by Grant Nicol
‘Thorgeir’s explained the rules to you, yeah?’ he said through his neatly-groomed ginger beard.
‘Two minutes,’ Grímur said.
‘Two minutes,’ the giant reiterated holding up two sausage-like digits so there was absolutely no confusion.
He opened the door and indicated that Grímur should step inside. The room was much smaller than he’d anticipated and wouldn’t have allowed for much movement even if Gunnar Atli had been able to get up out of bed. Thorgeir hadn’t been kidding about the damage he’d sustained during his seizure or whatever it was they were calling it now. His face was not a pretty picture. He looked like he’d been set upon by a bunch of guys with knuckle dusters. He had a broken nose, two black eyes, one of them so badly swollen it would be staying shut for the foreseeable future, and so many cuts and contusions on his face it was almost impossible to count. He looked surprisingly similar to the way Bella had when he’d found her, minus the grotesque cuts to her face. Whether or not that was merely coincidental was yet to be seen. He was lying perfectly still and seemed to be asleep.
If he’d been trying to keep himself out of prison he had definitely achieved that objective but in doing so had opened wide a window to the darker recesses of his mind, and it was within those soulless voids that the answer to Bella’s death undoubtedly lay. All Grímur had to do now was get him to offer it up.
He stood over Gunnar Atli’s prone figure and wondered why he had even bothered coming. He supposed that it was because he had needed to see what had happened for himself. Well, he had seen it with his own eyes now and he could go back and report to the powers that be in the prosecutor’s office that they wouldn’t be interviewing their prime suspect anytime soon.
Just as Grímur was turning to tell the red-headed giant he could lock up again and apologise for wasting his time he saw Gunnar Atli’s lips move, so faintly that at first he thought he’d imagined it.
‘Has he said anything to you since he was brought in?’
‘He hasn’t said a word. I don’t even know if he can talk with his face all busted up like that. If you’re waiting to have a conversation with him, you could be waiting a while.’
He had a good point. The fact that Gunnar Atli’s jaw wasn’t broken had to be down to luck and nothing else. That being said though, his lips continued to move almost imperceptibly as if reciting a silent prayer. Grímur knelt down and got his head as close to Gunnar Atli’s mouth as he possibly could.
‘Don’t you go touching him or I’ll have to throw you out.’
The orderly definitely didn’t sound as if he were joking. Grímur ignored him anyway and whispered softly to the sleeping patient.
‘What is it? What are you trying to say?’
A sound escaped his lips, so faint Grímur wouldn’t have heard it had he been six inches further away.
‘We all learn to live with our mistakes.’
Grímur asked him to repeat himself a couple of times but to no avail. Gunnar Atli had drifted off back to wherever it was he had disappeared to. Whatever the name of that mysterious land he seemed destined to be spending plenty of time there in the near future. A thudding tap on his shoulder reminded him that his two minutes was up and it was time to go.
#8
It wasn’t hard for Kjartan to find the place where his daughter had been killed. The television news had shown the back of the city’s church, Hallgrímskirkja, and from there he could see the street that had been closed off by the police. Leifsgata had been taped from one side to the other with black and yellow Lögreglan crime scene tape and only people who lived on the street were being allowed through. Because of the police presence most of the residents had been awake since the crack of dawn, at their windows or in their front gardens watching forensic and technical crews come and go.
As determined as he was, Kjartan stood absolutely no chance of getting close to where his daughter’s body had been found. Along with the police at either end of the street, there were two more directly outside the apartment building. A polite but brief conversation with one of the officers at the top of the street extinguished any hopes he had of talking to her neighbours. Unless they wandered out of their homes and decided to speak to him of their own free will that just wasn’t going to happen either.
There was another apartment block at the top end of Leifsgata – on the corner where it met Barónsstígur – that was also receiving some attention from forensic officers but not nearly as much as the one where Bella had been found. A little guess work and an hour or so of quiet observation from his car and Kjartan decided that this had to be the building where Bella had been living. As the day wore on and the police line slowly fell back he saw that he would probably be able to go for a wander as long as he didn’t make a nuisance of himself. Eventually he spotted a couple of women entering the ground floor apartment of the corner building and decided the time was right to make his move.
He strolled across the road to the front of the building. The entrance to their flat wasn’t up the steps and through the front door but through a private entrance just off the street in a small slightly overgrown garden. Very conscious that there might be eyes on him he casually knocked on the door and waited for an answer. The two of them had to be inside somewhere but there was only silence from within. He knocked again and this time heard tiny sounds of movement. The door opened no more than six inches and one of the women peered out at him. She was somewhere in her late twenties or early thirties and looked flustered and anxious to be left alone. As he opened his mouth to apologise for disturbing her she started shaking her head violently.
‘No, I am sorry but today no good.’ She spoke in hesitant English with a heavy Eastern European accent.
