Hafthór turned to the door, knocked lightly and went in, with Huldar and Freyja on his heels. Huldar caught a glimpse of the papers Hafthór was carrying. On top was a document with a photo attached to it with a paperclip. It was of a middle-aged man with fleshy cheeks and high temples; clearly a mugshot taken after he had been arrested, fingerprinted and booked in. Huldar recognised the background and the man’s bemused expression of shocked disbelief. Photos taken following an arrest were never what you’d call Instagram material.

  Erla opened her mouth to speak but Huldar got in first. ‘Who’s that in the picture?’

  Hafthór turned the sheaf of papers over, frowning at Huldar in surprise. ‘That’s the suspect. Bergur.’

  ‘Bergur?’ Huldar held out his hand and asked if he could get a better look at the photo. As he studied it, he could feel the others staring at him as if he was crazy. Why should it matter what Bergur looked like?

  Huldar handed back the papers. ‘I may be mistaken but I could have sworn this man’s in one of the photos taken in Spain by Abby, the young British woman whose bones we found in the sea.’ Seeing Erla’s open mouth, he added hastily: ‘I’d better double check.’

  Chapter 33

  Tuesday

  There was a constant bustle of activity at the police station. People seemed too restless to stay long in one place, whether they were supposed to be sitting at their computers or had just returned with new information, after being sent out on a variety of missions. Freyja concentrated on not getting under anyone’s feet. She had completed her allotted task but no one had bothered to give her another.

  Ever since Huldar had identified Bergur in the British couple’s holiday snaps, the subdued atmosphere had lifted. The detectives straightened up, their faces brightening as if the sun had suddenly broken through the clouds and shone in through the office windows. At last a shadowy link had been established between two of the cases; there was a connection between the bones on the seabed and the care-home case. Its precise nature remained obscure, however. As did the question of whether the murders of Rósa and Binni were part of the same story, though it was at least clear that Bergur couldn’t have been the killer. He had the best possible alibi since he had been in custody when they were committed.

  When it came to Bergur’s dealings with the British couple, however, they were on firmer ground. Almost everyone agreed that he was the overweight man with the wallet in the photo from Leonard and Abby’s Spanish holiday. After examining his Facebook page, the police discovered that he hadn’t posted anything during the period in question. That was unusual, as he was generally very active on the site. His posts were mostly innocuous; he never referred to politics or other topical issues, so anecdotes from a swimming pool in Spain would have fitted right in with his usual content. That left two possibilities: one, the man hadn’t had an internet connection or, two, he hadn’t wanted to draw attention to his trip. The police were working on the latter assumption.

  Freyja’s job had been to find out from children’s services whether Bergur had been on holiday at the time and to talk to his closest colleagues in case he’d mentioned the trip to them. In turned out that he had gone on leave for ten days but he hadn’t spoken about his holiday to anyone afterwards. A few said they’d asked where he’d been as he’d come back looking unusually tanned, but he’d just said something vague about having gone out of town. Next, Freyja had spoken to Elsa and asked her to check with her cousin, who was Bergur’s sister’s best friend. It had only taken half an hour to get an answer. Elsa had rung her cousin who had rung Bergur’s sister, and then the round of phone calls had come back to Freyja. Yes, Bergur had gone to Spain in May. His sister had asked why they wanted to know. Freyja said she wasn’t at liberty to say and rang off. Her reply was now no doubt winging its way back to the sister.

  After this, the Sexual Offences Unit had examined Bergur’s credit-card statements and found activity consistent with the purchase of a trip to Spain and transactions in shops and restaurants as well as cashpoint withdrawals in the country. Analysis of emails on the man’s laptop, which had already been confiscated in connection with the abuse case, revealed an air ticket and a booking at the British couple’s hotel. On the other hand, there was no evidence that he had paid for the couple’s tickets to Iceland. It remained unclear how they had travelled to the country, and what the nature of their relationship with Bergur had been.

  It was a quarter to one. Freyja scanned the office for Huldar. Tristan would be arriving any minute and she was afraid they would forget to alert her when they entered the meeting room. But she couldn’t see Huldar anywhere – or the other two, for that matter. Perhaps she had better hurry along to the room anyway, so she wouldn’t be the idiot who turned up late. It was vital to her that it should start on time; she would die of stress if it dragged on past four o’clock. Baldur was due into town at two and he was supposed to collect Saga from her nursery school, but he couldn’t always be relied on. Freyja wouldn’t be able to relax until she knew he’d kept
his word, and the last thing she wanted was to be distracted by watching her phone during the questioning. She sent Baldur a text and received an immediate reply that everything was cool; he might be a bit late but she needn’t worry. She instantly regretted sending the message.

  When she got to the meeting room she found it locked and no one around. There were two chairs in the corridor outside but she didn’t want to sit down for fear of looking like a patient outside a doctor’s waiting room. They were the same kind of padded armchairs as the one that had been used to jazz up the interview room for the care-home inquiry. She hoped they weren’t now planning to redecorate the meeting room with the chairs, the Gorbachev–Reagan picture and the wilting pot plant.

  In the event, the first people to turn up were not Erla and her team but Tristan, his mother and his legal adviser, Magnús. None of them appeared to be looking forward to what was to come, but the boy’s mother was in by far the worst state. Her complexion was as grey and sickly as it had been last time and she avoided eye contact when Freyja shook hands. Hers felt as limp as an empty rubber glove. The lawyer obviously had the least emotional investment in the case: he was detached and calm, and soon stepped aside to deal with phone calls while he was waiting.

  That left the three of them standing there in agonised awkwardness. Tristan’s gaze flickered around the featureless corridor in search of something to fix on. His mother sank down on one of the chairs, keeping her eyes lowered. Freyja had to bite back the urge to ask the haggard woman if she was OK. In the end, she decided to offer them a drink. The mother mumbled, ‘No thanks,’ and Tristan shook his head. He sat down beside his mother and began gnawing at his cuticles. His mother shot out an arm without looking up and pulled his hand gently away from his mouth. He desisted.

  ‘Where is everyone? I want to get this over with.’ Tristan glanced agitatedly up and down the corridor.