The Girl Who Died

by Ragnar Jónasson

  Una opened her mouth to interrupt and change the subject, but Gunnar was oblivious to her, lost in his memories: ‘They used to give us Christmas presents too, American toys that were quite unlike anything we’d ever seen before. I’ll never forget them. But what I remember best of all was the time they held a movie show for us. I don’t know what the film was, some black-and-white Hollywood feature, but it all seemed so exotic to us. None of us kids had ever been to the cinema before, so it didn’t matter if we could hardly understand a word they said. It was all about the experience.’

  ‘He’s told me that story so often,’ Gudrún told Una, with a smile of sympathy. ‘Far too often. I know all his stories off by heart by now, as well he knows, but you’re his latest victim.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Una replied. ‘I enjoy hearing them. It makes me realize how little I know about this place.’

  ‘I’ve got plenty more stories up my sleeve, don’t you worry,’ Gunnar assured her.

  ‘They’ll have to wait, dear,’ Gudrún said. ‘Now, Una, tell us about your plans for the concert. Have you made any arrangements yet? The children will sing, won’t they? Have you chosen the carols?’

  Give me a break, I’ve only just got here! Una thought. ‘No, I haven’t had a chance to start thinking about it yet,’ she said aloud. ‘I’m sure it would be a good idea to get the children to sing. “Christmas is Just Around the Corner”? That sort of thing?’

  ‘ “Christmas is Just Around the Corner”?’ Gudrún made a face. ‘That’s hardly a proper carol. They need to learn some decent Christian hymns. And “Silent Night”, of course, though, strictly speaking, that should only be sung on the twenty-fourth.’

  ‘Like I said,’ Una replied, ‘I’ve hardly had a chance to think about the programme yet.’

  ‘I’ve always been involved every year,’ Gudrún said. ‘I studied singing in Denmark when I was young. I could be persuaded to help out …’

  ‘Oh, yes, please. I’d be very grateful.’

  Gudrún brightened and the real purpose of this invitation to coffee finally became clear to Una.

  ‘How about I come along to some of your classes and rehearse with the girls?’ Gudrún suggested eagerly. ‘I took them for singing practice a bit last year. Of course, I wouldn’t expect to be paid; I’d offer my services for free. Gunnar and I have more than enough for our needs.’

  Una thought for a moment, then decided to accept the offer. What did she have to lose? It would make life easier for her, and it would do the children good to learn to sing. ‘That would be great, really great. Perhaps we could start next week?’

  ‘I like the sound of that,’ Gudrún said. Gunnar was silent; with the change of subject he had withdrawn into his own thoughts.

  ‘Are the girls good? At singing, I mean?’

  ‘Edda is, yes. Kolbrún … well, I didn’t feel she really made the effort last year. But of course we won’t let her get away with that again. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with her voice. Children can generally sing, if they’re made to practise,’ she said, and her expression reminded Una ominously of the teacher she herself had once had.

  A woman she hadn’t got on with at all.

  The doorbell rang again and this time the ringing was followed by knocking.

  Shit, there was a light on in the sitting room. It was too late for him to turn it off now. The curtains weren’t drawn either, which meant the visitor could walk round the corner, look in the window and see the dead man on the floor. Shit.

  He had to act fast. Grabbing hold of the dead man’s limp arms and recoiling slightly at the strange feel of them, he dragged the body with frantic haste across the sitting room and into the hall, where the lights were off and there were no windows. He didn’t dare put his eye to the door’s peephole for fear that the visitor might spot the movement inside and realize that someone was there. He pushed the sitting-room door to, without quite closing it, and positioned himself so that he would see if a face appeared at the window.

  His heart pounding, he tried not to think about the body lying on the floor behind him, about the man he had murdered. He tried to breathe calmly. He’d had to do it; there had been no alternative. It was just that things were turning out differently from how he’d expected.

  He caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. Someone was peering in through the window, looking for the man who was dead.

