The Reckoning

by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

  ‘Sólveig Gunnarsdóttir – that was the woman’s name.’

  Freyja showed no sign of making a note of this. Perhaps she had an excellent memory but Huldar knew the name would have slipped his mind by the time they left the building. ‘Like me to write it down?’ he asked her.

  ‘No need. I work with her. She’s a part-time psychologist at the Children’s House.’ She still wouldn’t look at him.

  The headteacher clapped his hands together. ‘That’s lucky. Are we done then? Was there anything else?’

  ‘Would you like the original back? You mentioned that the letters were going on display and I don’t need it. I made a copy.’ Huldar placed Thröstur’s unsigned letter on the desk and pushed it over. The headteacher recoiled as if it were radioactive.

  ‘Goodness, no. No, thank you. That’s not going in our exhibition. Are you mad? Just take it. Throw it away or whatever you do with evidence that turns out not to matter. I expect we’ll leave out the letter he signed as well.’

  Huldar shrugged and took the letter back. ‘When’s the exhibition?’

  ‘It opens next week. We’re putting the letters up now, including the photocopies from America. It’ll be great fun. At least for the young people who wrote them ten years ago. They’re all invited to the opening.’

  ‘Thröstur too?’ Freyja’s voice was like ice. ‘Won’t he be surprised not to see his letter? The one he signed?’

  ‘He didn’t see out the term. I’m inviting those who were still there at the end of the school year.’ The man’s long fingers formed a steeple. The school motto Education for all and for all abilities obviously didn’t apply in this case.

  Freyja’s voice had lost none of its ice. ‘One more thing … what information did you receive from his previous school when he started here? Did you contact them when it became apparent that the boy had problems?’

  The headteacher’s long fingers had twined themselves into a knot. ‘I didn’t, no. If I’m busy now, you should have seen what my first year was like. I had to learn the ropes as I went along. By the time it became apparent that Thröstur was … that something was wrong … he’d been with us almost three months; by then he was our pupil, our problem. I saw no reason to ask how his old school had handled him; after all, it clearly hadn’t worked.’

  ‘So he seemed normal at first? For nearly three months?’

  ‘No. It just took us that long to work out that there was something seriously wrong rather than a temporary blip. He was a new boy, after all, and exceptionally withdrawn.’ The man’s fingers suddenly stopped their fidgeting. He untwined them and placed both hands, palm down, on the desk in front of him, as if to examine his nails. ‘And now I’m afraid I’ll have to wrap this meeting up. I’m already late for something else.’

  ‘What about his parents? What sort of people were they and what did they have to say about all this?’ Freyja was not about to let the man off so easily. ‘You must have met his mother at least.’

  ‘Of course. I never saw his father, mind you. His mother was rather a mousy woman, if I remember right. She had difficulty finding the time to come in during working hours and we don’t have the funding to stay open in the evenings. That’s not how it works. But she did come in once. She seemed to have given up, rather. Apart from that our only communication was via e-mail.’ He didn’t offer to read them the messages or print out copies. ‘Anyway, now I really do have to dash.’ He stood up, pursing his lips as if to show that no more answers would be forthcoming.

  Freyja and Huldar thanked him and got up to leave, their cups of undrinkable coffee sitting virtually untouched on the desk. When Huldar offered to take the cups, the headteacher waved him away, then resumed his seat, showing no sign of dashing off anywhere.

  * * *

  The children were being let out for break when Huldar and Freyja left. The noise was deafening and there was no point trying to talk while they were crossing the playground.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Huldar once they reached the car park. As he surveyed the horde of children, his eyes lingered on a few pupils alone on the periphery, and he guessed that the oddball Thröstur would once have been like them.

  ‘I don’t know. I’m less confident now than I was when I read the letters. If the head remembered correctly and Thröstur had been to see Sólveig on an earlier occasion, before his depressive episode at this school, it’s a bit worrying. Children don’t go for regular sessions with a therapist unless there’s a genuine problem. There must have been something wrong with the boy. Or with his immediate environment.’

