Rupture

by Ragnar Jónasson

  A little disappointed, Ari Thór nodded.

  The landscape of the remote fjord was breathtakingly beautiful, with sparkling white snow lying deep everywhere; the sight was almost unreal, as if from a different world – peaceful and picture-perfect. The first part of the film had been taken from the Hestsskard mountain pass. There was no tunnel and no traffic, just a white expanse and snow-clad mountain slopes, followed by a shot of the house and a woman looking out over the fjord.

  ‘Is that Jórunn?’ Ari Thór asked.

  ‘That’s her. You can see how peaceful she looks, standing still like that with her mind on her own thoughts. I let the camera roll for a while. She didn’t notice me right away.’

  Ari Thór wanted to yell the question that was on his mind: ‘What are you thinking, Jórunn?’

  Then she looked around, straight into the lens, as if she had heard his thoughts. From beyond the grave and across years and decades, she looked straight into Ari Thór’s eyes.

  He recognised her immediately from the photograph – her short, dark hair, and the clothes she was wearing were much the same: a coat over a thick, wool sweater. The only difference was that now she was smiling, while in the photograph she had been distracted.

  She’s smiling at me, Ari Thór thought. In some indiscernible way he felt that she had a message for him, or a task; a request to solve the mystery of her death at long last.

  ‘It was quite a house in those days,’ Ari Thór said, to try and steer his thoughts in another direction. It was a sturdy-looking concrete building – not too big, and similar to other farmhouses he’d seen around the country. Ari guessed, or maybe hoped, that it had been painted red, although the black-and-white film gave no indication.

  ‘It was hit by an avalanche many years ago,’ Delía said. ‘Long after the fjord was finally abandoned. It’s a terrible place to build a house; much too close to the mountain. Nobody would dream of building somewhere so dangerous today.’

  Now the images that flickered across the kitchen wall were from a new viewpoint, over the magnificent lagoon and the sea beyond it. The water, the sea and the horizon all merged into one on the white wall. That wonderful moment fifty-five years ago had become part of today and then retreated into the past as the girl with the camera turned its lens elsewhere.

  The Delía of half a century ago was behind the camera, gradually turning in a circle, framing first the mountains to the east, and then coming back round to the valley covered in snow and the majestic mountains sheltering it. Then she stopped abruptly as a figure appeared in front of the lens.

  Ari Thór started with the sudden realisation.

  This was the boy.

  The mystery figure had appeared, as large as life, on the kitchen wall of an old house in Siglufjördur.

  Ari Thór shuddered and felt a sudden chill. The boy was wearing a hat, a scarf and some sort of an overcoat, but Ari recognised his face right away; that innocent look.

  It was only a brief glance; the boy disappeared almost instantly from the frame, replaced by a view of the house where Hédinn’s family had lived. It stood to the west of the lagoon and was close to the spot where Delía had stood to film her sequence of pictures.

  There was some movement to be seen by the farmhouse; a man appeared in the doorway and the camera remained focused on him. The man waved a hand, and appeared to be calling to the boy and to Delía. Then the viewpoint shifted again, back to the view over the lagoon.

  ‘That was Gudmundur,’ Delía said as the film continued to flicker over the wall.

  Ari Thór shook himself, and was back in the warmth of the kitchen after the cold of the remote fjord.

  ‘He called the boy in. As you can see, I just carried on filming, but not for long. It wasn’t easy to get about in that kind of snow, and I had to use snowshoes to make walking easier,’ she said and then paused. ‘He was something of a difficult character,’ she murmured, breaking the silence.

  ‘Who? Gudmundur?’

  ‘Yes. I remember him well from when he lived here. He was an awkward, arrogant man who was used to getting his own way.’

  ‘A dangerous man?’ Ari Thór asked, hesitatingly.

  ‘Dangerous?’ Delía thought for a moment. ‘I wouldn’t go so far as to say he was dangerous. He never did anyone any harm, as far as I know; at least, he wasn’t violent. But I’ll tell you that he’s not the kind of man I’d have wanted to quarrel with.’

