The Shadow District Page 9

  ‘Was Rósamunda interested in that sort of thing?’

  ‘God, no, not in the slightest. She didn’t believe in it. Thought it was a load of old mumbo jumbo. And when he said that to her … the filthy sod …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Like I said, I was going to come and see you about something that happened to Rósamunda. But she didn’t like talking about it and begged me not to tell anyone.’

  ‘Oh? What was it?’

  ‘She refused to tell me who the man was or where it happened. Only that it did and that it was horrible. Disgusting. There was never any question of keeping the baby when she found out she was in the family way. I don’t know …’ The girl faltered, then made herself say it: ‘He raped her. Rósamunda came round here afterwards and stayed with me for two days before she could face going home. She was in a terrible state …’

  ‘Was this about three months ago?’ asked Flóvent.

  The girl nodded.

  ‘Who raped her?’

  ‘A “bloody bastard”, she said. She couldn’t go home so she stayed here with me until she’d recovered a bit.’

  ‘Did she tell you who he was?’ asked Thorson.

  ‘No. She just said he was completely off his rocker. I found her waiting for me outside when I got home, her clothes all torn. She was a dreadful sight. He told her to blame it on the huldufólk. Told her to say she’d been on Öskjuhlíd hill and one of the hidden people had attacked her. So you can tell he was completely unhinged.’

  ‘The huldufólk?’

  ‘I wish she’d reported him. I wish she’d said who he was. She shouldn’t have let him get away with it. She should have shouted his name from the rooftops, told everyone what he did to her, refused to leave him alone.’

  ‘What’s this about the huldufólk?’ asked Flóvent. ‘Are you sure she wasn’t interested in the supernatural?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did she believe in stories about the elves?’ asked Thorson.

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Then what did she mean?’ asked Flóvent.

  ‘Search me. She wouldn’t say any more. Only that the man was off his rocker.’

  Flóvent and Thorson caught each other’s eye.

  ‘Do you know if she had any contact with her family up north?’ asked Flóvent.

  ‘No, very little. Some of her brothers had moved south – two of them, I think. She said something about them working for the army. In Hvalfjördur or somewhere like that.’

  ‘What did she do in the evenings after work?’ asked Thorson.

  ‘Just went home, I think. She often worked late – far too often, if you ask me. We sometimes went to the pictures or dancing at Hótel Borg, but mostly she just slaved away for the old bag. Then, after she was raped, she stopped going out altogether.’

  ‘Do you know if she was acquainted with anyone from the supply depot in the theatre building?’

  ‘No, I very much doubt it.’

  ‘Or if she knew a soldier called Frank Carroll?’ asked Flóvent.

  ‘She never mentioned a Frank.’

  ‘He might have been calling himself Frank Ruddy.’

  The girl shook her head again.

  ‘She wasn’t in the Situation?’ asked Thorson.

  ‘No. Definitely not.’

  ‘Did she have a boyfriend?’ asked Flóvent.

  ‘No. Unless she met him very recently.’

  ‘No boys she was interested in?’

  ‘No. Rósamunda wasn’t really the type.’

  ‘You say she was determined to get rid of the baby. Do you know who performed the abortion?’

  ‘She wouldn’t tell me who it was. She was ashamed of what she’d done and didn’t want to discuss it. So I avoided bringing it up.’

  ‘But you spoke to her afterwards?’

  ‘Yes. She was so crushed by the whole thing. Was feeling so terrible. Actually, I …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know who fixes that sort of thing here in town, but my mum knows a woman who makes all kinds of herbal cures. I told Rósamunda about her and I know for a fact she was going to pay her a visit.’

  ‘And who is this woman?’

  ‘Her name’s Vigga and she lives in the Shadow District. I’m pretty sure Rósamunda did go and see her.’

  Thorson jotted down the name.

  ‘And she definitely didn’t tell you who raped her?’ asked Flóvent.

  ‘No,’ said the girl with the raven-black hair, frowning. ‘I don’t know why she protected the bastard. I just couldn’t understand it.’

  17

  Konrád downloaded newspapers from the archives, a page at a time, reading reports of air raids on Berlin and a lull in the fighting in Italy. News of the war tended to dominate, interspersed with domestic reports of political infighting and shipping losses. ‘The Ódinn Believed Lost with Five Men.’ ‘Preparations in Full Swing for Independence Celebrations at Thingvellir.’ They were all freely available online and Konrád carefully scanned the papers from the time of the girl’s death and a good while afterwards. However, he could find few articles about the case apart from the ones Thorson had kept, and those he did find told him nothing new. Censorship had been in operation during the war, Konrád reminded himself, to ensure that nothing would be printed that might be of advantage to the enemy, but that could hardly have applied to the case of the strangled girl.

  He had also searched the CID archives for old files relating to the inquiry but found next to nothing. It seemed that almost everything relating to the case had been lost, and he could find no indication that it had ever gone to court. All he managed to turn up was part of an interview with a witness, the woman who had found the body. She claimed she had seen a girl running away from the theatre. In the margin of the witness statement someone had written a name. Konrád copied it down.

