Hypothermia

by Arnaldur Indridason

  ‘He has no right to say that about your father and me.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘It’s not fair on him.’

  ‘No, I know.’

  ‘Where did the man get it from?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  His mother closed the book.

  ‘It’s a load of nonsense; I don’t want anyone to read it,’ she repeated.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘No one,’ she said, handing him the book. He saw that she was fighting back tears. ‘As if it was his fault,’ she said. ‘As if it was anybody’s fault. It’s nonsense!’

  Erlendur took the book. Perhaps he should not have shown it to her. Or should at least have prepared her better for ‘Tragedy on Eskifjördur Moor’, as the chapter was called. He didn’t intend to show anyone else the account. His mother was right; there was no need to draw attention to what was written there.

  The winter that the volume containing the story of the brothers’ ordeal was published, Erlendur’s mother came down with flu. He wasn’t aware of it, being wholly taken up with work, and she was unwilling to put him to any inconvenience. She went back to work before she was fully recovered, suffered a relapse and took to her bed again, seriously ill this time. When she finally got in touch with Erlendur she was more dead than alive. The infection had seriously affected her heart. He forced her to go to hospital but there was little they could do. She was only in her early sixties when she died.

  Erlendur took a sip of his coffee and found it was cold. He stood up, went into the living room and took down the third volume from the bookcase. It was the same copy that his mother had been reading all those years ago. She had been aggrieved with the author of the account, feeling that he had been too hard on the family. Erlendur agreed; the book contained assertions about matters that were nobody else’s business – however true they might have been. His children, Sindri and Eva, knew of the existence of the account but he had been reluctant to show it to them. Perhaps for his father’s sake. Perhaps because of his mother’s reaction.

  He replaced the book on the shelf and the puzzle of the woman from Grafarvogur returned to haunt him. What had led her to that noose? What had happened at Lake Thingvallavatn the day her father died? He wanted to know more. It would have to be his own private investigation and he would have to proceed cautiously, so as not to arouse suspicion; talk to people, make deductions, just as he would in any other case. He would need to lie about the reason for his prying; invent some fictional assignment. But then, it wouldn’t be the first time he had done something of which he was not exactly proud.

  Erlendur wanted to know why the woman had suffered such a cruel, lonely fate by the lake where her father had also met his chilly end.

  The point where the book opened, the sentence about the sky, was also significant.

  María’s meeting with the medium had lent her a degree of strength, She was convinced that her mother had given her a sign by pulling Swann’s Way out of the bookcase, She couldn’t imagine any other explanation, and the medium, the gentlest, most understanding of men, had seemed to agree with her, He told her examples of similar cases of the dead making contact, either directly or else via dreams, sometimes even the dreams of other people rather than of their nearest and dearest.

  What María did not tell the medium was that a few months after Leonóra’s death she had begun to see extraordinarily vivid apparitions, and yet she was not frightened by them, despite her fear of the dark, Leonóra would appear to her in the bedroom doorway or on the landing or even sitting on the edge of her bed, If María went into the living room she might see Leonóra standing by the bookshelves or sitting in her chair in the kitchen, She even appeared to her when she left the house, as a faint reflection in a shop window or a face disappearing into the crowd.

  To begin with, these visions did not last long, perhaps only for an instant, but they became increasingly prolonged and vivid, and Leonóra’s presence grew stronger, just as María had experienced after her father’s death, She had read up on this type of grief-related hallucination and knew that the visions could be connected to loss and emotions such as guilt and chronic anxiety, She also knew that studies of the phenomenon suggested that they were projections of her own mind, her inner eye, She was an educated woman; she did not believe in ghosts.

  And yet she did not want to close off every avenue, She was no longer confident that science had the answers to all mankind’s questions.

  The passing of time only reinforced María’s belief that her visions were something more than mere psychological delusions produced by a mind oppressed with suffering, At one point they became so realistic that she felt they must originate in another world, despite what science would have her think, Little by little she began to believe that another world might exist, She immersed herself once more in the accounts that Leonóra had read at her urging about near-death experiences and the golden radiance and the love associated with it, about the divine figure in the light, the weightlessness in the dark tunnel that led towards the light, Instead of seeking help for her suffering, she tried to analyse her own condition by using her innate logic and common sense.

  Almost two years passed in this way, María’s visions grew less frequent over time and her obsession with Proust faded, Her life was returning to an even keel although she knew it would never be the same as it had been when her mother was alive, Then one morning she woke up early and happened to glance in passing at the bookcase.

  Nothing had changed.

  Or . . .

  She looked back at the books.

  She felt dizzy when she realised that the first volume was missing. Moving closer she saw that Swann’s Way was lying on the floor.

  Not daring to touch the book, she stooped and peered at the open pages, reading:

  ‘The woods are black now,

  yet still the sky is blue . . .’

  9

  Sigurdur Óli returned to work, coughing and fastidiously blowing his nose into a paper tissue. He said he couldn’t face hanging around at home any longer, though he hadn’t completely shaken off the bloody flu yet. He was wearing a new, light-coloured summer coat in spite of the autumnal chill and had already been to the gym and barber’s at the crack of dawn that morning. When he bumped into Erlendur he looked as fit as ever, despite his lingering virus.

