The Legacy

by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

  ‘Anything useful?’ Huldar made an effort to soften the harsh expression his face had worn ever since the internet had gone down. ‘Anything that could point us to the killer?’

  ‘I’m not sure. There’s loads we overlooked first time round but nothing that shouts at you. Mind you, your eyes tend to glaze over after reading a thousand status updates.’ Almar shuffled his feet awkwardly. He was one of the younger members of the department. His unusual expertise in IT had drawn the attention of his superiors in the regular police, and they had recommended his transfer. However, rumour had it that the real reason for his move was that Almar was completely unsuited to ordinary police work. He had graduated from the training college with the lowest possible marks in all the areas relating to physical operations and manoeuvres, but managed to drag up his average by his strong performance in the more academic subjects.

  He was shaping up pretty well in CID, though, despite a tendency to be absent-minded and slow on the uptake, which irritated some of his colleagues. In part this was due to Almar’s habit of walking around with earphones on, which meant he only heard a fraction of what was going on around him. Egill’s attempt to reprimand him had achieved little since they had both ended up poring over a new app that Almar had downloaded onto his phone.

  He had politely removed his earphones when he entered Huldar’s office. ‘I’ve divided it into two folders: “A” contains material that might be important; “B” stuff that probably doesn’t matter. Like I said, I filtered out anything obviously irrelevant.’

  ‘For example?’ It was impossible to guess what Almar might regard as irrelevant.

  ‘The unimportant folder contains, for example, e-mails from the widows of Nigerian generals, mass mailings from online stores, adverts, notices from the children’s schools and so on.’ Almar drew breath to continue but Huldar interrupted.

  ‘Good. I’ll take a look at it. What about text messages? Are they here too?’

  Almar’s eyes widened as he raised his brows. ‘No. That was kind of odd. The phone I was given was full of messages up until about two months ago. But it’s like she didn’t send or receive any texts after that. Maybe her phone broke.’

  ‘Oh?’ Huldar sat up. ‘Are you sure it was the phone she used?’

  ‘Well, there was a SIM card in it, so I just assumed it was. They gave it to me along with the desktop computer and laptop and told me it was her stuff. No one said anything about a second phone.’

  ‘There may not be one.’ Huldar ran a hand over his head and sighed. ‘What about phone calls? Did you see if there had been any recent ones?’

  ‘I didn’t look at them.’ Almar wore a hunted look, as if he’d been guilty of gross negligence. ‘I was told to go through the photos and texts. Nothing else.’

  Huldar put down the memory stick. ‘What kind of phone is it?’

  ‘An iPhone 4.’ Almar frowned. ‘It’s kind of an old model, now I come to think of it.’

  Huldar didn’t waste time replying. He put in a call to Elísa’s husband Sigvaldi, identified himself, received the man’s lukewarm greeting in return and fielded his enquiries about how the investigation was progressing. This didn’t take long; the only difficulty was to find a sufficiently polite phrase to explain that it wasn’t progressing at all. When the man started ranting at him about Margrét, Huldar interrupted. ‘The idea’s being considered in the interests of her own safety. You yourself agreed to it. If you’ve changed your mind we’ll have to accept that, but I’d advise you not to make any rash decisions. We have reason to be concerned for her safety, as you’re well aware.’

  ‘Then hurry up and solve the crime.’ Sigvaldi’s voice swooped and dipped. He coughed, got his feelings under control and continued, sounding flat and hollow. ‘You must be able to solve it.’ There was no conviction behind the words.

  ‘Oh, we will. I promise you that.’ Huldar blurted this out before he had time to think. On the desk in front of him lay Ríkhardur’s report on Sigvaldi’s injuries. He had gone to A&E and interviewed the doctor who had examined the man. According to the doctor, the injuries were consistent with Sigvaldi’s explanation. No signs of a struggle had been observed anywhere else on his body. No scratches or bruises to suggest that a desperate woman had tried to fight him off. In spite of this, Huldar wrote a question mark against the report. Sigvaldi was a doctor and probably acquainted with the medic who examined him, though they worked in different departments. ‘Actually, I was calling about another matter. What kind of phone did your wife have?’