  It was possible that the case had been handed over to the military authorities. At the time, the occupation forces had included servicemen from Norway, Canada, Britain and the United States, though the Americans were by far and away the largest group. If it had turned out that the girl’s killer was subject to the jurisdiction of the occupying military powers, that might explain why there had been so little about the incident in the Icelandic press and police records.

  Konrád searched for other stories from the first few months of 1944, the historic year Iceland had become an independent republic, the year he was born. According to his father, news of the notorious seance held at their flat had found its way into the papers. Konrád had never checked whether or not this was true, but he took the opportunity now, sifting carefully through the dailies in search of anything about a fraudulent medium and his accomplice.

  The first he’d heard of the affair was when his Aunt Kristjana stormed into the flat like a whirlwind from the north and unleashed a tirade of recriminations against her brother, full of obscure accusations about ‘that seance’ and warning him to keep his nose out of matters he had no business meddling in. That had been almost a decade after the event. Her anger had been sparked by a newspaper obituary for Rósamunda’s adoptive father who had died in hospital after a short illness. Aunt Kristjana had given her brother a crude tongue-lashing about honour and shame and what a good-for-nothing scoundrel he was to treat people like that, until he lost patience and told her if she didn’t shut up she could just sod off back up north.

  His father had held no further seances at their flat. He was no longer a member of the Society for Psychical Research, from which he had previously selected his victims, and had ceased all collaboration with mediums. Konrád’s mother had divorced her husband by the time of Aunt Kristjana’s visit, utterly sick of her life with him, of his duplicity, his swindling and the small-time crooks he associated with. Not only was he unreliable and incapable of holding down a job, but he drank heavily in the company of riff-raff, had dared to raise his fist to her and repeatedly humiliated her in front of his friends. One day she announced that s
he’d had enough, she was leaving him and taking the kids. ‘Do what you like,’ Konrád’s father had yelled at her, ‘you can bugger off and take the girl with you, but you’re not having my boy!’ She hadn’t let this stop her, though she had hoped against hope that he would relent and let her have Konrád. It was not to be, however, and the matter remained a source of bitter conflict between them.

  Following Aunt Kristjana’s visit, Konrád had asked his father what she meant about a seance.

  ‘Don’t you start,’ he said, ruffling his son’s hair. ‘It’s nothing to worry your head about. My sister’s always been half-cracked.’

  Konrád went on downloading newspaper pages from 1944 until at last his attention was caught by a headline: ‘Stir at Seance’. It turned out to be a fairly detailed account of a seance recently held in the Shadow District, which had been exposed as a hoax, much to the disgust of those in attendance, especially an older couple who had recently suffered a tragic loss. No names were given, but the article referred to a veteran psychic and his accomplice, a family man whose home was used for the meeting, who had conspired to elicit information from the sitters, then pretended it had been channelled through the medium from beyond the grave. An ugly trick, the newspaper called it, adding that the couple who had sought their services had been distressed in light of their bereavement and …

  Konrád had read enough. He closed the page and didn’t search for any other references to the incident. Suddenly he didn’t want to know what the papers had to say. Rising from his chair, he went into the kitchen and put on some coffee. Then he fished out a scrap of paper from his pocket: he had jotted down the name from the margin of the witness statement. It was a woman’s name he’d not heard before and thought was probably uncommon in Iceland. It was almost certainly borrowed from Danish. Settling in front of his computer again, he clicked on the telephone directory and entered the name. There was only one result.

  ‘No harm in trying,’ he told himself, picking up his phone and tapping in the number.

  It rang for a while.

  ‘Hello?’ he heard a voice that was elderly but clear answer at last.

  ‘Is that Ingiborg?’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘Ingiborg Ísleifsdóttir?’

  ‘Yes, speaking,’ said the woman. ‘Who’s calling, please?’

  18

  It didn’t take Flóvent long to find the right address, a small house clad in corrugated iron, with a cellar and a tiny attic, which stood on the edge of the Shadow District. He climbed the short flight of steps and rapped on the door. No one answered. There was a small yard behind the house and, rounding the corner, Flóvent saw that the owner had converted it into a vegetable garden. He was turning to go back to the street when the cellar door opened and out stepped a woman in a ragged jumper, dirty linen trousers and a pair of waders, with long woollen socks showing over the tops. Her thick shock of hair made her head seem huge. She was carrying an empty bucket.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked, slamming the cellar door behind her and securing it with a padlock.

  ‘Excuse me, are you Vigga?’ asked Flóvent.

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘I’m from the Reykjavík police. I’m investigating the death of the girl whose body was found behind the National Theatre. You may have heard about it. Her name was Rósamunda.’

  ‘Nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Is your name Vigga?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what they call me.’

  ‘I wondered if I might have a word with you.’

  ‘I’ve nothing to say to you,’ said Vigga and stumped off up the steps. She obviously had no intention of letting Flóvent interrupt her chores.

  ‘I hear you know a lot about Icelandic herbs.’

  ‘What business is that of yours?’

  ‘And understand their healing properties.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that.’

  ‘And destructive powers.’

  ‘Look, I haven’t got time for this,’ said Vigga. ‘Please get out of my garden.’

