The Legacy

by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

  Baldur had an innate ability to sweep people along with him against their better judgement. Had he chosen to live on the right side of the law, he would have made a consummate politician; charismatic and utterly persuasive, whatever nonsense he was peddling. Freyja had often caught herself thinking that his absurd plans weren’t so crazy after all.

  But she always came to her senses the moment he stopped talking. The enchantment of his words and personality were like a firework display: you were blown away while it lasted but afterwards it left you with irritating blobs of light on your eyeballs and a ringing in your ears.

  Baldur had yet to hit upon a clever scheme that also happened to be legal. When he did, his life might well turn around. But the hope of his finding the right niche was fading. He seemed ever more comfortable dabbling in shady business, surrounded by characters who knew no better. His looks were not all he had inherited from their mother: he seemed to have imbibed with her breast milk her dreams of luxury and a happy-ever-after, all achieved without effort. They both lived entirely for the moment, convinced that better times were just around the corner, so there was no need to complicate one’s life with such tedious things as worries or foresight.

  Baldur’s smile didn’t last long. ‘Make sure she doesn’t get fat. It’s a bloody nightmare trying to get the weight off her again.’

  ‘I’ll make sure.’ Freyja shifted on the mattress, trying to find a more comfortable position, and eventually settled with her back against the wall. ‘She’s doing fine. Don’t worry.’

  ‘You know you have to exercise her. Not just a little potter around the block but a full-blown hike.’

  Freyja forced a smile. Baldur was optimistic if he thought she was going to charge up a mountain with his dog every morning and evening. ‘Look, stop worrying. Molly’s in good shape. But what about you? Is everything OK? In the circumstances?’

  ‘I’m always OK. You know that.’ He took a mouthful of coffee. ‘There’s not much time left if I toe the line. I’ll probably be out in a few months.’ He hastened to add: ‘You can stay on in the flat even if I do come home. I’ll have to sleep at the halfway house to start off with, so you can have the place to yourself at night.’

  Freyja’s thoughts strayed to the spare room that had been crammed full of heat lamps and propagators when she moved in. They had been used to cultivate a variety of crops other than herbs over the years and although she had moved the propagators down to the storeroom, the place still reeked of cannabis. ‘I’ll find a flat. It’s just not going too well at the moment because people would rather rent to tourists. Understandably – they pay better.’

  ‘Maybe I should take a look at the tourist industry when I get out.’

  Freyja gave an inaudible sigh. She didn’t like to imagine what opportunities Baldur might spot for making a quick profit at the expense of foreign visitors, but she was sure they were services the tourists could do without. He was currently serving a sentence for taking out a major loan with a friend, using as security a property that belonged to a man who happened to have the same name as his friend. They had spent the money before the fraud was discovered, even paying off some of the monthly instalments to buy themselves time. It was only when they could no longer cover these that the scam was exposed. As Baldur had been on probation, the remainder of his previous sentence had been added to the new one for forgery and embezzlement. Freyja could hardly remember a time when Baldur wasn’t either inside or awaiting sentencing.

  He winked at her again and smiled. ‘So, what about you? Seeing anyone special?’

  ‘No. No one, special or otherwise.’ Freyja had no intention of telling him about the Huldar fiasco. For one thing, her love life was none of his business, and for another she didn’t want him to find out that she’d let a cop into his flat, however unwittingly. ‘I’m absolutely fine for the moment.’

  ‘Absolutely fine? What the fuck’s the matter with you?’ Baldur scowled. In his world view everyone needed a partner to be happy, though not necessarily long term, as variety was the spice of life. ‘Don’t you get out at all? You won’t find anyone by sitting on your arse at home.’

  She felt like retorting that being banged up didn’t seem to have cramped his style when it came to meeting women. How he did it was beyond her. He’d had four girlfriends in the past year. Every time the position became vacant, a new one materialised. Freyja had a constant fight on her hands to be granted a visitor permit because the current girlfriend always took precedence. It was mainly when he was between women, like now, that he had time for her. ‘I’m not sitting on my arse at home. I go out. I just haven’t met the right guy. Anyway, I haven’t been single that long. I’m not giving up hope yet.’