  ‘She had a new iPhone. I gave it to her for Christmas.’

  ‘What model?’

  ‘An iPhone 6.’

  ‘Not 4?’

  ‘No. Her old one was an iPhone 4 but she stopped using it when she got the new one.’ Sigvaldi paused. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘It turns out we’ve got her old phone. Could her new one have been sent in for repair?’ While he was talking, Huldar called up on the server an inventory of everything that had been removed from Elísa’s home. Only the old iPhone was listed.

  ‘No, not as far as I’m aware. It was working when I left. I called her from the airport and she answered.’

  ‘I see. But there was a SIM card in the old phone. Is it possible that the new one stopped working after you left and she transferred the card to the old one while it was being repaired?’ Most telecom companies had taken to offering phones on loan in these circumstances but it was conceivable that she had refused one, for whatever reason.

  ‘No. They take different SIM cards. She got a new one when she changed over. The new card’s much smaller.’

  Huldar rang off and turned back to Almar who was nervously winding the fine wire of his earphones around his fingers.

  ‘She’s got another phone. An iPhone 6. She stopped using this one some time ago. Do you know where they found it?’

  ‘Er, I think I read in the accompanying document that it was in a drawer in the kitchen. I swear there was no mention of any other phone.’ Almar’s eyes dropped briefly to the broken pencils as if afraid Huldar would grab one and lunge at him. News of his explosion that morning had obviously spread. Ríkhardur had taken care not to let his gaze linger on the desk any more than on Huldar’s face. Almar lacked his self-control; his eyes were constantly darting round the room in search of something other than the broken pencils to fix on. ‘If there’d been another phone I’d have examined it, of course.’

  ‘I’m not blaming you. Talk to the guys who searched the house. Double check that no other phone was found, then tell them from me that I want them to go back and have another look. If it doesn’t turn up, we’ll have to put a trace on it. You can take care of that, can’t you?’

  ‘We can try. But if it’s switched off, there’s not much we can do. Either the wifi has to be on or the phone has to be connected to the GSM network.’

  ‘So, let me get this straight: if for some bizarre reason the murderer has taken it, it would have to be switched on for us to trace it?’

  Almar nodded, embarrassed, as if the limitations of the technology were somehow his fault.

  ‘Like that’s going to happen. But make arrangements, just in case.’ Huldar waved Almar out and plugged the memory stick into his computer. He felt a pang of conscience that he hadn’t been kinder to him when he saw how conscientiously Almar had sifted through Elísa’s electronic data and the painstaking care with which he had classified the information. Every file in folder A had been given a descriptive label to enable Huldar to view them systematically. Once immersed in the material, however, he quickly forgot about the young man and his flaming cheeks.

  Elísa’s life lay open before him. Barely a day had gone by in the past six months when she hadn’t been in constant contact with the outside world via her computer. No doubt a similar picture would emerge when and if her phone turned up. The volume of personal messages and e-mails was absurd when compared to his own habits. The only e-mails he received outside work were sporadic
messages from his sisters, scolding him for never getting in touch or for something else he’d done to displease them. They also liked sending messages about joint gifts for children’s confirmations or important family birthdays – followed by angry ones when he failed to come up with any suggestions for presents.

  Elísa couldn’t have been more different. She welcomed all messages about gifts and parties and had, for example, responded to one about a class reunion with the words: ‘Yay! Awesome! Me! Me! Me!’ Huldar couldn’t remember ever in his life using an exclamation mark. He noted down the date of the party in case Elísa had any enemies from her school days. Once written down, the idea seemed ridiculous. This must count as low priority even allowing for their almost total absence of leads.

