Yet again she regretted having stopped teaching. She had taken advantage of the rules on early retirement for public-sector workers, but a month after she resigned her post she had lost her husband to a heart attack. Once she had recovered from the initial shock and grief, she had taken herself down to the sixth-form college to which she had devoted most of her career to offer her services again. But by then the school had employed a young man in her place and she was no longer required to teach pupils the mysteries of biology.
The memory was still painful enough to bring a flush to her cheeks as she stood staring at her phone. At the time she had stammered that she had of course known about the new teacher but had simply wanted to offer herself as substitute; to cover for the young man when he was ill, for example, or they needed an examiner. Unfortunately, though, Ástrós had spoken with characteristic directness when she asked for her old job back and there had been no chance her words could be misconstrued. Since then she had avoided her old workplace. She couldn’t face running into the head of HR or any of her old colleagues, aware the story must have got back to them.
Now that the radio was off and she was no longer talking on the phone the flat was uncomfortably quiet. She could even hear the people downstairs. Relations with her neighbours hadn’t been particularly friendly since she was widowed. It had all started just before her husband died, when they couldn’t agree on a colour to paint the building. Ástrós, who naturally hadn’t been at her best after her bereavement, had insisted on the shade that she and her husband had both wanted, though in reality she didn’t have a strong opinion. In the thick of grieving she had thought of the battle as a way of serving her husband’s memory. With the passing of time, she had come to realise how foolish this was, but by then it was too late to undo the damage. Relations between the floors were beyond salvaging.
The dispute over the paint colour eventually died down, but it wasn’t long before they fell out again. The couple downstairs claimed she wasn’t doing her share of maintaining the garden and communal areas. However hard she tried, they always looked disapproving. She had attempted to discuss the matter with them and find a compromise – she would look after the garden and keep the dustbin store clean if they would touch up the paintwork, change the light-bulbs and keep the pavement clear of snow. The cost of tradesmen would be equally split. But that had really put the cat among the pigeons. The wife had snapped that they had drawn the short straw – summer, when the garden needed tending, only lasted three months a year, and the bin store didn’t require much effort either. Whereas shovelling snow, changing light-bulbs and decorating involved far more work. Ástrós tried to point out that there was only one shared light-fitting and that she could take care of that if it mattered that much. But she couldn’t shovel snow.
Eventually, since the couple seemed disinclined to cooperate, she had suggested paying someone else to take care of it all. That was when relations really deteriorated. The frustrating part was that when her husband was alive they had put much more effort into all the maintenance, snow-clearing and gardening than the people downstairs. But the neighbours had a short memory. How shabbily people could behave. The bloody man had dared to fling in her face at the height of their quarrel that he and his wife had always taken much better care of the communal areas and that they weren’t going to stand for it any longer. He spoke with such conviction that Ástrós’s certainty wavered. But only for a moment. Of course she and Geiri had done far more.
The memory made her want to stamp on the floor in the hope of annoying the couple, but she checked the impulse. Not because she thought it was a bad idea but because the phone on the table had suddenly lit up. Ástrós couldn’t resist taking a quick peek. Yet another message, again from an unknown sender. She assumed they must all be from the same person, or it would be too much of a coincidence. To her relief the text consisted of letters this time, conveying the brief message: Not long till my visit – excited?
Whose visit? She wasn’t expecting anyone. Was she? She couldn’t remember issuing any invitations. Going into the hall, she peered in the mirror and saw that she would need to smarten herself up a bit if she was to receive guests. What a pity it didn’t say when this mysterious visitor would arrive. Not long till my visit. That could mean anything, depending on where the sender was at the time. In the countryside? Abroad? In the next street?
Ástrós hurried into the bathroom and jumped in the shower after a brief debate with herself about whether she had time. She didn’t want to answer the door in her dressing gown, hair wrapped in a towel and face bare of make-up, but she decided to go ahead anyway, and beat her own speed record. As she stood in front of the misted-up mirror, wiping away the steam, she felt depressed by her lonely fate. The way she was behaving you would have thought she hadn’t seen another soul for days or even weeks. Well, this strange visitor who omitted to give their name could simply wait outside until she was ready.
She was confronted in the mirror by the alien face that had slowly but surely replaced her own in recent years. It looked like the face of a much older woman, with wrinkles round the eyes and mouth, deep creases across the forehead and pronounced pouches under the eyes. Who the hell are you? Who invited you to my party?
Picking up her foundation, Ástrós set to work concealing the worst signs of ageing. She went about it methodically, with no sense of urgency. What she did feel was an ominous foreboding that the visit would not bring her much joy. Where had that thought sprung from? The green light on her curling tongs lit up. She studied her face with some satisfaction, then put aside the make-up and began to do her hair, strand by strand. The hot smell of singeing helped her to relax. However pleasant or otherwise the visit turned out to be, at least she would look halfway decent.