  ‘I can fix you up, if you like. No problem. I’d choose carefully.’

  ‘No way – thanks all the same.’ She tried to hide her vehemence so he wouldn’t notice how little she appreciated his help. Better change the subject before he started interrogating her about her taste in men and making a list of possible candidates. ‘Work’s hectic at the moment.’

  ‘Oh?’ Baldur had never had much faith in Freyja’s career. The jobs she had done over the years had no place in his world. He thought the Children’s House was all right as a concept, but couldn’t understand all the fuss when everyone knew you could deal with paedophiles with a baseball bat without having to trouble the health services or legal profession.

  The sun broke through the black clouds that had loured over Freyja on her drive east over the mountains from Reykjavík. The bars in the narrow window threw symbolic shadows on the floor. Unable to tear her gaze from them, she felt a pang at the thought of her brother’s situation and was seized with anxiety about his future. They had seen an older prisoner slipping into another visiting cell; a bent, scrawny figure, with faded tattoos emerging from the neck and sleeves of his crumpled fleece. Freyja couldn’t bear to think of Baldur ending up like that. It mustn’t be allowed to happen. Unrealistic as it was, she felt it was up to her to make sure it didn’t. The feeling was a familiar one.

  Ever since she could remember she and Baldur had been responsible for one another. He was there for her; he used to hit the boys who teased her during break, and help her to carry her heavy school bag. He was two years older and ever since she was a baby she had looked up to him and felt safe when he was near. Her admiration and unfailing trust had in turn boosted Baldur’s self-confidence and endowed his life with purpose. But as Freyja grew older and the realisation gradually sank in that her brother was not perfect, so her hero worship waned. The truth was that he had his share of faults, which were allowed to develop unchecked. No wonder: their mother had had them both before she was twenty and was too immature to raise them properly, yet they loved her unconditionally, as children do, and she made it easy for them. Like Baldur, she was happy-go-lucky, always smiling in spite of the difficulties and chaos of their home life.

  Although Freyja and Baldur didn’t share a father, they had never thought of themselves as half-siblings. There was nothing ‘half’-hearted about their relationship. Their fathers were peripheral figures; their mother was the centre of their world. From her they received all they needed – food, shelter, security, companionship and a refuge, however chaotic – whereas their fathers came and went without ever gaining a foothold in their life. Both were young men who had only been casually acquainted with their mother, though they did at least make feeble attempts to do the right thing. Their contributions consisted mainly of badly wrapped presents for birthdays and Christmas, the occasional trip to the cinema, visits to the bowling alley, and meals at hamburger joints, which were characterised by long silences during which they kept stealing glances at the clock. Little by little they had faded from Freyja’s and Baldur’s lives, vanishing for good after they married and had other children. Their mother had done nothing to encourage further contact; as long as her child support arrived on time, she couldn’t care less about their participation in her children’s lives. He
r heart and mind were always taken up with new men and it was only a question of time before she would find Mr Right who would welcome all three of them with open arms and build them a large, detached house on Arnarnes where they would live happily ever after.

  In Freyja’s memory these men formed a long line in which each was allotted a brief opportunity to intrude on her and Baldur’s life. They used to turn up reeking of aftershave, awkward in the presence of the children and eager to get out of the cramped flat as soon as possible, out on the town with their mother. None of them had hung around long enough to learn the brother’s and sister’s names or how old they were. One had given Freyja a kitten and seemed promising, but before long he had vanished from the scene like the rest.

