The Girl Who Died

by Ragnar Jónasson

  Salka, the woman she had spoken to on the phone, had come across as friendly and approachable. If all the locals were like her, perhaps the little village would welcome Una with open arms. And perhaps she would be so taken with the scenery and the people that she wouldn’t want to leave after her contract was up …

  She snapped out of her thoughts when her mother touched her arm and repeated her question, although Una had already answered it: ‘You’re sure it’s only for one year?’

  ‘Just for one winter, yes. I’ve no intention of living that far from Reykjavík for ever.’ She smiled reassuringly at her mother.

  ‘Well, Una. I feel as if the bird’s finally flown the nest.’

  ‘What nonsense, Mum. I flew the nest years ago.’

  ‘Yes, darling, but you’ve never been far away. We’ve always been there for each other … I just hope it won’t be too difficult for you, being alone up there, not being able to come and see me to talk about … well, about the past.’

  Una had a sudden suspicion that her mother was in fact describing her own fears; that this parting might prove harder for her than Una had realized.

  Una hugged her tight, and they stood there for a moment, neither of them saying a word.

  There was nothing more to say.

  He had never killed a man before.

  Had never come close, despite his sinister reputation. It was a reputation designed to instil respect and fear, cultivated deliberately because he had a position to maintain. Plenty of people no doubt believed him capable of murder, and some probably thought he had already killed, given all the times he’d been forced to resort to violence. Although his appearance didn’t necessarily suggest it, he was strong and knew how to fight.

  And today he had finally done it; he had killed a man.

  It had been a strange feeling. At first, all he had been aware of was the adrenaline pumping through his veins, telling him that from now on there was nothing he couldn’t do. He’d proven capable of taking a life, of standing and watching as a man drew his last few breaths, savouring the power of knowing that at any moment he could have intervened to save him.

  He had brought along the sawn-off shotgun. It was late, the evening was dark, wet and cold. He had battered violently at the door, knowing there was little risk that anyone would hear. The block of flats was hardly more than a construction site, the first half-completed building in a concrete jungle. No one else had moved in yet; there were no witnesses to his visit. His victim – who didn’t deserve to be called a victim – had obviously realized what was happening and tried to defend himself. He had felt an urge to shoot him, but the purpose of the shotgun had only ever been to intimidate, not to kill. The fallout from a gunshot would be too messy.

  Instead, he had spun the gun round and used the butt to knock the man senseless, then finished him off with his bare hands.

  It hadn’t been that hard. Not really. He had to do it; he had no choice.

  Now the poor bastard was lying dead on his own living-room floor, and somehow the body would have to be removed and made to disappear. That was tonight’s job.

  He stood there motionless for a while, examining the lifeless corpse, and as he did so it came home to him that everything had changed; he had crossed a line, committed a deed that couldn’t be undone. He would have to learn to live with it. From now on, he would always be a fugitive, because he had every intention of getting away with it. The alternative was unthinkable. There were people who knew about this visit, but they were on his side. They were the ones who had asked him to deal with the problem. He wasn’t too worried about the police, as long as he managed to dispose of the body without a trace. The Icelandic CID didn’t have much experience of real crimes. He would probably be interviewed, since he had links to the victim; he might even be a suspect for a while, but he could live with that. He just needed to make absolutely sure he didn’t leave behind any incriminating evidence like fingerprints.

  Luckily, there was no blood as it had been a clean blow, and it was dark – in fact, it was pretty much dark round the clock now, in late November. He just needed to get the body out to the car, then find a good place to dump it. He had an idea or two about suitable places, but he would probably need one of his mates to give him a hand.

  It briefly crossed his mind to wonder if anyone would miss the dead man. Did he have parents who were still alive, or siblings, perhaps? He’d never had many friends, treacherous scum that he was. No, nobody would miss him.

  At that moment the doorbell rang.

