The Shadow District

by Arnaldur Indridason

  When Flóvent and Thorson arrived at the prison towards midday, he had finally fallen asleep but started awake when the key was turned in the lock and his cell door opened. Sitting up on the bed, he stared blearily at the two policemen in the doorway.

  ‘I must have dropped off.’

  ‘Would you come with us?’ said Flóvent. ‘There’s a room where we can talk.’

  ‘Are you going to let me go?’ asked Jónatan, standing up.

  ‘We’re going to have a little chat,’ said Flóvent. ‘We need to ask you a few questions concerning the two girls. After that we’ll see.’

  ‘I explained to these men that I haven’t got time for this; I’ve already missed some of my lectures.’

  Nevertheless, he accompanied them down the corridor and into a small room next to the guards’ coffee room. It contained a table and three chairs, and they all sat down. Flóvent asked if they could have some coffee but Jónatan declined his. He seemed calm and composed; brief as it had been, his rest had done him good. Flóvent reached into his pocket for the composition about the cormorant that he had found in Jónatan’s room and handed it to him.

  ‘Informative stuff,’ he said. ‘Have you always been interested in birds?’

  ‘Yes, actually. Ornithology’s a hobby of mine. I’ve always been fascinated by nature, birds especially.’

  ‘By the cormorant in particular?’

  ‘No, by seabirds generally. The cormorant is … I like watching it in flight, its elongated neck, the way it plummets into the sea. It’s a wonderful bird.’

  ‘Did Hrund share your interest in ornithology?’

  ‘Hrund?’ said Jónatan. ‘I wouldn’t know. I don’t think so.’

  ‘Tell us again how you knew Hrund,’ said Flóvent.

  ‘I didn’t touch her,’ said Jónatan. ‘I hope you don’t think I harmed her. Because I didn’t.’

  ‘Did you talk about birds? You told us yesterday she knew a lot about nature, about birds and plants and so on.’

  ‘Well, maybe we did. But I can’t really remember.’

  Flóvent nodded understandingly. Thorson sat silently at his side. Facing them across the table, Jónatan embarked again on the tale of how he had met the young girl who often used to hang around the petrol station. His account was largely consistent with the one he had provided the day before: they would chat from time to time; she had asked a lot of questions about Akureyri and wanted to move south to Reykjavík, and she was open to the idea that the hidden people really existed.

  ‘And the subject came up because she knew of your interest in such things?’ said Flóvent, once Jónatan had finished.

  ‘Yes. She knew I was going to university. I told her I wanted to read Icelandic and history.’

  ‘Did you regard her as a subject for your research?’ asked Thorson.

  ‘A subject for my research? No.’

  ‘Well, she told you her ideas about the huldufólk, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘Which were?’

  ‘All the usual stuff about enchanted mounds and elf rocks. She knew lots of stories too. Nothing out of the ordinary, though.’

  ‘Had she had any encounters with supernatural beings herself?’

  ‘She didn’t say.’

  ‘She didn’t discuss it with you?’

  ‘She never mentioned it, no.’

  ‘She’d never been molested in any way by a supernatural being?’ asked Flóvent.

  ‘You asked me that before. I’ve no idea.’

  ‘She didn’t tell you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’

  ‘Yes. Anyway, I don’t believe in that sort of thing. If she had, it would have been a figment of her imagination.’

  ‘Oh, that’s right, you don’t believe in the existence of such creatures. They belong purely to the world of fairy stories.’

  ‘Yes. Of course. Not that I’m familiar with the type of malevolence you’re referring to in tales of the huldufólk. After all, they’re mostly told by women, passed down from mother to daughter. That’s essentially how they’ve survived. And because they’ve been kept alive by women, they reflect a female view of the world, feature concerns close to their hearts. They tend to be stories about faithless lovers, childbearing, the exposure of infants.’

  ‘Exposure of infants?’ queried Flóvent.

  ‘Some things don’t change much.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Thorson.

  Jónatan looked from one of them to the other, seeking to make himself understood. ‘The stories often describe the harsh lot of women. Such as giving birth to a child out of wedlock and being forced to dispose of it. Exposure of infants was the abortion of its day. Naturally it would have been a harrowing experience and the huldufólk stories were a way of glossing over the harsh reality and easing the mental anguish. They offered an alternative world in which women have children with handsome, gentle men of the hidden race, who are the antithesis of their brutish human counterparts. The infants are left out in the open for their fathers to find, and grow up, cherished, among their father’s people, and may even return one day to the human world. In other words, the stories serve to alleviate a distressing experience.’

  ‘Handsome, gentle men?’ repeated Thorson.

  ‘Like the Yanks,’ said Jónatan.

  ‘Are they the new huldufólk?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  ‘How do you feel about that?’ asked Thorson.

  ‘Me? I don’t have an opinion.’

  ‘Are you involved with any women yourself?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything? Why are you asking me that?’

  ‘Maybe everything we’re asking is relevant; maybe none of it is,’ said Flóvent. ‘We’d appreciate it if you simply gave a straight answer to the question.’

  ‘I’ve never had a girlfriend,’ said Jónatan.

