‘Do you mean Edvard?’ asked the man.
‘Yes, Edvard, that’s right!’ exclaimed Elínborg, as if she had been racking her brains. ‘That’s him. I used to work with him,’ she said. ‘Is he still teaching, or …?’
‘Yes, he’s a teacher. At one of the secondary colleges — I don’t remember which one.’
‘We used to teach together at Hamrahlíd High School,’ Elínborg said. She felt bad about lying to her new acquaintance but she was reluctant to admit she was a police officer. The word would spread quickly through the neighbourhood and soon get back to Edvard himself.
‘Right,’ said the man. ‘I don’t see much of him. He keeps himself to himself, and you hardly notice him.’
‘I know. He’s a bit of a mystery. Has he lived here long?’
‘I think he moved in about ten years ago. He was still a student back then.’
‘But he could afford to buy a house?’
‘I wouldn’t know anything about that,’ the man said. ‘But I think he used to have a lodger for a while, a few years ago. Maybe that helped towards the mortgage.’
‘Yes, I remember him mentioning that,’ Elínborg lied. ‘Didn’t he teach in Akranes at one time?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Did he drive up there every day?’
‘Yes, he did. He had the same car he’s driving now. It’s pretty decrepit. As I say, I don’t know Edvard very well even though we’re neighbours. He’s more of an acquaintance, really. I don’t know much about him.’
‘Is he still single?’ asked Elínborg, trying to feel her way forward.
‘Oh, yes. Edvard doesn’t seem to have much to do with women. Not that I’ve noticed, at any rate.’
‘He was certainly no party animal when I knew him.’
‘That hasn’t changed, then. I never see anyone at the house at weekends,’ said the man, with a smile. ‘Or at all. He’s pretty much a loner.’
‘Good luck with the Chrysler,’ said Elínborg. ‘She’s a beauty.’
‘Yes,’ the man replied. ‘She’s a real humdinger.’
As Elínborg was pulling up outside her home, her mobile rang. She turned the engine off and glanced at the screen. She did not recognise the number and was in two minds about answering. It had been a tiring day and she longed for a few hours of peace and quiet at home. She looked at the number, trying to place it. The children sometimes used her phone, and occasionally one of their friends would ring her number by accident. The ringing was irritating but she was reluctant to turn it off. She decided to answer.
‘Good evening,’ said a woman’s voice. ‘Is that Elínborg?’
‘Yes, I’m Elínborg,’ she snapped.
‘I’m sorry to call so late.’
‘That’s all right. Who is this?’
‘We haven’t met,’ said the woman. ‘I’m a bit worried, although I probably shouldn’t be. He can look after himself, and he likes to be alone.’
‘Excuse me, who is speaking?’
‘My name is Valgerdur,’ the woman replied. ‘I don’t think we’ve spoken before.’
‘Valgerdur?’
‘I’m a friend of your colleague Erlendur. I’ve tried to contact Sigurdur Óli but he’s not answering.’
‘No,’ said Elínborg. ‘He won’t pick up if he doesn’t recognise the number. Are you all right?’
‘Yes, thank you. I just wanted to find out if Erlendur has been in touch with either of you. He’s gone to the East Fjords and I haven’t heard from him.’
‘No, I haven’t either,’ said Elínborg. ‘How long is it since he went to the east?’
‘Nearly two weeks now. He’d been working on a difficult case, which I think he found very distressing. I’m a bit worried about him.’
Erlendur had not said goodbye to Elínborg or Sigurdur Óli when he left — they had simply found out at the station that he had taken a leave of absence. Just before that he had discovered the bodies of a man and woman who had been missing for twenty-five years. He had also been pursuing another case on his own time but had been unable to uncover enough evidence for a prosecution.
‘I should think Erlendur just wants to be left alone,’ said Elínborg. ‘Two weeks isn’t all that long, if he was planning to stay in the east for a while. I know he’s been working very hard lately.’
‘Perhaps. Either he’s turned his mobile off, or he’s in some dead spot.’