  He felt compelled by the depressing state of the inquiry to continue his trawling, tedious though he found it. Although he had a Facebook account he almost never logged on. What was the point? He never knew what to write and had no interest in looking at photos of his friends and acquaintances on holiday or on skiing trips. He would rather see his sisters’ kids in person, especially since they were all boys – a fact that seemed like poetic justice to him, after growing up as the only boy among five girls.

  In contrast, Elísa had been incredibly conscientious about updating her status – which was almost invariably about her children. Their minutely detailed antics were no doubt cute or funny if you happened to like children, which Huldar didn’t. He had even less time for the updates featuring pictures of cakes and food she had variously cooked, baked or ordered in restaurants. Her friends, on the other hand, seemed to appreciate these, and every update was followed by a string of comments. He skimmed through them all, but the reason for Elísa’s murder was highly unlikely to be connected to her children or eating habits. Or to her job at the tax office; the police had talked to her manager who said that although plenty of people had reason to hate the tax authorities, that hatred was unlikely to be directed at Elísa. She had worked behind the scenes, had no direct contact with those under investigation and had never been called upon to testify in court. Those fingered by the tax man would have no idea of her existence.

  One thing that did emerge from his reading was how different Margrét was from her two younger brothers. Elísa rarely mentioned any funny things she had said or done. When she wrote about her daughter it was on a more serious note, to dutifully report the loss of a tooth or, more commonly, her good performance at school. Margrét didn’t come across as a particularly lively or happy child and Huldar experienced a twinge of guilt when he remembered the ongoing debate about whether to place her in care. If the girl was naturally depressive, he didn’t like to think about the consequences if the rug was pulled from under her feet at a time like this. Then again, she herself had asked not to be sent back to her father. But she might well change her mind at the last minute. It wouldn’t surprise him.

  Huldar turned from the screen to gaze out of the window at the sea and the long, flat-topped bulk of Mount Esja, looming over the scene, content with its lot, elevated above all human strife. How nice to be a mountain and never get yourself into a mess or take on a case you couldn’t handle. Huldar sighed and shook his head. Were their concerns for Margrét’s safety unnecessary? It was one thing to murder a grown-up but a child was another matter. Then again, it was one thing to kill a person in a conventional manner, with a blunt object, knife or firearm, but quite another to hoover all the air out of her body with such violence that her eardrums burst. The M.O. suggested that the perpetrator was a psychopath, completely devoid of conscience. Huldar turned back to the screen and started browsing through the photos that Elísa had either uploaded to Facebook or stored on her computer. In every shot his attention was drawn irresistibly to Margrét’s green eyes in her colourless face beneath the dark red tangle of hair. She was the only member of the family who was careful always to look directly at the lens. The others seemed unaware that a photo was being taken. She also appeared to be much more dependent on her mother than her brothers were, since in most of the pictures she was either clinging to her or standing close beside her. Huldar thought this tendency was even more marked in the most recent photos. You’d have thought the girl had had an intuition of what was to come.

  Studying these family photos that clearly weren’t intended for strangers’ eyes made him uncomfortable. He had seen enough to conclude that Sigvaldi and Elísa had been a normal couple who gave every appearance of enjoying life. She was smiling or laughing in almost every frame, and the pictures in which they appeared together gave the impression that here were two people who were in love and great friends. Though of course this could have been a front.

  Bored as he was of ploughing through this material, Huldar persevered. He concentrated on Elísa’s social life, which gave him more than enough to work with. She had been part of a large circle of friends who kept in touch and met up regularly. They exchanged countless messages about meals, children’s parties, diets and trips to health spas. Elísa was always up for everything. Huldar didn’t know enough about married life or women in general to tell whether this was normal or a sign of cracks in a relationship that appeared perfect on the surface. If he had to guess, he would say it wasn’t normal. To him, marriage meant having less need of other people’s company, but perhaps he was just hopelessly old-fashioned. Perhaps that explained why he was still single. If he hadn’t been such an idiot and screwed Karlotta, he could have turned to Ríkhardur for advice. He must know a thing or two about failing marriages, but there was no way Huldar could bring up the subject of divorce with him now. It would be totally inappropriate for him to say Karlotta’s name in Ríkhardur’s presence. The sooner their divorce was finalised, the better. Once it was done and dusted, he hoped the memory of his cock-up would no longer come back to haunt him every time he laid eyes on Ríkhardur.

