Gallows Rock - Freyja and Huldar Series 04 (2020)

by Sigurdardottir, Yrsa

  Still, it appeared unlikely, if Huldar was to be believed. He and the young policewoman had turned up at the flat in connection with a murder inquiry. So far all she knew was that the victim, Helgi, had owned the flat where Siggi was found. Nothing had appeared in the news yet: most of the domestic bulletins over the last twenty-four hours had focused on the official visit by the Chinese delegation, showing footage of the foreign minister visiting local landmarks including a geothermal power station, the ancient parliament site at the Thingvellir National Park, Höfdi House, the presidential residence at Bessastadir, the hot springs at Geysir and an unnamed farmhouse. He and his retinue were making valiant efforts to appear interested but they weren’t fooling anyone. You had to sympathise – it had obviously been a packed programme.

  Her thoughts were interrupted when the door of her office opened to admit the director of the Children’s House. The woman asked if she was disturbing her and Freyja answered honestly that she wasn’t. ‘We’ve just got the results of the medical examination of the little boy found in the flat,’ the director said. ‘The child hasn’t been subjected to any kind of sexual or other physical violence.’

  Freyja skimmed the report. She’d already heard the verbal version and there was nothing new here. Her boss stood over her while she was reading, apparently waiting for a response, but what was there to say? Siggi had no injuries. Certain parts of the body are more likely to display evidence of violence that is very unlikely to have resulted from an accident: the insides of the arms and thighs, for example, as well as the back, sex organs and bottom. These areas had been carefully examined but nothing had been found: no new injuries and no scars of older wounds. The X-rays had told the same story: no fractures, whether recent or earlier; no healed breaks.

  But violence against children wasn’t limited to physical or sexual abuse. Neglect and mental cruelty don’t show up on an X-ray or on a child’s limbs. In her career, Freyja had encountered countless victims of mental cruelty, so she was all too familiar with the behaviour indicative of such cases. Some children were subjected to chronic stress, others to intermittent incidents of escalating seriousness. In her professional opinion, Siggi didn’t fit the profile. But of course you could never be sure. Children were affected differently by this kind of trauma and some fared better than others, demonstrating an ability to call on mysterious inner reserves of strength.

  What was atypical was the fact that Siggi didn’t seem particularly anxious or upset at his parents’ absence. Most children would be inconsolable but she didn’t remember seeing him so much as shed a tear. That could have been due to the circumstances, of course: it didn’t take much to distract young children and for them police officers were a big deal. It was possible that Siggi had been too preoccupied by all the bustle around him. He might have broken down later, in the relative peace and quiet of the care home.

  Freyja thanked her boss, who left the office. The moment she’d gone, Freyja picked up the phone and rang the foster home. Her call was answered by a woman called Heidrún, who knew at once which case Freyja was referring to, since she’d been there when Didrik had brought the boy round the previous evening.

  ‘I was wondering if you’d noticed any sign that Siggi was missing his parents?’

  ‘He hardly mentions them,’ the woman replied. ‘But that’s not unusual. We try to entertain the kids and keep them happily occupied. Actually, he did mention his mother to the other children when I was out of the room. Apparently he told them the bad man had taken her. Of course, that’s the kind of thing a little kid like Siggi would think. It doesn’t necessarily mean he’s referring to a particular man.’

  ‘What about tears or other symptoms of distress? Was he upset at bedtime last night, for example?’

  ‘No, he wasn’t. He just fell asleep. Quite soon after his head hit the pillow.’

  ‘That’s odd. I’d have expected him to show signs of anxiety.’

  ‘Yes. You’d have thought. But, like I say, we’ve seen this kind of reaction before. Some kids simply adapt more easily than others. Siggi strikes me as the trusting type; I get the feeling he thinks it’s all going to be fine in the end. He seems to believe it when we tell him it’s only a matter of time before his parents come to fetch him.’ Heidrún was silent a moment, then asked: ‘Have you heard any news about how they’re getting on with tracing them?’

