The Commandments : A Novel (2021)

by Gudmundsson, Oskar

  ‘Frightened, Helgi?’ whispered the voice of the man on top of him, as the sock as pulled from his mouth. He adjusted his leather gloves.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fact number one. You don’t have long to live. Maybe twenty minutes. Fact number two. If you shout, then that time is significantly shortened. You’ll have a minute of life left. Maybe two. You understand that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Helgi said, in the same low voice as the man used.

  ‘And we’re going to take care to keep our voices down, aren’t we?’

  Helgi nodded.

  ‘And we’re going to take care to tell the truth, aren’t we? Are you the Helgi who likes young boys?’

  He said nothing.

  ‘I repeat. Are you the Helgi who likes young boys?’

  Still no reply.

  ‘For the last time,’ the man said, his finger seeking the point below Helgi’s Adam’s apple and applying pressure. ‘Are you the Helgi who likes young boys?’

  He released the pressure as the shade of Helgi’s face couldn’t be mistaken. Helgi made a sound, as if trying to say something.

  ‘Who are you?’ he gasped once he had caught his breath.

  ‘That’s not important. What matters is who you are, and who you were.’

  ‘I don’t understand … I’m just … What do you want?’

  ‘Correct me if I’m wrong. You directed the Dynheimar amateur dramatic society. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘Good grief, that was years ago!’

  ‘Yes or no, Helgi?’ the man said, one finger on his throat, looking for the spot.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And today you do youth work and you’re a deacon?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’re still abusing young boys, aren’t you?’

  Helgi was silent.

  The man pulled off one glove, reaching inside the waistband of his own trousers, and then held his fingers under Helgi’s nose.

  ‘Familiar?’

  Silence.

  ‘No?’

  Still silence.

  ‘That’s the smell the boys know,’ the man said, replacing his glove. ‘Open your mouth, Helgi.’

  Again, no reply – no response.

  ‘Open your mouth,’ the man repeated, gripping Helgi’s cheeks, squeezing them together. Helgi’s mouth opened and the man again stuffed the sock into it. He took hold of Helgi’s forehead as if to keep it steady. One hand was slowly lifted, as if he was pulling back on a bowstring.

  Helgi felt everything in his head shaken loose as the gloved fist slammed into his cheekbone. A piercing pain burst out in his temples. A high-pitched whine hissed in his ears.

  He was dimly aware of the sock being removed from his mouth.

  ‘Good with names, are you, Helgi?’

  Silence.

  The man slapped his cheek.

  ‘Names? Yes … or … think so.’

  ‘Do you remember…?’ the man said, leaning close to him and whispering in his ear.

  Helgi stayed silent.

  ‘Come on, Helgi,’ the man said, straightening up. ‘Of course you remember them. You’ve only just stopped abusing them. You and your friends.’

  There was still no reply.

  ‘But do you remember…?’ he said, whispering again in his ear. ‘Isn’t that right, Helgi?’ he continued, coming close to his face, so that the tips of their noses touched. ‘You liked him, didn’t you? At any rate, you abused him on eleven occasions. Let’s say that he remembers eleven times, but there were many more, weren’t there?’

  The man straightened his back and looked around, puffed loudly. He looked at Helgi again.

  ‘Your whole life has been about getting into jobs and positions that put you in contact with young boys. It’s what your life has revolved around. Getting close to them. Building up their trust in you, slow and steady. Murdering their souls. He was the one who had never been able to trust anyone, not even his closest relatives. But he trusted you implicitly. Once you had built up his trust, you all got to work. You stopped seeing him as a person. Isn’t that the way it was?’ the man said, his face again coming close to Helgi’s. He stared deep into his eyes. ‘You saw him as disposable trash. But that’s what happens with stuff that’s supposed to be disposable. You only use it once. Yet, even though he had been ruined after being raped that first time, you used him again and again. That’s what you did with those boys. You murdered their souls not just once, but many times. But you’re innocent, aren’t you? Those boys wanted it, offered it. Tell me, Helgi, when you see yourself in the mirror in the mornings, do you see yourself as good looking?’