  She went into the house, shutting the door behind her and leaving Flóvent standing there like an idiot. Determined not to admit defeat so easily, he climbed back up the steps and banged on the door. A long interval elapsed before Vigga appeared again.

  ‘I thought I asked you to leave.’

  ‘I understand Rósamunda may have come to you for help. I wanted to know if she had, and, if so, what passed between you.’

  He pulled out a photograph of Rósamunda that her parents had given him and showed it to the woman. ‘This is the girl.’

  Vigga studied the picture for a while, then regarded Flóvent impassively with small, catlike eyes. Her brow was high under the wild mop of hair, her face narrow with thin, almost invisible lips, her sour expression hinting at a life of hardship.

  ‘She did come here.’

  ‘What did she want from you?’

  ‘She was in a wretched state, poor thing. At her wits’ end.’ Vigga gave Flóvent a searching look. ‘Come in, then.’ She opened the door wider and went back inside. ‘I don’t suppose I’ll be able to get rid of you. But I’m not offering you anything. I don’t have any coffee and it’s no good asking me for booze.’

  ‘I don’t want anything,’ Flóvent assured her, following her inside.

  Vigga led the way through a small hall to the kitchen and gestured to Flóvent to take a seat at the table. He didn’t get a glimpse into any of the other rooms. He sat down and Vigga positioned herself by the old coal range. She appeared to be making a concoction involving dried Iceland moss, reindeer lichen and wild thyme. The kitchen window faced the street and he saw a woman walk past in the gathering dusk, pushing a pram.

  ‘I’m experimenting with dyes,’ Vigga explained, when Flóvent expressed curiosity about the plants. ‘For an artist here in town. You won’t have heard of him. He’s nothing special.’

  ‘Do you make herbal cures? Mountain plants have strong medicinal powers, don’t they?’

  ‘Sometimes. If I’m asked to.’

  ‘Did Rósamunda ask you to help her?’

  ‘She told me her problem. Took her forever to spit it out. I told her straight off there was nothing I could do for her. She was almost hysterical, poor child, when she first arrived, but she soon calmed down. Sat where you’re sitting now. I gave her a tea that I brew myself. Felt sorry for her. I get visits like that from time to time because they think I’m some kind of witch who can sort out their problem. It’s to do with the soldiers, if you get my meaning. I directed her to a woman I know, but I’ve no idea if she ever went to see her.’

  ‘Which woman is that?’

  ‘I’m no snitch. You won’t get her name out of me so don’t bother asking.’

  ‘All right. Then what did you and Rósamunda talk about?’

  ‘The huldufólk, mostly. She started rabbiting on about the elves for some reason, so I told her about that girl up north in Öxarfjördur.’

  ‘What girl up north?’

  ‘The one who went missing.’

  ‘Who was she?’

  ‘A girl from the countryside. I met her once when I was working as a cook for the road-building crew. Hrund, her name was, if I remember right.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  Vigga stuck a sprig of wild thyme in her mouth and tipped the reindeer lichen into the concoction in the saucepan. Then she began to relate the story of a girl who had grown up on a poor croft in a rural farming community up north, one of a large brood of children; she’d received a good Christian upbringing and had just started walking out with a boy from the same district. One day, when she was twenty, she was sent to see her eldest sister, who was married and lived on a nearby farm. The girl arrived on foot at the appointed time, completed her business and set off home. But she didn’t turn up until twenty-four hours later, and when she did she was in a state of shock, weeping uncontrollably one minute, unable to speak the next, and proved incapable of explaining whe
re she’d been, how she’d come to lose some of her underwear, why one of the sleeves on her jumper was torn, and how she had come by the injuries to her face and neck. She was terrified of being left alone and refused to leave the house. When questioned, all she would say was that she’d got lost and couldn’t really remember what had happened. She’d been out all night and only found her way home in the morning.

  After two days she was a little calmer but still refused to describe what had happened in any detail. And she was in such a fragile state that no one had the heart to coax or scold her into revealing the truth. It would all come out in time, but no one could fail to see that she had gone through some terrible ordeal.

  ‘They should have kept a better watch on the poor child,’ said Vigga, ‘because one morning they found her bed empty. She’d run away in the night and was never seen again. They’d been keeping a close eye on her, but not close enough. They checked all the neighbouring farms but nobody had seen her. Later a big search party was sent out but they never found anything.’

  ‘Was this after the British occupation?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Were there troops in the area, do you happen to know?’ asked Flóvent.

  ‘There were soldiers around – at Kópasker, for example. You used to see them from time to time.’

  ‘Was the girl involved with one of them?’

  ‘I don’t think so. But you never know.’

  ‘So it’s not impossible?’

  ‘I really couldn’t say.’

  ‘What did people think had happened?’

  ‘There were rumours doing the rounds that she wasn’t right in the head. That she may even have lied about the incident, invented it to cover up something else, something she didn’t want people to know about.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Haven’t a clue.’ Vigga stirred the contents of the pan. ‘Nobody knew for sure.’

  ‘What do you think happened to her?’

  ‘How should I know? Some people thought she’d thrown herself into the waterfall at Dettifoss. But that’s just a guess. Nobody knows what became of her.’