Chapter 8
From the outside, the house looked no different from countless others built in the sixties and seventies. Plain concrete, single-storey, around 180 square metres, with a simple, sloping roof. The layout inside was no doubt designed to meet the requirements of another age: a master bedroom, separate dining room, poky kitchen and several tiny children’s rooms with wardrobes to match, reflecting the limited choice of clothing available to kids in those days. A house of the type that, as a little girl, Freyja used to dream of living in when she grew up, together with a vaguely imagined husband and two beautiful children, one girl, one boy. And a cat and a fish-tank too. The complete opposite of her current existence.
Tubs containing the shrivelled remains of last summer’s flowers flanked the gate, but these were the only reminders of mortality. The house stood innocently on its plot, as if nothing had happened there. If she hadn’t known better she would have assumed that life was carrying on as normal inside; there was no cordon of yellow police tape – not even, as she would have expected, stretched across the front door. Freyja found herself wondering if the architect who had designed the house with a happy, nuclear family in mind would have changed anything had he known the fate that awaited the future occupant. Would he have drawn the windows larger to facilitate Elísa’s escape, put in bars, installed huge security fences around the garden? Or given the house a more forbidding façade to warn the family off buying it? She studied the building through the dirty window of her car but came to no conclusion. She had parked outside in the road, for fear of spoiling any evidence that might still await discovery on the concrete drive, but given that the parking area wasn’t cordoned off and there was a police car there already, her caution was probably unnecessary. Still, she didn’t want to risk a reprimand for the sake of saving herself a few extra steps.
She had switched off the ignition but was still holding the key, reluctant to face the cold outside, though it wasn’t that much warmer in her brother’s clapped-out wreck of a car. The heater had given up the ghost on the way there and the windows had ice on the insides. The interior stank of old cigarette butts from the ashtray that she hadn’t got round to cleaning out, and the colder it got, the worse the smell became. It
wasn’t helped by the sickly odour emanating from the cardboard Christmas tree dangling from the wonky rear-view mirror. The taste of this morning’s fried eggs lingered in Freyja’s mouth, clashing unpleasantly with the fragrance of artificial pine. She took a hefty swig of Coke to ward off incipient nausea. The half-frozen drink rattled in the can but slid down her throat smoothly enough. She felt a little better, and better still when she stepped outside and breathed in the fresh, wintry air.
God, it was cold. She wasn’t dressed for visiting murder scenes or hanging about outdoors. When she received the call she had been on her way to meet her girlfriends for lunch in town and her clothes had been chosen to strike the right balance; not too scruffy, not too smart. Though she had probably erred towards the latter.
She fumbled with the zip of her jacket, impeded by her gloves, but finally managed to pull it up to her neck. Then she took a better look at the house. She could have sworn there was an ominous atmosphere, that the grey winter light had a gloomier, chillier quality here than it did over the neighbouring properties. But she was just being fanciful. Shrugging off her unease, she put the car keys in her jacket pocket and concentrated on breathing calmly. Thin clouds accompanied her breath, and the impacted snow on the pavement creaked underfoot. Apart from that a deathly hush reigned. The dense silence belonged to winter; it would be unthinkable in summer. There were no birds singing in the bare trees and nothing moved in the stillness. Freyja could have been alone in the world when suddenly she heard the slam of a door nearby, followed by rapid footsteps. Someone about to miss a bus, perhaps? Glancing round, Freyja saw that it was a woman. She was halfway to the house when the woman caught up with her.
‘Hello. Excuse me.’
Freyja stopped and turned. The woman hadn’t had time to wrap up properly before running outside. She stood there, teeth chattering, in a thin raincoat designed for a warmer season. Her hair was scraped back in an untidy ponytail, and only one of her eyes was made up, which gave her an oddly lopsided appearance.
‘Excuse me, I’m Védís. I live next door. It was me who found the boys.’
Freyja looked over at her house, which was identical to Elísa’s and Sigvaldi’s, and saw the outline of a figure in the window. The husband, presumably. He moved away when he saw Freyja watching him. She returned her attention to the woman, who had started speaking again:
‘We … I – the rest of us who live in the street, I mean – are very upset.’
Freyja was silent, unsure how to respond, which made the woman even more awkward. Freyja almost felt sorry for her; no doubt it had seemed like a good idea to dash outside in the hope of hearing news, but like many rash decisions it didn’t seem so clever in practice.
‘I was just hoping you could tell me how Sigvaldi and the kids are doing. We couldn’t help noticing that you lot were round here yesterday and the day before, but no one will tell us anything. They asked me a ton of questions but wouldn’t answer any of mine. Then I heard about a suspected murder on the lunchtime news and nearly had a heart attack. Is it the same case?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t help you. I’m not with the police.’
‘Oh?’ The woman frowned. ‘Who are you with then?’
Freyja answered levelly: ‘I’m a civil servant.’ She didn’t want to mention the Child Protection Agency or Children’s House. It would only give the street more to gossip about, and it could lead to misunderstandings. When people heard mention of social services, their thoughts immediately went to unfit parents, while everyone knew that the Children’s House was involved with sexual abuse cases. The police were bound to release more details soon and that would give the woman the information she desired. ‘I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to comment on my reason for being here.’
The woman made a face as if Freyja were deliberately trying to exclude her.
