On A Small Island

by Grant Nicol

  Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared

  and wrote on the plaster of the wall.

  An old quote that I had heard years ago came back to me: once is happenstance, twice is coincidence but three times is the work of the enemy. I couldn’t remember who it was who had said it but I knew one thing for sure: somewhere out there we all had a new enemy to contend with, whether we wanted to or not.

  CHAPTER 9

  Once I had fished Grímur’s number out of my pocket, he arrived within about five minutes. At first I thought he might have been down the road in his office after all but when he arrived, for some reason I couldn’t quite fathom, he had a dog with him. I was standing waiting for him at the back door as he and his black dog made their way across the car park. He must have noticed the slightly bemused look on my face as I greeted him.

  ‘I only live up the street on Hátún and Bobbi was due his late night walk anyway. I like to take him out before bed each night.’

  Bobbi was a Labrador from what I knew about dogs and he was slightly morose-looking, a little like his owner. When I offered my hand to Bobbi he seemed somewhat indifferent to the idea of meeting me. Grímur tied him to a post and took out his notebook. He asked me to go through everything for him once again so that this time he could make notes and then we would make our way up to the third floor for a look around. The fact that we were standing in a howling wind in the rain didn’t seem to bother him. I suggested we move somewhere undercover as Bobbi stood sullenly in the downpour.

  I started off my story with Elín not showing up to the performance and felt compelled to tell him that I hadn’t been completely surprised that she hadn’t appeared.

  ‘So it’s not that unusual for her to be unreliable, then?’

  ‘No, it’s not, but her keys and wallet are still here and she’s nowhere to be seen. That’s unusual.’

  He wanted to know if I had touched anything while I’d been in her office. I told him that as far as I could remember I had only handled her keys and phone. I had left them on her desk but made sure that he knew they’d been on the floor when I found them. I told him about the note but not the fact that I’d photographed it on my phone. These religious quotations were no longer merely items of curiosity; they meant something and I was determined to discover exactly what that was.

  ‘I’m going to have a look around on my own first and then I’ll be back down. Björn will be here soon, you can send him up when he arrives,’ Grímur said. ‘If you’d keep an eye on Bobbi for me I’d really appreciate it.’

  And so I was left standing alone looking out into the pouring rain with a wet Labrador for company while he disappeared inside. As soon as he was gone I untied the unfortunate dog and we both sheltered just inside the door on a rubber mat that had been purchased with exactly such weather in mind. True to Grímur’s word it wasn’t long before Björn arrived with his now familiar briefcase in tow. He hurried through the rain and into the building where he was greeted with much more enthusiasm than I’d received from my new friend Bobbi.

  ‘Wet out there tonight, Ylfa.’

  I was a little surprised that he had remembered my name but took it as something of a compliment.

  ‘Grímur’s up on the third floor having a look around. I’m not allowed back up until he says so, apparently.’

  ‘He just doesn’t want the scene disturbed.’

  ‘Let me ask you something, Björn. My father says that there was something in Jóhannes’s mouth when he was killed. Is that right or is he just making it up?’

  Björn crouched down to scratch Bobbi’s head for him and pretended not to hear me. Either that or he was trying to decide how he should answer. Eventually, he stood up again and looked me in the eye. He had been mulling over how much he should tell me and the fact that Grímur wasn’t around might just have swung things in my favour.

  ‘Look, sometimes there are details about cases like Jóhannes’s that we like to keep to ourselves. A little something that only the killer would know. We don’t want this becoming public knowledge, you must remember that.’

  I nodded to indicate that I understood.

  ‘There was a note left behind scrunched up in Jóhannes’s mouth. It bore a striking resemblance to the one that we found at the scene of the Ketamine theft in Mosfellsbær.’

  ‘And the one upstairs,’ I added.

  He nodded in a way that made me even more worried than I already was. I was just about to ask him what the note had said when Grímur reappeared. Björn threw me a quick look, which suggested I should keep our conversation to myself.

  ‘Björn, good to see you. We should all head back up now, I think,’ Grímur said. ‘Just leave Bobbi where he is, he’ll be fine. He can let us know if anyone else wants to use the door. Can you tell me what sort of car Elín drives, Ylfa?’

  ‘It’s an Audi: a new one; Sepang Blue is the colour I think.’

  ‘Is it in the car park anywhere?’

  ‘No, unless it’s under the building.’

  Grímur nodded and walked outside to make a call while having a look around the car park.

  ‘Why’s his dog called Bobbi? Isn’t it an odd sort of name for a dog?’ I asked Björn.

  ‘He’s named after the American chess player. Grímur met him when he was much younger.’

  ‘What was in the note you found on Jóhannes?’

  ‘You’re not to tell anyone, remember?’

  I nodded in agreement, wishing that he’d just get on with it.

  ‘It was a quote from the Book of Daniel. Daniel 4:15: Let him be drenched with the dew of heaven, and let him live with the animals. I’ve no idea what it is supposed to mean in the context of his death but there is a connection to the other crime, as I said. And now this.’

