Black Skies de-8 Page 12

  ‘Her relationship? Fine, I think. It was a bit of a struggle though. They had massive debts — some sort of foreign currency loan, as well as loans on their car and the holiday cottage they’re building. They didn’t earn a huge amount but they wanted a share of the pie, you know? Didn’t want to deny themselves anything, so they just took out more loans. Isn’t that what everyone does nowadays?’

  ‘You mentioned a holiday cottage?’

  ‘Yes, in the south-west, at Grímsnes.’

  ‘I gather Ebeneser organised tours for your company,’ Sigurdur Óli said. ‘Corporate entertainments.’

  ‘Yes, he did two trips, I think. I didn’t go along but Lína did, of course. It’s supposed to be amazing — they’re two-to three-day tours, as far as I can remember. You know, jeep tours of the glacier. All these guys own off-roaders: the smaller their dicks, the bigger their cars.’ She flicked her cigarette into the mess of stubs. ‘Or at least that’s what Lína used to say.’

  ‘Was she speaking from personal experience?’ asked Sigurdur Óli.

  Kolfinna fished another cigarette from the packet, determined to make the most of her break.

  ‘Well, naturally, she had Ebbi.’

  She emitted an abrupt, husky laugh and Sigurdur Óli smiled.

  ‘Do you mean, had she been with any of those guys?’ Kolfinna asked, returning to his question. ‘She may well have done. Lína was the type, you know? She saw nothing wrong in sleeping around. Do the police know something? Was she involved with any of them?’

  Her interest was genuine and her disappointment obvious when Sigurdur Óli claimed to have no information on that score. He asked if she could provide him with the names of clients who had participated in the glacier tours run by Ebeneser, and she said nothing could be easier, she had the lists on her computer. Although she was not aware that the couple had been in the sort of difficulties that might result in a visit from a debt collector, she reiterated that they owed a lot of money and pointed out that Lína had never been one to talk much about herself. They had got on well and worked together for several years but the truth was that Kolfinna knew very little about Lína’s life.

  ‘She was brilliant to work with,’ she said, ‘but she always kept you at a certain distance, you know? That’s just how she was. It never bothered me though.’

  ‘Did she ever give any indication of being frightened, or in danger, or mixed up in something she couldn’t handle?’ asked Sigurdur Óli.

  ‘No,’ replied Kolfinna. ‘Everything was fine with Lína, as far as I know.’

  She could only locate the list for one of the jeep trips on her computer, but printed it out, saying she would email him the other as soon as she found it. Sigurdur Óli glanced down the list but did not recognise any of the names.

  Later that afternoon Elínborg rang to ask if he could help her out in the evening. Despite feeling that he had better things to do on a Saturday night, he let himself be persuaded. Elínborg was engaged in a tough case, working almost day and night on the Thingholt murder. She picked him up and they drove to meet a man called Valur, a uniquely irritating character who immediately succeeded in annoying Sigurdur Óli further.

  ‘Have you heard anything from Erlendur?’ asked Sigurdur Óli once the visit was over and they were getting back into the car. He remembered the phone call from Eva Lind who had been asking after her father.

  ‘Nothing at all,’ Elínborg answered wearily. ‘Didn’t he say he was heading east for a few days?’

  ‘How long ago was that?’

  ‘A week, probably.’

  ‘How long a holiday was he planning to take?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What was he doing out east anyway?’

  ‘Visiting where he grew up.’

  ‘Any word from that woman he’s seeing?’

  ‘Valgerdur? No. Perhaps I should ring her, find out if he’s been in touch with her.’

