Rupture

by Ragnar Jónasson

  ‘Hi,’ he said in an unfriendly tone as he looked Breki in the eye.

  They were much the same size – around six feet two. Breki had a shaved head, an unkempt beard and unusually large eyes. He nodded to Róbert and extended a beefy hand. Róbert ignored it.

  With the other hand, Breki held a child’s car seat, with Kjartan wrapped up and fast asleep inside. The boy was dressed for the rain and the insidious chill that accompanied it.

  ‘Sunna home?’ Breki asked, his eyes glancing around him.

  ‘She’s at work,’ Róbert replied, taking the heavy car seat and placing it gently on the floor.

  Breki shrugged, then turned and strode off towards the green pickup he had left in the middle of the narrow street.

  ‘Hey,’ Róbert called after him, sniffing. The coffee had done nothing to shift his cold. ‘Hey,’ he repeated. ‘What were you doing here last night?’

  He watched carefully to see how Breki reacted to this provocation; he turned and stared at him, his large eyes wide, and a perplexed look appearing on his face.

  ‘What the hell do you mean? I was nowhere near here last night.’

  Róbert waited. That was enough for now.

  ‘I was sure I saw you,’ he replied and slammed the door.

  Róbert knew he shouldn’t have made so much noise, but the little boy didn’t seem to have woken up. He waited until Breki and his green rust bucket had gone and then moved Kjartan carefully from the car seat to the pushchair that they kept in the hall, before setting off around the block in the rain, the new keys in his pocket.

  At the end of the street he stopped, turned and looked over his shoulder, almost without thinking.

  There was nobody to be seen. But the memory of last night’s unwelcome guest followed him like a ghost.

  8

  Ari Thór was ready for the night shift, despite feeling tired. He had tried to close his eyes during the day but hadn’t managed to sleep properly.

  There wasn’t a great deal waiting for him, however. Maybe he’d be able to sleep for a few hours at home, with the phone at his side. He did need to call Ísrún, the journalist from Reykjavík, but he guessed she had probably gone home already, so that could wait until later in the evening.

  He also needed to get in touch with the hospital and the specialist in infectious diseases that evening, to go over the situation with them. The second fatality had only ramped up people’s fears about the virus. All across the media, descriptions of the nurse’s symptoms were being discussed, from vomiting to internal and external bleeding. It was now obvious what kind of hazard they were now facing, and nobody wanted to be next. Speaking to the head doctor, it was clear to Ari Thór that the hospital staff were living in fear, even now that the most stringent contingency plans had been put into action.

  The way he saw it, the media had only lit a fire under people’s fears following the death of the nurse, while the authorities, on the other hand, were making every effort to assure the general public that the situation was under control, and were trying to get the message across that, taking all the circumstances into consideration, it was in fact a triumph that more people had not been infected.

  This situation aside, Ari Thór felt he had reason to be cheerful currently, now that his relationship with Kristín, his former girlfriend, was improving. Having split up quite some time before, he had been unable to get her out of his head, and had ended up appearing unexpectedly at her door in Akureyri, only to find another man there. Jealousy had got the better of him and he had lost his temper. In the ensuing brawl he had been stabbed. He took the blame entirely on himself, but in some strange way it had served to bring him and Kristín closer together.

  In January, though, there was yet more turmoil in his personal life. A surprise phone call had brought him news that was certainly not the uplifting kind he always thought he needed during the gloomy winter months near the Arctic Circle.

  ‘Is that Ari Thór?’ a woman’s voice had enquired, hesitatingly.

  ‘Yep,’ he answered shortly, not recognising the voice. Being asked for by name during work hours was a rarity, so, to begin with, he had thought it was someone with a complaint; someone who felt that he should be doing his job better. If only that had been the case.

  ‘You probably don’t remember me,’ the woman continued after a pause. ‘We met in Blönduós.’