  A police car pulled up outside and one of the officers got out to talk to Grímur briefly before driving off again. When he had made his way back inside he signalled for us to follow him upstairs. I appreciated Björn’s candour and wanted to see his reaction when he saw the note in Elín’s office. The note in Jóhannes’s mouth had been the same wording as what he’d written down in his flat. Somehow he had come across it before and I didn’t think it had been in Bible class.

  Upstairs, Björn stared long and hard at the letter before carefully putting it in an evidence bag. I had thought he would spend ages going over Elín’s office with a fine-toothed comb but he only seemed interested in the note. Grímur noted that there was no sign of a struggle whatsoever and that there was no clear indication that any crime had actually been committed. His phone rang; the officers he had sent away thought they might have found her Audi. Leaving Björn to his work, Grímur and I walked the short distance down Borgartún with Bobbi to where they were waiting patiently for us.

  As soon as I saw it I knew it was her car and told Grímur as much. It was parked behind an older office block that sat next to the hotel at the end of the street just before the intersection with Kringlumýrarbraut. It was certainly a strange place for her to have parked considering she only worked up the road. Hidden from view and yet close enough for her to walk to from her office. Grímur pulled her keys from one of his pockets and unlocked it. There didn’t appear to be anything of interest in the front or back of the car, nothing that seemed out of place, anyway. Until he opened the boot. Two suitcases and a smaller shoulder bag sat next to each other.

  Grímur opened the shoulder bag and found her laptop, passport and some airline tickets. She had planned to catch the first flight to London the next day and then on to Spain from Heathrow. Bilbao in the Basque country seemed to be her final destination. It appeared that her threat to leave us all behind hadn’t been all bluster and noise after all. Except, of course, that she still hadn’t made it away. If she was planning to catch these flights then she would struggle to do so without her car keys, wallet, tickets and passport.

  ‘Did you know she was going away?’ Grímur asked.

  ‘She had mentioned it but I wasn’t con
vinced she was serious. A lot of the things she says are just talk. She did say she was sick of Reykjavík and wanted to start over somewhere new.’

  ‘Did she mention anything about Bilbao?’

  I shook my head. As far as I knew she didn’t even know where Bilbao was but obviously she did. I was suddenly very confused. Maybe she had decided to say goodbye at the concert but if that was the case, why hadn’t she shown? Had she gone through with her crazy plan and that was why she had disappeared? Was that why Jóhannes had been killed? Grímur was watching me intently as if trying to read my mind.

  ‘Is there something you want to tell me, Ylfa?’

  I told him there was and that it was probably time to get out of the rain. The officers were told to watch the vehicle and her office just in case she reappeared. I felt like saying that there wasn’t a hope in hell of that happening but at the same time I would have given anything for her to walk around the corner and ask us what we thought we were up to.

  A little later as I sat on one side of an old wooden desk warming my hands on a cup of hot coffee, I was about to tell Grímur all about the ridiculous plan that Elín had dreamt up to fund her escape. Her escape from what, he was bound to want to know. I couldn’t very well tell him until I knew myself. The best I would be able to come up with would be that she had decided to run away from herself. Hopefully the situation would make more sense to him than it did to me.

  It dawned on me that I should have watched the stupid email attachment she had sent me after all. I desperately hoped that the last memory I would have of my rather irksome sister wouldn’t be her writhing about naked with someone she obviously despised. Hope as I might, it was entirely possible that her video would indeed be my enduring memory of her if she didn’t suddenly appear out of thin air. I was going to wind up hating her for that too. Somehow it just seemed to fit in annoyingly well with all her other selfish tricks. Grímur took his seat opposite me and asked me what was on my mind.

  ‘I think someone’s taken my sister.’

  ‘Why do you think that, Ylfa?’

  ‘She has been seeing someone. A married man. She told me that she’d had enough of her life here in Reykjavík and that she wanted to get away and start afresh. In order to do that she was going to need some money and she said that she was going to get it from this lover of hers.’

  ‘He was going to give her the money?’

  ‘Yes, but not willingly.’

  ‘Can you clarify that answer a little for me?’

  ‘She was going to extract it from him, unfairly.’

  A stifled but nonetheless broad grin crept across Grímur’s face. He obviously found my choice of words amusing.

  ‘Extracting money from people unfairly is usually illegal in my experience, Ylfa. Was she planning to break the law?’

  ‘I guess she was. She was planning to film them having sex and then persuade him to give her enough money to leave the country.’

  ‘And did she go through with this plan? Did she manage to persuade him to do such a foolish thing?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I know she made the movie and she obviously has tickets to leave tomorrow but I don’t know if she managed to follow through with the rest of it.’

  ‘By, the rest of it, I assume you mean the money.’

  I nodded, unsure about how much more I should actually say.

  ‘The reason I haven’t said anything to anybody is that I didn’t think she’d go through with it. I thought she was just fooling around and that she’d patch things up with him and he’d buy her something nice and she’d forget all about it.’

  ‘Who is this man?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He seemed to accept the answer even though I wouldn’t have if I’d been him. He must have wondered why on earth I hadn’t tried to talk her out of her stupidity. It was because chances were that she wouldn’t have listened to me anyway.