  23

  Sigurdur Óli was lurking in his car outside the block of flats for the second Sunday in a row, keeping an eye on the newspaper that protruded from one of the postboxes in the lobby. He had taken up position early that morning, shortly after the paper was delivered, and watched the comings and goings, keeping himself warm with the car heater. He had brought a Thermos of coffee and something to read — the papers and a handful of new holiday brochures for Florida. If anything, there were even fewer people about than the previous Sunday. No sign of the girl who had staggered up the stairs, or that waster who called himself a composer. Time crawled by. Sigurdur Óli read every word of the papers and pored avidly over the sunny images in the Florida brochures. He had switched on the radio but could find nothing to his taste, despite flicking from talk shows to music stations and back again. Finally he found a station playing classic rock and settled on that.

  An elderly man walked into the block carrying a bag from a nearby bakery. He did not give the paper so much as a glance, but at the sight of the man’s bag Sigurdur Óli was assailed by hunger pangs. The bakery was only just round the corner; he would be able to see the sign if he reversed a few metres. He considered his situation. He could almost smell the aroma of fresh baking, so strong was his desire, if only for a scone, but on the other hand he might miss the thief. I wonder if there’s a queue? he thought, craning his neck in the direction of the bakery.

  Little of interest happened until just before midday when an elderly woman came down into the lobby and, after peering out through the glass door, turned to the postboxes, seized the newspaper without hesitation and pushed open the door to the stairwell again. Sigurdur Óli, who had been struggling with the crossword while trying to stave off his hunger, threw it down, leapt out of the car and charged inside, jamming his foot between the inner door and the frame, and caught the woman red-handed as she began to climb the stairs.

  ‘What are you doing with that?’ he demanded sharply, taking hold of the woman’s arm.

  She stared at him in terror.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ she said. ‘You can’t have my paper!’ She began to cry ‘Thief!’ in a weak voice.

  ‘I’m no thief,’ said Sigurdur Óli, ‘I’m from the police. Why are you stealing Gudmunda’s paper?’

  The woman’s expression relaxed.

  ‘Are you Gagga’s son?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Sigurdur Óli replied, taken aback.

  ‘I’m Gudmunda, dear.’

  Sigurdur Óli released her arm.

  ‘Didn’t Gagga talk to you?’ he said. ‘I was going to keep an eye on the paper for you.’

  ‘Oh, heavens, yes, but I did so want to read it.’

  ‘But you can’t read the paper if I’m supposed to be watching it.’

  ‘No,’ said Gudmunda, continuing on her way up the stairs, unperturbed, ‘that’s the snag. Do give my regards to your mother, dear.’

  Shortly afterwards, as he prepared to tuck into the lunch she had cooked for him, Sigurdur Óli reported this exchange to Gagga, adding that he had no intention of lying in wait for the paper thief again. There would be no more of that nonsense.

  Gagga seemed to derive some amusement from her son’s displeasure. She stood behind him, struggling to suppress her laughter, then offered him a second helping and expressed surprise at his appetite.

  When she had poured the coffee, she asked if his father had spoken to him. Sigurdur Óli described how he had turned up at the station with the news about his prostate.

  ‘I expect the poor man was a bit anxious?’ said his mother, sitting down with him at the kitchen table. ‘He sounded pretty subdued when he rang to tell me.’

  ‘Not that I noticed,’ said Sigurdur Óli. ‘I’m going to look in on him later as the operation’s tomorrow. He said I should get myself checked out — that I was in a risk group.’

  ‘Then you should do it,’ Gagga said. ‘He mentioned it to me too. Don’t put it off.’

  Sigurdur Óli sipped his coffee, thinking about his father and mother and their relat
ionship back in the days when they were still together. He remembered overhearing a conversation about himself; that for his sake they could not get divorced. That had been his father. Whereas Gagga had said she could look after him perfectly well on her own. His father had done what he could to avoid a divorce but it was no good. It had felt inevitable when he moved out, taking a couple of suitcases stuffed full of clothes, an old trunk that had been in his family a long time, a table that was his, pictures, books and various other bits and pieces, all of which disappeared into a small van parked outside the block of flats. Gagga had been out that day. Sigurdur Óli and his father had said their goodbyes in the car park, though his father had pointed out that it was not really goodbye as they would still see a lot of each other.

