‘You never know,’ Elínborg ventured.
The man looked up from beneath the tractor. ‘Was there anything else?’ he asked.
Elínborg smiled and shook her head, apologised for disturbing him and then set off, back out into the storm.
When she reached the guest house she met the woman who had served her at the restaurant. She was still wearing her apron, with a name badge on it: Lauga. She was on her way out, and it occurred to Elínborg that perhaps she was involved in the guest-house operation too. That’s multitasking for you, she thought.
‘I heard that you talked to Valdi,’ said Lauga, holding the door open for Elínborg. ‘Did you get anything out of it?’
‘Not a lot,’ answered Elínborg, surprised again at the speed with which news spread round here.
‘No, he’s not much of a talker, but he’s a good lad.’
‘He seems to work hard. He was still working when I left.’
‘There’s not much else to do,’ observed Lauga. ‘He likes it, always has. Was it the tractor?’
‘Yes, he was working on a tractor.’
‘I should think he’s been fiddling around with it for ten years now. I’ve never seen such care and attention as he lavishes on that tractor. It’s like his pet. They gave him a nickname — Valdi Ferguson.’
‘Well,’ said Elínborg. ‘I have to get back to town early in the morning, so …’
‘Sorry. I wasn’t meaning to keep you up all night.’
Elínborg smiled and looked out at the forlorn village that was gradually disappearing in the blizzard. ‘I don’t suppose you have much crime here?’
Lauga was closing the door. ‘No, that’s for sure,’ she replied with a smile. ‘Nothing ever happens here.’
But for a niggling question at the back of her mind Elínborg would have dropped off as soon as her head touched the pillow; it might mean anything, or nothing. It was the girl she had bumped into at the video rack: she had spoken in whispers, as if she had not wanted anyone to overhear their conversation.
7
Elínborg landed in Reykjavík around midday. Accompanied by a counsellor from the rape-trauma centre, she went straight to the home of the young woman who had been found at the roadside in Kópavogur.
The counsellor, Sólrún, was about forty. Elínborg had worked with her before. On the way, they discussed the increasing incidence of rape reported to the police. The number of offences varied: one year, twenty-five; another, forty-three. Elínborg was familiar with the statistics: she knew that around seventy per cent of rapes took place in the home, and in about fifty per cent of cases the victim knew the rapist. Rape by strangers was on the increase, although cases were still relatively rare. Such assaults might not necessarily be reported to the police; often, more than one man was involved. And each year the police dealt with six to eight cases in which the use of a date-rape drug was suspected.
‘Did you speak to her?’ asked Elínborg.
‘Yes, she’s expecting us,’ answered Sólrún. ‘She’s still in a bad way. She’s moved back in with her parents and doesn’t really want to see or talk to anyone. She’s cut herself off. She sees a psychologist twice a week, and I put her in touch with a psychiatrist too. It’s going to take her a long time to get over it.’
‘And it can’t help that the justice system treats these victims with such contempt,’ Elínborg said. ‘Eighteen months on average for a rape conviction? It’s a disgrace.’
The young woman’s mother met them at the door and showed them into the living room. Her husband was not at home but was expected before long.
She went to let her daughter know that the visitors had arrived, and a brief argument ensued. So far as Elínborg could make out, the daughter was protesting that she didn’t want this — she didn’t want to speak to the police any more, she wanted to be left alone.
Elínborg and Sólrún stood up when the mother and daughter entered the room. The young woman, Unnur, had met both women before and recognised them, but she made no reply when they said hello.
‘I’m so sorry we’re imposing,’ said Sólrún. ‘This won’t take long. And you can stop whenever you want.’ They sat down, and Elínborg took care not to waste any time with small talk. Although Unnur tried to conceal it, Elínborg could see that she was uncomfortable as she sat by her mother’s side. She was striving to put on a brave face. Elínborg had learned to recognise the long-term consequences of major physical assault, and she knew what mental scars it left. To her mind, rape was the worst form of physical assault, almost equivalent to murder.