  In the end there was nothing of real interest on the memory stick. Going by the bank statement Elísa had e-mailed to her accountant, the couple’s finances were fairly healthy, better than most people’s nowadays. Elísa’s death wouldn’t bring about any major changes in their circumstances. The insurance companies had confirmed Sigvaldi’s claim that she had no life insurance, though it wasn’t impossible that he was concealing information about a policy with an overseas company. They would find out in due course. The police had contacted those foreign insurers known to do business with Icelanders and their responses were expected shortly.

  As Huldar returned to examining the photos it suddenly occurred to him that the man who had been watching the house in Margrét’s drawings might have been accidentally caught on camera. He skimmed through the albums again, bearing this in mind. There was a knock and Erla put her head round the door while he was studying a picture of Elísa and Margrét. The photo had been taken outdoors and for once both were looking straight at the camera with a rare ray of sunshine illuminating their hair. Their eyes were sad, though Elísa was making a feeble attempt to smile. Margrét looked as stony as ever; not a hint of pleasure or happiness could be detected in her childish face. This made her appear older than her years. Huldar tore himself away from the photo and turned to Erla. ‘Yes?’

  ‘They’ve found a woman’s body. Quite a bit older than Elísa. But the circumstances are more or less identical. Only nastier.’

  Huldar closed the photo, switched off his monitor and stood up. Before leaving the office he rang Egill and broke the news to him, adding that it would be advisable to move Margrét to a safe house without delay. While he was speaking, he fought an overwhelming craving for nicotine.

  He would leave it up to fate to decide: whether he took up smoking again today would depend on which he drove past first, a chemist or a sales kiosk.

  Chapter 16

  It was hard to imagine a less inviting place than the visitors’ cell at Litla-Hraun prison. It might have been deliberately designed to convey the message that crime didn’t pay. The walls could have done with a lick of paint, and the worn v
inyl flooring needed replacing. The room was furnished with a small table, a single chair and a narrow bed nailed to the floor, which was at present serving as a seat. No doubt it was intended for more enjoyable activities during conjugal visits, judging by the bag containing a blanket and sheet that had been placed at the head of the bed. Freyja hadn’t bothered to inform the new prison guard that she was the inmate’s sister, but every time her gaze fell on the bedclothes she regretted the fact. She was afraid the guard would subsequently discover their relationship and jump to unsavoury conclusions.

  Freyja was a past master at worrying about imaginary misunderstandings; capable of brooding over them long after everyone else had forgotten. Once, when she was twelve, she had walked around with a knot in her stomach for weeks because she hadn’t managed to answer the craft teacher’s question about whether she had knitted her jumper herself. The bell had rung as Freyja opened her mouth. When, just before the Christmas holidays, she had finally plucked up the courage to correct the misunderstanding, the teacher had stared at her blankly. Perhaps the disaster of the gloves she had accidentally knitted without thumbs had helped the teacher to forget that she had ever overestimated her ability.

  ‘How’s Molly?’ Baldur rested his right arm on the little table, gripping the coffee she’d brought him from the drinks machine outside. His white teeth lit up his face in a smile as he thought about his dog. Baldur had always been beautiful; as a plump baby, a mischievous boy, a lanky teenager, and now as a man. Adulthood suited him particularly well, and as a result he was wildly successful with women; more successful than could be counted healthy. At least two of Freyja’s friends had slept with him and she suspected a third, though the friend had vehemently denied it, her cheeks burning, when the other two grilled her during a particularly drunken dinner party. Baldur winked at her as if he could read her mind. She couldn’t help grinning back, though the memory wasn’t particularly edifying.