  Perhaps their mother would have managed to find herself a partner in the end, but she had dropped dead at thirty, when Freyja was ten and Baldur twelve. The beautiful, lipsticked smile, the waft of perfume, the heavily mascaraed eyes and varnished nails disappeared from their lives one Saturday evening when she went out on the town as so often before but this time failed to come home. At a party in Mosfellsbær, her heart, which had in its eccentric fashion beaten for her two children, decided without warning to pack it in. They had received the news, the sleep still in their eyes, at the unfamiliar home of an old schoolfriend of their mother’s, who she had wheedled into looking after them for the night.

  They didn’t cry until later that evening, but once their tears had started to flow they were unstoppable. Their grief was made worse by fear about what would happen to them. They would probably have wept even more bitterly if they’d known that they would be sent to live with their mother’s parents, a religious couple who had given up on their daughter and taken little interest in the family. They weren’t bad people so much as emotionally stunted, and, in hindsight, worn out by a life of toil, and were ill suited to caring for children, especially a naughty, obstreperous boy. Within a short time Baldur had managed to break almost every ornament in their suburban home, but Freyja shouldered the blame half the time to protect him from their scolding.

  Their life didn’t really change that much; there were fewer happy times but brother and sister remained inseparable. Freyja tried to look after her brother and he took care of her. There was a lot they didn’t understand, which no one took the trouble to explain to them. Their grandparents lavished all their love on a strange, invisible God who sat on His throne in heaven. This struck the children as unfair because God had millions of people to love him while they had no one but their grandparents. God was to loom large in their new home: this celestial being who had hardly impinged on their lives before was suddenly everywhere yet nowhere. Neither of them understood the first thing about their grandparents’ faith but, afraid to admit the fact, they made do with exchanging glances and giggling behind the old couple’s backs.

  None of the pearls of divine wisdom that fell from their grandparents’ lips were consistent with Freyja’s and Baldur’s experience, and over time they agreed that if God existed and was as old as people claimed, His eyesight must be failing. The alternative explanation for why an all-good, all-powerful God would allow injustice and evil to flourish in the world was that He quite simply did not exist. They quickly inclined to the latter explanation. It was simpler and spared them the effort of trying to grasp such nebulous concepts as the Holy Ghost or the forgiveness of sins. In spite of this, both agreed to be confirmed, too cunning to alert their grandparents to the fact that they were non-believers. That bombshell would fall later.

  Soon after her confirmation, Freyja was forced to accept that Baldur wasn’t academic like her. His interests lay elsewhere, and her attempts to encourage him to apply himself had less and less effect as he moved down the path towards juvenile delinquency.

  And now here they were. She felt the usual regret about not having been firmer, made more effort to encourage him. But it wouldn’t have changed anything.

  ‘Have you heard from the loser?’ Baldur had no need to say his name. He never referred to her ex any other way. ‘Loser’ could mean anyone. But ‘the loser’ was Freyja’s ex-boyfriend who Baldur had never been able to stand. ‘You know I’ll have him dealt with if he tries anything.’

  Freyja wanted to laugh. ‘Like what? He won’t try anything. Have you forgotten that I walked out on him because he was a pain in the arse, not because he was violent?’ Recalling now the perpetual nagging over the most trivial things, she was amazed she had put up with it for so long. What’s this smear on the fridge door? Did you hit the kerb? There’s a dent in the wheel rim. How often do I have to tell you to tidy away your bag when you come in? Why do you have to load the dishwasher in such a stupid way? Her present situation might not be that enviable but at least there was no danger of anyone complaining about which way round the loo roll was facing. ‘I’m shot of him for good.’

  Baldur stared at her. ‘There are two blokes on my corridor who are doing time for attacking and raping their ex-girlfriends. I bet the girls thought they were free of them for good when they moved out.’ He took a sip of coffee, his gaze straying to the window. ‘Lock the door and keep Molly beside you. The loser wouldn’t stand a chance against her.’

  Freyja omitted to mention her fear that, if it came to the crunch, Molly would turn on her instead. There was no point. And the last thing she wanted was for Baldur to organise a revenge attack on her ex. The idea was more tempting than she cared to admit but the chances of a plan like that blowing up in Baldur’s face were almost one hundred per cent.