  The police four-by-four headed out of town with Ari Thór at the wheel, making for the Hédinsfjördur tunnel. He had appropriated the priest’s philosophy, deciding that there would be no harm in venturing beyond the town’s limits as long as he only went as far as the uninhabited fjord.

  He glanced up at the peak of Hólshyrnan, looming over the town. As so often before, he found the ring of mountains encircling Siglufjördur overwhelming. There were certainly higher mountains elsewhere, but compared to the little houses on the spit of land, these sometimes seemed breathtakingly vast. The church was the most prominent building in the landscape, sheltering under the mountains, and the other houses, with their colourful roofs, made up the final but essential part of this glorious painting.

  Hédinsfjördur welcomed him with bright sunshine. The previous visit in the dark was a distant memory. But Delía’s ghost story still troubled him. What had the boy seen that was so ‘abnormal’?

  Ari Thór parked the four-by-four off the road and walked towards the lagoon, conscious of the difference between this and his previous night-time visit. He stopped at the water’s edge, where the path came to an end, enjoying the cold, fresh, ocean air, which rejuvenated him every single day up here in the north.

  The ruins of a building stood on a spit of land that jutted out into the water to his left. Ari Thór worked out that he was standing roughly where Delía had stood with her camera decades before, when Jórunn was still living and had all her life before her; back when the two families were living together in harmony. Or were there tensions beneath the surface even then – difficulties or disputes that led to Jórunn’s mysterious death on that ordinary March day in 1957?

  He decided to walk out to the ruins, picking his way between tussocks and holes, as there was no path, and reaching his destination with difficulty.

  There was not much to see. The years and the forces of nature had not treated the place well. The whispering surf in the distance blended into the chatter of the brooks finding their way down the mountainsides. He gazed out over the water, which at this moment was so tranquil, it was hard to imagine that this remote place could ever be anything other than a spot where beauty thrived. Ugly brutality was far away. Or was it?

  His thoughts turned again to Jórunn and he wondered if she had been so unhappy as to take her own life. He closed his eyes and was sure that he could sense her presence. He quickly shook the feeling off, determined not to let his own imagination run riot.

  Almost imperceptibly, like a ghost appearing in broad daylight, the thought that he now realised had been at the back of his mind all along seemed to step forward. Could Jórunn have been the only one to meet her death in this lonely, abandoned fjord; or had the nameless, unknown youngster met the same fate?

  He stared out over the water.

  24

  He was a minute into Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto when his phone rang. Ari Thór was stretched out on the sofa in his Eyrargata apartment, doing his best to get some rest before deciding what to cook that evening. Not that there was much in the fridge; he would have welcomed the opportunity to order a pizza, but that was out of the question. The infection hung over the town like a curse.

  Siglufjördur was still in quarantine. The opinion was becoming prevalent that it must be safe by now to lift the restrictions; no new infection cases had appeared in a few days, and a careful watch was being kept on anyone who had been in contact with the victims. However, the decision had been taken to delay the all-clear a little longer. Tómas had told Ari Thór that he had agreed wit
h the decision.

  ‘It would be unforgivable if more people became infected just because we lifted the quarantine restrictions too early,’ he said, making it plain that closing off a small town for a few more days was not considered a major sacrifice.

  Ari Thór sat up quickly when he heard his phone. He hated to interrupt a good piano concerto, whether in a concert hall or on a CD at home. This was a piece he had never heard played live, even though he had been a regular at the symphony orchestra’s recitals when his mother had been alive and playing with the orchestra. Nowadays, though, he found that going to a live concert was accompanied by a sense of loss and too many old memories.

  He looked at his phone’s screen and turned down the music when he saw that it was the journalist calling. It was probably as well to take the call, as she had helped him out; although he’d given up on the interview ever taking place.

  ‘Hello,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I hear it’ll all be over up there soon.’

  ‘There isn’t anyone seriously ill at the moment,’ Ari Thór replied, although Sandra came immediately to mind; he quickly stifled that train of thought.