  There was no response.

  ‘Sure, you do. You look in the mirror and take a look at those grey bags under your eyes,’ he said, touching them. ‘That dirty, coarse skin,’ he continued, stroking Helgi’s cheek with a sound that was reminiscent of sandpaper. ‘And you believe people think there’s gel in your hair when you pull it back into that greasy ponytail. And you really believe that the stink of you is hidden if you squirt on some cheap aftershave? Can you see your dick when you take a piss? You’ve convinced yourself that they wanted it, that all of those boys found you simply irresistible.’

  He stuffed the sock back into Helgi’s mouth. He raised a hand and rammed a bunched fist into his temple.

  ‘You know the Commandments, Helgi,’ the man said, even though he had lost consciousness. He lifted himself off and sat on the edge of the bed. He took off the balaclava and went into the living room to fetch the backpack he had let fall as he had rushed in. Then he placed it on the table, opened it and examined the contents.

  ‘What on earth is going on?’ the woman asked as she brought the plates into the kitchen, where her husband stacked them in the dishwasher.

  ‘He must be hanging up pictures, or something,’ he said as the hammering stopped.

  ‘A whole load of pictures,’ she said, glancing at the kitchen clock. ‘Is he allowed to do that?’

  ‘Yes, that’s all right. It’s only a quarter to ten. Now stop this endless fretting. Shall we take a stroll?’

  Half an hour later they stood on the pavement by the front door. A fresh wind blew and the woman supported herself with a hand on the rail as she went down the steps. For a brief moment she caught sight of the back of a man with a backpack who strode from the steps outside Helgi’s door and out into the street.

  Salka opened her eyes, leaning against the front door she had just closed. She could hear the neighbour making her way down the steps outside.

  She went back into the apartment. She looked at the trail of blood across the floor from the bedroom into the dark living room. She glanced around but couldn’t see a light switch anywhere and went cautiously into the room.

  Salka took a deep breath, held it for a moment, and shone the torch in her phone on the floor, where the trail of blood went to the middle of the room and then swerved to one side. A pair of feet were illuminated by the beam of light. She moved the light up the wall.

  She looked at Helgi.

  Then she went cautiously to open the bathroom door. The pale light that shone through the frosted matt window was cold.

  She switched on the light to read the words that had been written in blood red letters on the mirror.

  Farewell with a kiss

  21

  ‘Getting him down is going to be easier said than done,’ Óttar said, after carrying out the initial examination.

  Salka stood next to him in the middle of the living room, struggling with the sight of Helgi nailed to the living room wall, crucified. The killer had used many of the same methods as with Hróbjartur. His arms were spread wide and the broad heads of the nails could hardly be seen. These had been hammered through each hand, as well as through the testicle that the murderer had placed in each of his victim’s palms. The feet were crossed, with the sole of the left foot placed on the instep of the right, and a nail driven through them both. There was a wound in his
left side and the knife lay on the floor. A white towel, red with blood at the front, had been wrapped around his waist. Helgi’s head lolled forward, and his penis had been stuffed into his mouth.

  ‘Is that a knife from the block in the kitchen?’ she asked, nodding to the knife on the floor.

  ‘No. I already checked,’ Óttar said. ‘This one is far too broad.’

  ‘Did you find another knife?’ she said, going to the kitchen with Óttar following behind her.

  ‘Not yet. I had a careful look at all the knives in the block and none of them match the stab wound. Look, a small meat chopper, a bread knife, and this little one that’s probably for chopping vegetables and doesn’t have a point. Then there’s the sharpening steel.’

  ‘Could he have used a fork to punch holes in the cover?’

  ‘No. It looks to me like it was done with a sharp knife,’ Óttar said, examining the plastic film over the ready meal.

