The Doll

by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

  From the reports Freyja had read, it was evident that Tristan and his mother had an unhealthily co-dependent relationship. Berglind had never properly grown up, and after her mother died, the job of caring for her had fallen to her eleven-year-old son. That couldn’t be good for either of them. He was overly attached to her and she was over-reliant on him. In view of this, it wasn’t impossible that he might resort to unorthodox methods of protecting her, just as parents are capable of doing when their children are in trouble.

  If Bergur had taken advantage of Tristan’s mother’s vulnerability, the boy might well have hit on this method of exacting revenge; telling lies about him and persuading his friend Rósa to back him up. The idea might have seemed clever at first but circumstances had conspired to change that.

  Freyja closed the files, let go of the mouse and checked her phone again. Nothing. She sighed. There was no chance of an interview with Tristan today, at least not one that she could attend. She had to collect Saga from nursery school in less than an hour.

  She was dying to know what was happening. Had the police got hold of Tristan or his legal adviser? Had they announced that he wouldn’t be coming back, either today or tomorrow? If so, the boy would have to be summoned before a judge.

  Freyja couldn’t resist the temptation any longer. She had to know what was going on. She selected Huldar’s number, but the longer it rang the more awkward she felt. Wasn’t he going to pick up? That would be mortifying.

  Just as she was expecting to be transferred to his voicemail, Huldar finally answered. ‘Hi. Sorry. I left my phone in my coat pocket. It was lucky I heard it at all.’

  ‘Is there any news?’

  ‘Yes, finally. We’ve just got hold of the lawyer. They’re coming in tomorrow. At one. Keep the day free.’

  ‘What about Bergur? Are they going to let him go?’

  ‘No, not as things stand.’

  ‘I’ve just heard something. There may be nothing in it but I thought you should know.’ She repeated Bergur’s sister’s suspicions regarding the mothers of the kids in Bergur’s care. A short silence followed, after which Huldar said he would bear it in mind. He added that he couldn’t quite see how it was relevant, even if it were true. Freyja didn’t bother to explain her theory. She wanted to assess the boy’s credibility for herself. If, by the end of tomorrow’s interview, she still believed her theory was plausible, she would share it with Huldar. No doubt he had plenty of other things to think about at the moment, without having to listen to her speculating about the case.

  ‘Hey. There’s one thing.’ Huldar sounded oddly elated.

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s something I need to show you. Trust me, you won’t want to miss it.’

  ‘OK.’ Freyja didn’t know if he expected her to come down to the station or if he was planning to email her. ‘If I’m going to come in, it’ll have to be quick because I’ve got to collect Saga. For the last time for now. After tomorrow I’ll be free to attend interviews twenty-four seven.’

  ‘Look, I’m flat out here at the moment but I’ll drop by your place this evening. I’ll bring burgers.’ Huldar had many good qualities but his taste in food wasn’t one of them. ‘I’m hanging up now, before you can say no. See you later.’

  Freyja realised that he had gone.

  Chapter 31

  Monday

  Freyja placed Huldar’s phone carefully on the kitchen table. The photo of the doll filled the screen, in shocking contrast to the mundane mess of fast-food packaging and leftovers. ‘So the doll did exist and hadn’t been thrown in the bin? Rósa wasn’t talking nonsense.’

  ‘Looks like it. There’s absolutely zero chance it’s a coincidence. A doll that’s been at the bottom of the sea, exactly like she said. It has to be the same one.’

  ‘But what was Brynjólfur doing with it? Does this mean there could be some truth in what Rósa claimed about her mother being murdered? Could Brynjólfur have been the killer?’

  Huldar reached for the phone and returned it to his pocket. ‘Who knows? We may never get an answer to that. Everyone connected to the incident is dead. All we know is that his ex-wife says she gave him permission to put some more stuff in storage several years ago and she believes the doll must have been part of it. The storage company has confirmed her story. The wife phoned and told them to let Binni have access to the unit. That was late the same day that Rósa’s mother was found dead. The following day he went to the storage place and picked up the keys, then returned them. Since then, no one else has asked for them until last Sunday when his ex-wife cleared out the unit. So the doll was put there by Binni. I don’t know how the hell we’re supposed to find out any more. We’ve hit a dead end.’

