Black Skies (19 page)

He had almost forgotten why he had come when he noticed a policeman approaching. The name escaped him at first. Sigur-something.

Sigurdur.

29

SIGURDUR ÓLI WAS
standing reading the printout when the phone on his desk rang. He answered testily and could hear nothing but breathing at first, the faint snuffling sounds of rapid breathing.

‘Who’s that?’ he asked.

‘I need to see you,’ said a voice which he immediately identified as belonging to Andrés.

‘Is that Andrés?’

‘I … can you meet me now?’

‘Where are you?’

‘In a call box. I’m … I’ll be in the graveyard.’

‘Which graveyard?’

‘On Sudurgata.’

‘All right,’ said Sigurdur Óli. ‘Where are you now?’

‘… about two hours.’

‘OK. In two hours. In the graveyard. Whereabouts in the graveyard?’

There was no answer. Andrés had hung up.

Nearly two hours later Sigurdur Óli parked his car and entered
the
old Reykjavík cemetery from the western end. He had no idea where to find Andrés but decided to try going left first. He walked some way down the hill past tombs and headstones, along narrow footpaths that wound between grey slabs, and had almost reached Sudurgata, the road at the bottom, when he caught sight of Andrés sitting on a low, mossy wall that had long ago been erected around a double tomb. Andrés watched as Sigurdur Óli approached. His hands, glimpsed beneath the long sleeves of his jacket, were black with dirt; he wore a woollen hat on his head and looked as dishevelled as he had when he last spoke to Sigurdur Óli behind the police station.

Andrés made to stand up but abandoned the idea. The stench he gave off was beyond belief; a reek of excrement combined with alcohol and urine. Apparently he had not changed his clothes for weeks.

‘You came then?’ he said.

‘I’ve been looking for you,’ Sigurdur Óli replied.

‘Well, here I am.’

He had a plastic bag from the state off-licence that looked to Sigurdur Óli as if it contained two bottles. He sat down on the wall beside Andrés, watching him take one bottle out of the bag, loosen the cork and swig from the neck. Noticing that he had almost finished it, Sigurdur Óli reflected that there was probably more to be gained from him drunk than sober.

‘What’s going on, Andrés?’ he asked. ‘Why do you keep contacting me? What do you want from us?’

Andrés looked around him, his eyes straying from one gravestone to the next, then took another gulp of alcohol.

‘And what are you doing here in the graveyard? I’ve been asking after you at your block of flats.’

‘There’s no peace anywhere. Except here.’

‘Yes, it’s a quiet spot,’ said Sigurdur Óli, remembering how the
body
of a young girl had once been found on the grave of Jón Sigurdsson, Iceland’s national hero. Bergthóra had been a witness on the case, which was how they had met. The occasional car drove past along Sudurgata and on the other side of the wall the pleasant houses of Kirkjugardsstígur slumbered in the quiet afternoon.

‘Did you get my package?’ asked Andrés.

‘You mean the film clip?’

‘Yes, the bit of film. I found it in the end. Not much, but enough. He only kept two short films. He’d thrown all the rest away.’

‘Is it you we can see in the film?’

‘We? Who’s
we
? I sent it to
you
. Have you shown it to somebody? Nobody else was supposed to see it! Nobody else can see it! You mustn’t show it!’

Andrés became so agitated that Sigurdur Óli tried to calm him down by reassuring him that he had only allowed a lip-reader to watch it to find out what the boy in the film was saying. No one else had seen it, he added, which was not far from the truth. He had not put the inquiry on an official footing yet because he wanted to conduct his own investigation first, to see if there were sufficient grounds to call in the vice squad and devote time and manpower to pursuing the case.

‘Is it you in the film?’

‘Yes, it’s me,’ said Andrés faintly. ‘Who else … who else would it be?’

He fell silent and drank from the bottle.

‘It took you a long time to find the film, did it? So where did you find it in the end?’

‘You see, my mother … wasn’t … she wasn’t strong, she couldn’t control him, you know?’ Andrés said, ignoring the question and following some thread of his own. He was unshaven, his tufty beard sparse, his face grimy. A bloody bruise stood out under one eye as if he had been in a fight or an accident. His eyes were small, grey,
watery
, almost colourless, his nose swollen and crooked as if it had once been broken and never properly set, perhaps during the years that he had spent loitering around the bus station at Hlemmur for warmth.

