Snowblind (23 page)

Fish.

It all started with the fish.

If there hadn’t been fish in the sea then nobody would ever have thought of living here. The first house would never have been built and Ari Thór would never have come to live here. Now he couldn’t be sure that he would keep his job, and he was facing an assault charge.

That bloody fish.

Shattered by the events of the evening, Ari Thór had slept soundly that night. He stopped at the bakery on the way to the station to buy himself a roll and felt that every eye was on him – in the bakery and on the street – searching, inquisitive eyes, as if his altercation with Karl had become common knowledge. He tried to steady his breathing. Of course nobody knew. He had to get his bearings, get his feet back on the ground. There was no all-encompassing conspiracy of townspeople against him.

‘Good morning. Sleep well?’ Tómas asked cheerfully.

Ari Thór nodded and glanced towards Hlynur. ‘Apologies for all the excitement last night.’

‘Excitement? It doesn’t even compare with the news from down south,’ Hlynur replied. ‘These protests are boiling over and I hear our colleagues had to use tear gas to get it under control.’

‘That’s how it goes,’ Tómas said. ‘At least there’s not much in the way of protest going on up here.’

‘Didn’t you say the other day that you missed out on the boom
years up here? Maybe you should have protested about that at the time,’ Ari Thór suggested. ‘Anyway, did you speak to Karl last night?’

‘We did, and we had to release him,’ Tómas said. ‘For the moment.’

It was what Ari Thór had expected, but he still felt a stab of disappointment. It was an uncomfortable feeling knowing that Karl was a free man.

‘I spoke to the insurance company this morning,’ Tómas said. ‘I told them that the case is under investigation as an attempted suicide. If Linda dies, which unfortunately doesn’t seem to be unlikely, then Karl won’t get a penny. So there’s a little justice there. Then I had a word with the sheriff in Akureyri as well. We’re commended for an efficient investigation into Linda’s case. They won’t be sending anyone to help us out after all, the case is more or less cleared up,’ he added.

Ari Thór had printed out a version of the information from Denmark the night before. Karl had been interrogated as part of the investigation at the time. The woman’s husband had arrived home early in the morning to find the body by the outside door, with two stab wounds in her back. It had been deemed that she had died instantly on receipt of the second wound, and the case remained open.

‘You asked Karl about this affair in Denmark?’ Ari Thór asked.

‘There’s no way he can be convicted on the basis of what we have,’ Tómas said in a serious voice. ‘There’s no new evidence. It doesn’t matter how convinced you are that he’s guilty, Ari Thór, or what you feel you deduced from his manner, unfortunately. But I’m convinced that you’re right.’

‘What about Pálmi’s mother?’

‘It’s a damned good theory, very convincing… But I reckon it’s far from likely that he’ll ever admit anything. He wouldn’t answer any questions yesterday. He’s not the type to break down under questioning, but we’ll certainly try and look into this. I’ve asked Hlynur to interview Sandra and ask her to make a statement regarding the rat poison.’

Ari Thór felt his spirits lift.

‘But don’t get your hopes too high. Karl will never be sent down for this murder, I’m sure there’s insufficient evidence for a conviction. But we might check on his parents, who still live in Denmark, and see where that leads us. If your theory’s right and they left the country to keep him out of harm’s way, I doubt they’d let him down.’

‘I’m prepared to do my best to put him away.’

‘Sorry, my boy … You’re not going to be part of this investigation, not with an official complaint hanging over you. It has been sent to the state prosecutor, but don’t worry about it. I don’t doubt that the case will be thrown out once the context is taken into account. The man had a knife in his hand, after all.’

Being left out of the case was something that had not occurred to Ari Thór. He had been set on making up for his mistakes by putting every ounce of energy into the investigation. He was silent, disappointed and dissatisfied.

‘But it
was
clumsy on your part,’ Tómas said. ‘Not clever at all. We might have to give you an official reprimand, but we’ll see … Let’s hope we can get away without that. While I remember, we need to let you have another phone. Yours is part of the evidence.’

Ari Thór nodded, accepting that he had no choice in the matter. The night before he had told Tómas that he’d forgotten his phone at Karl’s, having had to run for his life.

‘And the car?’ he asked earnestly.

‘Car? What car?’

‘Karl’s jeep. The one he bought with the money stolen from Pálmi’s mother. Can’t you check and find out if he paid for it in cash?’

Tómas made a note.

‘I’ll do that, my boy.’

The tale spread rapidly once a news website in Reykjavík posted the story, painting it in suitably lurid colours.

Man suspected of 25-year-old murder in Siglufjördur.

Reportedly based on “reliable sources”, the story even mentioned that the man in question had been suspected of a murder in Denmark and that his girlfriend was the woman found more dead than alive in the snow only a week before.

Hlynur had not mentioned to his journalist acquaintance that the case of the woman in the snow was being treated as attempted suicide.

Nothing about Karl and Anna’s relationship had reached the media. The reason was a simple one; Hlynur preferred as far as possible to shield the innocent.