  ‘What about Hrund?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Did you have a crush on her?’

  ‘No,’ said Jónatan. ‘I hardly knew her.’

  ‘Did she go running after the soldiers up north?’

  ‘Not that I could see.’

  ‘Did you assault Hrund?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Did she turn you down?’

  ‘Turn me down?’

  ‘We mentioned Rósamunda yesterday,’ said Thorson.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You claim you didn’t know her.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘And you had no idea where she worked?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Tell me, what do you do if your clothes need mending?’

  Jónatan was confused by the question. ‘I … what do I do?’

  ‘If you tore a hole in your trousers, for example. Or needed to get the elbows of your jumpers patched. Are you good with a needle and thread yourself?’

  Jónatan looked wonderingly from Flóvent to Thorson and back. ‘Why … why are you asking me that?’

  ‘You’re not much cop at sewing, are you?’ said Flóvent.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Rósamunda worked for a dressmaker’s in Reykjavík. The shop also offers a mending service. It’s called The Stitch. Does that jog your memory?’

  ‘I took my trousers to be mended once,’ Jónatan faltered.

  ‘Did you take them to that company, to The Stitch?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘Possible?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Perhaps this will refresh your memory.’

  Flóvent took out the invoice they had found in Jónatan’s digs and placed it on the table in front of him. It bore the stamp of The Stitch and listed a fee for repairs made to one pair of trousers. Jónatan reached for the invoice, but Thorson was quicker off the mark and, snatching the piece of paper, held it up to him.

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Were you aware that Rósamunda worked
for this company?’

  ‘I don’t know any Rósamunda. I don’t understand why you’re holding me here. I’ve done nothing wrong. All I want is for this to be over.’

  ‘It might be advisable for you to get yourself a lawyer at this stage,’ said Flóvent.

  ‘I don’t want a lawyer. I don’t know any lawyers. I want to go home. I haven’t got time for this. You have to understand – I’m innocent. I haven’t done anything. You’ve got to believe me.’ Jónatan stood up. ‘You can’t keep me here. You’ve no right to hold me. I’m leaving.’

  By now Flóvent and Thorson were also on their feet. Jónatan walked to the door, which was unlocked. He opened it and was about to step out into the corridor when Thorson grabbed his arm.

  ‘Let me go.’

  ‘I’m afraid you can’t leave yet,’ said Flóvent.

  For an instant it looked as if Jónatan was going to try to make a break for it. Then, conscious that he was outnumbered, he seemed to wilt.

  ‘Don’t do this to me,’ he begged. ‘Let me go.’

  ‘I’m sorry, son,’ said Flóvent. ‘I’m arresting you on suspicion of murdering Rósamunda. We have no alternative. I advise you to cooperate and also strongly recommend that you get yourself a lawyer.’

  An hour later Flóvent was back in his office on Fríkirkjuvegur, poring over the notes he had found in Jónatan’s room. They consisted of an account the student had scribbled down over five sides of paper. The handwriting was barely legible yet Flóvent thought he could make out the gist. Pulling over the desk lamp, he shone it on the pages. They were unnumbered, so it took him a while to figure out what order to read them in. The style was familiar from the old court records he had occasionally consulted, and before long he had worked out that the pages described a nineteenth-century rape case. The more Flóvent was able to decipher, the more convinced he became that he had the right man in custody.

  36

  Konrád pushed one drawer of the filing cabinet shut and opened the next. He hadn’t entirely given up hope of finding a police report on Rósamunda’s death. The fragment of the witness statement, from which he’d learnt Ingiborg’s name, had turned up in an otherwise empty folder, marked only with a case number and filed under 1944. After sifting through everything he could find in the archives for that year without success, he tried widening his search to include files from the years immediately preceding and following 1944, in case any documents had been misplaced. The police must have written reports about such a major crime; he was convinced of it. It was simply a matter of finding them.

  His thoughts kept returning to Petra’s description of the elderly Thorson’s agitation on learning that Rósamunda had been afraid of entering a certain house in Reykjavík. According to Petra’s mother, it had been the home of a prominent family: a member of parliament and his wife, pillars of society, important customers, in whose patronage the dressmaker had taken a snobbish pride. Oddfellows, and he might have been a Freemason, Petra had said. Since she had also passed on their names to Thorson, it was a fairly safe assumption that he must have attempted to approach the family, seventy years after the event.

  ‘I’m glad you came,’ Petra had told Konrád as he was leaving. ‘I hope I’ve been able to help. To be honest, my mother was terribly bothered about all this before she died. Plagued with guilt about withholding information.’

  ‘Surely there was no need for that,’ Konrád replied, not knowing what else to say.

  ‘She was afraid she’d unwittingly caused trouble for someone,’ said Petra, ‘but felt it was far too late to make amends. She was desperate to relieve her conscience. Do you think this Stefán – Thorson – could have been killed because of what she knew?’

  ‘Oh no, that’s very unlikely,’ Konrád said reassuringly, though privately he was beginning to wonder.

  ‘Or someone else could have suffered because she kept quiet? Though Mother didn’t think anyone had been arrested or tried for the murder.’

  ‘No, I can’t find any evidence of that either.’