  ‘Enough to make it plausible that he might act out his threats? Or do something equally serious?’

  Freyja wrinkled her brow as if she were having second thoughts. ‘Probably not. But I’d like to talk to him. After I’ve spoken to Sólveig. But I won’t be able to tell you what we discuss, only what comes out of it. Very broadly.’

  He’d forgotten what a beautiful smile she had.

  ‘If you’re lucky,’ she continued, ‘though of course I may not be able to share any of what she tells me.’

  ‘OK. I’ll have to be satisfied with that.’ Huldar watched her burrowing in her pocket for her car keys. It occurred to him that, unlike most women, she didn’t carry a handbag. Whenever his sisters got together their bags adorned every chair-back and table. The most common request at such gatherings was: ‘Pass me my bag, would you?’, invariably directed at Huldar. He was the youngest in the family and they would never stop regarding him as their errand boy. Perhaps what attracted him most about Freyja was how different she was from his sisters. He’d rather spend the rest of his life as a hermit than get hitched to a woman like one of them. ‘I’m going to try and track Thröstur down. I’ve got enough information now to find his ID number and the rest should be simple. Would you like to come along and meet him with me?’

  He noticed that Freyja unlocked her car with a key rather than by remote control. It was such an old wreck that it probably predated the technology.

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I’d like to be there for that. In the meantime, you’d better check if he’s got a criminal record. It could make for interesting reading.’ Without explaining what she meant, she got behind the wheel and slammed the door.

  Huldar watched her drive away, then returned to his own car, musing on her comment and her sober expression as she had said it.

  Chapter 6

  Back at the Children’s House after the school visit, Freyja stared out at the weather. Another day, another storm. She had begun the day by letting Molly out into the scruffy back garden of the block of flats where she lived. The flat belonged to her brother Baldur and Freyja had only intended to stay there temporarily, but almost a year had passed and she was still having no success in finding a place of her own. At this rate she wouldn’t be moving out before Baldur’s release, which had been put back twelve months. This had its pros and cons: on the plus side, it meant she didn’t have to struggle with a difficult rental market; on the minus, it meant continuing to live among people on the margins of society. Her fellow tenants had no interest in taking care of the garden or cleaning out the dustbin store, or the other communal areas. They had more urgent priorities, like sourcing their next high – or anything, really, apart from getting out a vacuum cleaner, duster or broom.

  Recently she had noticed a yellowing sheet of paper pinned to the wall in the hall, which turned out to be a cleaning rota for an unspecified – no doubt long-ago – year. As the squalor was really getting to Freyja, she decided to tackle the cleaning on the days assigned to Baldur’s flat, in the hope of shaming the other occupants into following her example. It might help to win them over, too, since few of them ever said hello, and she got the impression that most would be pleased to see the back of her. But her plan misfired. While she toiled away at the cleaning, her neighbours peered out, one after the other, to see what on earth was going on. Their faces registered astonishment, even indignation or pity, when they saw the
hoover. She certainly didn’t earn any brownie points for her efforts and few seemed to appreciate the clean corridor or unblocked rubbish chute. In spite of this, she was determined to stick to the ancient rota and carry on cleaning when it was her turn.

  If she set about tidying up the garden in the spring, her fellow residents would probably lose any last remnants of respect for her. But at least she and Molly could be sure of having the patch of grass to themselves. The other occupants tended to stay indoors during daylight hours. She could put out a table and chairs and bask in the sunshine with a cup of coffee while Molly was nosing around for the perfect place to do her business. With her back to the building, Freyja would even be able to kid herself that she lived in different, more salubrious surroundings.