  ‘Everything hunky-dory?’ he asked.

  ‘How are you?’ Erlendur asked in return, ignoring the irritating phrase that Sigurdur knew always got on his nerves.

  ‘Oh, you know. Anything happening?’

  ‘The usual. Are you going to move back in with her?’

  It was the same question that Erlendur had asked Sigurdur Óli before Sigurdur came down with flu. He liked Sigurdur’s wife Bergthóra and was saddened by the failure of their marriage. They had once briefly discussed the reasons for the separation and Erlendur had got the impression from his colleague that all hope was not yet lost. But Sigurdur Óli had not answered him then and nor did he do so now. He couldn’t stand Erlendur’s interfering.

  ‘Still obsessed with missing-person cases, I hear,’ he said and disappeared round the corner.

  There was less to do than usual, so Erlendur had dug out the files on the three missing-person cases that had occurred in quick succession nearly thirty years ago and had arranged them on the desk in front of him. He clearly remembered the girl’s parents. He had gone to visit them two months after their daughter had been reported missing, when the search had yielded no results. They had travelled down from Akureyri and were staying in Reykjavík at the house of some friends who were away. Erlendur could see that they had been going through sheer hell since their daughter’s disappearance; the woman looked haggard and the man was unshaven, with black shadows under his eyes. They were holding hands. He knew they had been to see a therapist because they blamed themselves for what had happened; for going on that long trip and only keeping in intermittent contact with their daughter. The trip
had been the fulfilment of an old dream of theirs to visit the Far East. They had travelled to China and Japan and even deep into Mongolia. The last contact they’d had with their daughter was via a poor telephone line from a hotel in Beijing. They’d had to book the phone call a long time in advance and the connection was bad. But their daughter had said that things were going very well at her end and that she was looking forward to hearing all about their adventures.

  ‘That was the last time we heard from her,’ the woman said in a low voice when Erlendur came to see them. ‘We didn’t come home until two weeks later and by then she had vanished. We called again when we got to Copenhagen and when we landed at Keflavík, but she didn’t answer. When we reached her flat, she had disappeared.’

  ‘We couldn’t really make proper telephone contact until we got back to Europe,’ her husband added. ‘We tried to call her then but she didn’t answer.’

  Erlendur nodded. A comprehensive search had been organised for their daughter, who was called Gudrún, nicknamed Dúna, but with no success. The police had interviewed her friends, fellow students and relatives but no one could explain her disappearance or begin to imagine what could have become of her. They combed the beaches in Reykjavík and the surrounding area. Crews in inflatable lifeboats scoured the coastline and divers dragged the sea. No one seemed to have noticed the movements of her Austin Mini; an aerial search of the entire Reykjavík area, the route north to Akureyri and all the main roads had failed to produce any results.

  ‘It was just an old banger, really, that she bought herself up north,’ her father said. ‘You could only get in through the driver’s door; the passenger door was stuck, the handles for winding the windows were broken and the boot didn’t open, but she was very fond of it all the same and drove it everywhere.’

  The parents talked about their daughter’s hobbies, one of which was studying lakes. She was reading biology and had a special interest in lakes and aquatic life. The search for her had taken account of this and encompassed the lakes near Reykjavík and Akureyri and on the road north, but to no avail.

  Erlendur looked up from the file. He didn’t know where the couple were living these days. They were probably still based in Akureyri, both in their seventies by now and hopefully enjoying their retirement. They had got in touch with him every so often for the first few years but he had not heard from them for a long while.

  He picked up another file. The disappearance of the young man from Njardvík seemed to have a more obvious explanation. He had been underdressed for the walk between the villages and although the distance was short, a violent blizzard had been raging and seemed likely to have caused his death. In all probability he had stumbled into the sea and been dragged away from shore by the waves. The amount he’d had to drink, which by all accounts had been excessive, must have hampered his ability to save himself, blunting his judgement, energy and willpower. Local rescue teams and the young man’s family and friends had combed the entire coastline from the Gardskagi lighthouse to Álftanes in the following days. The young man had left no trail and the search had to be postponed again and again due to extreme weather conditions. All efforts to find him proved in vain.

  Erlendur got in touch with María’s friend Karen to tell her that he had listened to the tape she’d left in his office. They had quite a long conversation during which Karen gave him the names of several people connected to María. She didn’t ask Erlendur why he wanted to examine the case further but seemed pleased with his reaction.

  One of the people Karen mentioned was a man named Ingvar. Erlendur decided to pay him a visit. He was friendly and did not query Erlendur’s explanation of why he was asking questions about María. They met late one afternoon as freezing showers lashed the city. Erlendur claimed that the police were taking part in a comprehensive study of suicide in collaboration with the other Nordic countries. It was not a complete lie. A study of the kind was being carried out by the Nordic ministries of social affairs and the police had contributed information to it. The aim was to try to uncover the root of the problem, as a Swedish report put it: to examine the causes of suicide, the distribution according to age, gender and social class, and to try to identify any common factors.