  ‘No. I don’t think they’re getting anywhere.’

  ‘How strange.’ The woman paused again, then said: ‘Talking of strange, I did notice one thing about the boy’s behaviour that was a bit odd. It might not be important but I think you should know.’

  ‘Oh? What’s that?’

  ‘He hanged a Barbie doll. Maybe he didn’t mean to; maybe she was supposed to be lowered on a rope from a helicopter or something. Only, when I asked him, he flatly denied that he’d done it. But the thing is, it can’t have been any of the other kids. The fact that he lied about it struck me as even stranger than executing the doll in the first place. The boy’s so sweet and well behaved otherwise; it seems out of character for him to tell lies. His drawings are quite violent as well – covered in red scribbles. When I ask, he tells me it’s blood.’

  Freyja raised her eyebrows. ‘Really? He drew a picture while he was at the police station but that was very ordinary, just him and his parents. Mind you, he only had two crayons to choose from. Perhaps he would have added some blood if he’d had a red one.’

  After she’d hung up, Freyja sat there, thinking. Was it possible that Siggi wasn’t as unconcerned about his parents’ whereabouts as he seemed? Perhaps the drawings provided an outlet for his anxiety. Or could the poor kid have witnessed something he wasn’t telling them about?

  Freyja’s mobile phone rang. When Huldar’s name flashed up on screen, she grimaced briefly, unsure if the call would be related to the investigation or yet another attempt to invite her out for a meal.

  ‘Hi. How would you like to come for a drive?’

  Before Freyja could say no, he elaborated, and she instantly accepted his offer. The plan was to drive Siggi around town in the hope of finding his home. They’d drawn a blank after tracking down all the Sigurdurs of his age with fathers whose names began with an S. Before they widened the search, they thought it was worth trying this method. The Child Protection Agency had given the green light and agreed that Freyja should go along as their representative, since no one else was available.

  Freyja rang off and began to get ready. As she zipped up her jacket, she realised she was almost disappointed that Huldar hadn’t tried to flirt with her.

  Hastily pulling herself together, she left the office.

  Chapter 14

  The car stopped at a red light. Siggi turned away from the window to stare at the back of Gudlaugur’s head in the driver’s seat. Huldar winked at the boy encouragingly from the passenger seat. Siggi’s excitement at being allowed to ride in a police car had faded now that they’d been driving around for over an hour. They’d been hoping he would spot something familiar that could help them identify the area he lived in but the only things he had pointed out were landmarks everyone knew: the Laugardalur swimming pool, the Kringlan shopping mall, Hallgrímskirkja Church and the great glass dome of Perlan.

  At first they had concentrated on neighbourhoods that fitted his description: no views of Esja, Hallgrímskirkja or the sea. Freyja had lost count of the streets they had crawled up and down to no avail. The boy watched as they passed houses, blocks of flats and terraces, but didn’t recognise any of them. It turned out that he wasn’t old enough to see the similarities between certain types of building and the one he lived in, something that could have narrowed down their search. There were only two categories: his house or not his house.

  They had tried driving into Kópavogur, the town immediately to the south, in case the boy thought it counted as Reykjavík, but when they got there he only seemed more bewildered. He didn’t even recognise such obvious landmarks as the Smáralind shoppin
g centre or the Toys R Us store.

  ‘Can I have an ice-cream now?’ Siggi looked hopefully at Freyja, sitting beside him in the back.

  ‘Soon. We just need to check a few more streets and when we’ve done that we’ll get you an ice-cream. With sauce.’

  The boy smiled and turned back to the side window. He was sitting on a cushion that raised him high enough to see out. ‘I want to go to Florida. To Disneyland.’ This was clearly a test to discover how far he could get with his wishes. From ice-cream with sauce to Disneyland. It was a bit of a leap.

  ‘Nice try, Siggi, but we can’t take you there, I’m afraid,’ Freyja laughed. ‘But you can have an ice-cream.’