‘He’ll turn up,’ said Elínborg. ‘He’s gone off before without telling anyone.’
‘Well, that’s good to know. If he does get in touch, perhaps you’d let him know I was asking after him?’
26
Theodóra was still awake. She moved over in bed and Elínborg lay down next to her. They lay quietly together for a while without speaking. Elínborg’s mind was on Lilja, who had vanished from Akranes. She thought of the young woman dumped by the road in Kópavogur who had locked herself away in her misery. She recalled Nína in tears in the interview room: imagined her, knife in hand, slashing Runólfur’s throat.
The house was silent. The boys were out and Teddi was at the garage, working late over his accounts.
‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ said Theodóra. She sensed a restlessness in her mother, who was tired and distracted. ‘Not about us, anyway. We know you sometimes have to work a lot. Don’t worry about us.’
Elínborg smiled. ‘I think I have the best daughter in the world,’ she said.
They did not speak for a while. The wind was rising, howling at the windows. Autumn was gradually giving way to winter, and to the cold and darkness it would bring.
‘What is it you must never do?’ Elínborg asked Theodóra after a few minutes. ‘Never?’
‘Never accept a lift from a stranger,’ replied Theodóra.
‘That’s right,’ said Elínborg.
‘No exceptions,’ recited Theodóra, using the words she had long since been taught by her mother. ‘No matter what they say, whether it’s a man or a woman. Never get into a car with a stranger.’
‘It’s a pity to have to say it …’ Elínborg said.
Theodóra, who had heard these words many times before, finished the sentence for her: ‘… because the majority of strangers are perfectly good people, but there are always a handful who can’t be trusted. And that’s why you must never get into a car with strangers. Even if they say they’re police officers.’
‘That’s my girl, Theodóra,’ Elínborg said.
‘Are you investigating a case like that?’
‘I don’t know,’ answered Elínborg. ‘Perhaps.’
‘Did someone accept a lift?’
‘I don’t want to tell you about what I’m doing at present,’ said Elínborg. ‘Sometimes it’s no fun to talk about work when you get home.’
‘I read in the paper that two people are being held — a man and his daughter.’
‘Yes.’
‘How did you find them?’
‘I followed my nose,’ said Elínborg smiling and pointing at her nose. ‘I think it was my sense of smell that broke the case. The daughter likes tandoori cookery, like me.’
‘So is there a spicy smell in her house, like here?’
‘Yes, much the same.’
‘Were you in danger?’
‘No, sweetheart, I wasn’t in any danger. They’re not that kind of people. I’ve told you, police officers are rarely at any risk.’
‘But the police are often attacked. On the streets.’
‘Those assailants are just hoodlums, the dregs of society,’ said Elínborg. ‘Don’t you worry about low life like that.’
Theodóra gave that some thought. Her mum had been in the police all of Theodóra’s life, but she had very little sense of her job because Elínborg did not want her to know too much about it while she was so young. Theodóra’s friends generally had some sense of what their parents did at work, but not Theodóra. She had occasionally been to police headquarters, when Elínborg had no option but to ta
ke her along. She would sit in a small office, waiting for her mother as she hurriedly finished some task. Men and women, some in uniform, others in plain clothes, would look around the door and say hello, smiling and expressing amazement at how big she was getting. All except one man, wearing an overcoat, who frowned at her and asked Elínborg brusquely what she thought she was doing with a child in a place like this. Theodóra never forgot the words the man had used: a place like this. She asked her mum who he was, but Elínborg shook her head and told her daughter to forget it — the man had his problems.
‘What is your job, Mum?’ asked Theodóra.
‘It’s just like an ordinary office job, darling,’ her mum replied. ‘Nearly finished!’
But Theodóra knew perfectly well that it was no ordinary office. She knew about some of the things police officers did in their work, and she was well aware that her mum was a police officer. Just as Elínborg finished speaking, a great commotion broke out in the corridor, where a man, handcuffed between two policemen, had gone berserk. Punching and kicking in all directions, he headbutted one of the policemen, who collapsed with blood pouring down his face. Elínborg shepherded Theodóra back into the little office and shut the door.
