I Remember You

by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

  Freyr went over to the window and at first saw only his own reflection in the glass. He looked younger than his age but that was doubtless because he kept himself in shape, thus avoiding the extra pounds that had started to weigh down his former classmates from medical school. Still, this was only fair, since he hadn’t enjoyed as much female attention as they had during his university years. These days, luckily, women seemed to appreciate his strong facial features; and, given that he remembered what it was like to have to clear his throat to get a woman’s attention, he was planning on holding onto his looks for a while. Naturally they would start declining at some point, but he still had several years to go until he hit forty, so it wasn’t like he had one foot in the grave just yet.

  The children were scattered around the playground, their snowsuits making them look stiff and almost spherical. Although the winter had been unusually mild, it was still cold outside and their fiery red cheeks glowed beneath multicoloured bobble hats. Freyr could well imagine that this incident would result in a spate of visits to the health clinic; the flu was going round and ear infections were on the increase. If the children weren’t going to be allowed back in until things were cleaned up here, they might have to stay outdoors for the rest of the day. ‘When can the poor things come back inside?’ Freyr watched a girl topple onto her head after walking straight into a sandpit.

  ‘When we’re finished.’ Dagný took more photos. The flash in the window indicated that she’d moved over to the basic-looking bookshelves lying on top of their former contents. ‘It shouldn’t take too much longer; we’ve already taken fingerprints from most of what the vandal might conceivably have touched, but I don’t expect anything to come of it. It’s my understanding that every square centimetre in here is covered with fingerprints. It’s going to be nearly impossible to determine whether any of them belong to him.’

  Freyr said nothing as he continued to watch the children. If he squinted, he could imagine that he’d gone back in time several years and that this was his son’s playground. One of the children could then be his son; there were several boys who moved like he had as a toddler, and when they were this bundled up it was easy for Freyr to deceive himself. However, he wouldn’t allow himself to indulge in the fantasy. It would be too painful to abandon the dream world and return to the cold reality in which there was no longer any place for his son.

  The door opened to admit Veigar, the older police officer who had responded to the call with Dagný. ‘How’s it going here?’ He looked around and shook his head. ‘What a fucking abomination.’ He was accustomed to working with Dagný, so it didn’t bother him when she didn’t reply. Instead of repeating the question or taking offence, he turned to Freyr. ‘Have you solved the case for us, mate?’

  Freyr pulled himself away from the window and smiled in reply. ‘No, I haven’t pieced it together yet; but, from the evidence, I’d say a pretty sick person was at work here.’

  ‘Yes, it doesn’t take an expert from the south to see that.’ Veigar bent down to pick up a broken chair leg. ‘How could anyone do this? I have no interest in understanding what drove this idiot to it, I just want to know how he actually did it.’

  ‘Was nothing spared?’ Freyr had only managed to glance over the place but of course he’d noticed various things on his way in: the children’s coat rack in the lobby had been destroyed, the hooks and the shelves above them all torn down from the walls.

  ‘Very little. The kitchen, for example, was in a right bloody state.’

  ‘But was this the only message?’

  Veigar scratched his head. ‘Yes. Maybe he meant to write more but didn’t have time for it. He was probably exhausted after making all this mess.’

  ‘We don’t know whether it was a man or a woman.’ Dagný didn’t look up, busying herself instead with putting the camera into a black bag. ‘It could even have been a couple or a group of people. It barely seems possible for one man to do all this alone, even if he did have the entire weekend.’

  ‘He certainly didn’t hold back.’ Freyr nudged a pile of track sections from a wrecked wooden train set with his foot. ‘Didn’t anyone notice anything? Neighbours, or passers-by? All this must have made quite a racket.’

  ‘Not that we know of. We haven’t contacted all the residents of the adjacent buildings but the ones we spoke to didn’t notice anything, or at least nothing clicked if they did hear something. There’s quite a distance between the buildings,’ replied Veigar.