  But the summer was a long way off, assuming they were ever going to have one, and no one would dream of trying to sit outside at this time of year. Freyja had been ready to jump for joy when Molly finally finished and she could get off to work. At least it was warm at the Children’s House and the coffee was good. The windows in Baldur’s place let in the draughts and the coffee-maker seemed incapable of producing a decent brew anymore. If the weather hadn’t been so horrendous she would have taken herself down to the homeware store to buy herself a new one. Where on earth was she to find the energy to turn her life around if she was prepared to let a bit of wind and snow come between her and a good cup of coffee?

  The door of the Children’s House opened and there was a sound of voices, almost immediately cut off again. Freyja decided that now was her chance to make another attempt to speak to Sólveig. When she got back earlier, Sólveig had already been seeing a child, whereas Freyja had nothing to occupy her apart from minor tasks such as reading over the evaluation and summary tables for the centre’s annual report. It was infuriating that being asked by Huldar to assist the police should feel like winning the lottery. He was the last man in the world she wanted to associate with, but anything was better than sitting here, staring into space. She needed to be busy, to have a purpose in life. Cleaning the communal areas of her block every other month just wasn’t enough.

  She managed to catch Sólveig as the other woman was sitting down at her desk again. The fact that a part-time employee had a larger, better-equipped office than Freyja spoke volumes, but, trying not to let it rankle, she reminded herself why she was there.

  ‘I couldn’t have a quick word, could I? It’s about a boy who was referred to you ten years ago and possibly a few years before that as well.’

  ‘Ten years?’ Sólveig frowned, four deep grooves forming in her forehead. As usual, her greying hair was drawn back in a tight bun, but there was nothing else in her appearance to suggest severity. Her pale yellow shirt was buttoned up wrong and her long brown cardigan hung unevenly from her broad shoulders. ‘God, I can’t remember that far back.’ She swivelled her hand to motion Freyja in. Bracelets jangled at her wrist. ‘But take a seat anyway. I have to admit I’m intrigued.’

  Freyja’s shirt was buttoned up correctly and her clothes hung straight. Next to Sólveig she felt prim, the way she felt about the communal cleaning; like a square who took life too seriously and missed out on all the fun. Her inner psychologist couldn’t help wondering if this was the truth. Perhaps it was time to let her hair down a bit more, even though her attempts to do just that had ended disastrously in the past. It was time to cut loose, if only to have a fling. The weekend was coming up and she resolved to drag her girlfriends out clubbing with her. Then the following day she’d take her hangover into town and invest in a new coffee-maker. The first step in her mission to get her life back on track. With a decent cup of coffee, she could curl up on the sofa and look up the courses on offer at the university next autumn.

  ‘You may not be aware but I’ve been asked to assist the police with rather an odd case connected to the boy in question.’ As Freyja told Sólveig the whole sorry tale, she saw the furrows deepening in the other woman’s brow. Sólveig clearly hadn’t got wind of the job, which suggested that the director had kept quiet about it. Freyja was surprised by this, as usually the projects the staff were working on were discussed fairly openly within the four walls of the Children’s House.

  Perhaps her cases were no longer important enough to merit discussion. The renewed self-confidence created by her plans for the weekend faded a little. Freyja forced herself to focus. ‘According to his headteacher, Thröstur was sent to you for primary diagnosis, and he was also under the impression that you’d dealt with the boy some years previously. And possibly treated him too, though he had no information about that.’

  ‘Oh, it’s all such a long time ago.’ Sólveig shook her head. She appeared to be racking her brains to remember the boy, screwing up her eyes and twisting her mouth. ‘No, I don’t remember any Thröstur.’ She smiled suddenly. ‘So at least it can’t have been anything serious. The difficult cases have a habit of staying with me, whereas the trivial problems, if you can call them that, tend to slip my mind. It’s a wonder we’re not all on anti-depressants, really.’ The woman smiled again, revealing a glimpse of less than perfect teeth. Her smile left a lot to be desired too, as it failed to reach her eyes.

  Freyja bared her teeth with equal insincerity. ‘Did schools refer a lot of kids to you in those days?’