  ‘God, that’s frustrating.’ Two frown lines appeared between Freyja’s eyebrows. Huldar thought how well they suited her, along with the informal hoodie and grubby jeans she was wearing. Her feet were bare in her open-toed slippers, her toenails painted pink. Usually she went around dressed like a law student on her way to a job interview. Looking at her now, he felt a sudden impulse to invite her camping with him, but this wasn’t the moment.

  ‘Is there really no way to get to the bottom of it?’

  ‘Probably not.’ Huldar knew what she was thinking. It was hard to accept that some riddles would never be solved. The human race had centuries’ worth of unsolved mysteries to puzzle over, and, in the great scheme of things, this one was unlikely to be remembered for long. The story of Rósa’s mother’s death wasn’t dramatic enough to survive. If her nose had been missing or a stranger’s arm had been found in her bathtub, the story would have had a chance. Especially if the origin of the body part had never been discovered. Realising that his mind was wandering, Huldar picked up again from where he had left off: ‘Perhaps it really was an accident. The thing that makes me think Brynjólfur can’t have done anything to Rósa’s mother is the doll itself. Would you kill a woman, steal the doll, then hang on to it? Usually people try to get rid of evidence that could connect them to a crime.’

  ‘No. I wouldn’t. But then it’s highly unlikely I’d kill someone over a doll, let alone over a horrible specimen like that.’ Freyja shivered.

  ‘I can’t believe the doll was the motive. I’m guessing it was an accident: the woman slipped and fell, and the doll ended up in Brynjólfur’s possession by some perfectly natural set of circumstances – if anything about that doll can be considered natural.’

  At this point Saga bashed Huldar on the leg with a cuddly toy that was probably supposed to be a dinosaur. She had barely touched her burger and insisted on getting down from her high chair. Since then she had been amusing herself by throwing the dinosaur for Molly to fetch. Her reach was so short, however, that the dog hardly needed to move from her place. It was fortunate the toy was soft, given the violence with which the little girl was now beating it against Huldar’s leg. He got the message and lifted her onto his lap, only to regret it when she shoved the dinosaur in his face, all soggy from Molly’s slobbery chops.

  ‘Does anyone know what’s happening tomorrow? About Tristan, I mean?’ Freyja ate a chip that must be cold by now. ‘Will he continue to be interviewed as a witness or will his status be changed to suspect?’

  ‘Haven’t a clue. It’s not my decision.’ Huldar pinched Saga’s nose. ‘The meeting to discuss it was still going on when I left the office. I just kept my head down so I wouldn’t get sucked in there. I’ll find out tomorrow morning, which is good enough for me.’

  He had plenty of other things to keep him busy, though he couldn’t discuss the business of the bones with Freyja. Lína had hit the jackpot when Erla sent her out to investigate the rubbish-filled ditch in an attempt to get rid of her. It now appeared all but certain that Lína’s antisocial campers were the people whose remains had turned up on the seabed. The shoe in the ditch matched the other shoe that had been found on the end of the skeletal leg, and that was just the beginning.

  Lína had beaten both Interpo
l and the British police to it when it came to identifying the owners of the bones, though, in defence of these institutions, the information from the DNA analysis had only reached them on Saturday and they had probably still been at the stage of registering the case. But still, Lína was a hero.

  A name found on a debit card in the inside pocket of one of the coats had turned out to be on the Interpol list of missing people. And a second name had been linked to the same disappearance, which involved a young British couple called Leonard Vale and Abby Endler, who had last been seen in Spain. The police were now trying to discover how and when they had travelled to Iceland, since they didn’t appear to be on any airline passenger list or to have arrived with the Norröna ferry. Lists of passengers and crews had been requested for a two-week period either side of the couple’s disappearance in Spain, but their names were nowhere to be found. Still, it wasn’t impossible that they would turn up on closer investigation, since there were nearly a hundred flights to Keflavík Airport every day, and not all the twenty-four airlines serving the route had delivered their lists yet. Moreover, one of the companies had gone bust, which meant that their passenger lists might never materialise. It would be sod’s law if the names of the unlucky Brits had been on them.