  A red plastic bucket bounced off the window where Freyr had just been standing and they all looked round in surprise. ‘The poor kids must be getting bored out there,’ said Veigar. ‘Something’s got to be done if they can’t come in. It’s only an hour until lunch and the only toilet they’ve got access to has a permanent queue outside.’

  ‘Have you spoken to the headmistress?’ Dagný pushed down hard on the camera in order to close the bag.

  ‘Yes, and she’s not too pleased with the situation; I mean, she understands, but she’s still annoyed. The children must be getting cold.’

  Freyr waited for Dagný to snap that they would just have to grin and bear it, but she didn’t. On the contrary, she displayed an unusual amount of consideration, for her: ‘They should be able to have the smaller room in fifteen minutes or so. It was empty, so it wasn’t damaged much. They’ll have to eat with their plates in their laps, though; I still haven’t come across any undamaged furniture.’

  ‘I’ll let the headmistress know. She’ll be relieved.’ Veigar walked out and left the door open, giving them a clear view of the devastation.

  ‘I’d better get going. I don’t think I can be of much more use here – if I was of any use to start with.’ Freyr looked back towards the window and the children playing outside. They seemed even more restless than before. They were probably starting to get hungry. His attention was caught by a boy of three or four, not because he reminded him of his son but because unlike the others he stood stock-still, staring at Freyr as he stood there at the window. Although an attempt had been made to shield the children from what had happened they had sensed that everything wasn’t as it should be, and this boy’s expression suggested that he believed Freyr to be the evildoer who had destroyed the schoolroom. The child appeared fearless, in fact, his stare and frozen expression suggestive of pent-up rage, which seemed to be directed at Freyr. Freyr tried to smile and waved at the child to let him know that he wasn’t the bad guy, but it had no effect. There was not a flicker in the child’s stony face.

  ‘Are you making faces at that kid there?’ Dagný had come up beside him and was now pointing at the boy in the green snowsuit. ‘Weird kid.’ She rubbed her upper arms as if she felt cold, even within the warmth of the school.

  ‘It looks to me like he thinks I’m the vandal. At least he’s glaring at me like I am. Maybe he’s scared.’

  Dagný nodded slowly. ‘It’s strange that more of the kids don’t seem scared.’

  ‘I’m sure some of them are worried, but hopefully they’ve shrugged it off and got lost in playing games instead. Most children have an incredible ability to block out bad feelings, but this little boy clearly isn’t that type.’ Freyr couldn’t take his eyes off him. The other children had obeyed a staff member and gone inside to eat. The boy must have heard her too, but he hadn’t moved a muscle and didn’t take his eyes from the window. Suddenly the headmistress came out and pulled the boy away. As they walked off he turned back so as not to lose sight of Freyr. It wasn’t until he’d gone around the corner that they broke eye contact.

  ‘Well, well!’ Dagný raised an eyebrow at him. ‘If I hadn’t seen you this weekend I might have reason to question you about your movements.’ She smiled, which was rare; a real shame considering how beautiful and genuine her smile was. His ex-wife had smiled often and it had been a lovely sight, until life deprived her of any reason to do so. Freyr smiled back, delighted that she had paid him any attention at all. But Dagný’s expression immediately resumed it
s usual seriousness. ‘I don’t know why, but all of this is making me feel kind of uncomfortable.’

  Freyr surveyed the destruction in the classroom again. ‘I’m not surprised. You have every reason to be concerned, and even to wonder what this individual is going to do next.’

  ‘No, I don’t mean uncomfortable about that. I mean I’ve got a strange feeling, as though I’m forgetting or have overlooked something, as though there’s more to this than just someone giving in to their destructive urges. I was hoping you could explain it.’

