Nightblind

by Ragnar Jónasson

  Maybe it was all over?

  It was a long night. Ari Thór slept fitfully, a few moments at a time and during periods of wakefulness, his thoughts went from Kristín to Herjólfur’s death and back. What had Tómas said that hadn’t quite added up? And why did Ari Thór still feel there was a link to Valberg?

  It wasn’t until the early hours, as he lay somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, that the answer broke through from his subconscious. Herjólfur had told him that he and his wife weren’t much interested in outdoor activities – such as skiing. But now the news from Reykjavík was that his wife had broken her leg on the slopes. Could that be a fiction? What was she hiding? The thought of Valberg kept on flashing back to him, too, as did the year’s leave that Herjólfur had taken to look after his wife when she was ill. What illness?

  Strict and decisive was how Tómas had described Herjólfur.

  Tómas’s tale of Addi Gunna and the rescue operation high in the valley at Skardsdalur came to mind. Everyone has a good side to them, even Addi, Tómas had said. And everyone has a dark side that others don’t get to see, thought Ari Thór.

  When he and Tómas had talked about Valberg, Tómas had made the point that not only criminals committed violent acts, but also men who appeared on the surface to behave impeccably, heads of households in responsible positions.

  He also recalled that Helena had not seemed to be particularly upset about her husband’s injuries, neither when he brought her the news, nor later when they met again. She had even started to prepare for the man’s funeral before his death had been confirmed.

  Could she have been hoping that he wouldn’t survive?

  Valberg’s assault on Elín had given Ari Thór the germ of an idea … had Herjólfur possibly been violent towards his wife? Would that explain the strange, subdued atmosphere, and the lack of any apparent distress or sorrow on his family’s part?

  Ari Thór sat up on the sofa. There wasn’t a chance of getting back too sleep.

  The more Ari Thór thought about it, the more convinced he became that this possibility was something he would have to investigate.

  But regardless of whether this theory was right or not, surely the assault on Herjólfur was most likely linked to the drug trading that Herjólfur had been looking into, the business that was at least partly conducted at the house where the fatal shot had been fired?

  Then Ari Thór recalled how he had first found out about the investigation at the house. From a family member who had so very kindly pointed him in that direction; away from Herjólfur’s personal life.

  No, hell …

  Ari Thór refused to believe it. It was unthinkable.

  How had he known where the shotgun could be found?

  The answer came to him in a flash. Of course this person knew about Ingólfur’s shotgun. And if Herjólfur was the intended target, very few people could have known that he was on duty that night. He quickly pulled on his uniform jacket and hurried out of the police station, slamming the door behind him, out into the cold morning to meet a murderer.

  I still haven’t got rid of this notebook. I surprised myself by bringing it home, actually wanting to keep it. This has been an experience that I must never let myself forget, the misery and the fear, all those things that made me want to take my own life. I still find it hard to believe that I took things that far, but I still feel a shadow of the despair that propelled me towards it.

  I feel as if I’m standing in front of a wall, an insurmountable wall. There is no way over it. There is no way to escape its shadow.

  40

  Ari Thór stood by the basement door and waited. He had already rung the doorbell twice.

  The town was quiet, with night just turning into a piercingly cold morning. The darkness seemed endless at this time of year.

  He rang the bell a third time. Nobody answered.

  Not giving up that easily, he thought. He shivered, scowled into the frosty wind and went to the main door instead and rang the bell there. As he did so, he heard movement inside the house.

  Ari Thór stood in much the same place as he had a few days previously, looking into the eyes of Herjólfur’s son and namesake. Now the boy looked weary and there was bewilderment on his face. The last time they had met, the younger Herjólfur had been serious, stone-faced as he told him about his father’s investigation into the old house.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ the boy asked, with evident surprise.

  ‘Could I come in?’ Ari Thór asked politely.

  ‘You know what the time is?’ the younger Herjólfur asked, rubbing his eyes. ‘I was fast asleep, like normal people are at this time of day.’

  He stepped back and gestured for Ari Thór to step inside.

  Herjólfur switched on the living room lights and nodded for Ari Thór to follow him. The living room appeared as it had before, cold and soulless. Nothing seemed to have been moved since he had been there last, everything in its place.

  Herjólfur sat on the white sofa, as his mother had, the last time Ari Thór visited. He chose to stand, as he had done before. This was serious business, deadly serious if his suspicions were to be confirmed. It was as well to keep things formal.

  ‘I understand your mother has a broken leg?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Herjólfur answered shortly. ‘Yes, broken. They thought it was a sprain at first, but no. She thought it would sort itself out, but it needed to be put in plaster.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘She, well … she hurt herself skiing.’

  There was a tremor behind his voice and he did not appear to be as relaxed about this early-morning visit as he clearly wanted to be.

  ‘Your father told me that you weren’t outdoor types. He said that he and your mother never went skiing. Just holidays to town.’

  The boy gulped.

  ‘True. Dad wasn’t much for that kind of thing.’

  Herjólfur seemed keen not to allow this line of questioning to be pursued and Ari Thór let it go.

  ‘I take it he made all the decisions?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Herjólfur agreed, and there was a great deal of weight in that one word.