  Further information had been obtained from a phone call to Interpol. According to a member of the international police, who knew something about the case, the young couple hadn’t mentioned any plans to travel to Iceland, which was why it hadn’t occurred to anyone to search for them there. Their families and friends said they’d been intending to go to Spain for two weeks but had vanished without trace from their hotel halfway through their holiday. The Spanish authorities had concentrated on looking for them in Spain, as there had been no indication that they had bought air or train tickets out of the country, or had access to a car. An examination of the couple’s invoices revealed that they had paid for the flights to Spain and the hotel themselves, and the bookings had been in their names.

  They had taken all their luggage with them when they abandoned their hotel, leaving their room empty. They hadn’t spoken to reception and none of the other guests remembered hearing them discussing their plans or seeing them leave.

  The couple’s credit card had been over the limit, and they hadn’t used it for two days before vanishing from the hotel or at any point after that. The debit card found in the coat pocket hadn’t been used either, and the account it belonged to turned out to be empty.

  The couple’s last posts on social media dated from the morning of their disappearance and had been made via the hotel’s wi-fi connection. According to the Interpol representative, the posts had offered no clues to their fate. Abby had posted a photo of the two of them smiling under an umbrella beside a swimming pool, with the caption: It’s not where you go, it’s who you travel with. Leonard had posted a photo of a small waste-paper bin overflowing with empty beer bottles, with the message: Save water – drink beer. The bin was the same type as those found in the hotel rooms, but the couple’s room had been cleaned by the time their disappearance was reported. No one remembered whether the beer bottles had been in the bin when the cleaners had come round.

  In other words, the couple’s electronic trail had provided no answers, and no witnesses had come forward with information about their disappearance. Nor had Leonard and Abby’s phones been picked up by any network.

  The Interpol representative did add one fact that he thought might explain why the couple had gone missing. A sizeable heap of opioid pills had been found in a litter bin in the hotel grounds when it was emptied the day after the couple vanished. The discovery was reported to the local police who had subsequently made the connection when the couple were reported missing. The stash had consisted of around 1,200 loose pills, mainly 80 mg OxyContin. Interpol believed the two events were linked. The young couple must have got themselves into a situation that was out of their depth. The theory was that they had agreed to act as drugs mules and carry the pills back to Britain but that they had got cold feet, ditched the drugs and made a run for it. To cover their tracks, they had probably hitched a lift, paid for bus tickets in cash or got a lift somewhere with a fishing boat. To another city or even another country.

  The alternative was that the smugglers had caught up with them.

  The hotel employee who had spotted the pills had kept them to hand over to the police but thrown away the rest of the rubbish. Unfortunately, this meant that the bag or packaging the pills had been tipped out of was not available for fingerprinting. No prints had been found on the pills themselves, apart from those of the observant hotel employee. The upshot was that the police had no evidence to confirm their theory and their investigation had soon reached an impasse.

  The young couple’s names had been added to the missing-persons’ lists held by Interpol and the British police, and the file had soon been closed and shelved. The inquiry might have remained open if family or friends had alerted people to the couple’s disappearance via social media and kept the case in the public eye, but this hadn’t happened. The couple seemed to have had relatively few friends and not much of a support network at home. Now, however, the dust would be blown off their files.

  Huldar was longing to tell Freyja about Abby and Leonard. He couldn’t stop thinking about them, as if the mystery of how they had ended up at the bottom of the sea off Iceland had hooked its claws into him and wouldn’t let go. The young couple’s fate wasn’t only gut-wrenchingly sad, it was also hard to get one’s head around. He didn’t for a second imagine that Freyja would be able to suggest a solution to a problem that had left Interpol scratching their heads. He just wanted to talk about the couple to alleviate the sickening feelings of incomprehension, anger and sadness that their demise was churning up inside him. His thoughts kept returning to the photo he had seen of the two young Brits, smiling and happy, seemingly without a care in the world. The contrast was so stark when juxtaposed with the harrowing images of the skeletal remains fished up from the sea, as if his brain was intent on presenting him with the worst before-and-after photo comparison imaginable.