‘Who are you talking about? Who couldn’t she control?’

‘He just used her, you know? She gave him a home and he kept her in drink and drugs, and no one bothered about me, eh? He could do what he liked with me.’

His voice was hoarse and slurred, fuelled with ancient anger and loathing.

‘Are there any other films?’

‘He got a kick out of making them,’ Andrés said. ‘He had a projector that he stole from some school when he was working in the countryside. Had a stash of porn that they used to smuggle in on the boats.’

He was quiet again.

‘Are you talking about a man called Rögnvaldur?’ asked Sigurdur Óli.

Andrés was staring into space. ‘Do you know who he is?’

‘We spoke to you in January, on another matter,’ said Sigurdur Óli. ‘Do you remember? You remembered the other day. We spoke to you about this Rögnvaldur back then. He was your stepfather, wasn’t he?’

Andrés did not answer.

‘Was it him who made the film you sent us?’

‘He was missing a finger. He never told me why. But I sometimes comforted myself by hoping that it hurt, hoping that he had suffered and screamed from the pain. Because he bloody well deserved to.’

‘Is he the man you’re describing?’

Andrés hung his head, nodding reluctantly.

‘When did this happen?’

‘A long time ago, years ago.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Ten. When it started.’

‘So, around 1970? We tried to work it out.’

‘You can never be free of it,’ Andrés said, so quietly that Sigurdur Óli could barely hear him. ‘However hard you try, you can never be free of it. Mostly I’ve tried to drown it in drink, but that doesn’t work either.’

He raised his head, straightened his back and cast a glance at the sky, as if seeking something in the heavens. His voice dropped to a whisper.

‘I was in hell for two years. Almost constantly. Then he left.’

30

A BUS DROVE
past noisily, down Sudurgata in the direction of the city centre, and the sound of laughter rose from Kirkjugardsstígur: life in the city carried on as usual but in the graveyard where Andrés sat it might as well have stopped altogether. He did not say another word. Sigurdur Óli waited for him to continue, unwilling to press him. The minutes passed. Andrés had picked up one of the bottles, taken a long draught, then shoved it back in the bag with the other one. He had retreated into a private world. When all hope of his resuming the story seemed lost, Sigurdur Óli coughed.

‘Why now?’ he asked.

He was not sure if Andrés had heard him.

‘Why now, Andrés?’

The other man turned his head and regarded Sigurdur Óli as if he were a complete stranger.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘Why are you telling us this now?’ Sigurdur Óli asked again. ‘Even if we caught this Rögnvaldur, the case is long dead, long over. There’s nothing we can do. There are no laws that can touch him now.’

‘No,’ Andrés said slowly. ‘You lot can’t do anything. You never could have …’ He trailed off.

‘What happened to Rögnvaldur?’

‘He moved out and never showed his face again,’ said Andrés. ‘I didn’t know any more about him. He just disappeared. For all these years.’

‘But then?’

‘Then I saw him again. I told you about that.’

‘We couldn’t find him, and we lost interest once we had closed the case that he was thought to be involved in, because it turned out he hadn’t been anywhere near it. There was no way we could use your statement; it was so vague and you refused to give us any more specific information. So why do you want to talk about it now?’

Sigurdur Óli waited for an answer but Andrés merely gazed down at his feet.

‘If I remember right,’ Sigurdur Óli went on, ‘you hinted that he had killed someone of your age. Were you talking about yourself? Is that how you experienced what he did to you? That he killed some part of you?’

‘Maybe he should have finished me off,’ said Andrés. ‘Maybe it would have been better. I don’t remember what I told you. I haven’t been … I haven’t been in a good way for a long time.’

‘There’s support available, you know,’ said Sigurdur Óli. ‘For people like you, people who’ve gone through this sort of thing. Have you tried any help like that?’

Andrés shook his head. ‘I wanted to see you to tell you … to tell you that whatever happens, however things turn out, it wasn’t all my fault. Do you understand? It wasn’t all my fault. I want you – the police – to know that.’

‘How what turns out?’ asked Sigurdur Óli. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You’ll find out.’

‘Have you found Rögnvaldur?’

Andrés did not answer.

‘I can’t let you leave without answering. You can’t just drop hints like that.’

