‘Oh, no thanks. Don’t even go there.’ Erla gestured at him to get lost, as if afraid he was tempting fate. ‘We’ve got enough on our bloody plate without the poor kid turning up dead. Go away and do something useful instead of making me depressed and worried.’ Her phone rang and she turned away to answer it, forgetting about Huldar.
He hadn’t been sitting at his desk long when the door of Erla’s office opened and she came out. Huldar stretched out his leg as far as he could and trod on Gudlaugur’s toes. His colleague was sleeping like a baby in his chair on the other side of the desk. Gudlaugur jerked awake, sat bolt upright, grabbed his mouse and pretended to be absorbed in his computer screen. Huldar wasn’t sure if Erla had noticed that Gudlaugur had been out for the count. Only now did he realise that she was white as a sheet and looked extremely upset. ‘Could we have a quick word?’ she asked him.
He followed her back into her office. She perched on the edge of her desk, her arms folded across her chest, as if she were inadequately dressed for a blizzard, hugging herself to keep warm.
‘I’ve just had some very bad news. The worst.’
‘Oh?’ Huldar guessed this wasn’t something he wanted to hear. For a split second he thought of intervening to prevent her from opening her mouth for a few moments longer, but he was too late.
‘We’ve had a report of a body.’
‘Oh.’ Usually, when this sort of thing happened, Erla’s reaction would be to pull on her coat and get straight over to the scene, shutting down all human emotions. He couldn’t ever remember seeing her react like this before; in fact, he got the impression she was close to breaking down. ‘Have they found an ID?’ he asked.
Erla shook her head slowly. ‘No. But I have a horrible feeling that what you said earlier could be about to come true. It’s a teenager. Very likely a girl. With dark hair, wearing black jeans, a red hoodie and a dark-blue anorak with a fake-leather collar. Does the coat sound familiar to you?’
Huldar drew a deep breath. ‘I’ll get my coat. I’m coming with you.’
Erla dropped her eyes to the floor. She stayed where she was on the desk, her legs dangling motionless. She didn’t appear to be going anywhere.
‘Is everything OK, Erla?’ Huldar kept his voice slow, quiet and kind. ‘You need to get a move on. They’ll be waiting for you.’ When she didn’t answer or raise her eyes from the floor, he added: ‘You’ve run murder investigations involving kids before. And coped like a trouper. This won’t be any different.’
Erla looked up and met his eye. ‘Huldar, I’m pregnant.’
It was his turn to be momentarily paralysed.
She rolled her eyes, suddenly herself again. ‘Relax. It’s not yours. I’m not an elephant whose pregnancies last for years.’
‘That’s not why I didn’t say anything.’ This was a lie: he’d been frantically trying to remember how long it was since they’d slept together. Panic had done nothing to improve his mental arithmetic; he had still been counting the months when she interrupted his thoughts. ‘I suppose I should congratulate you?’ he said.
‘I don’t know what you’re supposed to do. I’m no expert.’
Huldar resolved not to ask who the father was. He preferred to stay out of that particular minefield. ‘Er … now I get why you’re so upset about the body. Carrying a child must do that to you. I can see why the death of a kid would hit you so hard. Hormones and so on.’
Erla raised her head to glare at him. ‘God, you’re an idiot. Pregnancy doesn’t make you more sensitive. I’m just struggling with fucking horrible morning sickness. Though morning sickness is a misnomer, because this bugger doesn’t just affect me in the morning, it lasts twenty-four fucking seven, which is why I’m not my usual chirpy self. That’s all. Jesus. “Hormones and so on”? What’s “so on” supposed to mean?’
Huldar backed two steps towards the door and fumbled behind him for the handle, relieved when he felt the cold metal in his grasp. ‘I’m going to fetch my coat. I’ll be ready when you are.’ He got himself out of there.
Gudlaugur was wide awake now. Curiosity, no doubt. He tensed when he saw Huldar but managed to wait until he got to his desk before asking what was up, rather than yelling it across the open-plan office for all to hear, as he would no doubt have liked to.
