Black Skies Read online

  He flicked a switch and the machine started up. A white glare lit up the screen. The projector emitted a pleasant whirring sound as the film ran in front of the bulb and the glare developed lines, dots and numbers until finally images appeared.

  They watched it through to the end. Then Röggi rewound the film, put it away and took out another, just as lively and entertaining as the first. Both were Donald Duck cartoons.

  When it was over, Röggi threaded a third reel into the projector without saying a word. The film was in colour, foreign, and began with a grown-up man stroking the hair of a girl who could not have been more than seven years old. Then he started to undress her.

  ‘I never wanted it!’ he shouted, as he stood over the old man. He had toppled backwards on to the floor, still tied to the chair. ‘I never wanted to watch that filthy shit. You made me do it, you forced me and forced me … you forced me …’

  He kicked the man, kicked him like a dog, kicked him and sobbed and yelled at him, kept on kicking and sobbing.

  ‘I never wanted it!’

  21

  THÓRARINN HAD GONE into hiding.

  Sigurdur Óli had headed over to the modest terraced house on Sogavegur where Thórarinn lived, taking a small team after deciding that there was no need to call in the special squad. As he knocked on the door it was getting on for evening and a cold pall of drizzle hung low over the city. The street lights had come on some time ago and cast a misty glow over the surroundings. Sigurdur Óli stood waiting for the door to open, Finnur at his side and a couple of policemen a little way behind them. Two officers had gone round behind the house in case Thórarinn made a break for it out of the back exit. Suddenly, the front door opened and a little girl of about six years old stood gazing up at them.

  Sigurdur Óli bent down. ‘Is your daddy home?’ he asked, trying to smile.

  ‘No,’ said the little girl.

  Another girl appeared behind her. She must have been around ten and gazed at Sigurdur Óli, Finnur and the other officers.

  ‘Is your mummy home?’ asked Sigurdur Óli, addressing his question to the elder girl this time.

  ‘She’s asleep,’ said the girl.

  ‘Could you wake her up for us, please?’ asked Sigurdur Óli, attempting to sound friendly. It did not seem to work.

  ‘We’re not to wake her,’ said the girl.

  Sigurdur Óli glanced at Finnur.

  ‘You’ll need to wake her up for us, dear,’ said Finnur firmly. ‘We’re from the police and we need to talk to your father. Do you know where he is?’

  ‘He’s at work,’ answered the girl. ‘I’ll wake Mum,’ she added, vanishing into the house.

  They waited on the steps for some time, the other officers shuffling their feet in the drizzle. The younger girl was still standing in the doorway, her eyes full of doubt. They had a warrant to enter and search the house but, ignoring Sigurdur Óli’s advice, Finnur had announced that he did not want to cause unnecessary alarm if there were children involved. They knew that there were three, the youngest of whom was only four years old. They also knew that Thórarinn was not at work. On enquiry they had discovered that he had not done any jobs since Monday. The police had already issued an alert for his van.

  At last the elder girl returned to stare at them in silence from the doorway, and shortly afterwards their mother appeared. She had clearly been having a nap and was not yet fully awake. Her plump face was creased from the pillow, her hair a tousled mess.

  ‘We have a warrant to search these premises,’ Sigurdur Óli announced, ‘though we would rather you let us in voluntarily. And we need to speak to your husband, Thórarinn. Do you know where he might be?’

  The woman did not answer.

  ‘We would rather do this with the minimum of unpleasantness,’ Finnur said.

  The woman seemed to be taking a long time to wake up.

  ‘What … what do you want with him?’ she asked, her voice drugged with sleep.