  III

  Una heaved a sigh of relief when, after two days’ driving on bone-juddering roads, she finally reached the fishing village of Thórshöfn on the north-east coast, the gateway to the Langanes Peninsula and the last settlement of any size before Skálar. The place felt small and remote enough in its own right; nothing more than a handful of houses scattered along a curving sweep of black sand, a striking white-roofed church and a picturesque harbour with a few colourful fishing smacks. Finding a kiosk open, she stopped for a drink and a snack, and took the chance to consult the map again. From now on she would be travelling another thirty kilometres out along the mysterious Langanes Peninsula, a place so far away from Reykjavík that Una didn’t know anyone who had actually visited it. To get to Skálar, she would have to drive almost as far as Fontur, the headland at the very end.

  It was with a sinking feeling that she embarked on the final leg of her journey, as though she wasn’t quite sure if she really wanted to reach her destination. She kept telling herself it wasn’t too late to turn back. The sky was overcast, the sun hidden behind a seamless, grey layer of cloud that weighed heavily on her spirits. To make matters worse, her old yellow Toyota Starlet, which was fine for nipping around town, proved hopelessly inadequate when faced with the rough dirt road. The views didn’t provide much compensation either: the treeless landscape was desolate and featureless, nothing but rocks and grass, though at one point early on she did pass a pretty country church, with walls clad in white corrugated iron, and a red roof. All she knew about Langanes was that a polar bear had come ashore there from the sea-ice during the Great Frost Winter of 1918 and almost killed a man. She’d heard the story from Sara: it was yet another piece of information her friend had picked up from the TV report about Skálar.

  For the most part, the road hugged the coast, passing a succession of grey, stony beaches littered with great piles of bleached driftwood, which no one seemed interested in collecting. A few Whooper swans shone white here and there among the waves. But before long all Una’s attention was focused on the road, which grew steadily worse until she became seriously alarmed. Although she did her best to swerve round the deepest potholes, in the end, inevitably, she drove straight into one, with a sickening lurch.

  Switching off the engine, she sat there trembling for a moment, sure she must have got a puncture and bracing herself to have to change the wheel. But when she got out to inspect them the tyres looked fine. Flooded with relief, she paused to take a lungful of fresh, salty air and examined the map again to reassure herself that she was going the right way.

  But when she started the engine and moved off again, she immediately noticed a strange clattering noise. Worried that it was the exhaust or gearbox, she drove on, never going above second gear, desperate not to break down on the final stretch. The landscape became hillier, cliffs reared up from the sea, and finally a long, narrow headland appeared in front of her, presumably the famous Fontur. Beyond it was nothing but the vast, empty ocean. When she reached a junction with a signpost pointing to Fontur on the left and Skálar on the right, she was aware again of that cold, sinking feeling. I don’t want to live here, she thought. But there was no turning back now, especially with the car limping along and the clatter growing ever more worrying.

  As she was approaching Skálar, fog rolled in without warning, blotting out the landscape and merging sea with sky. It felt like driving into an Impressionist painting, in which her destination
kept receding as fast as she approached it; like entering a void in which time had ceased to have any meaning. Maybe, in a sense, this was true: maybe time was less important there; it mattered less what day it was, what hour it was, out here where people lived at one with nature.

  When she finally reached it, the tiny hamlet of Skálar was wreathed in dense cloud. And now the feeling was more like being in a folk tale, an ominous, supernatural tale, set in a vague, shifting world. There was nothing solid, nothing real about her surroundings. Just as there had been nothing natural about her decision to turn her life upside down and promise to spend nearly a year out here, at the edge of the habitable world. But she must put a brave face on things: it wouldn’t do to pay too much attention to first impressions.

  She had passed a pinprick of light a little way back and remembered Sara saying the TV programme had mentioned a farm that counted as part of the village. And now she saw the dark shapes of houses looming through the billowing veils of grey vapour. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought it was a ghost town. But there were people living here, she knew that. She began to have a powerful sensation of being watched; that here and there eyes were peering through the gaps between the curtains, curious about the identity of this newcomer.