  It was a woman, a young woman with black hair, as far as he could tell.

  He hid in the shadowy hall, watching her as she pressed her face up against the glass. Was she the man’s girlfriend? All of a sudden he felt a faint stirring of conscience; she would never see him again, perhaps never have any idea what had happened to him, especially if his plans for getting rid of the body worked out.

  All he needed to do now was hang around and wait for the woman to leave. He just hoped she wouldn’t do anything stupid, like ringing the police. It was bloody lucky he’d taken the precaution of parking a couple of streets away.

  Once the coast was clear, he would lug the body out to his car and drive it to the lava-fields, under cover of night.

  There was no alternative. There was too much at stake, too much money, and the men in charge were utterly ruthless. It wouldn’t do to leave any loose ends that could upset everything. What did one or two lives matter, in the circumstances? Once he had taken care of this, he also had orders to deal with the other man who was planning to squeal.

  So what if the bodies of two no-good pieces of shit went to their final resting place in the lava-fields? Few would miss them.

  XI

  Una had been planning to play it cool and let a bit of time pass before she engineered another meeting with Thór. Or, rather, she’d been hoping she might bump into him, but that still hadn’t happened, even though she’d been in the village for three days now.

  After the frustration of being talked at during coffee with Gudrún and Gunnar, she felt a simple longing to spend time with someone younger, someone she actually liked. There had been a spark between her and Thór during their encounter in the darkness, she could swear to it; some indefinable connection which convinced her they would hit it off. Not only was he close to her own age, but he had also come across as friendly.

  In the end, she decided to take a walk up towards the farm, which was just out of sight of the village, over the brow of the hill. It was the first time since her arrival that Una had seen anything beyond the low, eroded slopes that formed a backdrop to the small area of grassy lowland on which Skálar lay. But as she breasted the rise, all she saw inland were more low, featureless hills. Immediately before her appeared the farmhouse, which was large, with a dilapidated air. Under the traditional red roof, the white walls were turning grey where the paint had flaked off to reveal the concrete underneath. In addition to the usual outbuildings, there was a smaller house, presumably the guesthouse Thór had mentioned. After a moment’s reflection, Una decided it would be politer to knock at the door of the main house first.

  As she stood there waiting, she had time to feel increasingly awkward before the door eventually opened to reveal a woman of about forty, with long dark hair and a wary expression, though she must presumably have had an inkling who Una was.

  ‘Yes?’ the woman said.

  ‘Hello, I’m Una, the new teacher.’

  ‘I know,’ the woman replied. ‘I’m Hjördís. I live here.’

  ‘I wondered …’ Una hesitated, feeling her face grow hot with embarrassment, as if she’d come round to ask after the popular boy at school. ‘I was wondering if Thór was in.’

  This time it was Hjördís’s turn to hesitate. She stood there staring at Una, as if unsure how to react. Finally, she said: ‘He’s upstairs. I’ll get him.’

  She disappeared without inviting Una in, and Una wondered, belatedly, if there was something going on between Hjördís and Thór. Perhaps that was why she had reacted so oddly to Una’s visit. It might also explain why Thór hadn’
t made any effort to get in touch since they’d met that first night. For a moment she considered turning and walking away. She lowered her head, closing her eyes briefly, then decided to tough it out. There was no point giving up straight away, before the battle had even begun.

  ‘Hi,’ she heard a voice say, and looked up quickly. There was the beard and the attractive twinkle in his eyes, but now she could also see his hair, thick, dark and tousled, which had been hidden by his woollen hat the other night. His manner was still rather diffident, as if he didn’t know how to react to her, yet she felt instinctively that friendliness came more naturally to him than reserve.

  ‘Oh, hi, sorry,’ she said, stumbling over her words. ‘Maybe I should have called first. I was just going for a walk and decided to drop by and say hello.’