  Sigurdur Óli was not prepared to enter into any further discussion at this point. Ordering his men to follow, he ushered the girls carefully aside and entered the house, the woman retreating before him. The search was soon in full swing, with the officers on the lookout for bloodstained or torn clothing, drugs, cash, a list of clients, anything that could be linked to the attack on Lína or give a clue as to its motive. The youngest girl was discovered asleep in her parents’ bed. Her mother woke her and took her into another room. The woman did not seem unduly surprised by this invasion nor did she raise any objections; merely stood in silence with her daughters, watching a group of policemen turning her home upside down. The house was exceptionally neat and tidy, with clean laundry folded in all the drawers, everything in the kitchen put away, all the surfaces dusted. There were no signs of affluence: the ornaments on the tables in the sitting room were cheap, the three-piece suite shabby. If Thórarinn made any money from his drug-dealing it was certainly not evident in his home, and the only vehicle registered in his name was the delivery van.

  ‘Do you remember what your husband was wearing last Monday?’ asked Sigurdur Óli.

  ‘Wearing?’ echoed the woman. ‘He always wears the same things.’

  ‘Can you tell us what?’

  The woman gave a detailed description that tallied with what Sigurdur Óli had seen. She wanted to know what Thórarinn had done.

  ‘Where was he on Monday evening?’ asked Sigurdur Óli, ignoring her question.

  ‘He was here at home all evening,’ the woman said without hesitation. ‘He didn’t go out on Monday evening,’ she added, in case Sigurdur Óli had missed the fact.

  ‘We have information that suggests otherwise,’ he said. ‘In fact he was spotted, so he can’t have been here all evening. I saw him myself. If you want to carry on lying to us, you’re welcome to, but you’ll have to do so at the station. The girls can go to a babysitter in the meantime. If you can’t find anyone yourself, we’ll provide a childminder.’

  The woman gaped at him.

  ‘Or you can tell us what we need to know and then you can go back to bed,’ he added.

  When she looked at her three daughters the woman knew she had no alternative. The eldest had been having problems at school, not only with her lessons but in the playground, and was refusing to go swimming or do games.

  ‘He never tells me anything,’ she said. ‘I don’t know anything.’

  ‘So he wasn’t at home on Monday evening?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Did he tell you to say that?’

  After a second’s hesitation, she nodded.

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘I don’t know. What’s he done? I haven’t seen him since he came home on Monday evening and I could hardly understand a word he was saying. He said he needed to get out of town for a while but would be back soon.’

  ‘What did he mean, get out of town? Where was he going?’

  ‘I don’t know – we don’t have a holiday cottage or anything like that.’

  ‘Does he have any family outside Reykjavík?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. Please, what’s he done?’

  The three girls had been listening open-mouthed to the conversation, their eyes darting from their mother to the detective. Sigurdur Óli indicated to the woman that it would be inappropriate for them to overhear the rest and she reacted quickly, herding her daughters into the kitchen and telling the eldest to make them a chocolate-milk drink.

  ‘We believe he attacked a woman here in the east of town,’ Sigurdur Óli said when the woman returned from the kitchen. ‘He was identified at the scene.’

  ‘You mean he was seeing another woman?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Sigurdur Óli. ‘We don’t believe the attack was of that nature. Can you tell me who he was in contact with in the days before he disappeared?’

  They had asked the telephone company for a log of all calls made to and from Thórarinn’s home phone, and this might conceivabl
y shed light on the events leading up to the attack on Lína, though Sigurdur Óli doubted it. From Kristján’s description, he judged that Thórarinn would be too careful for that. It was telling that there was no mobile phone registered in his name, although Kristján confirmed that he used one.

  ‘I know very little about what Toggi gets up to,’ said his wife. ‘He never says a word to me. All I know is that he drives a van and works very long hours, sometimes evenings and nights as well. And now he’s vanished.’

  ‘Has he been in touch since he disappeared?’

  ‘No,’ his wife answered firmly. ‘Why did he attack the woman?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘Was it the one in the news, the one who died?’ she asked.

  Sigurdur Óli nodded.

  ‘And you think Thórarinn did it?’

  ‘Were you aware that your husband is a debt collector?’ asked Sigurdur Óli.

  ‘A debt collector?’ repeated his wife. ‘No. What makes you think that? Why … I don’t believe this!’

