The Commandments : A Novel (2021)

by Gudmundsson, Oskar

  Kolla fell silent and Salka sensed the anger in her. She tried to dampen it down.

  ‘We’ll see how things develop, Kolla.’

  ‘You can imagine what the media would make of it if they knew we had dinner with him, or if they knew about our acquaintance.’ This time there was a longer silence. ‘But that’s a problem for later. Take a look at the documents I sent through to you. One of those who made accusations lives in the north. You could have a word with him. And I spoke to Valgeir,’ she continued, changing the subject. ‘He wasn’t happy at all that this Skúli is being held. He said you were being…’

  ‘Skúli isn’t being held right now, but I suspect I’ll have good reason to speak to him again. With respect, Valgeir has to be able to say exactly what he thinks. But he comes across as being dissatisfied with everyone and everything,’ Salka said, suddenly aware of how sharp her tone had become.

  ‘I know. He can be cross-grained, but he’s a decent man. I hope you can get along with him until I get there, which hopefully won’t be long. Do you think that’ll work out?’

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ Salka said as the call ended.

  She dressed quickly, and sent Gísli a message telling him to meet her outside Hróbjartur’s place on Lundargata.

  Salka inspected the exterior of Hróbjartur’s house. It was a small, old detached house with two storeys, in one of the older districts, just to the north of Akureyri’s Hof cultural centre. The cladding was faded and white paint was flaking off the window frames.

  She had already looked up the details of a Nissan car that was registered in Hróbjartur’s name, but there was no such vehicle to be seen anywhere near the house.

  On the way there, she had called a locksmith, and found him waiting for her by the door. The sight of the man made her want to smile. He was someone she probably wouldn’t have trusted with her house keys. Dyed hair stood up at angles and a devil tattoo peeked over the neckline of his shirt. The letters F U C K were tattooed on the fingers of his left hand. She showed him the required warrant to open the building on her phone, and he set to work with his tools. It took the locksmith a matter of moments to open the door, and she went inside after thanking him, to which he responded with ‘have a great day, darling.’

  She stepped into a narrow hallway. There were a couple of freesheet papers, advertising leaflets and envelopes on the floor behind the front door. She snapped on gloves and crouched down to check the papers. The oldest was from three days before. She stood up and went into the darkness, to open a door leading to the kitchen, bathroom and living room. The air was stuffy, with curtains drawn over every window. Weak beams of evening sunshine flickered between the heavy living-room curtains that were swaying to and fro. She went over to them and saw that the window had been forced. A sound behind her made her start, and she spun around. She saw nothing to begin with, until a quick movement caught her eye. She glanced to one side and looked into the eyes of a black cat that had jumped onto the living room table.

  Salka made an effort to bring her quick breaths under control.

  The cat miaowed pitifully, and its tail stood up straight. It had to be looking for attention – or food. Salka left it to its own devices and, after checking each of the downstairs rooms, she looked up the steep carpeted steps leading to the upper floor. She couldn’t shake off the feeling that someone else, other than the cat, was in the house with her. She went cautiously upstairs and looked into the small bathroom, then pushed open another door to find what seemed to be a study. A few more steps took her to a closed door. She turned the handle and opened it. There was complete darkness inside. She felt along the wall by the door until she found a switch. The light illuminated a scene that made her blanch.

  ‘Hello,’ a voice behind her said.

  Salka flinched as if she had been punched. In what seemed a flash, and without a moment’s hesitation, she jerked her elbow back with all the force she could muster, into the belly of the person behind her.

  She turned to see a man bent double in front of her, both hands clasped to his belly as he whined in pain. Salka crouched down to get a sight of the man’s face.

  ‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing, taking me by surprise like that?’ she demanded, placing her hands on his shoulders.

  Gísli looked up at her, his face flushed bright red.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked once he had got his breath back. ‘Maybe I should ask what you’re up to?’ he said as he straightened up gingerly.

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to… How was I supposed to know it was you sneaking in here behind me?’ Salka laughed.

  ‘Sneaking? I wasn’t sneaking,’ he said with chagrin. ‘Didn’t you hear me? I called out more than once when I came in. The front door was open.’

  Once Gísli had recovered, they looked into Hróbjartur’s bedroom. Dark red letters on the headboard spelled out

  Thou shalt not…

  Salka went in cautiously. A heap of CDs and video cassettes had been piled up in the middle of the made up bed. On top of the heap lay the video camera that went with them.

  She picked up the camera and after turning it over in her hands, switched it on, and opened the screen window. She pressed the play button and Gísli leaned closer to see the screen.

  Someone holding the camera was pointing it at two boys romping in a hot tub. They looked to be fourteen or maybe fifteen years old. The recording was a little unclear, far from recent.

  The one who gets the other one’s pants off gets a prize, said someone behind the camera. It was a strong voice, but also had a certain tenderness to it – or not so much tenderness as a cajoling quality to it.

  The boys laughed and grappled, taking hold and each trying to rip off the other’s swimming trunks. It was difficult to make out what they said as they wrestled with each other.