From her pocket she took a photograph of Runólfur, copied from his driving licence. ‘Do you recognise this man?’ she asked, passing it to Unnur.
She gave it a brief glance. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘I’ve seen his picture on the news, but I don’t know him.’ She returned the photo to Elínborg. ‘Do you think that’s him? The man who raped me?’ Unnur asked.
‘We don’t know,’ answered Elínborg. ‘We do know he was carrying a date-rape drug when he went out on the evening he was murdered. That information hasn’t been made public and you mustn’t tell anyone. But I wanted you to hear the truth. Now you see why we were anxious to meet with you.’
‘I don’t know if I could identify him, even if he were standing right here in front of me,’ said Unnur. ‘I don’t remember anything. Nothing. I vaguely remember the man I was last speaking to, at the bar. I don’t know who he was, but it wasn’t that Runólfur.’
‘Would you be willing to come to his flat with us, and look around? In case it jogs your memory?’
‘I … no, I … I haven’t really been out anywhere since it happened,’ said Unnur.
‘She doesn’t want to leave the house,’ said her mother. ‘Maybe you could show her some pictures.’
Elínborg nodded. ‘It would be very helpful if you felt up to coming with us,’ she said. ‘And he had a car — we’d be grateful if you would look at it.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ said Unnur.
‘The most noticeable feature of his home is that there are big posters of Hollywood action heroes on the living-room walls. Superheroes, like Superman and Batman. Does that …?’
‘It’s all a blank.’
‘And another thing,’ added Elínborg, producing the shawl, wrapped in a plastic evidence bag. ‘We found this at the scene of the crime. I’d like to know if you recognise it. I’m afraid I can’t take it out of the bag, but it’s all right to open it.’
She handed it to the young woman.
‘I don’t wear shawls,’ Unnur said. ‘I’ve only ever owned one, and this isn’t it. Did you find it at his place?’
‘Yes,’ replied Elínborg. ‘That’s another thing that hasn’t been released to the media.’
Unnur was beginning to see where the questions were leading. ‘Was there a woman with him when he … when he was attacked?’
‘It’s possible,’ Elínborg said. ‘We know at least that he was involved in some way with women who came to his home.’
‘Had he drugged her, or was he planning to?’
‘We don’t know.’
Silence reigned.
‘Do you think it was me?’ Unnur asked eventually.
Her mother stared at her. Elínborg shook her head. ‘Absolutely not,’ she replied. ‘You mustn’t think that. I’ve already told you more than you’re supposed to know, and you mustn’t misinterpret it.’
‘You think I attacked him.’
‘No,’ Elínborg said firmly.
‘I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. I’m not that kind of person,’ said Unnur.
‘What sort of questions are these?’ asked her mother. ‘Are you accusing my daughter of attacking that man? She doesn’t even leave the house. She was with us all weekend!’
‘We know. You’re reading far too much into what we’ve said,’ Elínborg said.
She hesitated. Mother and daughter watched her. ‘But we do need a sample of your hair,’ She s
aid at last. ‘Sólrún can take the sample. We want to establish whether you were in his flat the evening you were assaulted. Whether he might have been the one who drugged you and took you home to rape you.’
‘I’ve done nothing wrong,’ Unnur objected.
‘No, of course you haven’t,’ agreed Sólrún. ‘The police just want to rule out the possibility that you were in his flat.’
‘And what if I was there?’
Elínborg felt the horror behind the young woman’s words. She could barely imagine how she must feel, knowing nothing of the night when she was raped. ‘That would give us more information about what happened to you in the hours before you were found in Kópavogur,’ she pointed out. ‘I know this is hard, but we’re all looking for answers here.’
‘I’m not even sure that I want to know,’ Unnur said. ‘I’m trying to pretend to myself that it never happened — that it wasn’t me, but some other girl.’
‘We’ve talked about this,’ said Sólrún. ‘You shouldn’t repress it. It will only take much longer for you to understand that you’re not at fault at all. You didn’t do anything that led to the assault. You have no reason to blame yourself. You were brutalised. There’s no need to hide away. You don’t need to withdraw from society, or feel unclean. You aren’t, and you never can be.’