  Although Thórarinn had a criminal record, it dated from before his eldest daughter was born, possibly from before he met his wife. He had twice been charged with assault and battery. For the first offence he had received a four-month suspended sentence for attacking a man outside a Reykjavík nightclub and inflicting a severe beating on him; for the second he had received a six-month sentence, of which he served only three, for assaulting someone at a restaurant in the neighbouring town of Hafnarfjördur. When the police had issued a wanted notice for Thórarinn that afternoon, they had stressed that he could be violent and dangerous.

  If Kristján’s account was anything to go by, Thórarinn could also be physically abusive towards his wife, though Sigurdur Óli could see no sign of it. He wondered if he should pursue it but decided not to.

  ‘We’re investigating his connection to the crime,’ he said. ‘You had better believe it. Is it you who keeps the house clean?’

  ‘He likes to have everything just so,’ the woman said automatically.

  Finnur emerged from the kitchen and asked Sigurdur Óli to come with him. They went outside.

  ‘We can’t find a thing to link him to Lína,’ Finnur said. ‘Have you got anything out of her?’

  ‘She’s just learned that her husband may be a murderer. Perhaps she’ll be able to tell us more once it’s sunk in.’

  ‘And your friends, what do they say?’ asked Finnur.

  ‘My friends? You’re not going to start on that again?’

  ‘Don’t you want to know how the interviews went?’

  ‘I really couldn’t give a toss.’

  Sigurdur Óli knew that Patrekur, Hermann and their respective wives had been brought in for questioning. Finnur had been in charge of the interviews and Sigurdur Óli would have obtained a transcript had he not been so busy trying to track down Thórarinn.

  ‘Hermann showed me a picture of himself and claimed that Lína and Ebeneser had been blackmailing him. Of course, he didn’t admit to having attacked Lína or to sending someone to find the photos. He was pretty pathetic in fact, and his wife was in tears throughout the interview. Patrekur was tougher, though. He denied everything.’

  ‘What are you going to do with them?’

  ‘I’ve put them under a travel ban. Patrekur admitted to having gone to see you, so it’s on record – that you knew about the case but failed to report it. I’ll be writing a report later and intend to send it to Internal Affairs. You can expect to hear from them.’

  ‘Why are you doing this, Finnur?’ asked Sigurdur Óli.

  ‘I’m surprised you’ve got the nerve to continue with this case,’ Finnur replied. ‘You’re far too closely involved, and if you don’t see sense, I’ll have to deal with the situation myself. I’m in charge of this inquiry; it’s not your little game.’

  ‘Are you sure you can afford to threaten me?’ said Sigurdur Óli.

  ‘Your position is not looking good, Siggi. You’re compromising this inquiry by turning it into a private vendetta. I call the shots and you should do as I say.’

  ‘Do you really think I can’t be trusted? Is that what you’re implying? You, of all people?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I’m implying.’

  Sigurdur Óli gave Finnur a steady look. He knew that Finnur was a good policeman but his manner had begun to smack of bullying and that would have to stop. There was no way Sigurdur Óli was going to put up with it, not from Finnur. From someone else maybe, but not Finnur.

  ‘If you keep up this bullshit,’ he murmured, leaning towards Finnur, ‘I’ll talk. Think about it. For your own sake, you’d better leave me alone.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You know a boy called Pétur, don’t you?’

  Finnur stared at him without answering, his expression grave.

  ‘You know him – one of those lowlifes, never out of trouble,’ Sigurdur Óli said. ‘A brain-dead thug. Well, he was nearly killed the other day, just down the road from the station. Ring any bells?’

  Finnur continued to watch Sigurdur Óli in silence.

  ‘If you think you’re the only straight cop around here, you’re deluding yourself. So you’d better drop your preaching and your threats, and just let us both get on with our jobs.’

  Finnur’s eyes were riveted on him, as if he was trying to grasp what Sigurdur Óli was insinuating. Whether he understood or not, he swore violently at Sigurdur Óli before disappearing inside the house.