  ‘Decisive?’

  Herjólfur nodded.

  ‘At home as well as at work?’

  ‘Don’t know about at work.’

  The answer was short, but the message was clear.

  ‘I saw some reports about your father being linked to some corruption case down south,’ Ari Thór said, watching for the response. ‘I wouldn’t know,’ Herjólfur said. ‘It’s not my affair.’

  Under normal circumstances a son might have been expected to leap to his father’s defence in the face of such an allegation, but Herjólfur seemed to have no intention of doing so.

  ‘Thanks for the lead,’ Ari Thór said after a short silence.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The drug trade at the old house.’

  ‘Yeah, of course,’ Herjólfur muttered.

  ‘You were quite right … or your father was quite right. There were people using the place for just what he suspected.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Your mother said you live in the basement.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right.’

  ‘I tried the doorbell down there.’

  ‘You can’t hear it up here. I thought I’d stay upstairs. More room.’

  ‘So you can come and go as you please.’

  Herjólfur looked questioningly at Ari Thór.

  ‘That’s what your mother said.’

  ‘Yeah…’

  ‘Is that right? Didn’t they notice if you were here or not?’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose they did…’

  ‘And where were you the night your father was attacked?’

  Herjólfur took the bait. ‘Where was I?’ he asked, his eyes flying open as if he was shocked by the question.

  ‘Yes. Were you here? Asleep?’

  Herjólfur jumped to his feet. ‘What are you asking that for? What the hell are you
asking me for?’ For a moment the boy seemed on the verge of bursting into tears – or an angry tantrum. ‘Yes, I was asleep, down in the basement.’

  He sat down again.

  ‘There weren’t many people who knew about this investigation, Herjólfur. Is that where the idea came from?’

  Herjólfur said nothing, and Ari Thór continued. ‘The police would be looking for a dealer or a user as the killer. And the case would never be resolved.’

  Still Herjólfur showed no response, although Ari Thór hoped that his questions were having some effect.

  ‘And the shotgun, how did you know about that?’

  Finally there was a response. ‘What d’you mean?’ Herjólfur squeaked indignantly.

  ‘Shall I tell you what I think? I’m sure you knew it was there in Ingólfur’s garage. We found out that his son was having a party for all the kids who are graduating next spring. He’s in his final year, just the same as you. That fits, doesn’t it?’

  Herjólfur was silent.

  ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’ Ari Thór demanded, raising his voice a little.

  Herjólfur nodded slowly. ‘It’s no secret which year I’m in.’

  ‘Were you at that party?’

  ‘I think you should get out.’ There was a new rage in Herjólfur’s voice, and he was on his feet. ‘Barging in here, waking me up … with these crazy accusations.’

  ‘So I take it that means yes?’ Ari Thór said firmly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That you were at the party.’

  Ari Thór waited patiently, allowing the boy some time to understand the seriousness of his position. At the same time, he thought through his next move, and how he could break down the resistance, make a way through the heavy defences with which Herjólfur had barricaded himself.

  ‘Quick with his fists, was he?’ Ari Thór asked gently.

  Herjólfur looked thunderstruck by the question and fear could be seen in his expression for the first time. He shook his head.

  ‘Did your sister get the same treatment?’

  ‘No,’ Herjólfur said, with a sigh.

  ‘Your mother?’ He asked.

  Herjólfur made no reply.

  ‘You’re going to have to work with us,’ Ari Thór told him in a comforting voice. ‘It’s the only way out of this.’

  After a long silence, Herjólfur nodded his head. ‘Yeah. He’d hit her when the mood was on him.’

  ‘She injured her leg skiing?’

  ‘He pushed her over. She fractured her leg when she fell.’

  Herjólfur sank down onto the sofa. ‘He broke or fractured her leg once before, I think,’ he said at last. ‘She said she had a fall from a horse not long after they got to know each other. I don’t believe it. He was always hitting her.’

  The boy looked at the floor and avoided Ari Thór’s eyes. Talk of violence in his home had taken him off guard, and he seemed numb with shock.

  ‘And that year’s leave that your father took to look after her, was that after a similar incident?’

  ‘What? No … you’ve got it wrong,’ Herjólfur said. ‘She wasn’t sick.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It was Dad who was on sick leave. He had spells of depression, but it wasn’t something that anyone was allowed to mention. Everything was fine on the surface, the perfect policeman on the outside. He never got to the top. Hidden defects. But they still looked after him, made sure he never lost his job. His father’s boy, you get me?’

  Tómas had described the boy’s grandfather, the older Herjólfur’s father, as a living legend, an old-school copper.

  ‘Your grandfather’s dead, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t think he ever really disappeared from Dad’s life.’

  ‘But the job was handed down?’

  ‘It’s all inherited, unfortunately,’ Herjólfur said and Ari Thór could see the effort it was taking him to talk about it. ‘Grandad used to knock my grandmother around as well.’

  ‘And your father’s violence towards your mother took place over a long period?’

  ‘Far too long,’ the boy said heavily. ‘Mum’s free now. She’s a good person.’