‘Maniacs,’ she hissed under her breath, with an apologetic smile at her daughter.
Theodóra remembered what Valthór had said, late one evening when their mum was still at work. He said she was dealing with some of the worst criminals in the country. It was one of very few occasions when Theodóra sensed that her older brother was proud of their mother.
As Theodóra lay in bed with her mother beside her, she asked the question again:
‘What is your job, Mum?’
Elínborg did not know how to respond. Theodóra had always been interested in what she did at work: curious about the details, what Elínborg was doing, what kind of people she had to deal with, who her colleagues were. Elínborg had done her best to answer Theodóra’s questions without touching on murder and rape, violence against women and children, brutal assaults. She had witnessed so much that she would have preferred not to see, and it was impossible to tell a child about it.
‘We help people,’ she said finally. ‘People who need our help. We try to make sure they can live their lives in peace.’ Elínborg stood up and smoothed the quilt over her daughter. ‘Was I not kind enough to Birkir?’ she asked.
‘Yes, you were.’
‘So what went wrong?’
‘Birkir never thought of you as his mother,’ said Theodóra. ‘He told Valthór, but you mustn’t say I told you.’
‘Valthór tells you all sorts of odd things.’
‘He said Birkir had had enough of us, his foster family.’
‘Could we have done anything differently?’ asked Elínborg.
‘No, I’m sure we couldn’t.’
Elínborg kissed her daughter’s forehead. ‘Goodnight, sweetheart.’
The questioning of Konrád and Nína continued after Elínborg left. They were asked repeatedly about their movements on the night of the attack, and their story remained unchanged. Their accounts were very consistent but, as Elínborg pointed out, they had had plenty of time to agree on a story. The witness who had reported seeing a woman in the passenger seat of a car in Thingholt when he was walking home that night was brought in to identify Konrád’s wife. He was sure that she was the woman he had seen.
The next afternoon Elínborg entered the interview room where Konrád was being held. Konrád was clearly worn down by being locked up and bombarded with questions, and by his anxiety about his family, especially Nína. He asked Elínborg how his daughter was, and she assured him that Nína was managing as well as could be expected. Everybody wanted this process to be over. ‘Wouldn’t you expect to find blood on my daughter’s clothes, or on her hands?’ demanded Konrád in response to a barrage of questions about Nína’s part in Runólfur’s death. ‘I didn’t see any bloodstains on her — not on her clothes, not on her hands. There was no blood.’
‘You said you didn’t notice.’
‘I remember now.’
‘Can you prove it?’
‘No, I can’t prove it. I know I should have called the police right away, got them to come, let them see the evidence, and shown them that Nína could not have killed him. And I was wrong not to take Nína to the rape-trauma centre and arrange counselling. We should have done all those things, I realise that. We shouldn’t have run away. It was wrong, and it’s rebounded on us. But you must believe me. Nína could never have done it. Never.’
Elínborg looked at the police officers who were conducting the interview. They beckoned her to join them.
‘I think your daughter is ready to confess,’ she said. ‘Nína has all but told me she killed Runólfur. Her only regret is that she doesn’t remember cutting his throat.’
‘He raped her,’ said Konrád. ‘That bloody bastard raped her.’
Elínborg had not heard Konrád swear before. ‘That gives us all the more reason to believe that when she came round she slipped him the same drug that he had used on her, overpowered him, and then slit his throat. Perhaps she tricked him — spiked his drink, then washed the glass. A lot of evidence points to that.’
‘This makes me sick,’ countered Konrád.
‘Unless it was you?’ said Elínborg.
‘Who was this Runólfur?’ asked Konrád. ‘What kind of a man was he?’
‘I don’t know how to answer that,’ replied Elínborg. ‘We never had any dealings with him while he was alive. You must appreciate our problem. Although your daughter says she was raped, we have no evidence. Why should we believe her? Why should we believe you?’