  That was all she needed to say. Ari Thór had been as startled as if someone had slapped him. He remembered her, although not clearly; it was all he could do to recall her through the haze of that night’s booze. This was the red-haired girl he had met at a country hop and had slept with that night, the autumn after he and Kristín had gone their separate ways.

  ‘Yes, of course I remember,’ he said.

  ‘We need to talk.’ There was a heavy silence before she continued. ‘I was sort of in a relationship with someone else when we met; we were taking a break from each other … But soon after we … you know … I found that I was pregnant.’

  It was a sentence Ari Thór had often dreaded.

  ‘What? And you think the child might be mine?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m not sure. I’ve broken up with my boyfriend now. I let him think it was his baby to start with, and then I had to admit that I wasn’t sure. We split up soon after that. I need to have a test done to make sure.’

  Ari Thór realised that he had to agree to the test, however grudgingly. It wasn’t as if he could say no, after all.

  But before he ended the call, he asked: ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’

  ‘A boy,’ she replied, the pride shining through in her voice. ‘He’s seven months. Would you like to meet him?’

  Ari Thór had hesitated a little, giving himself time to think. ‘No, let’s not,’ he said, at last. ‘We’ll make sure first, shall we?’

  With the phone back in its cradle, he had been gripped by a blend of trepidation and excitement. How the hell was he going to tell Kristín about this? He had made a decision at the time never to mention that one-night stand in Blönduós to her. It was none of her business anyway – they hadn’t been together then.

  Over the few days following the fateful phone call, he had thought seriously about keeping the news of his potential fatherhood quiet, not saying a word about it to Kristín as their relationship developed, and letting her remain in blissful ignorance. But with the two of them becoming ever closer again, the idea that there was something like a lie sitting between them, preventing them finally being a true couple, became more and more uncomfortable.

  So, finally, he had plucked up courage and told her the tale. She took it better than he had expected.

  ‘There’s no certainty it’s your child,’ she had said.

  ‘I can’t rule it out.’

  ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,’ she replied, with a shrug and a little smile. Despite her attempt at a light tone, he had fully sensed – almost seen – the grave concern behind her nonchalant demeanour. But it was easiest to let the matter lie.

  Blood samples had been taken from Ari Thór, from the little boy and the woman’s previous boyfriend. It turned out that the boyfriend and Ari Thór shared a blood type, so the next step had been a DNA test. They were all now waiting for the results. They had been waiting for two months.

  The phone rang on Ari Thór’s desk, snapping him away from these thoughts about his turbulent personal life and back into the present.

  On the line was an elderly lady who lived alone, even though she was well over eighty. She started by apologising for the inconvenience, but said she hadn’t been able to get through to the Co-op all day and badly needed a few groceries; a fillet of fish, some rye bread and milk for both herself and the cat. Ari Thór promised to look into it, aware that the Co-op’s manager was probably exhausted.

  He said goodbye to the old lady and made a note to call the Co-op.

  With nothing else to be done, he decided the peace and quiet of a town in quarantine gave him the perfect
opportunity to take another look at the Hédinsfjördur file.

  ‘I’m not promising anything,’ he had told Hédinn, who had asked if he could look over the case and maybe try to locate the young man in the photograph.

  First, Ari Thór had taken a look in the old police case files, but the ones they kept at the station went nowhere near far enough back to contain anything about this case, so all he had to go on was a file of material Hédinn had given him.

  He took the slim folder out, and examined the photograph that lay on the top of the little pile of paperwork. It was a black-and-white snapshot, slightly faded. Someone, presumably Hédinn, had written some names on the back – everyone in the shot, apart from the young man, of course. The group of people were gathered on the steps of a low-slung masonry farmhouse. On the left stood Jórunn, the twenty-five-year-old sister of Hédinn’s mother, the woman who had died after being poisoned. She had no idea how little time she had left, Ari Thór thought as he gazed at the photograph. It was difficult to tell precisely how long before her death in March 1957 the picture had been taken. The snow in the background told him that it was winter, but this far north it could just as easily snow in spring or autumn. The little boy, Hédinn, looked to be some months old – no longer a newborn – so, based on Hédinn’s birth date, Ari Thór guessed that the picture had been taken in the autumn or winter of 1957. There was a serious look on Jórunn’s face, which was framed by short, dark hair. She was wearing a wool sweater and a jacket, her eyes on the ground in front of her and not on the person behind the camera.