  ‘Helgi had only made holes in it on one side,’ Salka said, opening drawers to search for a knife with a sharp point, without success. ‘If he was doing this just as the doorbell rang, then he probably had the knife in his hand as he answered the door.’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘Where’s that knife?’

  ‘Most likely the killer took it with him,’ Óttar said, raising an eyebrow,

  ‘Yes. But why?’

  ‘Because Helgi may have cut him?’ Óttar suggested cautiously, as if there might be a prize for the correct answer.

  ‘Exactly. It’ll be interesting to find out if there are traces of blood from someone other than Helgi.’

  Salka went back into the living room and looked around. She stared at the picture on the wall. The print showed a young boy and a girl walking across a weather-beaten wooden bridge as they crossed a raging torrent below. An angel with long fair hair, outstretched arms and unfurled wings watched over them.

  ‘I know this picture.’

  ‘What?’ Óttar said, glancing at her.

  ‘The guardian angel,’ Salka said, almost to herself. ‘This picture hung on the wall of my parents’ bedroom. It’s not something you see often these days, but when I was a child, it was on the wall in many homes.’

  ‘Yes, I remember it. It’s pretty. My grandmother had this on the wall. She’d lost her son,’ Óttar said and watched Salka as she muttered something. ‘Are you all right, Salka?’

  ‘What? Yes, fine…’ she said, wrenching herself up from her own thoughts. ‘Do you think Helgi might have wanted to protect someone?’

  ‘Whoever was at work here certainly wasn’t looking to protect Helgi,’ Óttar said, getting to his feet. ‘It’s a very different scenario to the first crime scene… apart from the treatment the victim went through. There are signs on the corpse and the legs of the bed indicating that he had been restrained. Then there’s the thing with the genitals.’

  ‘Looks like he didn’t have the same time to do his work as he had with Hróbjartur,’ Salka said. ‘The neighbour, the kitchen-sink-generation woman, said that she saw a man ring Helgi’s doorbell at around nine-thirty, and she saw him leaving roughly an hour later when she and her husband went for a stroll. So he had one hour… to do all this,’ she said, looking around. ‘What about the nails? Do you think those were Helgi’s?’

  ‘I don’t think so. The only tools we've found are in a little toolbox in the pantry behind the kitchen. The only nails there were little steel ones. There was a little dolly hammer in there, and I don’t imagine that was used, although we’ll examine it anyway. The murderer used a heavier hammer for these,’ he said, looking at the palm of Helgi’s hand.

  ‘So it was well prepared, but he had to be quick,’ Salka said.

  ‘We found footprints. He stepped in the blood as he walked around. There are prints that show how he walked around, here, here, and over there,’ Óttar said, pointing at the floor. ‘The steps lead into the bathroom. Come and see,’ he said and Salka followed. ‘It’s not easy to be certain, but I suspect he took a shower,’ he added, drawing the shower curtain aside.

  There was a blood-tinged dampness in the shower tray and on the plastic-lined walls of the shower cubicle.

  ‘We’ll check whatever we get out of the shower trap for DNA.’

  ‘How did this pan out?’

  ‘What?’ Óttar said, looking at Salka.

  ‘How would I have done this? I ring the bell. Helgi opens the door. Maybe I know him, as the neighbour heard no noise other than the hammer blows, and they thought he was hanging pictures or something. I overpower Helgi. Knock him out. Did you see any signs of violence on his head? Or at the back of the head?’

  ‘There’s a wound to the forehead, which could be from a blow. And the face has been badly battered.’

  ‘At any rate, I overpower him and tie him to the bed. I put on fresh clothes, an overall. I put on a hood or a hair net. Then I put on gloves and even shoe covers with no pattern. I beat Helgi up. By then he’s almost unrecognisable … and I castrate him. I drag him into the living room and nail him to the wall. I either stab him with the knife in the bedroom or the living room. Leave him there like Jesus on the cross.’ She sighed and thought. ‘Jesus was stabbed after he was crucified. Then I come in here to the bathroom, and what? Take a shower wearing the overall and wash it off? Or do I take it off and wash it? That’s the more hazardous way, because I don’t want to leave any physical traces, such as hair, behind. Anyway, I wash myself, put the clothes into a bag and leave the apartment. All that in just an hour?’