‘You can believe everything she says.’
‘I want to,’ said Elínborg. ‘But there are problems with her story.’
‘I’ve never known her to lie. Not to me, not to her mother, nor to anyone else. It breaks my heart to see her caught up in this awful mess, this nightmare. It’s appalling. I’d do anything for it to be over. Anything at all.’
‘You know he was wearing Nína’s T-shirt?’
‘I realised that later. I took my jacket and wrapped it around Nína, then picked up her clothes. I ought to have been more careful. I knew you were on to us as soon as you asked me about San Francisco. That was no routine enquiry.’
‘You said you wished it had been you that killed him. Nína says she wishes she remembered cutting his throat. Which of you did it? Are you prepared to tell me now?’
‘Does Nína say she did it?’
‘Virtually.’
‘I’m not confessing to anything,’ said Konrád. ‘We’re innocent. You should believe us, and put a stop to all this.’
27
Elínborg spent the rest of the day shopping. She bought a selection of healthy foods, which she was forever trying to encourage her sons and their father to eat but with limited success. She bought a steak; she was planning to keep her promise to serve Valthór his favourite. He liked his meat rare, but Elínborg was not keen on bloody meat. She relaxed as she shopped, and tried not to think about the case which was weighing so heavily on her. Into the trolley went a jar of artichoke hearts, Colombian coffee, Icelandic yoghurt.
When she got home she soaked in a hot bath, and unwound so completely that she fell fast asleep. She had not realised how tired the strain of the last few days had left her. She awoke to hear someone moving around the house — one of the children, home from school. She tried in vain to keep her mind off her work. Edvard kept entering her mind. His squalid little house, the rusty old banger parked outside, and the twisted branches of the tree that loomed over the roof like eerie claws. The more she thought about Lilja, the more repulsive she found the house and its owner, Edvard, who shuffled around the rooms, hunched, unshaven, with unkempt hair, nervy and graceless. She could not honestly imagine him hurting anyone, but that proved nothing. Edvard’s character could not be judged by outward appearances, except for the obvious fact that he was a
slob.
Elínborg wanted to go back up to Akranes, to talk to more people who had known Lilja and Edvard. His colleagues on the college staff might have information that they regarded as unimportant, but could be useful to her. She wanted to re-interview Lilja’s mother, who had taken refuge in religion. She might also have to question the girl’s father, who had dealt with his grief by withdrawal and silence. It would be difficult to interview them without anything firm to go on, and Elínborg was not sure how far she ought to push it. She did not want to give them false hope. That would be no help to anyone.
She wanted to find out more about Runólfur, too. Konrád had asked her who the man was, and what the police knew about him, and the answer was: not much. Perhaps she should fly back to his village and interview more of the locals.
Elínborg changed out of her work clothes, and went into the kitchen. Theodóra had brought two friends home and they were in her room. Valthór too was in his room: she decided not to disturb him. She wanted to avoid conflict for the rest of the evening.
Before turning her attention to the steak, Elínborg unpacked two cuts of lamb to which she had treated herself for one of her culinary experiments. She went out into the back garden and lit the barbecue, to give it enough time to get good and hot. She took out her tandoori pot and mixed a marinade using Icelandic herbs. She cut the lamb into chunks, which she plunged into the marinade and set aside for half an hour. The grill was very hot when she lifted the tandoori pot on to it along with several large potatoes, which she baked among the coals to serve with the steak. She called Teddi, who said he was on his way home.
Whenever Elínborg focused on her cooking she attained a rare state of calm. She permitted herself to slow down and retreat from the stressful daily round, to concentrate on something other than work and take a break from the family. She emptied her mind of everything but the consideration of different ingredients, and how she could apply her insight and artistry to producing perfection from chaos. In her kitchen she found an outlet for her creativity: she took the ingredients and transformed their nature, taste, texture, aroma. For Elínborg the three stages of cookery — preparation, cooking, and eating — were a recipe for life itself.
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