He understood now why they had seemed so nervous. He couldn’t be sure but suspected they were in the country illegally. Her nervousness certainly seemed to suggest that this was the case. The woman was just about to shut the door in his face when she seemed to have a change of heart. She shoved him out of the way and looked hesitantly up and down the street as if trying to get a feel for who might be watching. Satisfied that they weren’t being spied on she grabbed Kjartan by the jacket and pulled him into the flat in such a way that he didn’t get a chance to argue. Once inside she closed the door again and turned towards him with an awkward smile on her face. The flat was tiny and barely had enough room for the two of them without adding him to the mix. She motioned to the two-seater sofa up against one of the walls and waited impatiently for him to sit down.
‘Okay, sorry for that. I need your help for something,’ she said.
She smiled again as he sat down as if to indicate that everything was going to be okay. Once he was sitting she nodded again before continuing.
‘Something happen today? What?’
Kjartan realised that they had almost definitely seen something on the news but weren’t quite sure about what had actually happened, probably because whatever they had seen and heard had been on television and in Icelandic.
‘A girl was murdered,’ he said in his own out of practice English. ‘Just down the street.’ He tried pointing towards where the police were stationed hoping they would get the idea. The two women looked at each other and shared a brief conversation in their own language.
‘Dead?’
‘Yes, dead.’
‘Why? No, who?’
‘A girl, Bella. Perhaps you knew her?’
Kjartan pulled a photo of his daughter out of his wallet and showed it to the two women. There was a sudden intake of breath from both of them as they crossed themselves in rapid succession.
‘My God,’ the older one said.
The younger, prettier one still hadn’t said a word.
‘Do you know her?’ he tried, hoping that the looks of recognition on their faces meant that he had finally got somewhere.
‘Of course, she live here,’ the older of the two said pointing at the ceiling.
‘She lived upstairs?’ he said.
> ‘Yes, upstairs. Bella, yes.’
‘Yes, Bella is her name. I am her father,’ he said, pointing to himself.
Again the two of them conferred in their own language, the tone very serious this time. When they were done she pointed at him.
‘You father?’
He just nodded solemnly this time. She crossed herself again and walked towards him. She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him whispering something foreign but gentle in his ear.
‘Thank you,’ he said in Icelandic, reverting momentarily to his mother tongue.
When she’d disentangled herself from him he motioned for her to sit down next to him.
‘How well did you know Bella?’
‘We, little bit, sorry,’ she said, probably apologising for her poor English.
‘How long did she live upstairs?’
‘Maybe,’ she seemed to be doing some arithmetic in her head, ‘five months.’
‘Five months, okay. So she must have been working somewhere then. Do you know where she worked?’
The two of them looked at each other and shrugged.
‘Same as us,’ she said with an expression that he couldn’t quite figure out.
It might have been confusion but he wasn’t sure.
‘Same as you? Where do you two work?’
‘Here. We thought you first customer today.’
She let that sink in. They both looked at him wondering if the penny had dropped yet or not.
‘You mean, you two, and Bella?’
‘Yes, we are whores,’ she said without a trace of embarrassment or self-consciousness.
‘And Bella too?’
She nodded and looked around the room as if unsure if she was breaking any previous confidences she’d agreed to keep. Kjartan exhaled from the bottom of his lungs as he took a moment to let that sink in. When he noticed that he was still holding her picture he carefully put it back in his wallet. Maybe that was something he would keep from the rest of the family. He wasn’t convinced that knowing everything about her time in Reykjavík would make things any easier for Abelína or Helga to understand. There was a point where extra information ceased to be of any further use. That she was dead was probably enough for them to digest at the moment and for now he would let them remember her the way she had been before. Whatever she had become since leaving home was neither here nor there for the purposes of finding a lasting memory to hold onto. The way she was to be remembered over the next few days would be the way they would always remember her.
‘Thank you,’ he said again. ‘What are your names?’
‘Petra, and Dinka,’ she said indicating that she was Petra and that the younger silent one was Dinka.
‘I’m Kjartan. Thank you very much for talking to me.’
‘You don’t tell police about us?’ She waved her arms around indicating everything in their flat, probably everything they had in their entire lives. Kjartan shook his head.
‘No, I won’t tell the police about you.’
‘Thank you,’ she said.
Kjartan smiled despite the awkwardness of the situation or maybe because of it. He had found out more about Bella than he’d bargained for but was still no closer to knowing what had happened to her. She had obviously run out of money and rather than asking her family for help she had sought to make up the shortfall by sleeping with strangers. The thought made him wonder what could have made her hate them so much, or care so little about herself.
‘Just before I go, I was wondering. Did Bella know anyone else around here?’
Petra and Dinka looked at each other for a second or two until Petra spoke for them again.
‘Gunnar Atli.’
‘Gunnar Atli? Who is Gunnar Atli?’
Petra motioned outside and Kjartan put two and two together pretty quickly.
‘The guy who lives down the street?’