  ‘Perhaps it’s for the best,’ he had said. ‘Not that I really understand what’s going on.’ The words had stuck in Sigurdur Óli’s mind.

  When he had asked his mother why, he had received no satisfactory answer. ‘It’s been over between us for a long time,’ she had said, then told him not to pester her any more with such questions.

  As long as he could remember, his father had bent over backwards to please her, until by the end he was completely under her thumb. She used to humiliate him in front of Sigurdur Óli who would wait in vain for his father to react, to do something, say something, lose his temper, shout at her, tell her in no uncertain terms what an unjust, domineering bitch she was. But he never said a word, never showed any backbone, just let her walk all over him. Sigurdur Óli knew that his mother was not blameless — she was born demanding and inflexible — but he also started to see his father in a new light and began to blame him, mentally accusing him of spinelessness and of failing to keep their family together. He trained himself to be indifferent to him.

  He would never allow himself to be pushed about in a relationship like that; he would do his damnedest to avoid turning out like his father.

  ‘What did you see in him when you first met?’ he asked his mother, finishing his coffee.

  ‘Your dad?’ Gagga said, offering him more. He refused it and rose. He needed to head over to the hospital and wanted to call at the station afterwards.

  ‘What was it?’ he asked again.

  Gagga regarded him thoughtfully.

  ‘I thought he had more guts, but your dad never had any guts.’

  ‘He was always trying to please you,’ Sigurdur Óli pointed out. ‘I remember it distinctly. And I remember how often you were nasty to him.’

  ‘What’s this about? Why are you raking this up now? Is it because of what’s happened between you and Bergthóra? Are you having regrets?’

  ‘Perhaps I sided with you too much. Perhaps I should have stuck up for him more.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have had to make the choice. The marriage was over. It had nothing to do with you.’

  ‘No,’ said Sigurdur Óli. ‘It had nothing to do with me. That’s what you’ve always said. Do you think that was fair?’

  ‘Well, what do you want me to say? Anyway, why are you brooding over this now? It was all such a long time ago.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ said Sigurdur Óli. ‘Whatever, I’ve got to go.’

  ‘I had nothing against Bergthóra.’

  ‘That’s not what she says.’

  ‘Never mind what she says; it doesn’t make her right.’

  ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Give my regards to your father,’ said Gagga, clearing away the cups.

  His father was asleep when Sigurdur Óli went to visit him in the urology ward at the National Hospital on Hringbraut, near the old town centre. Unwilling to wake him, he sat down to wait. His father had a room to himself and lay there, wrapped in silence under the white bedclothes.

  As Sigurdur Óli waited for him to stir, he thought about Bergthóra, wondering if he had been too inflexible and whether it was too late to rescue the situation.

  24

  By Monday afternoon the search for Thórarinn had still not yielded any result. The police had interviewed a large number of people who either knew him or had some connection to him, including other van drivers, relatives and regular customers, but no one had heard from him or knew where he was hiding, though various theories were put forward. The police followed up some, though others were deemed too far-fetched to be worth investigating. Wanted notices had been put out for him in the media using a recent photo supplied by his wife. The police announcement warned that he was wanted in connection with the murder of Sigurlína Thorgrímsdóttir and might be dangerous. They did not have to wait long before news of sightings started to flood in, not only from Reykjavík but from other parts of the country, even from as far away as the East Fjords.

  While this was going on, Sigurdur Óli spent the best part of the day dealing with another, more puzzling matter that required him, among other things, to find a lip-reader. He finally managed to arrange a meeting with one towards evening. At Elínborg’s suggestion, he had called the Society for the Deaf and the woman in the office there had proved very helpful, providing further contacts until he was eventually put in touch with a woman reputed to be one of the top lip-readers in the country. He emailed her and they arranged to meet at Hverfisgata at six.

  Sigurdur Óli wanted her to watch the film clip that had been sent to him wrapped in a dirty carrier bag.

