The ceiling light was switched off but the bright light from the desk lamp was enough to illuminate the room, giving it a warmth and making it a comfortable place to be, especially when Ari Thór glanced through the window at the darkness beyond. Books were stacked high on the desk. He peered at the titles while the priest was speaking and saw that, while a few of the books were theological works, most covered other subjects. The shelves were also filled with books, most of them carefully bound. He wondered for a moment what would become of this collection once the priest had gone to meet his maker. The old man was a childless bachelor, a role that maybe he had chosen for himself. The thought of the little boy in Blönduós who might or might not have a rootless father in Siglufjördur came to mind, and his heart missed a beat.
The Reverend Eggert stood up quickly, and the expression on his face showed that rapid movement did not come easily to him, although he seemed to be a man in good health and fitness. Ari Thór was taken by surprise.
‘Young man,’ he said with a grin. ‘We can’t sit here where it’s warm and light to talk about Hédinsfjördur. You have to experience it,’ he said in a tone of voice that Ari Thór could imagine him using to address a full congregation.
Eggert took an overcoat from a hook on the back door, and swung the door open, letting the darkness creep in.
‘Come on. We can take the jeep,’ he said. Then he stopped and looked Ari Thór up and down. ‘You’re dressed warmly enough; it’s not that cold tonight.’
The priest’s jeep was fairly new and even in the dim lights from the house, Ari Thór could see that it was bright red. The dashboard thermometer showed it was just above freezing, but it felt colder. Ari Thór wished he was in bed, under a warm duvet; it was all he could do to avoid shaking. Maybe he was one of those southern types who feel the cold, still unused to the northern climate.
It was a starlit night, although the lights of the town left the stars indistinct in the sky. Ari Thór looked out of the car’s window towards the mountains, but the slopes were nowhere to be seen, just the darkness and the stars. They were halfway to the Hédinsfjördur tunnel when a thought struck him.
‘We can’t go to Hédinsfjördur. We’re not supposed to go beyond the town limits.’
The Reverend Eggert roared with laughter. ‘Here we are: one of us God’s representative and the other the representative of law and order. Who’s going to stop us?’
Ari Thór had no argument with which to counter the priest’s logic. And, as if to prove his point, Eggert put his foot down and they accelerated to a speed well above the legal limit. Ari Thór decided not to argue the assumption out with him; he knew that the Reverend Eggert was probably right.
They drove in silence for a long time. They were in the tunnel when Ari Thór next spoke. ‘It’s completely dark over there, isn’t it? Did you bring a torch?’
The priest snorted. ‘The car’s lights will do,’ he said. ‘Don’t you worry.’
Ari Thór was right. The only light in Hédinsfjördur emanated from the tunnels, spilling out from the entrances leading to Siglufjördur on one side and to Ólafsfjördur on the other. Shortly after they left the Siglufjördur tunnel, Eggert drove off the road and brought the car to a halt. A private road had been laid most of the way down to the lagoon, but it had been closed off. Eggert got out of the car, leaving the car’s lights on.
Ari Thór stepped down from the jeep.
‘Come on. We’ll go over this way,’ Reverend Eggert said, more used to getting out of the high wheelbase vehicle than his passenger was. He pointed to a set of wooden steps that led up and over the fence and was over them in a moment, with Ari Thór following behind.
The jeep’s headlights illuminated much of the track, but not all the way to the lagoon, and nowhere near as far as the little point of land on its western shore where the ruins of the farmhouse stood. Ari Thór had never walked to the ruins before, but had often noticed the wreck of the house when passing through Hédinsfjördur. The new tunnels had been opened relatively recently. One carried the road from Siglufjördur into uninhabited Hédinsfjördur, and the other took it on to neighbouring Ólafsfjordur, a town of around 800 people. These new tunnels had made it much easier than before for the people of Siglufjördur to reach the largest town in the north of Iceland, Akureyri. And, naturally, this also meant that Siglufjördur had been opened up to many more tourists.