  ‘Depends what you mean by a lot.’ Sólveig dropped the fake smile and assumed a world-weary air instead. Freyja had lost count of the times she had seen her colleagues do this and it drove her up the wall. It was the face they put on, apparently unconsciously, when talking among themselves, as if to underline how dreadful their caseload was and how badly they were paid. Perhaps she could take some of them with her if she enrolled on that course in financial trading?

  ‘Of course, even one child with problems is one too many,’ Sólveig added, still with that care-worn air.

  ‘There’ll always be problems,’ Freyja said bracingly, refusing to play along. ‘Were you treating a lot of children at the time?’

  Sólveig didn’t seem put out by Freyja’s brusqueness. ‘Yes, I suppose you could say that.’ The insincere smile made a reappearance. ‘I had my own practice and also provided psychology services for four schools. But I only conducted primary diagnoses of children and adolescents with problems. If they turned out to need treatment, they were referred, mainly to the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Department. I only had very brief contact with them, so I’m not surprised I don’t remember this Thröstur.’

  ‘Really? I understood that you’d treated him on an earlier occasion as well. There was no mention of how old he was at the time, but in that case you must have conducted more than a primary diagnosis.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve completely forgotten. I must be getting old.’ Again Sólveig put on that irritating smile, but it vanished when Freyja failed to demur. ‘If anything comes back to me, I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Please do.’ Freyja prepared to stand up. ‘Anyway, I assume the police will want to talk to you about the boy and that period in his life. There may be reports on file that you could look up. You still work part-time for the schools, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. But I very much doubt the report still exists.’ The answer came a little too pat. ‘At least, I’d be very surprised if it did.’

  ‘Really?’ Freyja remained sitting. ‘Are the records destroyed after a certain number of years, then?’

  ‘No.’ Sólveig avoided meeting Freyja’s eye. ‘I mean, I don’t know.’ She seemed flustered and made a clumsy attempt to retrieve the situation. ‘It’s just that ten years feels like a lifetime, never mind anything from before that. Of course it’s quite possible that the report on the boy is still in the system somewhere. But given the sheer number of cases we deal with, I think it’s unlikely. That’s all I meant.’

  ‘I see.’ Freyja wondered whether to persevere with this conversation or go back to her office. Finish her tasks, then devote the rest of the day to surfing the net. She could sign up to Tinder, as her brother
was always urging her to. That’s how he’d become involved with a whole series of women who didn’t seem put off by the fact that he was behind bars. So surely she, who was free as a bird, must be in with a chance? But instead of rising to leave, Freyja decided not to let the woman off the hook quite so easily. There was no way Sólveig was getting away with this bullshit. ‘No. Actually, you know what? I don’t quite get it. What have all these changes got to do with the report? They’re all supposed to be kept on file, just like patient records. Just because a filing system’s upgraded, that doesn’t mean all the existing documents are destroyed.’

  ‘No, of course not. I’m talking nonsense. Of course the records must be somewhere. I’m just not au fait with the system. I file my reports but I don’t actually know what happens to them once they’ve been processed. Didn’t the school have a copy?’

  ‘The headteacher claims he never received a final report, only a very general summary. Doesn’t that sound rather irregular? Schools have no right to view pupils’ mental health records.’

  ‘Of course they don’t. He must just have received a short summary of the findings relevant to the school – if special procedures were required for dealing with the boy. My brain hasn’t woken up yet today. Sorry to be so scatty. I’ve had rather a trying morning. So sorry I can’t help.’ Sólveig heaved a sigh and re-assumed her world-weary expression, but again Freyja refused to mirror it.

  ‘You could authorise me to see the summary, since the headteacher thinks he should be able to track it down. Until the other records turn up, that would be better than nothing.’

  Sólveig was wrong-footed, though she tried to cover it up. Freyja had the feeling she was casting around in vain for an excuse to refuse. ‘Yes, absolutely. Sure. I suppose that would be OK. I just want to refresh my memory of the case to make sure I won’t be in breach of confidentiality. Would later this week be all right?’