‘Almost certainly bad news. The body of a teenage girl has turned up. The description fits Rósa.’
The excitement faded from Gudlaugur’s face. His shoulders drooped and he looked exhausted and crushed. ‘Shit.’ He rubbed his face, then splayed his fingers and looked through them at Huldar. ‘Where was she found?’
Huldar realised he’d forgotten to ask. ‘That’s all I know. I’m going to the scene with Erla. I’ll have more information later, if you haven’t gone home by then.’
‘I’ll be here. If it’s Rósa, there’s no point continuing with the search, so no more night shifts. Should I let Rafn know? He was going to do another circuit of town this evening and he asked me to come along.’
‘As long as you tell him nothing’s confirmed yet.’ Huldar pulled on his coat, though he knew he might have to wait a bit longer for Erla to be ready. He found it easier to deal with misfortune this way. In his coat he felt ready for action – or he looked ready, at least. Inside, he was gutted. He had been banking on their finding Rósa alive. The alternative hadn’t seriously occurred to him, even though he’d raised the possibility. The fact that the bad news had come from Erla did nothing to help matters. It wasn’t as if death and new life cancelled each other out. When it came down to it, one person didn’t come into the world to take another’s place.
The fact was, he was shattered by the news.
So shattered, that when Freyja rang, he couldn’t disguise the flatness in his voice. But she didn’t seem to notice anything, so her psychologist’s insight clearly wasn’t working. She got straight to the point.
‘I came across an interesting fact about Rósa yesterday. It was in an old recording of a session she had with a therapist. I wanted to tell you, though I’m not allowed to say exactly what it is. Not yet. I have to apply for an exception to my duty of confidentiality, which is a Herculean task. But, if I were you, I’d take another look at Rósa’s connection to Bergur. There may be some link dating from before she was placed at his care home and before Tristan mentioned him to her.’ Freyja added quickly: ‘I’m not violating confidentiality by telling you that.’
Huldar exhaled slowly. ‘Thanks for that, Freyja. Look, things are a bit hectic here. I’ll have to talk to you later.’
‘Oh.’ Freyja sounded like a concert-goer who was standing, ticket in hand, outside the venue when it was announced that the singer had a sore throat and the show had been cancelled. ‘Oh.’
Huldar hesitated, then decided to tell her: ‘If the duty of confidentiality is with regard to Rósa, the situation may have changed. That’s to say, if it only applies to the living.’
There was a long silence.
Chapter 23
Saturday
The sky was mirrored in the smooth sheet of water and an almost uncanny stillness hung over the scene. The modest summer houses dotting the shores of the lake appeared to be shut up and empty. There was no crying of moorland birds or any other sign of life. Even the police officers kept their voices to a murmur on the rare occasions that any of them opened their mouths. In spite of the all-encompassing beauty of the mountains, the lake, the green meadows and pockets of trees, it was the most depressing scene they had attended in a long time.
The slight figure was floating face down in shallow water at the southern end of the lake, one arm stretched towards the jutting grassy bank, as if to prevent her from drifting out into the middle. Dark hair spread out from the back of her head, seeming to hover as it was lifted by the gentle ripples. Her head had been turned just enough to establish that it was indeed Rósa and not some other girl in similar clothes.
The man who found her had been heading south along the road past Lake Hafravat
n, thirteen kilometres to the east of Reykjavík, when he’d spotted a dark-blue coat floating close to the bank, at a point where it was possible to drive down to the water’s edge. He had immediately pulled over and jumped out to take a closer look. The moment he saw that it was a person, he had waded into the water without stopping to think, his first reaction being to rescue them. But when he reached her, he realised that it was too late. Neither the kiss of life nor CPR would work now. He had let go of her shoulder and her body had fallen back into the same position as before. He had been so stunned that it had taken him three attempts to dial the number of emergency services. Now the man was sitting in the back of the police car, his legs soaked, shivering from cold and shock. Soon, he would be allowed to go home, which was where he had been heading when he made the discovery. He had been called to his father’s sickbed at an old people’s home in Mosfellsbær, north of Reykjavík, and decided to take the longer – usually more scenic – route past the lake on his way home to Nordlingaholt, the newest estate on the eastern edge of the city.