  ‘Can you see your house anywhere, Siggi?’ Gudlaugur grabbed the chance, while the car was held up at the lights, to peer over his shoulder at the boy. They had asked him the question so often that it was getting ridiculous. Siggi already knew the purpose of their drive.

  ‘No.’

  Gudlaugur turned back to face the front, the lights changed to green and they pulled away.

  ‘My mummy’s not allowed to drive.’ Every now and then the boy would pipe up with scraps of information about his life, none of which had any bearing on their quest. But Freyja always tried to get him to expand on what he said in the hope that something useful might eventually emerge.

  ‘Why’s that, Siggi?’

  ‘Her tummy’s so fat. The baby inside is so big the steering wheel could pop her tummy if she brakes.’ The boy continued imaginatively with his account, making a face and clasping his own stomach.

  ‘Oh yes, of course.’ Freyja tried to hit on something that could provide them with a lead. ‘Does your daddy drive her when she needs to go somewhere?’

  ‘Yes, sometimes.’

  ‘Are you allowed to go with them?’

  ‘Yes, always. I’m not allowed to stay at home on my own.’

  ‘Where have you been with them? Can you remember?’

  ‘Once we went to the hospital.’

  ‘Of course. Was the doctor looking at your mummy’s bump?’

  Siggi stared at Freyja in surprise. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Because when mummies are going to have a baby they often go to see the doctor. They have to make sure everything’s all right.’

  Siggi frowned. ‘Not that kind of bump.’

  ‘Oh? What kind, then?’

  ‘A bump here.’ Siggi pointed to his temple. ‘The bump made her be sick. In the car.’

  ‘Oh really? What happened?’ Freyja was careful to phrase the question vaguely so as not to influence Siggi’s reply, since information about the injury could come in useful. The Reykjavík A&E must keep records they could use to trace the woman. There couldn’t be that many pregnant women who had been brought in with a lump on the side of their head. If she had gone to her GP, though, the task would be more challenging, since there were any number of doctor’s surgeries in the capital area and no central records system.

  ‘She hurt herself.’

  ‘Oh dear. How did she hurt herself?’

  Siggi shrugged and stared unseeingly at the houses lining the street. ‘She just did.’

  Freyja decided to leave this for a moment and pursue another angle. ‘Did the doctor help her?’ Again the little boy shrugged. ‘Did she get a plaster?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘A long time ago.’

  Freyja’s smile was growing strained. Four-year-olds had a very abstract concept of time. They could understand ‘before’ and ‘after’, but when they said something happened yesterday, it could just as well have been several days or even a week ago. There was little chance, then, that Siggi would be able to tell them if the incident he was describing had taken place last month or six months ago. ‘Were there cartoons on TV in the morning?’ As the Icelandic TV stations only showed cartoons in the morning at weekends, perhaps they could narrow it down to a weekend. Thinking about her phone conversation with the woman from the care home, who had mentioned the boy’s lie about the Barbie doll, Freyja hoped he hadn’t made the story up.

  ‘No.’

  Freyja hid her disappointment. ‘Was it at Christmas, then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was Christmas over?’

  Siggi looked thoughtful. ‘Yes. I gave Mummy a scarf for Christmas. It’s pink. But it got blood on it in the car. And it wouldn’t come out. Now the scarf’s got blood on it.’ From his expression, she gathered that this made the scarf a great deal more interesting.

  ‘Was she wearing the scarf with blood on it at the New Year’s fireworks?’ Freyja saw Huldar twist round in his seat, as eager as her to hear the answer.

  Siggi took a moment to think about it. ‘Yes. Daddy didn’t want her to wear it to the bonfire but she did anyway. He got cross. He’s always getting cross.’

  That was as close as Freyja was going to get. The woman was given the scarf for Christmas and it got stained with blood from a wound that caused her to go to A&E. The blood-stain was on the scarf on New Year’s Eve. This time frame would have to do. ‘When your mummy went to hospital, did she go to A&E?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did you go with her?’

  ‘Yes. But I waited outside. With Daddy. We weren’t allowed to go inside because we weren’t hurt. Only Mummy.’