They walked side by side in the glare of the headlights, their shadows a step ahead of them, tall and menacing. Ari Thór listened as the priest spoke.
‘Can you imagine it?’ he asked gently. ‘You don’t even need to close your eyes. You can hardly see a thing anyway. We have the tunnels now, but those poor people – Jórunn and Maríus, Gudfinna and Gudmundur – they had to cross the mountain on foot.’ He raised an arm towards the range of crags on the western side of the fjord. ‘That’s the Hestsskard pass up there. That’s the best route out, but even on a mild winter’s night like tonight, you’d think twice about making that kind of crossing.’
Ari Thór’s eyes followed the priest’s pointing finger. To begin with, he could see only vague outlines in places, nothing reminiscent of mountain slopes, just something that looked like shadowy creatures. The sight made it easy enough for him to understand how folk tales had had such a tenacious grip on the minds of Icelanders through the ages. Here he was, accompanied by a priest, with the lights of the car, as far as they reached, bright behind them, and an easy route out of this place to either Siglufjördur or Ólafsfjördur – yet still a heavy disquiet inhabited him. The cold hand of solitude rested on his shoulder, the gloom sent shivers down his back and the darkness made him want to shut his eyes rather than look around him. The certainty of the familiar blackness as his eyelids closed was more comfortable than whatever might be there in the unknown night.
The priest stopped at the fringe of the bright arc cast by the car’s lights, the point where it no longer illuminated the track in front of them. The road ahead twisted and the next part of it was hidden from Ari Thór’s sight, although he knew that if he were to carry on, he would come to the lagoon with the open sea on its far side.
The Reverend Eggert continued speaking.
‘They were farming here, those two poor couples. People doubted that they would be able to do it. Some people are born farmers. Some aren’t. There’s some fishing in the lagoon. The fishing rights came with the land, as it borders the lagoon. It’s a sport these days, of course. I know they had a small boat as well, so they could sail round to Siglufjördur if they needed to and weather permitting.’
‘I don’t suppose they had electricity,’ Ari Thór said, to contribute something to the conversation, although the answer was obvious.
‘Good grief,’ the priest said. ‘There’s no electricity here, and no telephones. I gather they had a CB radio set in the house. It was a primitive setup, even though this wasn’t that long ago, really. The whole thing seemed to have this sense of determination to have a damned adventure. That’s all it was about, as far as I can tell. Gudmundur could afford it. He was a wealthy man by the standards of the day.’
Ari Thór’s eyes were starting to adjust to the darkness. He could make out the snow-covered mountainsides. Looking up, the sight of the star-studded heavens was before him, the twinkling Milky Way an unusual sight for someone who had rarely stepped outside urban areas.
He reflected that the starlight had travelled unimaginable distances to appear there for him, in an abandoned fjord on the most northerly coast of Iceland.
‘You said earlier that Jórunn died of loneliness and fear of the dark,’ he said, turning to the priest. ‘What did you mean by that?’
‘General opinion was that she took her own life,’ Eggert said in a low voice, standing motionless just beyond the reach of the car’s lights, his shadow eaten up by the darkness beyond.
Ari Thór’s thoughts went back to the police report stating that Jórunn’s death had been accidental; a convenient conclusion. T
he local gossip had decided differently – that it had been suicide. It was less palatable, but more plausible, he thought. The third possibility, murder, was a far more disturbing prospect, but Ari Thór felt that he could not rule it out. He hadn’t forgotten Hédinn’s words: that there had been nothing to confirm whether it had been suicide or murder.
‘Heaven help me,’ the priest continued. ‘I can’t bring myself to justify suicide. Life is sacred, whatever the circumstances, but maybe I can say …’ He hesitated for a moment before continuing, haltingly. ‘I can say that maybe I can understand how she felt. I suppose that’s why I brought you over here tonight, so you can put yourself in her position. You’re a city kid, just as she was. Don’t you feel uncomfortable here?’