Huldar was hanging back, watching the Forensics team and photographer at work. Erla had waded out into the lake with them. Her boots had long since filled with water but she didn’t seem to care. Every now and then she looked up and their eyes met. He didn’t smile or wave in acknowledgement and neither did she. They both had other things on their minds.
Huldar took a deep breath and gazed over at the summer houses on the northern shore. There were no lights on yet or any other sign of occupation. A handful of cars had driven past since their arrival but only one had stopped. Huldar had gone over and told the driver to move along.
He knew the lake fairly well, having fished for trout here several times with his mates and once with one of his nephews. He had tried to scare the boy with tales of the nykur or water monster that was supposed to live in the depths, but it seemed today’s kids weren’t afraid of monsters. The boy had been unimpressed by his description of a grey horse with hooves that faced backwards, and said there was no way he’d be fooled into climbing onto its back and being dragged down to a watery death. The boy had sat there on the bank and continued fishing without turning a hair. Stories about the creaking and groaning of the ice in winter when the nykur was trying to break its way through to the surface, or about the underground channel that supposedly connected the lake to Tjörnin in the centre of Reykjavík, had left the boy completely unmoved. In the end, Huldar had been forced to admit to himself that the nykur was a pretty lame kind of monster.
When it came down to it, reality was far grimmer than any imaginary terrors. His nephew was more likely to have shrunk back from the water if Huldar had described the scene that was before his eyes now.
‘What do you reckon? Did he drive her here and drown her, or just dispose of her body in the lake?’ One of the scene-of-crime team, who appeared to be surplus to requirements, had come over to stand beside him. His voice seemed unnecessarily loud to Huldar. At times like this it was more appropriate to keep it down.
Huldar surveyed the lay-by that was just large enough for two vehicles. ‘Hard to tell,’ he said curtly. ‘We’ll see.’
He was in no mood to chat and hoped the man would bugger off. If he’d felt like it, he could have told the guy that in his opinion the murderer had probably just dumped the body there. It was far too close to the road to have been the scene of the killing. However off the beaten track it was, there was always a risk that someone might drive past. Then there were the summer houses. Although no one appeared to be using them at present, the spot was too overlooked. And from his fishing trips, Huldar also remembered how well sound travelled across the lake. If Rósa had screamed, the noise would have sounded as close as if it was coming from the deck of one of the summer houses. Anyone staying there would have looked outside to see what was going on.
‘Terrible case.’ The man still hadn’t got the message, in spite of Huldar’s terse replies. ‘I understand it’s the girl they’ve been doing the big search for. You have to ask yourself what’s happening to this country. She was only just sixteen.’
‘Mm.’ Huldar pulled out a cigarette in the hope that the man would be put off by second-hand smoke. No such luck.
‘Ah, a hardcore smoker, I see. I vape myself.’ The man extracted a Vape pen from his pocket and began producing clouds of steam. ‘Do you think she’s been dead long?’
‘No. I doubt it.’ Huldar had already thought about this. It seemed unlikely that the murderer would have waited long before disposing of her body. Rigor mortis normally peaked twelve hours after death, lasted for another twelve, then receded over the next twelve. Transporting a body in an average-sized family car during that phase was easier said than done. Of course, it was possible the perpetrator had been driving a van or pick-up, but even then it wouldn’t have been simple. He would still have had to manoeuvre her into the back without being seen. Dead bodies were unwieldy objects.
From watching his colleagues’ activities in the water, Huldar had got the impression that Rósa’s body was at peak rigidity, though the pathologist would be a better judge of that, of course. But Huldar wasn’t expecting a very precise time of death as the cold water was bound to affect the calculations and no one knew how long she had been lying there or how long her body might have been hidden somewhere else beforehand. As nothing was yet known of her movements prior to her death, it wouldn’t be possible to rely on her stomach contents either. If you could pinpoint the time of a victim’s last meal, you could assess how far the food had been digested and work out an estimated time of death from that. Dead bodies don’t digest.