‘I’m … just scared,’ said Unnur.
‘Of course,’ said Elínborg. ‘That’s entirely understandable. I’ve sat with women like you. I always tell them it’s a question of how they feel about the offender. Just think what status you accord those animals by shutting yourself up here. It’s not right that they can imprison you. You must show them you’re able to fight back against the harm they want to inflict on you.’
Unnur gazed at Elínborg. ‘But it’s so horrible to know … you can never again … something’s been taken away from me, and I can never, never get it back, and my life can never be as it was.’
‘But that’s how it is,’ said Sólrún. ‘For all of us. We can never get things back. That’s why we look to the future.’
‘It happened,’ said Elínborg reassuringly. ‘Don’t dwell on it. If you do, then the bastards win. Don’t let them get away with it.’
Unnur passed the shawl back to her. ‘She smokes. I don’t smoke. And there’s another smell, a perfume — not mine — and then there’s something spicy …’
‘It’s tandoori,’ interjected Elínborg.
‘Do you think she’s the one that attacked him?’
‘That’s a possibility.’
‘Good for her,’ said Unnur through clenched teeth. ‘Good for her, killing him! Good for her, killing that pig!’
Elínborg glanced at Sólrún. She thought the young woman seemed to be on the road to recovery already.
When Elínborg got home, late that evening, the boys were in the middle of a blazing row. Aron, the middle child who somehow always felt left out, had had the audacity to go on Valthór’s computer. His older brother was yelling at him, in such a rage that Elínborg had to shout at him to make him shut up. Theodóra was listening to her iPod as she did her homework at the dining table, and was ignoring her bickering brothers. Teddi lay on the sofa watching TV. He had picked up fried chicken pieces on the way home, and the containers were scattered around the kitchen, along with cold chips and empty sauce tubs.
‘Why don’t you clear up this mess?’ Elínborg called out to Teddi.
‘Leave it,’ he answered. ‘I’ll do it later. I just want to finish watching this programme …’
Elínborg did not have the energy for an argument. She sat down next to Theodóra. A few days earlier they had met Theodóra’s teacher to talk about additional study material for her. The teacher was keen to find her something more challenging. They had discussed the possibility that Theodóra might take the last three years of compulsory schooling in a single year, if she wished, and enter high school early.
‘It said on the news that you’d found a date-rape drug on that man,’ said Theodóra, removing her earphones.
‘How on earth do they get this information?’ sighed Elínborg.
‘Was he a scoundrel?’ asked Theodóra.
‘Maybe,’ answered Elínborg. ‘Please don’t ask me about these things.’
‘They said you were looking for a woman who was with him that night.’
‘It’s possible that someone who was there with him attacked him. Now be quiet,’ retorted Elínborg amicably. ‘What did you have to eat at school?’
‘Rye-bread soup. It was horrible.’
‘You’re too fussy about your food.’
‘I eat your bread soup.’
‘Of course you do. It’s a work of genius.’
Elínborg had told Theodóra that she too had been a fussy eater as a child. She was brought up eating old-fashioned Icelandic food, in old-fashioned Icelandic circumstances. When she described it to her daughter, it was like telling her about life in the Middle Ages. Elínborg’s mother had been a housewife who shopped and then cooked lunch every day. Her father, who had worked in the offices of a fishing company, would come home, eat his meal, then lie down on the sofa to listen to the midday news, which went out at 12.20 p.m. precisely — for the convenience of workers like him. The chimes of the news theme usually rang out just as he swallowed his last bite and put his feet up.
At lunchtime Elínborg’s mother served boiled fish with bread and butter, or made a meat loaf served with mashed or more often boiled potatoes, an invariable accompaniment to every meal.