  Freyr was silent for a moment as he considered his reply. He didn’t want to interact with her as a psychiatrist; it was one thing to examine the weekend’s evidence as a participant in a police investigation, but quite another to approach her personally in his clinical capacity. One of the main reasons he had taken the job in Ísafjörður was that it gave him the opportunity to practise general medicine alongside his specialism. There was no need for a full-time psychiatrist here, and that suited him well. He had enough on his plate dealing with his own mental state, without having to immerse himself in others’ every day of the week. He noticed that Dagný was fidgeting, impatient at his lack of response to her question, so he hurriedly replied: ‘I expect it’s a combination of things – this dreadful scene, which would leave a bad taste in anyone’s mouth, and the urge to find the guilty party. You’re under pressure to tie up the investigation of the crime scene, so you’re also concerned about missing something that might matter. And to top it all off, your mind is trying to process all of this. The outcome is the feeling you describe.’ He stopped there, although he could easily have gone on for much longer.

  ‘I see.’ She didn’t seem very convinced but said nothing further, since Veigar had stuck his head round the door. ‘Dagný, we need to get going. Gunni and Stefán have come to finish up here, because we’re needed elsewhere.’ He gave her a look meant to convey that something even more serious than the desecration of a children’s classroom had taken place.

  Dagný hurriedly said goodbye and rushed off with Veigar, leaving Freyr standing there. He had to content himself with calling goodbye to them before the door banged shut.

  He stood in the lobby, surrounded by children, and by teachers who were deftly removing the youngsters’ snowsuits. One of them bundled four children into the corridor, telling them that now they would get to eat in the little gym, what fun! Freyr winked and waved at several of the children on his way past, then bid farewell to the staff, who responded in kind without looking up from their work. As he took hold of the front door handle, he felt a tug at his trouser leg and looked down with a smile. It was the boy who’d been standing outside. He was still wearing his green snowsuit. The boy stared silently up at Freyr without releasing his trouser leg. For some reason Freyr felt slightly uncomfortable in the child’s presence, although he was used to odd behaviour in his dealings with his patients. He bent down to the boy. ‘Did you see the police here before? I’m helping them catch the bad guy.’ The boy carried on staring, still not saying a word. ‘The police always catch the bad guy.’ The boy muttered something that Freyr didn’t catch properly, but before he could ask the boy to repeat it one of the teachers called the child over. Freyr straightened up and went outside. Apparently the child wasn’t immune to the effects of the mess and destruction inside after all – he thought he’d whispered ‘Dirty.’

  Chapter 3

  Katrín sat on the edge of the porch behind the house, closed her eyes and relished breathing in the clean air. The wood had sunk into the ground in one corner, meaning she had to lean in to the house to keep her balance. The sun was already up, hanging low in the sky as if it had turned up sick for work and didn’t expect to make it through the whole day. Its rays didn’t feel hot, but rather lukewarm, although Katrín had no complaints after having been inside the cold house. Anyway, you couldn’t make demands of the sun this far north in the dead of winter; you simply took what little sunshine you were given and were grateful. Gentle gusts of wind blew over her face and the fresh breeze carried away the paint smell that had settled in her clothing and hair. The feeling was profoundly satisfying and she breathed as deeply as her lungs allowed. The smell of chemicals always made her feel uncomfortable, since each inhalation reminded her of the toll the toxic vapour was taking on her limited number of brain cells. No doubt today’s painting frenzy had killed a good number of them.

  Katrín opened her eyes and stretched. If you ignored the babble of the stream separating the house from the abandoned village, the silence was absolute. Finding it a little uncomfortable, she listened harder, but nothing changed. She and Garðar had both had trouble sleeping in the silence the night before, even though they were exhausted by the seemingly endless conveyance of things from the pier. Líf, on the other hand, who couldn’t help much after being so sick, had slept like a rock. They could have used her help; the wheelbarrow the skipper had mentioned had been nowhere to be found, meaning they had to carry everything themselves. Katrín had resolved to count the number of trips but lost count as exhaustion took over, so she didn’t know whether it had been twenty, fifty, or even a hundred. Her aches and pains told her all she needed to know; her upper arms hurt at the mere thought of last night’s travails. She rubbed her sore muscles. Frustratingly, as she’d suspected, all the hard grind at the gym in recent years appeared to have been no help.