‘Who would do a thing like that?’ The man blew out a cloud so thick, it reminded Huldar of the vapour that billows out of a cooling tower. ‘I mean, what’s wrong with people?’
‘Plenty. There’s plenty wrong with some people.’ Huldar wouldn’t have had any more to contribute on this theme even if he’d been in the mood to chat. He just couldn’t get his head round the cases they were currently dealing with. CID were getting nowhere with the investigation of Brynjólfur’s death and Huldar couldn’t have been the only one who’d been staking everything on hearing Rósa’s account of her visit to his container that evening – assuming the visit had ever happened. It was hard to place any trust in the statement of a half-blind witness who had been so high that he saw four people when only three were standing in front of him. Well, they’d never get a chance to hear Rósa’s testimony now.
And that wasn’t all. This tragic twist in the girl’s tale had left him so shaken up that he was in no state to process Erla’s news. He had blown his chance to ask the million-dollar question and it was hard to see how he’d ever get another. Erla couldn’t stand it when people stuck their noses into her business. She’d never let down her guard again.
How far along was she? Who was the father? Would she bring up the child alone? How long would she be off on maternity leave? Did anyone else know or was it a secret? Might she be planning not to keep the child? Would she ask for a transfer back to the regular police while it was young? And if she did, what then? Who would take over from her?
His mind tormented by an endless stream of questions, Huldar puffed away beside his companion who had mercifully shut up at last. They watched in silence as their colleagues waded around in the water. The photographer, who seemed to have finished, climbed out onto the bank and began to take shots of the immediate surroundings. He took particular care over a patch of dried mud next to the gravel-surfaced lay-by. It looked untouched and Huldar guessed that no one had walked or driven over it since the last time it had rained. Still, better to err on the safe side. There were no tyre tracks or signs that Rósa had been dragged along the ground, nor were there any footprints. The perpetrator must have had the sense to stick to the gravel.
‘When do you think they’ll pull her out?’
‘Soon.’ Huldar had no idea.
‘Perhaps she was drowned in the lake?’
‘No. She didn
’t drown.’ Huldar took a last drag on his cigarette, then added: ‘If she’d drowned, there wouldn’t be any air in her lungs and she’d have sunk. To start with, anyway. Same as if her body had been put in the water face up: her lungs would have gradually emptied and she’d have sunk, only to float up later. But her body’s clearly not at that stage. Which means she wasn’t drowned and the person who dumped her here wasn’t used to disposing of bodies in water. Assuming the plan was for her to sink.’
The vaper, encouraged by this long speech, took it as an invitation to resume his questioning. ‘So, in other words, he could have dumped her in the lake in a different place and she could have drifted here?’
‘Sure. Quite possibly.’ Huldar regretted having encouraged the man and didn’t intend to fall into that trap again. He needed peace and quiet to think. The vaper, getting the message at last, didn’t ask any further questions.
Erla waved to the men who were standing by with the stretcher. It was time to remove the body and take it to the pathology lab. With any luck, some evidence would turn up in the post-mortem, more than had been found here at the scene, anyway. Huldar wondered whether Erla would be able to attend or if her morning sickness would prevent her. He shuddered when it occurred to him that she would probably ask him to go in her place. He hoped to God she’d be able to tough it out.
Erla waded to shore and made a beeline for the Forensics van, water sloshing from her boots at every step. The rear doors were open and she perched on the back to remove her boots and empty them, before putting them back on.
Huldar left the vaper and walked over to join her, determined not to show the embarrassment he still felt following their conversation earlier, though he knew it would be tricky. Erla was sure to regret having confided in him and was guaranteed to be all weird, like it was his fault. Though frankly, if she’d given him the choice, he’d have preferred to have been kept out of her private life. They were both hopelessly clumsy when it came to touchy-feely emotional stuff, and in this case two minuses did not make a plus.
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