‘Well, we know something’s happened.’ All it needed was the addition of a petulant ‘so there’. Instead the woman continued: ‘We saw the ambulance arrive. And leave.’ She opened her mouth, then closed it again. There was no mistaking it when a dead person was carried out to an ambulance; the sick or injured did not have their faces covered. ‘It’s driving us crazy not knowing what’s happened. They’re more than just next-door neighbours, you know. Elísa was quite a good friend of mine.’ The woman appeared to be in her early thirties, the same age as Elísa, so this could well have been true. Freyja noticed that she referred to Elísa in the past tense. The woman shivered with cold, or perhaps it was a shudder. ‘Who was it on the stretcher?’
‘I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to comment. I’m sure more information will be made available soon.’ Freyja kept her expression neutral, so the woman wouldn’t be able to read her face.
Momentarily distracted, the woman glanced at something behind Freyja, then looked back at her. ‘I’ve half a mind to complain about the way we’ve been treated. Me especially.’ She was speaking quickly now, apparently guessing that their conversation was about to be cut short. How prescient of her.
‘Well, I can’t stop you.’
The anger that had briefly distorted the woman’s features now gave way to resignation. ‘Of course I won’t really. I just thought it would be a basic courtesy to fill me in on what’s happening. It’s not like I’m a stranger or have nothing to do with it. I live next door and it was me who found the boys. So I’m involved, sort of. At least as a witness; I was given a real grilling by the police. Isn’t there a duty to keep witnesses informed about the cases they’re involved in?’
‘I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that.’ Freyja hoped the woman would go away before she froze to the pavement. ‘I’m sure they’ll have another word with you once things have quietened down a bit. But I’m not part of the investigation team so I can’t help you. Sorry.’
Freyja turned on her heel, putting an end to the conversation. Behind her she heard retreating footsteps. Now she could see what had attracted the woman’s attention: Huldar was standing at the front door, subjecting her to a hostile glare. This morning’s eggs suddenly repeated on her. It hadn’t occurred to her he would be there in person. There were plenty of other officers who could have come instead, and she had assumed he would avoid her like the plague after their awkward reunion at the Children’s House. Perhaps he was even odder than she’d thought. Freyja raised her chin and returned his disapproving stare with one of her own.
As she drew near she glimpsed a hand-painted plaque over his shoulder, announcing the names of the family. The decorative flowers in the corners had weathered away until only the odd petal remained but the black lettering was intact, and Elísa’s name was uncomfortably conspicuous in the second row. That aside, there was little to see in the porch, only two brightly coloured sledges leaning against the wall, one stacked inside the other, and a brand-new snow shovel propped up in one corner, which was unlikely to be required any time soon. Digging out the drive would hardly be a priority in the immediate future.
‘Hello.’ Freyja did not extend her hand. She didn’t want to touch the man, and anyway it would seem ludicrously formal in the circumstances.
‘Hello.’ Huldar sounded cross. He must be tired, judging by the dark shadows under his eyes, the stubble and crumpled clothes. He appeared not to have changed since yesterday’s fiasco at the Children’s House. But as he stepped aside to let her enter, she realised his bad mood wasn’t only due to lack of sleep.
‘When I offered to meet you here I didn’t expect you to start acting as police spokesman to the neighbours, or I’d never have agreed to it. We’re more than capable of dealing with public relations ourselves.’
Freyja retorted indignantly: ‘All I said to the woman was that I couldn’t comment.’
Huldar was wrong-footed. ‘Oh.’ He coughed. ‘Sorry. That couple have been lying in wait for us ever since we first arrived. They’re both eaten up with curiosity.’ He smiled sheepishly. ‘I’ve had to tear a strip off so many of my own people for getting sucked into conversa
tion with them that I automatically slipped into the same mode.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ But it did matter. Freyja couldn’t stand criticism, especially not from him, and when she didn’t even deserve it. She had come here to fetch clothes and other essentials for the three children. Since none of their relatives, not even their father, was permitted to enter the house, Freyja had agreed to help out, although it would make her late for lunch with her friends. As far as she was concerned she was doing the police a favour, so she had expected a rather different reception. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
She took care not to bump into a coat stand laden with jackets, woolly hats and scarves, most of them in bright, childish colours. The floor of the hall was littered with footwear as though the children had kicked off their shoes any old how when they came in. Freyja glanced around for a place to leave her own shoes. This was all new to her; she’d never visited a crime scene before and had no idea of the protocol. ‘Should I take my shoes off?’
‘No, not unless you want to. But I don’t advise it. The floor’s not exactly clean after our lot have been tramping in and out.’ He stared, fascinated, at her shoes. It was probably a ploy to avoid meeting her eye. His obvious discomfort restored her self-confidence and filled her with satisfaction. He deserved to suffer.
Eventually, tired of looking at the top of his head, Freyja coughed. ‘Hadn’t we better get this over with? People are waiting. Where should I begin?’ This wasn’t strictly true; no one was waiting with bated breath for these clothes.
‘What? Oh, yes.’ Huldar raised his head so suddenly that Freyja was afraid he’d crick his neck. He opened the door to the living area and she followed him, trying not to picture their night together. Feeling herself turning pink, she thanked God he couldn’t see. Bloody man.
The Legacy Page 9