  ‘Were there lots of people waiting outside like you?’

  ‘Yes. And some of them were drunk.’ Siggi studied Freyja’s face to see how she would react to this shocking news. ‘Daddy said so. One man even had some beer.’

  The boy had to be describing A&E. Drunks rarely stumbled into GPs’ surgeries.

  Huldar raised his fist and lightly punched the roof of the car in a muted gesture of triumph. They’d probably got their vital clue. No need to drive round any more neighbourhoods, watching the boy staring blankly at endless rows of houses.

  ‘Right then, Siggi. How about that ice-cream?’

  Didrik from the Child Protection Agency was waiting for them at the care home. He was sitting in the poky little office with a mug of coffee. By the time they had all crowded in there you couldn’t have fitted even a small child in as well. But they put up with the cramped conditions; it was the only place they could close the door for a bit of privacy.

  ‘Nothing?’ Didrik asked Freyja once the small talk had petered out. She couldn’t help thinking how incredibly hot he was. The first time she’d met him his beard had struck her as affectedly hipsterish, but now she found the waxed tips of his moustache rather cool. His haircut, too, with the shaved sides and the mop of longer hair heavily gelled on top of his head. She’d even got used to the ring through his nose. If you got a man like him into bed, he wouldn’t be remotely disturbed by the presence of a snake coiled up in the next room. The lemongrass fragrance that hung around him did things for her as well. Though not for Huldar, evidently; he had wrinkled his nose when they shook hands and now seemed to be sulking.

  To be fair, she had to admit that a snake in the next room was unlikely to put Huldar off his stride either. Or even a snake under the bed – or indeed in it, for that matter.

  Didrik repeated his question. ‘Really nothing?’

  ‘We didn’t find his house, unfortunately. But he did let slip some information about his mother that we’re hoping will be useful. It remains to be seen.’

  Huldar seemed impatient with this exchange. Pulling something from his pocket, he held it out to Freyja. When she saw that it was a measuring tape, she was momentarily thrown, thinking he must somehow have got wind of the python and was offering to help establish its length. But her fears were unfounded.

  ‘I need to find out how tall the boy is,’ Huldar said abruptly. ‘Does one of you have to be present while I do it?’

  Didrik shook his head and Freyja copied him.

  Huldar went out without another word, Gudlaugur following on his heels. Freyja had nothing against being left alone with Didrik. He had a uniquely soothing presenc
e, a sort of ‘I-was-born-cool’ aura. Freyja had always been attracted to this type; to people who were too comfortable in their own skins to display the kind of spite or negativity that was all too common these days. She caught herself dropping her gaze in search of a wedding band and smiled privately when his only ring turned out to be a large silver skull. Surely no one, however little they cared for convention, would exchange skull rings when they got married?

  Didrik didn’t notice Freyja’s interest in his hands. He sipped his coffee unhurriedly, then said: ‘I need to fill out a report. Do you know how the cops are getting on with locating his parents? Otherwise I’ll just have to describe the circumstances he was found in and the carer’s statement about his behaviour and developmental level. My bosses don’t care if he can tell yellow from green: all they want to know is whether we need to look at more permanent solutions for him.’

  ‘They’re not making much progress. But it’s possible A&E have information that will enable the police to identify his mother. That’s all I know, I’m afraid.’ Freyja wished she could give him something to help with his report. She wished even more fervently that he would ask her out. It was far too long since she’d been on a date that hadn’t ended in an awkward handshake and unspoken hopes on both sides that all talk of being in touch was a polite fiction.

  ‘Strange business.’ Didrik reached for his mug again and his sleeve pulled up a little, revealing a glimpse of his tattoos. From under his cuff peeped the yellow outstretched talons of the eagle that had so fascinated Siggi. Ready to snatch its prey and never let it go. The claws vanished as Didrik raised the mug to his lips. ‘Want to see?’ He handed Freyja a sheet of paper with the carer Heidrún’s report.