‘Yes, boyfriend.’
‘Her boyfriend? What does her boyfriend look like?’
Petra indicated that he probably stood about 5’ 8”, had short hair of some kind and walked with a limp. Kjartan now had a clear picture in his mind of the man he needed to find.
#9
As Kjartan wandered back to his car a woman appeared out of the main door of the apartment building he’d just left. She was tall and thin with jet black hair and walked with real confidence and authority. She gave the street a cursory inspection before letting herself into Petra and Dinka’s flat. He stopped where he was on the other side of the street and waited to see if she was going to stay or was just visiting the girls. He only had to wait a few minutes before he got his answer. She reappeared looking pensive and rubbing her arms to warm herself against the cold day. As soon as she saw him making his way across the street towards her she snapped herself out of her reverie and regained her air of impregnability.
‘Hello,’ he said.
She smiled but it looked a little forced to say the least. She didn’t reply but simply waited for him to state his business and get on with it.
‘I was wondering if I could have a word with you. I’m Bella’s father, Kjartan.’
That softened her up a little, but not much. She extended a long graceful arm and waited for him to take her hand.
‘I’m Adolfína, I’m sorry to hear about your daughter. I don’t really know what to say, it must be a dreadful time for you.’
‘It is very difficult. We’re struggling to believe it’s really happened. I don’t think anything can prepare you for news like that.’
‘No, I can’t imagine anything could. It must have come as such a shock. Is there anything I can do for you?’
‘I was just hoping that I might be able to ask you a few questions. Would that be alright?’
‘Of course.’
‘She’d been here for a few months so you must have known her a little then?’
‘Yes, she lived in the flat underneath mine. We would say hello to each other when we met but we weren’t exactly close. I’m not sure that I’ll be able to tell you all that much. Perhaps you would like to come in out of the cold? I could find something for us to eat and make us some coffee.’
‘Yes, that would be nice,’ he said.
She pulled a bunch of keys from her pocket and let them into the building. When they got up to the first floor she stopped and turned to look at him with her cold, pale blue eyes.
‘The police have already been by to look at her flat. I’m afraid they’ve sealed it off until they finish their investigation. There isn’t much to look at in there anyway. By the look of things she was all packed and ready to go somewhere but I haven’t a clue where.’
‘She hadn’t mentioned anything to you about where she might have been planning to go? Did she mention Leirubakki to you by any chance?’
‘No, I don’t believe she did. Is that where you’re from?’
‘Yes, that’s where she grew up.’
When Adolfína stepped onto the landing Kjartan could see that the door to his daughter’s flat was sealed off with crime scene tape.
‘I don’t mean to be presumptuous but I’m assuming that you hadn’t seen your daughter in some time,’ Adolfína said.
‘No, she ran off about six months ago and since then there’s only been the occasional phone call. We’re still at a loss as to why she left in the first place.’
‘Come upstairs and I’ll get us something to drink. You look like you could do with putting your feet up for a while. Times like these can be extremely tiring and you may not realise how worn out you really are, emotionally as well as physically.’
Kjartan nodded and followed her up another flight of stairs to the door of her own apartment. Adolfína’s flat was warm and cosy, it had a lived-in sort of look about it as though she’d been there for some time and was very settled. She was right about how exhausted he was but his mind didn’t want to listen to what his body was trying so hard to tell it. While he took a seat in one of her plush armchairs she busied herself in the kit
chen making coffee and arranging a plate of smoked lamb for them to share. He was soon filling himself with the strong coffee and slices of hangikjöt and rye bread and starting to feel revived again. Adolfína sipped her coffee but only ate a little. She had the figure of a bird and the appetite of one too.
‘I really appreciate this, I haven’t had anything to eat today. It’s all been such a shock. I only came to identify her body but now I’ve decided to stick around for a couple of days,’ he said.
‘Whatever for? Surely you’d be better off in Leirubakki with your family?’
‘I won’t be heading home. Not until they’ve released her body and I’ve seen that the man who did this to her is brought to justice. It’s important for me to see that the right thing is done. Otherwise we won’t be able to lay her to rest properly.’
‘Do they think they know who did it then?’
‘They’ve arrested a guy who lives just down the street. He was found with her body when the police arrived but he insists he had nothing to do with it.’
‘And you don’t believe him?’
‘Of course not, would you? I think he had help though, and now his partner’s disappeared. He’s pretending to be crazy so he doesn’t go to prison. Apparently he’s made up some ridiculous story about not being able to remember what happened. Memory loss of some sort. People do that sort of thing you know. When it looks like someone’s going to jail they’ll do just about anything to save themselves.’
‘So you think there’s more than one guy behind it?’
‘Even the police think so but they’re not saying much else at the moment. They have this guy in custody yet they seem pretty reluctant to point the finger at him. I suppose no one wants to look stupid when you’re dealing with something like this. If you were to get it wrong you’d never live it down, would you?’