As for the evening meal, the weekly menus generally followed a strict daily sequence. Elínborg’s mother did all the cooking. On Saturdays they had saltfish, presoaked in a tub in the kitchen — the same tub in which her husband bathed his aching feet. To this day, Elínborg could hardly stomach saltfish. On Sunday there was a roast leg or rack of lamb, with brown gravy made with the meat broth, and caramelised potatoes. To ring the changes they sometimes had lamb chops. The roast was always served with pickled red cabbage and tinned peas. Salted mutton with boiled swedes or horsemeat sausage with a white sauce might crop up on any day, but these were rarities. Mondays always meant fish, unless there were enough leftovers from the Sunday roast, in which case the fish was moved over to Tuesday. It was usually fried in breadcrumbs and served with melted margarine and mayonnaise. Wednesday was air-cured fish, which Elínborg regarded as all but inedible. After it had been boiled for so long that all the windows misted up, an abundance of melted suet was not enough to make the cured fish any more palatable. Wednesday could also be cod roe and liver, which was marginally preferable. Elínborg found the membrane of the roe off-putting, and she never touched the liver. On Thursdays her mother sometimes threw caution to the winds: one memorable Thursday, Elínborg first tasted spaghetti, boiled to within an inch of its life. She found it completely tasteless, but a little more palatable with tomato ketchup. On Friday, fried lamb or pork cutlets in breadcrumbs were accompanied by melted margarine, as with the fried fish.
Week followed week, adding up to months and years of Elínborg’s childhood, with hardly a variation. A ready-made meal was bought perhaps once every two years or so: her father would bring home open sandwiches of smoked lamb on malted bread, or prawns and mayonnaise on white.
Elínborg was nineteen when the first piece of grilled chicken entered her home, in a carton with ‘French fries’. That was another unforgettable day. She did not particularly like either foodstuff and her parents never repeated the experiment. She enjoyed reading about food in books, and often all she remembered from children’s stories and novels were the descriptions of meals and cooking: unfamiliar foreign delicacies, unavailable in Iceland in those days, such as ‘marmalade’, ‘bacon’ and ‘ginger beer’. She recalled reading one day about ‘melted cheese’. It took her some time to understand what it meant. She had never heard of cheese being eaten in any other way than straight from the fridge, sliced on to bread.
Elínborg was picky about certain foods and wa
s a constant source of disappointment to her mother, who was a firm believer in the virtues of boiling: she believed that food was inedible unless reduced to a mush, and she would boil slices of haddock for twenty-five to thirty minutes. Elínborg was always terrified of choking on a fish bone at the kitchen table. She did not like the fatty breadcrumb coating of the cutlets, found the meat bland and flavourless, and the caramelised potatoes were disgusting. Lamb’s liver in onion sauce, served on Tuesdays except when her mother plumped for hearts and kidneys, she simply could not get down. Nor did she think heart or kidney could be considered proper food. Her culinary blacklist was endless.
It came as no surprise to Elínborg when her father suffered a heart attack in his early sixties. He survived, and her parents were still living in the same place, Elínborg’s childhood home. Both were now retired, but remained alert and self-sufficient. Her mother still boiled her air-cured fish until the windows misted over.
When it had become clear that Elínborg’s fussiness about food was incurable, and as she grew old enough to find her way around the kitchen, her parents allowed her to start cooking for herself, using whatever her mother had bought. She would take some of the haddock or cutlets, or the fish loaf served on Thursdays after the pasta experiment came to an end, and prepare something that she really wanted to eat. And she developed an interest in cookery: she always asked for cookbooks for Christmas and birthday presents, subscribed to recipe clubs, and read cookery columns in the papers. Yet she did not necessarily want to be a chef; she just wanted to prepare food that was not inedible.
By the time Elínborg left home she had had some impact on the family’s eating habits, while other aspects of their life had changed of their own accord. Her father, for instance, no longer came home to eat lunch and lie down to listen to the news. Her mother went out to work and came home exhausted in the evening, relieved that Elínborg was willing to cook. She worked in a grocery shop where she was run off her feet all day long, and every evening she soaked in a hot bath, her feet red and sore. But she was more cheerful than before, as she had always been a sociable person.
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