  ‘I really feel for Tristan.’ Freyja picked up another cold chip, changed her mind and put it back. She didn’t seem to notice how distracted he was. ‘It’s not easy growing up with a mother who’s an addict. Or a father, for that matter. Did you see the woman? She looked terrible.’

  Huldar ducked as Saga swung the dinosaur at his face. ‘I’ve seen worse. But that doesn’t alter the fact that the poor kid didn’t exactly win at life’s lottery. I hope his mum’ll be able to turn over a new leaf, but, let’s face it, that’s pretty optimistic. I gather she’s addicted to opioids and that more than ninety per cent of opioid addicts lapse after treatment. More than half of them in the first week.’ It was a relief to focus on Tristan, rather than the deceased British couple. Although the kid had it bad, his circumstances were a whole lot better than theirs.

  Freyja looked despondent. ‘She’s been to rehab several times. She managed to stay clean for a while but then slipped up again. If there’s a ninety per cent failure rate, we’ll just have to hope she’s among the ten per cent.’

  Huldar gave her a reassuring smile as he engaged in a tug-of-war with Saga over the dinosaur, while thinking privately that if he’d been offered a bet on the woman’s chances of beating her addiction, he wouldn’t have taken it. On the other hand, he would have emptied his bank account if asked to bet on Saga’s chances of becoming a future Cross-Fit champion. She was unbelievably strong for her size. He let go of the soggy dinosaur so suddenly that the little girl nearly toppled backwards off his lap. ‘Whoa!’ Glancing up, he saw that Freyja didn’t look unduly disturbed. Yet another point in her favour. His sisters always behaved as if their children were made of china when he was messing about with them. They would hover around him, squawking like a flock of Arctic terns, ready to grab their sons in case Huldar tossed them up in the air or dropped them on the floor. It was a wonder his horde of nephews hadn’t gr
own up to be total mummy’s boys.

  ‘Have you made any progress with finding out how Rósa knew about Bergur before she was placed at his home?’ Freyja held out a chip to Molly who swallowed it without chewing, then readied herself for the next.

  ‘No. There’s been absolutely no time to look into that. We’re still trying to find out where the girl was hiding prior to her death. Hopefully things will become clearer once we know that.’ When Huldar had slipped out of the office to fetch the burgers and take them round to Freyja’s, Gudlaugur had still been at his desk, waiting for the list of Rósa’s mother’s former colleagues to come through. It appeared that the HR records of the office she had worked for had got into a bit of a mess when they’d merged with another agency. But the information was being collected. Once the list had been sent over, the police would be able to use the men’s ID numbers to establish which of them now lived in the Seljahverfi area. In Huldar’s opinion this was a waste of time. He was convinced the man they were after was Fridrik Reynisson, the owner of the fishing boat, but he supposed it wouldn’t hurt to make sure that there weren’t other candidates as well. There hadn’t been time to interview Fridrik today anyway, since Erla wanted to be present but had been too tied up.

  Freyja put an elbow on the table and rested her chin in her hand. ‘Tell me something. Do you enjoy working for the police?’

  ‘Enjoy it?’ Huldar thought for a moment. ‘It’s rewarding. It can be tough, but I’m OK with that. Anyway, someone has to do it, so why not me?’ From Freyja’s expression, he realised he wasn’t doing a very good job of selling the profession. He had no idea why she should be wondering about his job satisfaction but took it as a sign that he was gradually getting into her good books. He could have sworn she was looking at him differently these days. She no longer rolled her eyes when he appeared and she had twice let him in bearing burgers. He was fairly sure that hunger wasn’t the only reason. Based on his long experience of getting women into bed, Huldar reckoned Freyja was showing distinct signs of being receptive to his advances. But although his instinct was seldom wrong in these matters, he didn’t dare push his luck. She was as prickly as a porcupine and he risked being on the sharp end of her spines if he got it wrong. It was better to proceed with extreme caution.