  He had handed the film over to the experts who examined it, transferred it to DVD and did their best to clean it up and sharpen the images in the limited time available. The film turned out to be an eight-millimetre Kodak type, which the firm had stopped making in 1990. From the contents, it appeared to be an amateur effort intended for home viewing, though it was very hard to be certain, or indeed to guess, what country it had been filmed in. It might be Icelandic but could equally well be foreign, as one of the technicians put it bluntly when he rang Sigurdur Óli with the results of his analysis.

  For a variety of reasons it was difficult to guess where or when the film had been recorded. For one thing, it had a very narrow field of view, as the technician explained, referring to the fact that not much of the surroundings were visible, apart from a glimpse of a piece of furniture that might have been a bed or a couch. In this respect the material offered very little to go on. It could have been recent, meaning shortly before 1990, but then again it could date from the period when this type of Kodak film was most commonly used, around half a century ago. There was no way of telling. Moreover, the clip was extremely short — sixteen frames a second, 192 frames in all — and the view was the same in all of them, same angle, same movement. It was clearly shot indoors, in a house or flat where people were living at the time, and the presence of a bed or couch would suggest a bedroom. But in the absence of any view from a window there was no way to locate the house: the lens was pointed downwards throughout the clip.

  The clip was also silent and yet words were clearly being spoken. The technicians could not distinguish them, however, nor could Sigurdur Óli work out what was being said, and it was then that the idea of a lip-reader came to him.

  He would not have been interested in the film at all, but for what those twelve brief seconds failed to show. What caught Sigurdur Óli’s attention was what was hinted at. For the clip, however uninformative, told a very specific story; it was a silent witness to the misfortune and suffering endured by some of the most helpless members of society, giving a depressing promise of more and worse events than those it revealed. There was no reason to discount these fears, bearing in mind the manner in which the film clip had come into police hands. Experience suggested otherwise. Sigurdur Óli could not shake off the feeling that something much more harrowing would be revealed if the rest of the film could be found.

  It was nearly six when he was called down to the lobby with the news that two women had arrived to see him. One, the lip-reader, was called Elísabet; the other, Hildur, was a sign-language interpreter. They exchanged introductions, then went up to Sigurdur Óli’s office where he had positioned a
trolley carrying a DVD player and flat-screen TV. They took their seats on three chairs that he had arranged in front of the TV and he explained the situation in more detail for the lip-reader. The police had been sent a clip from a film but did not know exactly who it belonged to. It showed a possible crime, which seemed to have taken place at some indeterminate time in the past, and she might be able to help them by providing the missing soundtrack to the images. The sign-language interpreter conveyed his words as he was speaking. The two women could not have been more different: the lip-reader was around thirty, slender and petite, almost bird-like — she looked to Sigurdur Óli as fragile as a china doll — whereas the interpreter was a tall, immensely fat woman in her late fifties, with a booming voice. She had perfect hearing and it was fairly evident that she had never been mute, but what mattered was the unusual speed at which she was able to sign; nothing threw her, and she interpreted the lip-reader’s words clearly and concisely.

  They watched the film. Then watched it again. Then a third time. What they saw was a boy of not much older than ten, who was trying to get away from the unseen person holding the camera. The boy was naked and fell off what appeared to be a couch or bed, lay on the floor for a moment, then crawled away from the camera, spider-like, looking directly either at the camera or at the person holding it, his lips moving. His grotesque efforts to escape were reminiscent of an animal in a trap. It was obvious that he was terrified of the cameraman and he appeared to be begging for mercy. The clip broke off as suddenly as it had begun, during a scene of helplessness and degradation. The suffering in the boy’s face distressed the two women as much as it had Sigurdur Óli when he first watched it. They both turned to him.

  ‘Who is it?’ Hildur asked. ‘Who’s the boy?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ Sigurdur Óli answered, and Hildur interpreted his words. ‘We’re trying to find out.’

  ‘What happened to him?’ asked Elísabet.