‘I’m not trying to make excuses. What’s done is done and it’s too late to undo it. After he left I tried to … I tried to pull myself together but I couldn’t deaden the feelings. Then I found that I could keep them away with booze and dope, so I turned to them, to the people who could supply them, and that way I managed to keep the feelings under control. The minute he was gone. I got drunk for the first time when I was twelve years old. Sniffed glue. Took anything I could lay my hands on. I’ve hardly been sober since. That’s the way it is – I’m not making excuses.’

He paused, coughed, and delved into the bag for the bottle.

‘You’ll find out,’ he added.

‘What?’

‘You’ll find out.’

‘I gather you wanted to train as an upholsterer,’ said Sigurdur Óli, keen to keep him talking, to encourage him to open up, in the hope that more would emerge about Rögnvaldur. It did not take an expert to see that Andrés was on the verge of mental and physical collapse.

‘I’ve tried to clean up my act over the years,’ he said. ‘But it never lasted.’

‘Have you tried making anything out of leather recently?’ Sigurdur Óli asked carefully.

‘What do you mean?’ Andrés said, immediately on his guard.

‘Your neighbour, the woman next door, was worried about you,’ Sigurdur Óli explained. ‘She thought something might have happened to you, so she let me into your flat. I found bits of leather in the kitchen and when I put them together they made a round shape, a bit like a face.’

Andrés did not respond.

‘What were you cutting out?’

‘Nothing,’ Andrés said, beginning to scan his surroundings as if in search of an escape route. ‘I don’t understand why you had to go into my flat. I don’t understand.’

‘Your neighbour was concerned,’ Sigurdur Óli repeated.

‘You talked her into it.’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘You shouldn’t have gone into my place.’

‘What are you doing with the leather?’

‘It’s private.’

‘Do you remember we found child pornography at your flat in January?’ said Sigurdur Óli, changing tack.

‘I …’ Andrés faltered.

‘What were you doing with that?’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘You’re right, I don’t.’

‘I … I despise myself more than anyone else … I …’ He started mumbling again.

‘Where is Rögnvaldur?’ asked Sigurdur Óli.

‘I don’t know.’

‘I can’t let you leave until you’ve told me.’

‘I didn’t know what to do. Then I remembered. How the farmer used the spike. Then I knew how to do it.’

‘The spike?’

‘It’s no thicker than a krona piece at the end.’

Andrés was no longer making sense.

‘Where is Rögnvaldur?’ asked Sigurdur Óli again. ‘Do you know where he is?’

Andrés sat there dumbly, his eyes on the ground.

‘I always wanted to go back there,’ he said at last. ‘But I never got round to it.’

He drifted off again.

‘Röggi was a fucking bastard. I despise him, he disgusts me. He’s repulsive!’

He was staring into the distance, at what infinitely remote scenes no one could say, whispering words inaudible to Sigurdur Óli.

‘But I disgust myself most of all.’

At that moment Sigurdur Óli’s phone rang, shattering the peace in the graveyard. Hastily, he fumbled for it in his coat pocket and saw that it was Patrekur calling. He dithered, glancing from Andrés to the phone, then decided to answer.

‘I need to see you,’ he said before Patrekur could utter a word.

‘Sure.’

‘You lied to me,’ said Sigurdur Óli.

‘What?’

‘You think it’s OK to lie to me, do you? You think it’s OK to get me into trouble and lie to me?’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Patrekur. ‘Calm down.’

‘You said you’d never met Lína in your life.’

‘That’s right.’

‘And you’re sticking to that story, are you?’

‘Sticking to what? What are you getting at?’

‘I’m talking about you, Patrekur. And me.’

‘Don’t get all worked up. Just explain what you’re on about.’

‘You went on a glacier trip with her, you jerk!’ said Sigurdur Óli. ‘With a bunch of other pricks. Remember now? A glacier trip, last year. Does that refresh your memory?’

There was a lengthy silence at the other end.

‘We need to meet,’ Patrekur said at last.

‘You bet we do,’ snapped Sigurdur Óli.

He had turned away from Andrés during the conversation to gain a modicum of privacy, but when he turned back Andrés had vanished.

He reacted instantly, breaking off the call and sprinting up the
hill
through the graveyard, scanning the surroundings for Andrés, but he was nowhere to be seen. Reaching the gate, he ran out into the street, which was deserted, so he raced back into the graveyard and across it, looking all around him in vain. He had allowed Andrés to slip through his fingers again.