  Careful, boys. Careful, the voice behind the camera said. Let’s not get the camera wet, it continued as drops of water landed on the lens. The hand holding the camera moved it randomly from side to side, as if trying to avoid any more splashes. Then it was again focused on the two boys.

  Sorry, sorry, sorry, one of them said, his face coming closer to the lens.

  Judging by his eyes and the way he slurred his words, it was clear to Salka that the lad was either drunk or under the influence of some other substance.

  The sequence ended abruptly, cutting to the two boys side by side in the hot tub, beers in their hands. They gazed at the camera as if dazed, their eyes blank.

  Shall we? the voice asked.

  The sequence again cut and resumed to show the boys entering the dim bedroom, naked.

  ‘Fucking hell!’ Gísli burst out, taking Salka by surprise.

  ‘That’s the second time today you’ve almost given me a heart attack,’ she smiled.

  ‘Sorry. But do we need to watch this?’

  Salka appeared not to have heard him as the sequence continued to play. She stopped it when she noticed that Gísli was looking away, and that he was as white as a sheet.

  ‘I know. It’s appalling. Are you all right?’ she asked, and there was no reply. ‘Gísli?’ she said, plucking at his sleeve.

  ‘Yes, fine,’ he said, startled.

  ‘Do you recognise those lads?’ she asked, without catching Gísli’s eye.

  ‘No,’ he said, absently.

  ‘And the voice?’

  ‘No. That’s not familiar either. It must be Hróbjartur. Or what do you think?’ he asked as she didn’t reply.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said at last, rewinding the tape. ‘There’s something I want to take another look at.’

  She pressed play again.

  Careful, boys. Careful, the voice could be heard saying, as the camera turned smartly to one side. Salka paused the replay. The image was blurred and far from clear. It was only when she had played and paused it a few times that she found a sharper image.

  ‘Where is this?’ she said, and looked up at Gísli, who was on his feet.r />
  He leaned forward and peered at the screen for a long time.

  ‘Not sure. But it’s familiar,’ he said, sounding breathless.

  ‘Gísli, are you sure you’re all right?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said firmly.

  ‘OK,’ she said, surprised at how taciturn he was being. ‘That mountain. Where’s that?’ she asked, pointing at the screen. Only the higher reaches of it could be seen, the lower slopes hidden behind a hedge. His hands shook as he took the camera and held the screen close to his face.

  ‘I’m not certain but it looks like Thengilshöfði.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ’It’s south of Grenivík,’ he said, handing the camera back.

  ‘And where could this have been taken?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Come on, Gísli. You know the area.’

  ‘It’s possible it’s taken from a summer house. There’s an estate of summer houses at Sunnuhlíð, just north of Grenivík. There’s a view from there over Thengilshöfði,’ he said after studying the screen again.

  ‘Thou shalt not…’ Salka said, looking up and reading the words to herself. ‘This refers to the Commandments, I guess.’

  ‘But which one?’

  ‘Not easy to tell. Maybe thou shalt not commit adultery. The Commandments hark back to the time they were written down. My best guess is that this refers to the tenth commandment, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife nor his manservant … How did it go again? Nor his maidservant, not his ox, nor his ass, not anything that is thy neighbour’s,’ she finished and turned to find that Gísli had gone.

  She hadn’t heard him leave the room.

  16

  ‘Any sign of his phone?’ Salka asked as Óttar emerged from the church and sat in Gísli’s patrol car.

  She was getting tired of all this driving, but the forty or so kilometres between Akureyri and Grenivík seemed to be getting shorter every trip. After watching the recording, they had decided to go straight back to Grenivík.

  ‘No. There was no phone on him,’ Óttar said. ‘Did you find anything at his house?’

  ‘No phone and no computer. Judging by the newspapers under his letterbox, Hróbjartur hadn’t been home for the last three days … hang on,’ she said, leaning forward to pull off one shoe and shake a piece of gravel from it. ‘But we found a video that was probably recorded here in the area. Gísli reckons it could have been somewhere up at Sunnuhlíð,’ she said, pointing northwards. ‘We’ll take a look and see if we can identify the location from the background. Anything else you can tell me about Hróbjartur?’

  ‘Not so far. The body will probably be sent to Reykjavík for the post-mortem. He was certainly made to suffer. He’d been restrained, judging by the marks we saw on his limbs and upper body. Those are marks that come from some real tension, so he must have struggled. He was badly beaten about the face, but had been cleaned up. The perpetrator made efforts to clean away any traces of blood.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘No idea. The genitals were removed with a very sharp implement. Parts were placed in the palm of each hand, and the rest in his mouth. He has stab wounds to the chest made by a large knife. We haven’t found the knife,’ Óttar said, opening a bottle and gulping down water. ‘The only traces of blood we have found were some very slight ones just inside the doors inside the church lobby.’

  ‘Do you know where that came from?’ Gísli asked.