  When Sigurdur Óli went into the station late that afternoon he found a package waiting for him. The man who had brought it in had refused to leave his name but his description matched that of Andrés, the drunk who had accosted him behind the station. The package was wrapped in a large crumpled plastic bag from a supermarket, but the object it contained was so small that at first he thought there was nothing in the bag, that it was just some stupid prank. Finally, after he had turned it inside out and shaken it vigorously, the contents fell out on the floor.

  It was a rolled-up strip of eight-millimetre film. Sigurdur Óli placed the film on his desk and searched the bag again for a message or any more rolls of film, but there was nothing.

  He picked up the film and, unrolling it, held it up to his desk lamp and tried unsuccessfully to make out what was on it. Then he sat, deep in thought, picturing Andrés as he had stood behind the station, trying to work out what it could be that he wanted.

  He stared at the strip of film, unsure how he was supposed to react to this meagre offering in a dirty carrier bag. There could hardly be much to be gained from such a short piece of footage, and he had no idea why the film had been sent to his office.

  It transpired later that the film was twelve seconds long.

  22

  LÍNA’S COLLEAGUES AT the accountancy firm where she had worked as a secretary expressed themselves shocked and horrified by her fate when Sigurdur Óli went to visit them at lunchtime on Saturday. He had intended to leave it until Monday but was told that most of the staff would be working through the weekend because the company could hardly cope with all the business flooding through its doors. No one he spoke to could begin to imagine why Lína had been attacked or who could have wished her harm. He had a chat with one of her fellow secretaries and some of the accountants she worked for, as well as sitting down in a small meeting room with the deputy director, Ísleifur, with whom Lína had worked most closely. He was in his early fifties, overweight and prosperous-looking in an expensive bespoke suit. The company’s fortunes had been transformed by the economic boom and he put two mobile phones on the table in front of him, switched to silent mode, which took it in turn to vibrate during their conversation. Ísleifur glanced at the screens and dismissed the calls, answering only one, which presumably, to judge from the exchange that ensued, was from his wife. He told her gently that he was in a meeting and would call her back later; a line she seemed to have heard before.

  He described Lína as an outstanding emp
loyee, a verdict that everyone would endorse. It was true: no one Sigurdur Óli spoke to had a bad word to say about her.

  ‘I believe she was interested in becoming an accountant herself,’ Ísleifur said. ‘She had a good grasp of what the job entails, which is more than can be said of most,’ he added smugly.

  ‘Isn’t it just a question of adding and subtracting?’ Sigurdur Óli said.

  Ísleifur laughed drily. ‘That’s what many people assume, but I assure you there’s much more to it.’

  ‘Did Lína do a lot of work for you?’

  ‘I suppose you could say that. And she was a hard worker too. We often have to work late and at weekends, as you can see, but she never failed to pull her weight.’

  ‘What sort of business do you do here?’ asked Sigurdur Óli. ‘What kind of clients do you deal with?’

  ‘The whole spectrum,’ Ísleifur answered, picking up a vibrating phone, examining the screen and killing the call. ‘Individuals and corporate, big business. We do the whole caboodle, from the simplest bookkeeping to the most complicated contracts.’

  ‘Did Lína have a relationship with any of your clients?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Can you name any clients that Lína dealt with directly?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know …’

  One of the phones began to vibrate.

  ‘… do you mean involved with personally or …?’

  He checked the number and cut the call again.

  ‘Any sort of involvement – was she personally involved with any of the firm’s clients?’

  ‘Not that I’m aware of,’ answered Ísleifur. ‘Naturally you form more of a relationship with some clients than others, but as a rule it’s the accountants who get to know the clients rather than the secretaries.’

  ‘Do you know her husband, Ebeneser?’

  ‘Yes, but not well. He’s a guide or something, isn’t he? I know he’s organised corporate entertainment events for us in the highlands – barbecues on the Vatnajökull glacier, that sort of thing.’