  Ingvar listened attentively as Erlendur churned out his spiel. Ingvar was in his sixties, an old family friend and companion of María’s father Magnús. He came across as rather a passive, sedate sort of man. Naturally he had been shattered by the news and had attended María’s funeral, which he described as beautiful. He found it incomprehensible that the girl should have resorted to such a desperate measure.

  ‘Though I knew she was under a lot of strain.’

  Erlendur sipped the coffee that the man had offered him.

  ‘I gather she was badly affected by her father’s death,’ he said, putting down his cup.

  ‘Dreadfully,’ Ingvar replied. ‘Dreadfully badly. No child should have to go through an ordeal like that. She witnessed the whole thing, you know.’

  Erlendur nodded.

  ‘Magnús and Leonóra bought the holiday cottage shortly after they married,’ Ingvar continued. ‘They often invited me and my dear late wife Jóna to stay with them at weekends and so forth. Magnús spent a lot of time out in his boat. He was mad about fishing, could carry on for days at a time. I used to go along sometimes. He tried to get little María interested but she didn’t want to go with him. It was the same with Leonóra. She never went on Magnús’s fishing trips.’

  ‘So they weren’t with him on the boat?’

  ‘No, certainly not. Magnús was alone; anyway, you’ll be able to read that in your reports. In those days people didn’t bother so much about wearing or carrying life jackets. Magnús had nothing of the sort with him when he went out on the lake. From what I can remember the boat came equipped with two life jackets, but Magnús always said he didn’t need them and kept them in the boat shed. He only went a short way out as a rule; hardly left the shore.’

  ‘But he went a bit further out that last time?’

  ‘He did, yes, from what I’ve heard. It was unusually cold that day. It was about this time of year, autumn.’

  Ingvar fell silent.

  ‘I lost one of my best friends in him,’ he added, momentarily distracted.

  ‘That’s tough,’ Erlendur said.

  ‘His boat had an outboard motor and we gathered from the police afterwards that the propeller fell off and the boat lost its steering and stopped. Magnús had no oars and fell overboard while fiddling with the engine. He was overweight and a heavy smoker and didn’t take any exercise, so I don’t suppose that helped. Leonóra said the wind had picked up; a cold blast from Mount Skjaldbreid had whipped up the waves, and Magnús drowned in a matter of minutes. Lake Thingvallavatn is freezing cold at this time of year. No one can survive in it for more than a few minutes.’

  ‘No, of course,’ Erlendur said.

  ‘Leonóra told me the boat couldn’t have been more than a hundred and fifty metres or so from shore. They didn’t see what happened. Just caught sight of Magnús in the water and heard his shouts, which were soon cut off.’

  Erlendur glanced out of the living-room window. The city lights glittered in the rain. The traffic was building up. He could hear its rumble from inside the house.

  ‘Naturally his death came as a crushing blow to his wife and daughter,’ Ingvar continued. ‘Leonóra never remarried. She and María lived together for the rest of her life, even after the girl married. Her husband, the doctor, simply moved in with them.’

  ‘Were they religious, the mother and daughter, that you were aware?’

  ‘I know that Leonóra derived a certain comfort from religion after what happened at Thingvellir. It helped her and no doubt the girl too. María was a little angel, I have to say. Leonóra never had the slightest trouble with her. Then she met that doctor – who seems a very decent chap to me. I don’t actually know him very well but I had a word with him after María died and of course he was distraugh
t, just as we all are, all of us who knew her.’

  ‘María had a degree in history,’ Erlendur remarked.

  ‘Yes, she was interested in the past; she was a great reader. She got that from her mother.’

  ‘Do you know what her particular field was?’

  ‘No, I don’t, actually,’ Ingvar said.

  ‘Could it have been religious history?’

  ‘Well, I understand that her interest in the afterlife intensified after her mother died. She immersed herself in spiritualism, in ideas about life after death and that sort of thing.’

  ‘Do you know if María ever visited mediums or psychics?’

  ‘No, I know nothing about that. If so, she never told me. Have you asked her husband?’

  ‘No,’ Erlendur said. ‘It’s just something that occurred to me. Did she seem very depressed to you? Could you have imagined that she would do something like that?’

  ‘No, I couldn’t. I met her several times and talked to her on the phone but she didn’t give the impression that this would . . . in fact, quite the opposite. I thought she was beginning to pick up. The last conversation I had with her was a few days before she . . . before she did it. She seemed more decisive than often before, more optimistic, if anything. I thought I sensed signs of an improvement. But I gather that’s sometimes the case.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That people in her position rally once they’ve taken the decision.’

  ‘Can you imagine what effect it might have had on her as a young girl to witness the accident at Thingvellir?’

  ‘Well, naturally one can’t put oneself in her shoes. In María’s case she clung to her mother and drew all her strength and comfort from her after the accident. Leonóra hardly dared take her eyes off the child in those first months and years. Of course, an event like that would have a profound impact and remain with you for the rest of your life.’