  ‘Pleased to hear it,’ she said, although there was little sincerity in her voice. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Ready for what?’

  ‘The interview,’ she said with impatience. ‘It’ll go in the news bulletin tomorrow night. I’m promised a few minutes for an item – something with some human interest to it.’

  ‘You mean something lightweight?’ Ari Thór said sharply.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Don’t forget that two people lost their lives.’

  ‘People die all the time,’ she replied in a flat tone that made Ari Thór think there was something more serious behind her words – something unsaid.

  ‘All right. Let’s get on with it,’ he said.

  ‘Do you have another phone? A landline, maybe?’

  ‘No, only the mobile.’

  ‘Then that’ll have to do,’ Ísrún said after a pause. ‘I can hear you fine and it won’t be a long item. It’s been frantic down here and I haven’t had time to do this interview until now. A child disappeared down here today.’

  ‘I heard. It’s terrible,’ Ari Thór replied. ‘No news?’

  ‘Your colleagues in the police won’t say a word. There’s been a very strange atmosphere here today – as if everyone’s counting the seconds until there’s some good news at last. But these things normally work out, don’t they? This has to have a happy ending.’

  Ari Thór said nothing; he had no answer to give.

  ‘How is the search going for the boy in the picture?’ Ísrún asked after a short, uncomfortable silence. ‘Have you tracked him down?’

  Ari Thór hesitated. ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘But I saw him today.’

  ‘Today?’ Ísrún asked in clear astonishment.

  ‘On an old film.’ Ari Thór said, and explained about his visits to Hédinsfjördur and his conversations with Reverend Eggert and Delía.

  ‘Maríus’s brother didn’t recognise the boy from the photo,’ Ísrún said, more to herself than to Ari Thór. ‘So it’s unlikely he was family.’

  ‘At least not related to Maríus and Nikulás,’ Ari Thór said shortly, the piano concerto building into a crescendo in the background. He switched it off, unable to enjoy the music at the same time as holding a conversation. He told himself that next time he wanted to enjoy music, he would turn off his phone.

  Ísrún was quiet for a moment. ‘Maybe I can help you,’ she said.’

  ‘Really? How?’

  ‘I could weave it into the story about the infection. The danger situation seems to be out of the way now, so we can make it into something about the life of a police officer under these strange circumstances. I can say that life carries on as usual, as far as possible, and the police still have to deal with minor things as well as major cases, such as investigating the whereabouts of people in old photographs.’

  Ari Thór was about to interrupt: Ísrún’s summary was some way from reality, after all. Daily life in Siglufjördur had practically come to a halt during the quarantine, and it certainly wasn’t part of a police officer’s role to enquire about people in old photographs. He would prefer that the interview showed that the job of a police officer, even in a small town, was more demanding than that. But he decided to let her finish.

  ‘We can take it as an example of what you’re doing. And if you can scan the picture with the boy in it and send it to me, we can show it,’ she said, pleased with herself. ‘I’ll make sure the others aren’t recognisable, apart from Hédinn; not that anyone is going to recognise him from such an old photo. Then we wait and see. This programme has a huge audience,’ she added.

  Ari Thór thought quickly. There was nothing to lose.

  ‘Sounds good,’ he said. ‘But the film I saw disproved your theory,’ he added cheerfully.

  ‘What theory?’

  ‘That the child in the photograph might not be Hédinn, but could have been the boy born around 1950, the son of Maríus and Jórunn. The young man was the same age in the film as in the photograph, and the film was taken in 1956. Delía has no reason to lie, so the photograph has to have been taken at around the same time. In a way, you could say that we’re looking for two boys here: the teenager in the picture and the little boy who was adopted – Maríus and Jórunn’s son.’

  Ísrún was silent for a moment.

  ‘Three boys,’ she said quietly. ‘There’s the baby who was abducted this morning. I sincerely hope he’s found before we work out who the other two are.’