  It was only an illusion created by the fog, Una told herself; just as it was the fog that was to blame for her impression that the place was deserted; that no one had lived here for decades. Of course that happened sometimes: whole villages vanished – the fish disappeared and the population upped sticks and left. Yet here ten stubborn souls had clung on, and she was about to increase their number by one. Now she had seen it for herself, she had no intention of settling here. One winter, she told herself, then she would head back down south, the richer for the experience, having used the time to get her life back on track.

  She parked her car at the edge of the village, next to a handful of other vehicles. So there was life here after all. The village itself could only be entered on foot. She had been given a clear description of Salka’s house, in which she was to have the use of the attic flat: a handsome, white, two-storey building, she had been told, dating from the turn of the century. As luck would have it, the first building to meet her eyes was a house fitting this description, right next to the car park. It was set back a little from the sea. The dense cloud stirred in the breeze, shifting and parting to reveal a number of other houses clustered around the water’s edge. To her right, she noticed a particularly imposing building, dominating the settlement from its position on a rise in the ground, and, down by the sea, she glimpsed an attractive old wooden church. She hadn’t necessarily expected that, in a community this tiny.

  Una got out of the car and went to stand in front of Salka’s house, which had large windows in keeping with the period in which it was built. Now there was no question that she was being watched. The curtains in one of the downstairs windows moved, and she waited, expecting to see Salka herself appear in the gap, so she was rather taken aback when the face that appeared behind the glass was that of a little girl, of perhaps seven or eight years old, with long, pale hair.

  Although Una could hardly make her out in the gloom, she felt sure the child was watching her.

  It was 10 p.m. Should children be up this late?

  Smiling, Una waved at the girl, but even as she raised her hand, the small figure vanished from sight behind the curtain.

  Salka hadn’t mentioned that she had a daughter.

  Una walked slowly up to the front door, feeling a little chilled now. She couldn’t see any doorbell, just a heavy, functional-looking copper-lion knocker. As she lifted it and brought it down, the noise echoed around the silent village, and only then did she notice how quiet it was here compared to Reykjavík. Apart from the lapping and sighing of waves from the shore, you could have heard a pin drop – until she shattered the hush with her knocking.

  She stood and waited, feeling apprehensive about meeting Salka and about her stay here. Next minute, without warning, the heavens opened and the silence was dispelled by a sudden downpour. In the absence of any shelter, Una stood where she was, trying to ignore the rain, but she raised the knocker again just to be on the safe side. The blows sounded muffled this time, almost drowned out by the drumming of the rain.

  Probably only a few seconds had passed between the rain beginning its assault on Una and the door opening, but in that brief interval she was completely soaked.

  ‘Una? For goodness’ sake, come in,’ said the woman standing in the doorway. ‘Just look at that! I didn’t know it was supposed to rain this evening, let alone as heavily as this.’

  She held out her hand once Una was under cover. ‘Hello, I’m Salka, obviously. Nice to meet you.’

  ‘Hello. You too,’ Una replied, trying to stop her teeth from chattering. What a welcome – gloom, cold and rain. She hoped with all her heart that the place would look less bleak in the morning. At this moment all she wanted was to turn around and flee straight back to Reykjavík.

  Inside, however, it was warm and homely. The entrance hall was unusually large and it was immediately apparent from the shoes and outdoor clothing that a child lived there. Salka appeared to be around thirty-five, as Una had guessed from their phone conversation. She had black hair and the expression on her thin face was hard to read. Una thought she was very pretty.

  ‘Do take your things off,’ Salka said. ‘Just hang your coat up here for now. You can take it upstairs later. Would you like some coffee?’

  ‘Oh, yes, please,’ Una replied, trying to smile. It was too late to back out now, and the coffee was bound to raise her spirits, though it probably wasn’t wise to drink it this late in the evening.