  The unknown young man stood at her side. Nothing about him looked unusual, but having heard Hédinn’s story, Ari Thór couldn’t help but feel there was something menacing about him. He saw in the picture a young man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time; an unwelcome guest. Nobody at the picture night had recognised him, according to Hédinn, which indicated that he wasn’t from Siglufjördur. Ari Thór guessed that he was about fourteen or fifteen years old. He was dressed in working clothes, and the camera had caught him with his eyes wide open. He had a finely chiselled nose, his mouth was firmly shut, and his tousled hair stood on end in all directions. The baby was wrapped in a wool blanket, a thick hat on his head and the boy held him tightly in his arms. So why was he holding the baby? And what was his relationship with the family?

  Hédinn’s parents stood at the young man’s side, at the far right of the photo. Hédinn’s father, Gudmundur, looked to be around thirty. He was a tall man and didn’t seem dressed for the conditions – in just working trousers and a checked shirt. He had a strong face, drawn in sharp lines, his eyes hidden behind fragile round spectacles. He didn’t look cheerful at the prospect of being photographed.

  Gudfinna, Hédinn’s mother, looked as downcast as her sister. There was a strong resemblance between them, although Gudfinna was leaner and older than Jórunn, probably around thirty when the photograph had been taken.

  Ari Thór couldn’t put his finger on why, but there was a melancholy air about the people in the photo. It was only the small boy, lying innocently in the young man’s arms, who didn’t seem to sense the sadness that had affected everyone else.

  Ari Thór looked at them all carefully once more: first Jórunn, then the young man and baby Hédinn, and finally the couple, Gudmundur and Gudfinna. He couldn’t help noticing that of all those in the group, the young man was the only one whose eyes met the lens. The two women were both looking down at the snow piled in front of the house, and Gudmundur’s odd spectacles completely obscured his eyes. Whatever secret this photograph held, it was clearly well hidden.

  Putting the photograph aside, he began to go through the newspaper clippings that had come with it. They dated back to long before the days of red-top tabloid journalism and the unstoppable flood of internet news. There were two short pieces from national newspapers, each containing more or less the same details. A woman in her twenties had died after swallowing poison on a farm in Hédinsfjördur. The news was being reported a week after the event, presumably based on information made available by the police, and baldly stated that the incident had been an accident. Both pieces left out the woman’s name.

  The third cutting was from the local Siglufjördur weekly paper, which carried the lengthiest coverage of the woman’s sudden death. This one gave little more detail than the other reports, although it did include her name and a black-and-white photograph from Hédinsfjördur. It had been taken during winter; the farmhouse was in the centre of the picture, with the mountains on one side and the lake on the other. Ari Thór felt a chill of discomfort as he peered at the picture, similar to the feeling he had experienced during Hédinn’s account. The isolation of the place was almost palpable, the gloom overwhelming.

  Ari Thór wondered if he shouldn’t take a drive through the new tunnel to Hédinsfjördur to take a look at the place and look over the ruins of the old house. He felt a need to absorb the atmosphere of this empty fjord, which was now suddenly accessible via the new tunnel, linking it directly with Siglufjördur and opening it up for the first time to general traffic. But his conscience got the better of him; he knew he couldn’t disobey a direct instruction not to travel outside the town’s limits, even if it was only for an evening visit to an uninhabited fjord.

  The jangling of the phone shattered the evening’s silence.

  This time is was Tómas.

  ‘How goes it, my boy?’ Tómas asked, his voice betraying how tired he was.

  Recently he had begun calling in the middle of Ari Thór’s shifts to ask if everything was under control, although Ari Thór suspected the real reason was that he wanted someone to talk to.