Ari Thór made no reply. He felt far from comfortable, but didn’t want to admit it. He was still cold, the night air made even more chilling by the enveloping darkness; it seemed almost to press on his chest, threatening suffocation.
Even in a place as remote as Hédinsfjördur, however, silence was absent. There was a distant mutter of surf, muffled but unmistakeable. It was as if the crash of waves on the shore was calling to him alone. He wanted to walk on further, out into the darkness, to see how far he could go.
Before he knew it, he had set off, with the priest hurrying after him.
‘We ought to be careful. You don’t want to fall down and hurt yourself in this darkness.’ Eggert said in the same low voice, so that the sound of the surf almost swallowed his words.
‘Suppose I told you they hadn’t been alone here?’ Ari Thór said.
‘What do you mean?’ The priest asked, his voice quavering. ‘Gudfinna had a son, of course,’ he added.
‘I don’t mean Hédinn,’ Ari Thór said.
‘Well, what on earth do you mean, then? This is hardly the time or the place for ghost stories.’
‘It’s no ghost story,’ Ari Thór said grimly. ‘Even though it sounds far-fetched. Do ghosts show up on film?’
They were close to the shore of the lagoon, the lights of the car far behind them. It was almost impossible to see anything so Ari Thór crept slowly forward, conscious that they were on a road and that there could be steep banks leading down on either side.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ the priest said sharply.
Ari Thór decided to go for the facts.
‘A picture has come to light of the two couples with little Hédinn in the arms of a young man, a teenager, more like.’
‘Maybe someone who was just passing by,’ Reverend Eggert said.
‘I doubt that many people passed through here,’ Ari Thór said coldly. ‘And not everyone would be allowed to hold—’
But he was unable to finish before the priest interrupted him. ‘Well, you’re right, few people came this way. But I recall that Delía came here at around that time.’
They stood still. Ari Thór was really starting to feel the cold now. He would have liked to go straight back to the jeep. But he waited, wanting to give the priest a chance to finish what he was saying.
‘Who is Delía?’ he asked, guessing that the priest was expecting the question.
‘She’s a few years older than I am. Her father was a photographer and did some filming with a cine-camera as well. She never went on to study anything after leaving school, wasn’t interested in anything but cameras. She stayed in Siglufjördur and spent a lot of time taking pictures and filming. She took over her father’s photography business, but that fizzled out as more and more people moved away. She went to live in the south, and then moved back here to retire.’
‘And she visited Hédinsfjördur?’
‘I recall she once told me she came over here to make the most of the winter scenery. That’s right – it’s coming back to me now. She met Jórunn. You never know, she might still have some pictures. Go and see her tomorrow. And now I think we should be on our way, don’t you?’
Ari Thór nodded and then realised that the priest probably couldn’t see him. ‘Let’s go, shall we?’ he muttered.
Eggert walked briskly towards the jeep.
Ari Thór made to set off after him, but then he stopped for a moment to turn and look back over the fjord and the star-bright sky, drinking in the beauty of the heavens. At one point, a few months earlier, Ari Thór had actually gone over to Hédinsfjördur in the dead of winter to look out for the northern lights. He had the good fortune to spot these elusive wonders and had stood stock still by the side of road, in total awe of this natural phenomenon, for a few breathtaking minutes. He could almost envisage them now.
When he turned back again, the priest had disappeared from sight.
Ari Thór knew that Eggert was not far away, but all the same, and against his own better judgement, he felt a chill of fear. He didn’t want to call out to ask the priest to wait. He couldn’t let it be known that he, a police officer, was afraid of the dark.
He crept forward slowly, and fished his phone from his pocket to try and make use of its light. But the glaring beam just made the surrounding darkness deeper.
The worst part was the lights of the jeep. They had been invaluable before, when they were behind him, but now they were dazzling, making it impossible to make out where the twisting track led.
