Season of the Witch (28 page)

“That’s right. On the Saturday before Easter. At Hólar.”

“Did you notice whether he had a cell phone?”

“Yes, I did, actually. His phone rang just at the end of our interview.”

“Hmm.”

“What?”

“We’ve searched high and low for a phone, but we can’t find it. And no cell phone is registered in his name.”

“No, well, you can buy a cell phone without Big Brother knowing about it. You can buy them anywhere, not just in ordinary shops here in Iceland. In other countries or in the duty-free store or from anyone.”

“Yes, yes, I know that. Don’t go twisting my words. There is no SIM card or cell phone number in Skarphédinn’s name anywhere. And if you’re going to rant on about it still being possible to buy a SIM card without Big Brother’s knowledge, then save it. Even if the bosses down south want to make it compulsory to show ID in order to buy a SIM card so that the name and number can be traced, they’re not doing it for my benefit.”

“Really? Isn’t it being done at the request of the police?”

“Quite possibly. But nobody asked me.”

“What a scandal!”

“Just the usual. They don’t call me before they go off half-cocked. And I’m in the phone book, after all.”

“So you think it’s unnecessary for people to be registered when they buy a SIM card?”

“It’s not unnecessary. It’s insulting and demeaning for ordinary people.”

“But it would make the police’s job easier, wouldn’t it?”

“I’ve never asked anyone to make my job easier. I want police work to be difficult. It isn’t supposed to be easy. What kind of a country is it, where police work is easy?”

“A police state?”

“Quite. I don’t want to live in a country where the government bases its actions on the criminal. I want to live where the government treats people like people.”

“Hear, hear.”

“If the government bases its actions on gangs of crooks, it will finish up, sooner or later, as a gang of crooks itself.”

“Hear, hear.”

“Are you making fun of me, you bastard?”

“Far from it. You really aren’t the Bad Cop, are you?”

“I can be the Bad Cop. If I need to. I just want to be a policeman, not a spy or a soldier. Anyway. Do you know the number of Skarphédinn’s cell phone?”

“No, I never got it. What about all his friends and acquaintances and family?”

“That’s what’s so odd. You’re the first person who’s said he had a cell phone. Everybody else says he was so old-style that he didn’t like to carry one. It seems far-fetched.”

“Not really. Not going on what I’ve heard about his character. Or, to be more precise, going on some of what I’ve heard. And I’m a bit old-style that way myself.”

“But you did see him with a cell phone?”

“Yes. But I suppose he could have borrowed it.”

“Who from?”

“No idea. But what about the landline? Presumably you’ve checked the calls on that line?”

“Yes. But we didn’t get much out of it. He doesn’t seem to have used the phone much.”

“A modern man rebelling against modernity?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

On my way from the Yumm candy factory down into town, I’d visited a second-hand bookshop and invested in a dog-eared old paperback copy of
Loftur the Sorcerer.

Now I’m lying on the sofa in the living room with a cushion under my head and my roommate perched on my shirt collar. She sings and chirps as I page through the old play, which has, for whatever reason, sprung into life once more.

I read about a man who longs to be master of his own life, to control all around him, taking no account of any other person, or of anything other than his own will, or, as the play puts it, his own desire. And I read about the timeless theme of the love triangle.

I’m too sleepy to get any further than the middle of the first act. I stop at a line spoken by Ólafur, who is in love with Steinunn, the peasant girl impregnated by his friend Loftur. I fall asleep over that line and wake up to it in the middle of the night as Polly pecks at my neck:

He who feels that he has wronged another, will often find that he hates him.

“They say you shouldn’t go to a doctor who has dead plants in his office.”

I don’t know what to say.

“Very sensible of you not to risk it.”

“Pardon?” I’m lost.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” says Dr. Karl Hjartarson. “Just being frivolous. Inappropriate, I know.”

“That’s…” I manage to say. “That’s all right.”

“Just fooling around. Doctor jokes aren’t to everyone’s taste. But at any rate, I’ve just been watering my plants, trying to resuscitate them. But without success.”

I think of the cacti in Björg and Gudrún’s home.

“I suppose you can’t think of everything when you’re busy keeping patients alive,” I remark.

“Even that doesn’t always work,” he replies with a sigh. “Whatever. Ásgeir said it would be enough for you to talk to me on the phone?”

Can this be the same man who, only the day before yesterday, put on a mask of professionalism, claiming to be gagged by his Hippocratic oath? People are unfathomable.

“Hello?”

I’m abruptly jerked from my thoughts.

“Yes, yes, I’m still here. It’s this article I’m researching about hypochondria. I’m wondering if you can help me at all?”

“Yes, hypochondria. I almost feel I’ve become a specialist, although it’s a field not covered by any medical specialty.”

And he gives me a long lecture about the illness, research from other countries, symptoms, and theories. A variation on a familiar theme.

“And was Ásdís Björk’s case unusual, in light of what you’ve learned about the condition?” I ask when I can get a word in edgeways.

“No, I wouldn’t say so. She was fairly typical of the most difficult cases. No treatment seemed to help her, except in the very short term.”

“I gathered from Ásgeir that you tried a number of medications?”

“That’s right.”

“Were you aware of her misusing the drugs? Or overmedicating?”

“At times, yes. But I can’t go into details. Ásgeir’s permission doesn’t extend to making their private affairs public.”

“No,” I say, trying to find a subtle enough way to pose my question. “But toward the end of her life, what medications seemed to be most effective? I mean, what was the result of the treatment you prescribed?”

“Unfortunately, we can’t really call it a
result.
The only real result was Ásdís Björk’s untimely death.”

“Was she on medication at the time of her death?”