  Katrín shifted position on the porch and tried to spot Garðar and Líf on the slope west of the village, but it was hard to detect anything much through all the angelica, dry and dead since last summer, and downright impossible to see all the way to the top. Garðar had said that the slope seemed gentle most of the way up, then there was level ground that reached almost to the next fjord to the north. Katrín suspected Garðar hadn’t had much to go on when he described the conditions there. She felt too comfortable to stand up and try to see them, and she was sure they’d be back soon anyway. She wasn’t entirely certain how long ago they’d left; it had been many years since she had worn a wristwatch, contenting herself with the clock on her mobile phone. But the phone’s battery was too precious to leave it turned on. One thing was certain – they’d been away for so long that she was utterly relieved not to have gone with them. The skipper had said there was mobile phone reception on top of the hill, but that information might be about as reliable as his tale about the wheelbarrow. Maybe they’d have to walk much further in search of a good connection once they were up on the summit. It would have killed her to have to tramp around up there, and in any case, Garðar didn’t need her there just to ask the estate agent whether some boxes they’d found in the house belonged to them or to the estate. Katrín didn’t see why he was wasting time on this, especially given that they depended on the phone being charged if the weather were to turn bad or they needed emergency assistance, but once he’d decided on something he was immovable, so she hadn’t objected. Even when Líf, who was too unwell to help out with the renovations, said that she would accompany him, Katrín had held her tongue, though she longed to say that Líf really should be trying to paint something. She guessed the reason Líf was so keen on going off with Garðar was because she knew Katrín would find work for her to do as soon as the two of them were left alone. Katrín wasn’t quite as compassionate as Garðar, who had told Líf that morning that she should just rest until she felt better.

  She peered again through the yellowed sea of vegetation in the hope of locating them. Maybe something had happened; neither of them was used to hiking in the mountains, and Líf was quite accident-prone to boot. She smiled. Of course they were all right. What could possibly happen? The three of them were the only people here, and apart from the birds, a grey fox appeared to be the only other living thing in the area. The animal had watched them from afar as they moved their materials the night before, but it hadn’t appeared today; Putti’s presence had probably frightened it away. Once Garðar and Líf had set off, Katrín was virtually alone in the world, since the blessed dog had
let itself be persuaded to go with them even though its short legs hardly looked sturdy enough to climb mountains. This was the first time she’d experienced such total isolation and she found the surroundings and the empty house behind her oppressive. She would gladly have welcomed the company of the fox, if it made an appearance. Katrín had no idea whether foxes were mostly nocturnal, or if they came out during the day. She hoped that the animal would show its face, but she primarily wanted Garðar to come back – and Líf, of course. She struggled to her feet, but although she could now see most of the slope, she still couldn’t catch the slightest glimpse of them – though that meant almost nothing, since both of them were wearing clothing in earth tones that would blend into the snowless winter landscape. She was searching for signs of movement along the path they’d taken when she heard a sudden creak in the house behind her. A chill ran down her spine and she instinctively moved a little further away. She longed to run up the slope to where Garðar and Líf must be.

  Then she relaxed. She could be such a wuss. This was an old house – there was nothing unnatural about a noise or two. It was only thermal expansion of the wood in the sun. She was just so unused to this oppressive silence. Still, she yelled out when a hand gripped her firmly by the shoulder and someone shouted, ‘Boo!’

  ‘Idiot!’ Katrín shoved Garðar’s hand away and stamped her foot, furious. ‘I could have had a heart attack.’ She’d never liked sudden shocks, ever since childhood, and her anger at Garðar was also directed at all those who had played this same trick on her through the years. ‘I hate it when you do that.’

  Garðar pulled back his hand in surprise. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.’ His expression, full of remorse, made Katrín think of all the painters who had captured that same expression in their immortal works of art.