  The sitting room opened off the hall. It was lined with shelves full of books and photographs; there were handsome wooden boards on the floor and ceiling, and paintings on the walls. Una could imagine the room looking much the same in the 1920s or ’30s; it was like stepping into the past.

  There was no sign of the little girl, though she had been standing behind the curtains downstairs.

  ‘I didn’t know you had a daughter,’ Una said, taking a chair, as she didn’t want to sit on the elegant old sofa in her wet clothes.

  Seeing Salka’s brows lift in surprise, Una explained: ‘I saw her at the window just now. She was watching me.’ She smiled.

  ‘Really?’ Salka said. ‘I thought she’d gone to bed. She promised she would. But she’s always up to mischief. Her name’s Edda.’ She called out in a low voice: ‘Edda, love, are you awake?’ There was no answer. ‘She must have gone back to bed. It’s difficult to maintain any sort of discipline here in the countryside. It’s just her and me living in this house, and, as you know, there are only two children in the whole village, so they’re treated like grown-ups and do as they like. Edda’s seven; the other girl, Kolbrún, is nine.’ Salka hovered, still on her feet. ‘They have to play together, though, to be honest, if we lived in a bigger community I doubt they’d be friends. It’s not just the age gap; they’re very different types as well. Edda’s outgoing and cheeky, always off somewhere, hardly ever home, helping herself to food at our neighbours’ houses, even up at the farm. Everyone likes her, though I say so myself.’ She dropped her voice slightly. ‘Kolbrún’s … a bit more reserved, not quite as sociable.’

  Una got the feeling something wasn’t being said.

  ‘Anyway, I’ll make that coffee.’ Salka left the room.

  Una stayed put, taking the opportunity to close her eyes for a moment and rest after the long, at times nerve-racking drive. Her task for the next few months would be to take charge of the education of these two girls, Edda and Kolbrún. And judging from Salka’s description, which was bound to be partisan, Una guessed she would probably have an easier time with Edda, though of course she mustn’t let herself think like that. Hopefully, the girls would help her adapt to her new circumstances.

  The sound of Salka’s voice made her jump – she must have nodded off.<
br />
  ‘Do you take milk or sugar?’

  ‘Just black, thanks,’ Una replied, a little sheepish about being caught napping.

  Salka handed her a cup, then sat down herself.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ Salka asked. ‘Based on what you’ve seen so far?’ She smiled. ‘I know you can’t really say much since you’ve only just arrived, but one often gets a sense of a place straight away.’

  Una paused to choose her words tactfully. The truth was, she was feeling rather demoralized. Maybe she was just exhausted from the drive and stressed about her car. She had to give the place a chance; it wouldn’t do to start by being critical, so she replied: ‘I really like what I’ve seen so far. Of course, it’s quite remote and everything, but I’m optimistic that I’m going to enjoy it here. I’m sure the locals are a good bunch.’

  Salka’s reply was disconcertingly slow in coming, and, when she did speak, Una was almost sure it was against her better judgement: ‘Yes. Yes, a … a good bunch of people.’

  There was an odd note in her voice.

  Una told herself firmly that she was reading too much into it. Changing the subject, she asked: ‘How long have you and your daughter lived here?’

  ‘A year and a half now. We’re still newcomers, really. Everyone else in the village has lived here for decades. Some of them all their lives. It’s an old, established community and no one moves here any more. That’s why I’m so pleased you’ve come.’ She smiled again.

  ‘Yes, I’m quite excited about experiencing what it’s like to live out here. It must be so relaxing; quite a change for me. It’s good to get out of the hustle and bustle of the city – everyone’s always rushing around in Reykjavík, life’s a constant rat race.’ With me always bringing up the rear, she wanted to add. In a place like this, money was bound to be less important; people wouldn’t be as obsessed with owning the newest car, the latest TV, the best stereo or VCR. Una doubted there was even anywhere to rent videos.