  ‘Molly sleeps on the floor by my bed. He’d be mincemeat if he tried to set foot inside.’ She smiled. ‘Leave him alone, Baldur. He isn’t worth the risk of extending your sentence. All he did was nearly bore me to death with moaning.’

  ‘Well, seeing as you don’t want me to fix you up with a boyfriend, the least I can do is fix you up with a protector. Would you like that?’

  ‘A protector? No, thanks, I don’t need anything like that. Molly and I are good together. Stop worrying.’ She could tell from his face that he was sceptical. Or didn’t want to believe her. She suspected that it gave Baldur a purpose amid all the futility of life in jail to feel that he was helping her. Why couldn’t that help consist of sorting out her tax return or cutting out newspaper advertisements for flats to rent? Why did he always have to go too far? ‘Seriously. I don’t want some bloke hanging around outside the house.’

  Baldur didn’t respond to this and they spent the rest of her visit chatting about other things. The sun went down and Freyja drove home under a darkened sky.

  She was at the window of a drive-in burger joint when her phone rang. She tried simultaneously to answer it, hand over her card and take hold of the greasy bag. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Freyja?’ It sounded like a question. She recognised the voice; he worked for the Child Protection Agency but she couldn’t remember his name. When he introduced himself as Geir, she pictured him at once: a decent guy who was good at his job and whose only fault was his habit of interrupting people – which was intolerable. ‘Something’s come up in connection with the little girl, Margrét. Margrét Sigvaldadóttir.’

  ‘Come up?’ Freyja trapped the phone under her cheek and took back her card and a receipt for the food, then found a parking space beside the restaurant.

  ‘There’s been a major development in the police investigation. I don’t know what but it’s really stirred things up.’ The man paused and Freyja had to listen to his breathing. Perhaps he was waiting for her to speak so he could interrupt her. She decided not to give him the satisfaction and waited for him to resume.

  ‘To cut a long story short, we’ve agreed to the police’s request to take the girl temporarily into care. I gather she’s still refusing to go near her father, but the main reason is that they believe it would be in her interests to go into hiding now that news of the case is breaking in the media. Reading between the lines, I think they’re afraid of what the murderer might do when he learns there was a wit
ness.’

  ‘So? Did you want my opinion?’

  ‘Oh, no. No need for that.’

  Freyja decided not to take offence. He probably hadn’t meant it to come out quite so clumsily.

  ‘The reason I’m ringing is that we were hoping you would agree to look after her. Just for a few days. Possibly only for part of the day.’

  ‘Part of the day?’ The smell of fried food was filling the car and the windows were misting up.

  ‘Naturally, as soon as the police have solved the case the girl can go home. I’d be surprised if they don’t make an arrest soon.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I can’t do it.’

  ‘It’s not such a big deal. You’d stay in the flat we use for exactly these sorts of cases. There’s no one there at the moment.’

  ‘Why can’t she go to Bogga?’ Bogga ran a fostering service for children who had been removed from their parents until a permanent solution could be found for them.

  ‘She’s completely full. Already has two more kids than she should.’

  ‘Sorry, no can do – I’m dog-sitting. I can’t leave the dog alone at home.’

  ‘We could pay to send it to the kennels.’

  ‘Jesus, isn’t there anyone else who can do it? What about Dísa or Elín?’ She didn’t mention any of the men as that would be out of the question. It was policy that men were never allowed to be alone with children under the agency’s protection, not because they were thought to constitute a risk but because some of the children were so broken that there was a danger they would read too much into it if a man was kind to them. Of course this applied to women as well, but not nearly to the same extent. ‘Aren’t they at work? Or Silja? I know she’s not on leave.’

  There was a humming and hahing at the other end. Eventually the man came out with it: ‘You’re the only one who’s single. Everyone has their own children. Except you. We want Margrét to have her carer’s undivided attention. It’s much more difficult for mothers to drop everything and move to the flat.’