  ‘Do you think if we have a look at her laptop we might find out who he is? That isn’t something I would normally do but under the circumstances I think it might be a good idea.’

  I wanted to go home, open her email and satisfy my own curiosity before answering that question. Just In Case was the title she had given it. Just in case something happened was what I think she had said. Just in case what, Elín? Just in case my sister’s too stupid to do this without getting hurt. Is that what you meant to say? Just in case you mess this up really badly and I have to pick up the pieces?

  Grímur was staring at me no doubt wondering what my next move would be and how he would counter it. He was going to have a look at the laptop sooner or later, whether I wanted him to or not. Something had happened to her and anything we could do to find out what that was had to be done. I found myself nodding the answer back across the table to him.

  ‘Yes, I think we should have a look at her laptop,’ I said.

  ‘All right then, that’s what we’ll do.’

  He made a call and asked someone to join us. When he was finished he looked at me again. More than likely he was silently calculating whether he was being told the truth or not. He was probably someone who only asked questions when he had to. The rest of the time he just let people tell him what he wanted to know in their own time.

  ‘Ylfa, do you remember when she made this recording? Would you remember when it was in relation to what occurred at your father’s farm? You see what I’m getting at here?’

  ‘I do, see what you’re getting at, that is,’ I said. Until that moment I hadn’t even contemplated there being a connection between the two events. I had a feeling that Grímur had learned to see connections where maybe others didn’t quite yet. A character trait that his chess hero once had in abundance.

  ‘The night she told me she was sending me a copy of it I had just left Dad and Jóhannes at the farm. I have no idea when she actually recorded it, though.’

  ‘She sent you a copy of the tape?’ Grímur was sounding slightly angry now. He must have still thought I wasn’t telling him the whole story.

  ‘She sent me an email but told me not to watch it unless I wanted to see her doing the business and frankly, I didn’t.’

  Grímur nodded as if he could understand that piece of logic if nothing else.

  ‘So, it’s possible she had already sent it to this man before she sent a copy to you and that could have happened before Jóhannes was killed?’

  ‘Yes, but I really don’t see the connection between the two.’

  A man in his twenties walked into the room with Elín’s laptop in his hands. He introduced himself as Eiríkur Matthíasson and pulled up a chair to the table. He was skinny and very fit looking, like an athlete or gym fanatic. He opened up the laptop and started typing on the keyboard. Fast and efficient, as though he already knew exactly what he was looking for.

  ‘I’m not absolutely sure what it is you were hoping I’d find here,’ he said, ‘but the one thing of real interest is a file that was shot on the built-in webcam. The quality’s not very good but the content’s quite interesting, to say the least. Possibly not the sort of thing she’d want us looking at, though.’

  He looked up and waited for Grímur to take over.

  ‘Did she suspect something might go wrong, Ylfa?’ Grímur wanted to know. ‘Is that why you got a copy too? Or was it to make sure she got the money?’

  He was getting angry again and I no longer knew what to say, so I said nothing at all.

  CHAPTER 10

  The pale legs pulled away from us, briefly revealing a pair of rather delicate, porcelain-like knees. Elín lay herself down on her bed in an overly theatrical manner. She was well aware that this was going to be viewed later and she wanted to make something of an impression. I doubted that the one it was presently having on me was what she’d had in mind but it was hard to know for sure. As she spoke, her words came out badly muffled by something covering the laptop’s built-in microphone. She coyly beckoned someone toward the bed and then waited with an asinine smile on her f
ace as another pair of legs appeared on screen.

  The hairy thighs positioned themselves in front of us and with his hands on his hips, her suitor briefly attempted some levity before roughly slapping her leg to get her to move over on the bed. Knowing that this would ruin her close-up Elín refused to budge an inch and insisted that he climb on top of her where she was. The hairy backside on the screen duly obliged and before long my sister was putting on one of the worst shows of carnal enjoyment I could ever have wished to witness. Her enthusiastic partner didn’t notice or just didn’t care. Perhaps he considered her bedroom theatrics to be all part of the show and preferred them to whatever it was that he had grown tired of at home.

  She had been right, much to my amazement. She was nothing more than a sole-use call girl for her presumably rich and hirsute lover. Occasionally, she made clumsy attempts to get him to face her hidden camera but they were brusquely brushed aside as he focused on the job at hand. He wasn’t what I would have called a graceful lover but then I had never studied the act from such an objective perspective before. I was usually too busy staring at my ceiling wondering if they were going to want to stay the night or not.

  If I had to be honest, Elín and I weren’t as different as I sometimes liked to make out. We both used men, just for different things. She might like to pretend that she was the one constantly being taken advantage of but she took them for all they were worth. They were always rich and they always had plenty to give away. The problem she had was that the ones with money never had anything else to give her. She wanted them to love her but she never gave them any reason to. None I had ever seen, anyway.

  She certainly didn’t spare any effort trying to please this one, though. She had gone through what I assume was her whole repertoire of party tricks before we even got the briefest of looks at the man’s face. At first it was nothing more than a fleeting glance but as soon as they were done he rolled off her and towards the camera, still blissfully unaware that he was being filmed.