He realised too late that he had stepped off the road. He lost his footing and fell, tumbling a few feet down the bank onto the cold earth. He had instinctively shut his eyes as he fell, and finding himself on the ground, he opened them and found himself staring at the mouth of a culvert that ran under the track. He thanked his lucky stars that he had not hit his head on it. He struggled to his feet with difficulty, sore and bruised, with a stinging pain in his knee. He climbed back onto the road and stumbled towards the car. This time he managed to keep to the track and found the priest already behind the wheel.
‘I was wondering where you had got to,’ he said, and looked at Ari Thór’s hand. ‘What on earth happened to you?’
Ari Thór hadn’t noticed the blood seeping from the back of his right hand. He had put it out to break his fall and it had caught on the stones at the track’s edge.
‘I tripped and fell,’ he said shortly.
The priest nodded as if he’d expected as much. The journey back to Siglufjördur passed in silence.
18
The call came from Sunna’s sister.
Heida lived in Denmark, was ten years older than Sunna, and was single and childless. The two sisters had been brought up in Reykjavík. Sunna rarely talked about her sister, but Róbert had the feeling that Heida had never quite found a comfortable niche for herself in life. She had tried any number of professions, but had been unemployed and living in Denmark for a while.
Róbert had met her twice and both times he had found it difficult to form any kind of connection with her, feeling certain that she had no liking for him. He decided it was most likely that Heida thought Sunna could have done better for herself.
Now Heida had been in Iceland for two weeks. He was sure she was short of money and was scrounging from her parents, who had actually now left Iceland for a holiday abroad. She still hadn’t found time to meet Sunna, Róbert and little Kjartan, but the sisters had agreed to meet at a downtown coffee shop that morning, taking Kjartan with them. After that, the plan was that the little boy would stay with Róbert at home while Sunna was at a rehearsal.
They still hadn’t found anyone to look after Kjartan during the day, although they were considering it. So far it wasn’t urgent. Sunna’s working hours were flexible, as were Róbert’s study times, and he didn’t worry too much about missing the occasional lecture. The boy also spent time with Breki, so things generally worked out.
Róbert lay in bed. His cold was worse so he hadn’t made the effort to go to his class. His instincts were also working overtime, telling him that their home had to be guarded against the unknown presence he was convinced now threatened it.
Now, though, after Heida’s call, he realised that he had made a huge mistake.
<
br /> He had let himself be fooled.
He should have put his energies into protecting his family, not their home.
‘What the hell do you mean?’ he yelled furiously as Heida, a woman he hardly knew, told him about the shocking turn of events.
‘Kjartan’s disappeared,’ she said in a flat voice. ‘Someone took him from the pushchair.’
‘Disappeared? Where’s Sunna?’
By now he was on his feet, pulling on his jeans and a shirt, with the phone still to his ear.
‘She’s right here, crying, screaming, waiting for the police. She’s in no state to speak on the phone.’
19
Ísrún could feel her energy ebbing away with each day that passed. She longed for a break between shifts. The newsroom pressure was enough to test even people with robust health, with its long shifts and the constant activity from morning to night.
She pushed herself to do one more day, forcing herself out of her bed in spite of the temptation to call in sick, which would have only been the truth, but she couldn’t bring herself to hand the Snorri Ellertsson story to someone else. The interview the previous day with the Prime Minister had attracted attention, with bloggers and social media going wild, followed by the Prime Minister’s assistant, a young and talented woman with party connections, trying to contact Ísrún. She knew who was calling and let the phone ring, deciding to let the young woman sweat for a while.
Her illness was taking its toll, as it did most days. Occasionally, when she was drowning in work, she could forget it for a while, this damned sickness, or syndrome as the doctor called it. It was extremely rare, he had told her, as if that was supposed to be some kind of consolation. And it had turned out that her grandmother had suffered from this ‘extremely rare condition’ too. The old lady was thought to have died from cancer brought on by smoking. But the doctor had been through her medical records and had come to the conclusion that the cause of death was the same syndrome that Ísrún was now suffering from. The results of further research supported the theory that the disorder was genetic, and Ísrún had been offered counselling. During these sessions, it became apparent that the illness could be inherited by her own children, if she should choose to have any.
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