  ‘You’re quite a one for walks, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Not that there’s much scope for them in the village. You’ve hardly got started before you’re out the other side.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got to do something to keep the boredom at bay,’ she countered. Aren’t you going to ask me in? she thought, and wondered, if he did, whether he would invite her into the house or over to the guesthouse. Where did he actually sleep? And what was the nature of his relationship with Hjördís? Their eyes kept meeting, then skittering apart, embarrassed. Una could feel her cheeks going pink. She could have sworn he was feeling as shy as she was.

  After a moment’s hesitation, he said: ‘Hang on, I’ll grab my coat and walk along with you.’ He ducked out of sight, then reappeared in the same thick anorak he had been wearing the first time they met.

  ‘So, how are you finding life in the village?’ he asked, once he had joined her outside and closed the door behind him. They set off into the stiff breeze, hunching their shoulders and burying their hands in their pockets for warmth. ‘How about heading up the hill, to the ruins of the Second World War air station?’ he suggested.

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I’m slowly finding my feet, thanks. I had coffee with the old couple earlier – with Gudrún and, er, Gunnar, I mean.’

  ‘Lucky you.’ There was no mistaking the sarcasm in his voice. ‘I tend to steer clear of them, but they make an amusing double act. Gunni and Gunna, we call them. They’re rolling in it after all these years of sharing the proceeds from Guffi’s fishing business, but they’ll never leave. They wouldn’t live anywhere else. Gunni hardly gets a word in edgeways when they’re together. His wife definitely wears the trousers in that relationship.’ After a pause, he added: ‘Though, to be fair, she does let him bore on about …’

  Una finished the sentence for him: ‘Don’t tell me – the history of Skálar?’

  Thór laughed. ‘Exactly! You obviously got the full treatment.’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Did he tell you about the mine?’

  ‘What? No, he didn’t mention anything about mines.’

  ‘One exploded by the seafront here during the war – I’m pretty sure it was in 1942. I’ve heard the stories about it and read up on the background a bit too. Gunni and Gunna’s house was hit by the impact, all the windows blew in and I don’t know what else. It was no joke, I can tell you.’

  ‘Was anyone hurt?’

  ‘No, thank God, there were no injuries, but several families moved away that same year, probably as a result. They must have thought things were getting too hot around here.’

  They trudged on up the barren slope, ignoring the biting cold, with no sound but the wind in the grass. To their left was the vast, flat expanse of the sea, reaching away to the distant headlands, which were largely obscured by cloud.

  ‘I met Guffi too …’ Una said. ‘He invited me round …’ She didn’t know how to put into words what had happened; the momentary suffocating fear of that encounter in Guffi’s windowless, subterranean office. Thór was a complete stranger, in spite of the instinctive trust he inspired in her; the powerful sense that there was a thread, some affinity, between them. And perhaps an element of attraction too.

  ‘Don’t you like Guffi?’ he asked.

  ‘He was a bit offputting. Unfriendly, you know.’ She decided not to say any more for the moment.

  Thór laughed again. He had a captivating laugh; it had a warm, kindly ring to it. ‘Is it a condition with you that everyone has to be full-on friendly the first time you meet them?’ he asked, though it was clear he wasn’t being serious.

  ‘No. No, of course not, but …’

  ‘Don’t worry, I understand. The old boy can be a bit gruff, but his heart’s in the right place. He didn’t exactly welcome me with open arms either at first.’

  Una couldn’t tell if Thór really meant it or if he was just saying it to make her feel better. If so, it was kindly done. She changed the subject: ‘Are you going to stay on here? I mean, have you moved here for good?’

  There was a weighty pause before he answered. ‘I’ve often asked myself the same question.’

  He lapsed into silence again. They had reached the ruins now and he stopped. Una looked around, aware of an odd combination of claustrophobia and homesickness. She wondered what on earth she was doing here, so far away from everything and everyone familiar, and whether she would really be able to endure a whole winter in this place. All she could think of was that she might manage it if she was allowed to spend a little time with Thór now and then.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said at last, by which time she had almost forgotten her question. ‘No, I’d rather not, Una, to tell the truth. It’s a beautiful spot, and peaceful too. Peaceful and safe. But there’s not a lot going on. Though, having said that, I don’t have a bad life here. I read a lot. I never used to, but now I borrow loads of books from the library; all kinds of books, but non-fiction, mostly.’