  ‘Perhaps she should have told the whole truth.’

  ‘Presumably she was reluctant to report unfounded suspicions, as you said. She must have been in a real quandary.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll ever find out what happened?’

  ‘Who knows? It’s probably too late now.’

  Konrád pulled out one file after another. As he flicked through their contents he kept an eye out for references to Rósamunda, Thorson or a student connected to the case. Every now and then he came across the name of the detective, Flóvent, who had been conducting the inquiry with Thorson, but never in connection with Rósamunda. Flóvent had investigated all kinds of routine offences: burglaries, smuggling, car thefts and cases of assault, as well as the odd serious incident, until his name disappeared from the records shortly after the war.

  While Konrád was leafing through paperwork from the time of the occupation, he reflected on what he knew about the Situation. He had recently read a newspaper article about the prejudice that Icelandic women who had fraternised with soldiers had faced for many years after the war and the stigma attached to the children of such unions, though attitudes had gradually changed and softened with the passing of time and the influence of the feminist movement. According to the article, the war had effectively emancipated Icelandic women from the patriarchy of the old farming society. The unprecedented degree of independence they enjoyed was one reason why resentment about the Situation had been so fierce. After all, a woman who washed laundry for the army was an independent businesswoman with an income many times greater than that of her unskilled sisters. No longer subject to the traditional authority of the male householder, and spared the need to find herself a husband straight out of a turf hovel, she found herself free to indulge her desire for adventure, to sail to far-off lands with a man from another world on her arm. Besides, as the women themselves pointed out, the foreign soldiers – polite, personable and clean – seemed like fairy-tale princes compared to the Icelandic men on offer.

  Smiling to himself at the thought of his boorish countrymen, Konrád kept going back in time, looking for information about a girl who might have paid a heavy price for that new-found freedom. He had got back as far as 1941 when he discovered two loose handwritten sheets. They weren’t in a file and lacked both date and author; presumably they had ended up in the wrong place when someone was clearing out old files or in the midst of a move. Perhaps someone had just forgotten to throw them out. The handwriting was neat and legible, and the pages appeared to sum up an interview with a man who was not identified by name. It wasn’t an official report, more like a policeman’s notes to himself, stating that the man had been brought in for questioning and held in the cells on Skólavördustígur under strong protest. During questioning it had emerged that he knew ‘the girl up north’ – as it was phrased – and had taken some mending to a shop called The Stitch, where Rósamunda used to work. He was a student of Icelandic and history at the University of Iceland, it continued, with a special interest in folklore and legends, on which he was writing a thesis. Added at the bottom in different ink but in the same hand was a sentence which seemed strangely at odds with the dry tone of the preceding account, like a heartfelt outburst by the author: What happened was a tragedy.

  That was all that the pages told him. Konrád tracked down some typewritten reports signed by Flóvent, and, comparing them to the notes, concluded that the handwriting on the loose sheets of paper could well be his. He continued rummaging through the filing cabinets, pulling out drawers and leafing through reports, but turned up nothing else of interest. Although the reference to the girl up north was puzzling, it appeared that the student in question had been suspected of Rósamunda’s murder. Evidently, the case had not been solved by his arrest, though, since it never went to court and nobody was ever found guilty. It was as if the inquiry had been abruptly terminated. Was there any chance that the suspect could have been linked to the influential
family Petra had mentioned? A member of parliament was involved, after all. Could the investigation have been dropped as a result of political pressure?

  A student of Icelandic and history.

  A student.

  Was this unnamed suspect the student Thorson had muttered about as he was leaving Petra’s home?

  Two hours later, when it was clear that he was getting nowhere, Konrád abandoned his ferreting and went to see Marta. She told him glumly that they were making next to no progress with the inquiry. On her desk was a pile of recordings from CCTV cameras near Thorson’s home, labelled with the names of a shop, a bank and a school.

  ‘We’re starting to slog through this lot,’ said Marta, gesturing to the pile as she pulled on her coat. ‘In case we spot any of the usual suspects. Apart from that we haven’t a clue what we’re looking for.’

  ‘Have fun,’ said Konrád.

  ‘Have you got anything for us?’

  ‘Nothing concrete.’

  ‘We’re starting to think that the old guy took his own life,’ said Marta.

  ‘Smothered himself? Is that possible?’ asked Konrád incredulously.

  ‘Think about it, Konrád,’ said Marta. ‘He was old and knackered.’ She was late for a meeting, and clearly had no time to talk. ‘We’ve hit a brick wall. We can find no one who had any reason to harm him. There was no forced entry. Nothing was stolen. Motive? Absolutely no idea. He had no family here, no circle of friends as far as we know. Nothing to look forward to except spending the rest of his days mouldering away in a nursing home. See what I mean?’

  ‘Wrong,’ said Konrád. ‘Totally wrong. That’s a million miles from what was going on in his head. On the contrary, he had every reason to live. He was actively engaged in looking into that cold case involving the girl behind the theatre, a case he himself investigated back when he was a military policeman during the war. And I have reason to believe he was making progress with his enquiries. That’s where you’ll find the reason for his death. There’s your motive.’