He doesn’t answer immediately. “Well, I suppose it’s all right to tell you that she was on Prozac. That shouldn’t do any harm.”

“Only Prozac?”

“Yes, only Prozac. Antidepressants were generally the most effective treatment for her. They reduced the anxiety and helped distract her from the obsessive thoughts. For a while, anyway.”

I thank him for the information. I wish I could ask him if taking Prozac might have made Ásdís Björk so woozy that she could have lost her balance and fallen overboard. But I know that will get me nowhere. I say:

“The more I learn about Ásdís Björk, and this illness—or imaginary illness…”

“Oh, it’s not an imaginary illness,” the doctor interjects. “For the patient, it’s absolutely real. You must make that crystal clear in your article.”

“Yes, of course. Sorry, I put that wrong. But from all I’ve learned about hypochondria, it seems to me that it springs essentially from mental distress. Profound unhappiness?”

“In my view—and you must not, absolutely must not, quote me—you’re quite right.”

“You were old friends, weren’t you?”

“Yes. I’d known Ásdís Björk ever since high school. Back then, she showed no sign of that kind of unhappiness. I think perhaps her Achilles’ heel was really that she had such a sweet personality—she had a profound desire or need to please others, to make them happy. I had the impression that behind it all lay a certain lack of security or self-esteem. But I’ve no idea where that could have come from.”

“But this unhappiness or distress—what did that entail? Didn’t she ever tell you, or the specialists who treated her, what was wrong?”

“If she did, I couldn’t share that with you. That would be a step too far over the boundaries of confidentiality.”

“No, of course. But would it be fair to say that her hypochondria was, in a sense, an unconscious cry for help?”

“A cry for attention, at least.”

Before we say good-bye, I find myself saying: “It sometimes seems that the whole of society is making an unconscious—or even conscious—cry for attention. Don’t you think this society is attention-seeking?”

He laughs. “You could say so. That’s not a bad diagnosis.”

“Or maybe even hypochondriac? A whole nation of imaginary ills?”

He is silent for a moment. “No, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. But medicalization, as the medical profession sometimes calls it, is certainly real. And it’s cause for concern.”

“All these personality disorders. Don’t we all have one? Is anyone normal anymore?”

“Well, it depends how you look at it. Psychiatry isn’t my field, although I’ve learned a lot about it of late. In a British journal, for instance, I read a paper about a disorder that you could attribute to a whole society and not just individuals. It’s called
narcissistic personality disorder
or NPD. Of course the idea comes from the Greek myth of Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection. In narcissistic personality disorder, the person exhibits obsessive self-admiration, leading to the complete lack of morals or conscience. I read a quote from a British specialist who said that a diagnosis of NPD crops up in almost every major criminal case these days.”

A society of narcissists,
I think.
Ancient mythology thriving in the reality of the modern world.
What was it Jóa said?

Who knows when we may rediscover Atlantis.

And what was it that brought Atlantis down?

“Why are you always asking about that accident?” inquires Ólafur Gísli when I eventually make contact with him via Ásbjörn.

I decide it’s time to tell him about Gunnhildur and her suspicions.

“Oh, that,” says the chief. “I’ve talked to the old lady myself. Immediately after the accident, she was on the phone all the time. But there’s nothing to it. Not the slightest trace of anything. Surely you’re not planning to write about these wild delusions of hers?”

“I’m working on an article about this illness Ásdís Björk had, hypochondria. I’m planning to publish it at the weekend.”

“But the woman didn’t die of hypochondria. She died of injuries sustained when she fell in the river. Full of a mixture of all sorts of pills.”

“All sorts of pills? I’ve been told that she was only on Prozac at the end.”

“Who says so?”

“Her doctor. Karl Hjartarson.”

“Oh, yes. That’s what he told us too. But druggies tend to get their pills from more than one place. They have lots of sources.”

“And do you know what drugs she’d taken when she fell in the river?”

I hear a rustle of papers. “It was quite a cocktail, I can tell you. Yes, there’s Prozac. But there were also sedatives like Valium. And sleeping pills…Hang on, I can hardly make out the names…Oxazepam…Triazolam…Zopiklon…I’m not even sure all this stuff
is available on prescription in Iceland. She’d even taken Ritalin. And then she’d drunk beer on top of it all.”

“And what did her husband have to say about it?”

“He just said, as the families generally do in these cases, that he’d had no idea his wife was taking so many drugs, let alone where she got them from.”

“Were the pills packaged legally?”

“We didn’t find anything like that. But that’s often how it is. Illegal pharmaceuticals are rarely in the proper packaging. And never with a doctor’s prescription.”

“Did the autopsy reveal any signs of physical disease?”

“No. The woman was physically fit as a fiddle—apart from the effects of drug abuse.”

“Have you found the can, or whatever she was drinking from on the wilderness tour?”

“No. We’ve searched high and low. But they were drinking out of throwaway containers, which have gone without trace. Straight to the dump.”

“No hope of finding them there?”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“So you don’t think there’s anything fishy about the case?”

“Anything fishy? What’s fishy about this case is that goddamned drug peddlers are cashing in on unfortunates and their urge for self-destruction.”

And now I must undertake a difficult conversation. So difficult that I decide to go in person to the
Hóll
care home, rather than making a cowardly phone call.

“My dear Gunnhildur. Her doctor says she had that illness, and lots of specialists back him up.”

Gunnhildur is enraged. We are sitting in the niche, an irritating buzz from the television in the background.

“It will be interesting, educational, for people to read about it. It will make them more aware—”

“And to think I was happy to see you, young man,” Gunnhildur interrupts. She seems to be speaking more to herself than to me. “I thought you’d finally got to the truth. And then all you have to say is that you’re going to do a hatchet job on my Ásdís Björk.”