  ‘The library?’

  ‘Yes, of course we haven’t got one here in Skálar, but we can get books from Thórshöfn. Hjördís picks them up for me whenever she goes in.’

  ‘You and Hjördís, how – er – how did you meet?’

  Again there was a perceptible delay before he answered. ‘I just saw the job advertised here and applied for it out of some kind of desire for adventure. I didn’t know her at all.’ He hesitated, then said: ‘I expect there are stories doing the rounds about Hjördís and me, but I can assure you I only work for her.’

  And with that he saved Una the problem of asking the question. Once again, their eyes met, then they hurriedly looked away.

  As if to cover his embarrassment, he said: ‘Anyway, here we are. Let me show you round the ruins. I need some excuse to offload all the information I’ve absorbed from those library books about Langanes.’

  She’d been sleeping badly, and when she did finally drop off she tended to start awake again shortly afterwards, drenched in sweat.

  Hannes had been missing without trace for a month and, immediately after his disappearance, his mate Hilmar had vanished too.

  She was so frightened. She couldn’t shake off the conviction that they were both dead; that they’d been murdered.

  Of course she’d known that Hannes was mixing in bad company, and guessed that Hilmar was too, since they were both associated with the same crowd. But because she was – had been – in love with Hannes, she had tried not to ask too many questions.

  The police had spoken to her and questioned her exhaustively. She’d told them she had gone round to Hannes’s house the day he disappeared, and knocked on the door and peered through the window when he didn’t answer, but hadn’t seen anything. She got the feeling they didn’t believe her.

  She had also told them about his links to the underworld, explaining that she didn’t know exactly what he had been mixed up in but that she could give the police some names. And now she was frightened, terrified that these men would come after her in an attempt to shut her up.

  When she slept she dreamt of Hannes, but all her dreams were nightmares. A different sequence of events every night, but always ending in the same way, with Hannes dead, mu
rdered by those men.

  XII

  The choice at Gudrún’s branch of the Co-op was what you’d expect in the worst corner shop in Reykjavík, with prices to match. Some might have found it charming, romantic even, to live in an isolated hamlet like this, but Una was already fed up with having to forgo various luxuries that she had taken for granted in Reyk-javík. It didn’t help that the shop was only open between three and five in the afternoon, and not every day of the week either.

  Of course, she could always knock on Gudrún and Gunnar’s door, but Una was keen to avoid doing that, guessing that it would lead to her being roped in for coffee and a chat every time she bought something.

  Apart from the inevitable fish, there was hardly any fresh produce available. Una had discovered that the villagers were largely reliant on their chest freezers when it came to cooking anything else.

  She stood by the till, packing her shopping into a bag.

  ‘Shall I put it on your tab again?’ Gudrún smiled.

  At that moment the bell over the shop door jingled. Una turned hopefully, only to see Kolbrún’s mother, Inga, walk in, accompanied by a man who must be her husband, Kolbeinn.

  Kolbeinn smiled at Una, his gaze lingering on her as if he were sizing her up. Their daughter wasn’t with them. Kolbeinn, although greying slightly at the temples, was a handsome man, tall, lean and muscular. It was easy to believe he had spent his whole life working at sea.

  ‘Hello,’ Inga said, in a colourless voice.

  ‘Hello there,’ Una replied.

  ‘Hi, Una,’ Kolbeinn said, his manner much friendlier, his eyes still fixed on her. ‘We haven’t met, but I’m Kolbeinn, Kolla’s father. It’s great to meet you at last.’ He extended his hand and took hers in a firm grip that lasted a little longer than strictly necessary. ‘Buying something exciting for supper?’