  ‘No. Of course, it could be older drops of blood that were already there. We took the samples to the lab in Akureyri to be analysed. Apart from that, we’ll be finished here before long,’ he said, taking another long swallow from the bottle.

  ‘It’s getting on for seven-thirty, so Gísli and I are going to take a look at the Sunnuhlíð district.'

  Salka switched on the video camera and stared at the picture frozen on the screen, trying to work out the viewpoint, while Gísli drove slowly along the gravel road leading to Sunnuhlíð. There were a few summer houses each side of the road, but all of them stood on open ground. The place that had featured in the video was clearly surrounded by a thicket of trees.

  They were halfway up the slope when Salka asked Gísli to stop. She got out of the car and looked down at a large summer house below the road. A gravel track led down to an elderly Nissan pickup, which looked to be the one that was registered in Hróbjartur’s name.

  Salka’s phone rang. She answered it.

  ‘Thanks for that,’ she said, after listening for moment.

  ‘Who was that?’ Gísli asked.

  ‘Data. I asked if they could get a register of Hróbjartur’s property. He has a summer house right here in Sunnuhlíð.’

  Gísli drove down the lane. Salka peered into the silent car. They walked across a broad decking area and saw a hot tub next to the door. Salka went over to it, glanced at the video screen and compared it to the view. Thengilshöfði loomed above the spinney of trees at the edge of the plot. More of the mountain could be seen in the video, back when the trees had been smaller.

  ‘I reckon this is the right place,’ she said, handing the video camera to Gísli.

  She looked through a couple of windows before going to the door, and pulled on gloves before trying the handle, but found it locked. Salka walked around the building until she found an open window, where someone had unscrewed the window lock. Gísli held the window open wide while she wriggled through the gap. Inside, she stood in the middle of the room and listened. She looked around and saw a washing machine, washing lines strung from wall to wall, and a shower cubicle. It was always uncomfortable standing like this in an unfamiliar place, as if she was there without permission. She had often wondered if this was something that burglars felt. Apart from the occasional drop of water from the shower head, there was complete silence. She carefully pulled the matte shower curtain aside. Water dripped steadily into the wet shower tray, where someone had obviously taken a shower recently – or used it for something.

  Salka opened a door and went into the panelled living room that doubled as a kitchen. She stopped again, looked around and listened. She could smell the scent of pines. She hated this kind of silence, the kind of black silence that boded ill.

  In the little tiled hallway some coats hung on pegs. Several pairs of shoes had been lined up neatly by the wall.

  She opened the door to let Gísli in. As they crossed the floor, they both looked at the living room door. They both recognised the angle. That was where the boys had come in. Salka looked over the tidy kitchen. There were apples in a bowl on the table. There was no dirty crockery anywhere to be seen. She checked the two rooms that were open, and they stopped in front of a closed door. She felt a dark foreboding as she went closer. She could no longer smell the pines. She opened the door and switched on the light. They looked down at the neatly made double bed. A painting of a lake and a mountain surrounded by shafts of sunlight that were reminiscent of burned fingers hung over the head of the bed. The graceful necks of two swans in the middle of the lake formed a heart. Salka’s thought was that if this had been painted by a child, then there was a cuteness to it. If it had been painted by anyone with artistic aspirations, then it was simply bad.

  ‘Was that the painting in the video?’ she asked Gísli, who stood behind her.

  ‘Yes.’

  She stepped cautiously into the cramped bedroom and bent down. She lifted the bed cover and examined the wooden legs at the foot of the bed.

  ‘There are marks here,’ she said in a low voice.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Óttar said that Hróbjartur had been restrained hand and foot, and there are marks that would fit with that at the end of the bed.’

  Gísli squeezed past Salka and examined the frame at the head of the bed.

  ‘Same here,’ he said, shining the light of a little torch over what he saw.

  Salka lifted the bed cover and the duvet. There was no
trace of blood to be seen. She went back to the living room. Everything was neat and clean. There was nothing unusual to be seen anywhere, as if nobody had been here for some time. In the kitchen she opened the fridge, which contained a few essentials. The apples on the kitchen table were fresh.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ she said, after calling Óttar to let him know they had found the summer house. ‘It’s more than likely he was murdered in the bed that’s been made up nicely. Everything here is as spick and span as you could ask for. No sign of blood to be seen, although that could change when the forensic team take a look. The murderer presumably took Hróbjartur from here up to the church and laid him out there in front of the altar. The risks he must have taken … it’s all so, well, unbelievable.’

  ‘Salka!’ Gísli called. ‘In here. Look.’

  She went to where he stood in the bathroom. The front page of a newspaper had been taped to the mirror, where the headline Church Abuse Cover-Up could be seen. Some red writing could be seen along one side. Salka lifted it from the surface of the glass and could read what a familiar hand had written.

  Face in the mirror, you don’t listen

  17

  The wind had picked up and it was close to eleven by the time she was back in Akureyri and parking the car on Skipagata.

  Óttar and his forensics team had been to the summer house and had begun the painstaking process of examining the scene. They agreed that they would be in touch in the morning.