  ‘So you did it for her?’ Ari Thór asked, without any note of accusation in his voice.

  The following silence was a long one and Ari Thór felt a wave of sympathy for the young man, who was clearly deciding whether to leave things as they were, or confess.

  Herjólfur finally took a deep breath and spoke carefully.

  ‘To an extent, yes, of course. Someone had to do it. My sister couldn’t stand it any longer, so she moved south as soon as she could and never spoke to the old man again. She didn’t even come home when we told her about his injuries. The burden landed on me. Otherwise this never would have ended.’

  He seemed calm, at peace.

  Ari Thór was about to interrupt, to ask for details, but Herjólfur continued without paying Ari Thór any attention.

  ‘But mostly I did it for myself, I think. To break the vicious circle.’

  Silence fell again. Ari Thór was reluctant to interrupt the boy’s concentration and kept quiet as Herjólfur carried on.

  ‘And I didn’t really expect to get away with it. I didn’t really care. It’s fine as it is. It’ll be a blow to my mother when she finds out. The point of it was not to be like him, not to be like my grandfather. It had to end somewhere … I saw Dad all too often as he turned into a … a monster. After a while I figured out that this was the only way out. I had to stop him once and for all.’

  ‘You took Ingólfur’s shotgun?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And where is it now?’

  ‘It’s in a garden shed here in the street.’

  ‘You were going to keep it there?’

  ‘No, it’s a summer house, sort of. The place belongs to people who live down south and only come up here in the summer when the weather’s good.’ He smiled awkwardly. ‘I was going to drop it in the sea later, when the fuss had died down.’

  ‘And how did you get your father to go up there?’

  ‘I phoned him. I used a pay-as-you-go sim card in my phone instead of my own card.’

  ‘He didn’t know who was calling?’

  ‘No, he didn’t recognise me. I kept my voice low and mumbled, told him there were some druggies up to something in that house. That was enough.’

  It was a terrible thought that the boy had led his father into a deadly trap, and Ari Thór wondered if this was the work of a cold-blooded killer or someone who was suffering from some sort of an illness.

  ‘I did shed a few tears,’ Herjólfur said in a voice so low that Ari Thór had to listen hard to hear his words. ‘I had tears in my eyes as I fired, not because I was fond of him. Quite the opposite, I hated him deeply. But I cried for him all the same and I don’t know why. It was a hard thing to do,’ he said and Ari Thór shivered.

  ‘Do you regret it?’

  ‘Regret it?’ Herjólfur seemed to need no time to think over his reply. ‘No. My mother is free. I’m free as well. Maybe I’ll go to prison, but that’s fine.’

  His eyes were distant and he was clearly somewhere far away from the living room in Siglufjördur.

  ‘Why now?’ Ari Thór asked, more for curiosity’s sake than for necessity.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Why did you decide to do this now?’

  ‘It was the diary,’ Herjólfur whispered.

  ‘Diary?’

  ‘I found an old diary, came across it by accident. I recognised Dad’s handwriting straightaway.’

  He sat quietly, his breath coming in heavy gasps.

  ‘It was from 1982, when he was about the age I am now. It took a few days to read it. I didn’t really want to get to know him too well, I hated him so much … But when I’d finished reading his entries, I was scared, terrified … He reminded me so much of myself. So I had to do something.’

  ‘And you decided to kill him.’

>   ‘To stop him,’ Herjólfur said, as if correcting a fundamental mistake. ‘You know what he did? He was twenty-two when he wrote the diary … You know how he reacted when he saw he was going the same way as my grandfather?’

  Ari Thór shook his head.

  ‘He tried to kill himself, and it obviously wasn’t a successful attempt. Grandad had him put in a psychiatric ward. Grandad always got his way, just the same as Dad did later. And I think his time there made things even worse.’

  ‘A psychiatric ward.’ The words chimed with Ari Thór, touching on something in his distant memory. Had he overlooked anything in this investigation?

  There was a long silence.

  ‘You know, I wish he had been successful,’ Herjólfur said at long last. ‘The suicide attempt, I mean. That would have been the best thing. The best thing for everyone.’

  Herjólfur went without protest to the police station with Ari Thór. He had asked for the diary before they left the house and Herjólfur willingly handed it over, as if he were glad to be rid of it.

  Ari Thór called Tómas and between them they took Herjólfur’s formal statement. He confirmed everything he had told Ari Thór, freely confessing to the assault and without any apparent fear of the consequences.

  It was obvious that Tómas was relieved that the case was resolved. Ari Thór felt the same way, although he still found it difficult to accept that a boy of nineteen could be responsible for a killing. A turbulent flood of emotions raced through his mind in response to the repugnant thought that the boy could have murdered his own father.

  He suddenly remembered why the words ‘psychiatric ward’ had nagged at him, refusing to be forgotten in the speed of events. It was that call; the call from the woman who had never finished her story. Hadn’t she been a nurse on a psychiatric ward? He checked back to the log, and there it was. Her name and phone number.

  ‘Ása?’ Ari Thór enquired, when she answered the phone.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied cautiously.

  ‘Good morning. My name’s Ari Thór Arason and I’m a police officer in Siglufjördur.’