  Her phone rang.

  ‘Hæ, Gísli … You’ll have to speak slowly.’

  She listened.

  ‘I’ll be right there,’ Salka said and ended the call. ‘I have to go,’ she said, turning to Óttar, and making for the door.

  ‘Anything wrong?’

  ‘Everything’s wrong here. Gísli was calling from hospital.’

  ‘What? Has he had an accident?’ Óttar asked, following her out into the passage.

  ‘He’s found Rafn.’

  ***

  ‘It’s nothing serious,’ Gísli said with a smile. The words seemed to send a stab of pain through his head.

  Salka had driven straight to the hospital and found him lying on a bench in Accident and Emergency.

  ‘We’ll have to put a notice out that we’re looking for Rafn,’ he said weakly.

  ‘What happened?’ Salka asked, sizing up the bandage around his head.

  ‘I was at the station and saw that one of our old friends was being locked away in a cell. He’s a junkie. So I went to talk to him in the cell. After a bit of a chat and a few promises, he told me where to find Rafn. He’s been living with his sister for the last month, and where do you think she lives? Can you imagine where the bastard’s been living?’

  ‘With his sister?’ Salka said, speaking slowly.

  ‘Yes, but she lives in the block of flats next to the police station. He’s been looking in through our windows!’

  Salka knew that in that moment’s hesitation he had held back a few choice curses.

  ‘Don’t they say you should keep your enemies close?’ Salka grinned.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ’In this instance, we’re the enemy. But go on. What happened?’

  ‘I went straight over there, took the lift up, and as soon as it opened, he was standing there in front of me. He took to his heels, and on the way down the stairs, well, something happened.’

  Salka could see from the look on his face that it was embarrassing.

  ‘Out with it, Gísli.’

  He looked back at her for a moment.

  ‘He was one landing ahead of me, and he was like greased lighting. I wasn’t far off catching up with him but must have taken too many steps at once. I slipped and fell, banged into the wall and landed against a massive Chinese vase that was smashed to pieces. And I cut myself,’ he said, lifting his shirt to show her the dressing on his side. ‘And he got away.’

  ‘I
don’t see why you went alone.’

  ‘Didn’t you go on your own to Helgi’s place?’

  ‘Yes, and I’d tried again and again to reach you. We don’t have good news from there.’

  Salka gave him an explanation of what she had found, and what had become of Helgi.

  ‘Anyway, what did the doctor say? You might have concussion. You take it easy and then you can go home and rest.’

  ‘No chance, Salka,’ he said, getting up. He picked up his jacket from the chair it had been hung on.

  22

  It was getting dark when Salka parked the jeep in an empty space in front of the block next to the police station from where they had a view of the entrance.

  They watched two men go in through the main door. Twenty minutes later they emerged, got in a grey Toyota and drove away. The man in the passenger seat nodded discreetly to Salka as they drove past.

  ‘They’ve placed cameras. So we should be able to see who comes to the apartment,’ she said, looking to one side at Gísli, who was prodding at a plaster next to the bandage around his head. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yeah, fine. I thought in proper police terminology it was called shadowing the area?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Salka said, opening the app on her tablet connected to the cameras.

  ‘But you don’t?’

  ‘No,’ she said, her mind elsewhere.

  ‘Exactly,’ he said, looking out of the side window.

  ‘There. All connected.’

  ‘What?’ Gísli said, leaning over towards her.

  ‘Now we’ll see when anyone comes or goes.’

  A covert camera the size of a coin had been placed in the stairwell opposite the flat where Rafn had been staying. Salka had already arranged for roads out of town to be watched. Cars were being stopped and checked at the Leira junction and at the turnoff for the Dalvík road. She had asked Fanney to alert the media that the police were looking for Rafn.