  25

  Sunna had refused to accept that Kjartan had gone. She was screaming at the top of her lungs when Róbert appeared, out of breath, at the coffee house.

  ‘This can’t be happening,’ she had snapped. ‘I can’t have taken him with me this morning. Wasn’t he with you?’

  Róbert tried his best to convince her that she had hardly gone into town pushing an empty pram.

  ‘Don’t lie to me! Tell me he was with you, please!’ she pleaded, a wild, vacant look in her eyes. She made as if to run off down the street, back towards their house.

  He caught hold of her, and finally persuaded her to sit with him in the police car, where she seemed to calm down a little. He held her hand and did his best to be warm and encouraging. Her eyes were so distant and filled with desperation that he felt as if knives were being driven into his heart; he could hardy bring himself to look at her.

  Finally accepting that someone had really taken the boy, his support was what she sought. She immediately blamed herself.

  ‘How could I leave him out there?’

  The question was not directed at Róbert, but he tried to explain to her that this was something that had never before happened in Reykjavík. She could never have foreseen it.

  ‘Why didn’t I keep a closer eye on the pram? Why?’

  He noticed her sister, Heida, had been quick to disappear.

  ‘I’ll go now,’ she had announced as soon as Róbert had turned up.

  That was just like her, he thought. The woman who had never taken responsibility for her own life and who made a habit of leeching off others couldn’t even support her own sister at a time like this.

  By the time Róbert and Sunna had reached the police station, Sunna had stopped accusing herself and had turned her invective on the boy’s father instead.

  ‘Breki must have taken him. To hell with him! How could he do such a thing?’ Her voice became loud, as her anger grew. She made no attempt to keep her feelings to herself and seemed to be in a world of her own.

  ‘How could he do it?’ she shouted. ‘Couldn’t he just fight it out in court?’

  Róbert held her tightly and said the first thing that came into his head. ‘He’ll be fine if it was Breki who took him,’ he said and instantly regretted it.

  Sunna suddenly seemed to be hit by the possibility that this was nothing to do with Breki, and that Kjartan c
ould now be in the hands of a stranger. It was too much for her, she fell silent and perfectly still, and Róbert was unable to stop her collapsing onto the cold lino of the police station floor.

  ‘He must be with Breki,’ Róbert said under his breath.

  They were in the interview room with the Chief Inspector, who informed them that the investigation was in his hands. He tried to convince them that this case had absolute priority and they would find the baby soon enough. But Róbert was sure that there was a quiver of doubt in the policeman’s voice and hoped that Sunna had not noticed it.

  She showed no response so he whispered to her again, ‘He must be with Breki.’

  Sunna’s rage exploded with new-found energy.

  ‘Have you found his father? Well? You have to find him,’ she screamed at the Chief Inspector.

  ‘Do you have reason to believe he might have taken the child?’ the Chief Inspector asked in a slow, careful voice, as if there were no urgency.

  Sunna made a confused attempt to explain the custody battle that they were engaged in, with Róbert interrupting at intervals to provide details about Breki – his phone number, address and workplace. Bewildered, they both said that they had no idea of anyone else who might bear them a grudge.

  ‘I don’t normally take my eyes off him,’ Sunna cried. ‘But he was asleep,’ she said. ‘I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. No one suspicious hanging around.’

  The Chief Inspector asked for Heida’s number and dispatched an officer to interview her and find out if she had seen anything.

  ‘And you’re sure nothing unusual has happened recently?’ the Chief Inspector asked finally.

  Sunna shook her head and glanced at Róbert.

  He was silent. Should he mention the missing keys, the uninvited guest and the figure in the garden? An uncomfortable feeling had sneaked up on him during the day, as soon as he had heard of Kjartan’s disappearance and had run as fast as he could to the coffee house. His theory could explain the sinister attention they had been getting, but he tried to convince himself that there was nothing in it; the simple thought of it being a possibility made him sick with fear. Calm and collected for a moment, he thought it through, weighed the advantages and disadvantages, and came to the conclusion that risking losing Sunna was not worth it.