  ‘Not bad,’ Ari Thór replied guardedly.

  ‘You’ll call me if anything comes up.’

  ‘Of course. By the way … where are all the old police files kept?’ Ari Thór asked.

  ‘What …? How old do you mean?’ Tómas replied, clearly surprised.

  ‘Going back more than fifty years, 1957.’

  ‘What do you want those for?’ Tómas asked suspiciously.

  Maybe it was as well to ask Tómas about the case. It wasn’t as if Ari Thór had made a promise to keep things confidential.

  ‘I’m just looking at an old case, while I have some spare time.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘A woman who died after being poisoned – in Hédinsfjördur. Do you remember it?’

  ‘I’ve heard of the case, of course, but I was just a lad when that happened. Hédinn’s an old friend of mine and he was born there. His aunt was the one who died.’

  ‘That’s right. He was in touch in the winter, while you were down south, and I finally got to talk to him yesterday. He’d collected some old newspaper cuttings about the case and asked me if I could look into it. I promised I’d see what I could do. I’ll tell you more later,’ Ari Thór concluded, with unusual determination. Somehow he wanted to investigate this case by himself.

  ‘Well, Hédinn digging up the past isn’t a surprise, I suppose. He’s an inquisitive sort of guy; he was a teacher for a long time. I should be able to find the files for you tomorrow.’

  ‘Is there anyone other than Hédinn who knows the story?’ Ari Thór asked.

  ‘Maybe the priest, Eggert,’ Tómas said after a pause. ‘He knows the history of Hédinsfjördur very well. Go and see him. You can have a theological discussion while you’re there.’

  ‘Sure,’ Ari Thór said shortly. He had been sure he’d heard the last of the jokes about his short dalliance with theology. It had taken him three tries to find his place in life, assuming he had now actually found it. First there had been philosophy, then he had switched to theology; he had given up on both.

  ‘Before I forget,’ Tómas added. ‘Did you call the journalist back? It was Ísrún, the one who does all the crime reports.’

  ‘Oops. You’re right. I forgot,’ Ari Thór replied.

  As soon as the conversation with Tómas was finished, he dialled Ísrún’
s mobile number. She answered on the on the third ring.

  ‘Hello?’ she said, her voice sharp.

  ‘Ísrún?’ Ari Thór asked.

  He rarely watched the news but he knew who she was. He had seen her occasionally reporting on various crime stories and he had read an interview with her in one of the weekend papers after she had won an award for her work on a people-trafficking case in Skagafjördur that both he and Tómas had been involved with almost a year before. She had a scar on her face, left by someone who had accidentally splashed hot coffee on her as a small baby – or so Ari Thór recalled from the interview.

  ‘That’s me,’ she said, sounding defensive. ‘Who might you be?’

  ‘Ari Thór from the Siglufjördur police. There was a message to call you back.’

  ‘You’re remarkably prompt returning calls,’ she said, the sarcasm clear in her voice. ‘Maybe the phone lines up north also have a virus?’

  ‘Up here everyone’s doing their best to avoid a deadly infection so the police are about the only people in town who are still going to work,’ Ari Thór said sharply. ‘But it’s good to know that not everyone takes the matter as seriously as we do.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Ísrún replied instantly. ‘I didn’t mean to cause offence. I just wanted to check what the situation is before the item we ran about it on this evening’s news. We’ll definitely run another one tomorrow, though, so anything you can tell me would be useful.’

  ‘It’s pretty miserable,’ he said, his irritation prompting him to answer more directly than he would normally have done. ‘We’re doing our best here – there’s always someone on duty; but the truth is we could be just one call-out from catching something fatal. That’s the way it is right now.’

  Ísrún was clearly taken by surprise.

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say,’ she said. There was a pause while she processed what he’d told her. Then she asked, in a more friendly tone: ‘I’d like to do an additional item about this for later in the week. Could we record an interview over the phone tomorrow?’