Leifur watched as Úlfur timidly made his way up onto the stage in the old theatre. This time the director had everyone’s undivided attention.

Standing by the wall close to the stage, Leifur looked over the room. Nína stood in the doorway, not far from where Hrólfur’s corpse had been found. That now seemed so long ago.

Pálmi sat near the front, Anna and Ugla further back, but not side by side. Pálmi looked despondent and weary. The young policeman from down south had managed to uncover a murder from years back, something nobody had ever suspected. Pálmi’s mother had been deprived of her twilight years by a ruthless killer, or so it seemed, although it hadn’t been possible to prove anything.

Leifur had no answers. Someone had forced his brother off the road, wrecking the family’s happiness. Every day, little by little, he was coming to terms with the fact that the hit-and-run driver would never be found; that some questions would remain unanswered.

Úlfur cleared his throat.

The words “the show must go on” hung in the air, unspoken, and
hardly fitting the occasion. Instead he mumbled something as if to himself, and looked up into the auditorium.

‘We have to find a way to manage things with … Karl’s situation. I can well imagine that not all of us are keen on treading the boards right at this moment, but I’m sure it would do us all good to hold the opening night this coming weekend. I … I have spoken to Leifur. He has thought it over and is prepared to take the lead, even at such short notice.’

His eyes rested on Leifur, who smiled shyly and looked out again over the auditorium. Pálmi’s expression remained unchanged; he had presumably known of this already. The others murmured in surprise, never having expected Leifur to have the confidence in himself to take on such a part.

‘Well, I think I can manage,’ he said.

He had made up his mind the evening before. He knew the script well enough, having learned it as Karl’s understudy, but he had taken a few days off work to prepare himself. He was determined to shine.

He thought of his elder brother, who would now have been proud of him.

Leifur felt his self-esteem growing inside him. Maybe he ought to take the opportunity and have a word with Anna after the opening night? There was something captivating about her.

The town was still under a heavy layer of snow when Ari Thór walked down to the pontoons by the harbour in the early morning, his face drawn after a restless night. Fences had been engulfed by the snow and in many places it reached as high as the windows of the houses. A thrush perched on a post in one garden. A closer look revealed that a flock of thrushes had gathered to feed on the seed that a warm-hearted householder had scattered for them.

Ari Thór walked out onto the dock and looked over the troubled sea, the majestic mountains. Summer seemed a long way off. Would he still be in Siglufjördur when it arrived? Or would Tómas have sent him home in disgrace by then? Even if everything worked out here for the best, if Karl’s official complaint were to come to nothing, would he still want to be here?

He was proud of what he had achieved, despite having been unable to unravel the mystery of Hrólfur’s death. He still believed there was something sinister about it.

After all, he probably was where he should be in life at this point. Police work suited him. If he were to keep his job, then he would have to give Siglufjördur a chance.

Then there was Ugla. He wasn’t sure if he was in love with her, and he wanted to make sure.

She had done her best to persuade him not to give up on the town.

‘Give it until the spring,’ she had said. ‘Sometimes, in spring or early summer, you wake up and see the mist lying on the fjord – you
can’t even see the sea, and there’s just a glimpse of one or two mountain peaks, just as if they’re floating in the air. Then it all changes suddenly, when the sun appears. The beauty of the place is breathtaking. It’s when you’ve experienced those days that you find you never want to leave.’

She had been very persuasive.

He had stepped over the mark with Ugla, first the kiss and then the invitation into her bedroom. He had wanted to sleep with her, but then his conscience had taken over. He felt he couldn’t be so disloyal to Kristín. First he wanted to be sure of where they stood.

Hell, but it had been hard to leave Ugla lying practically naked in bed. She was beautiful in jeans and that figure-hugging white T-shirt, but irresistible once her clothes lay in a heap on the floor.

He felt like the world’s biggest fool when he told her he wanted to wait, without any mention of why. Ugla didn’t know about Kristín, and that was going to be a tough conversation.

Ari Thór looked up to the mountains. In Reykjavík, he’d always felt that he lived in the shadow of Mount Esja, but now he really knew what it meant to live under the shadow of a mountain. Esja was so far from his place in the centre of town; here the mountains were right on top of him.

In Reykjavík, right in the centre of town and not far from his flat, with the government close to falling, it had been impossible to avoid hearing of the protests. These were historic times that he would have experienced at first hand if he had not moved north. But none of this seemed relevant now. All those things were happening far away, almost in another world.

He gazed out over the fjord, imagining the water as still as a mirror on a bright day. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

Crossing the Town Hall Square on his way home, Ari Thór bumped into Pálmi.

Pálmi nodded a greeting, apparently intending to continue on his way, but he suddenly turned and stopped.

‘Thank you,’ he said in a low voice, heavy with emotion, his eyes piercing behind his glasses. ‘I heard about your … well, your theory about my mother’s death. I’m inclined to believe it.’

‘Did Tómas speak to you?’

‘Yes, yesterday morning.’

‘Karl will probably get away with it, in spite of everything.’

‘That’s of no consequence,’ Pálmi said. ‘Losing my mother was terrible. It happened so fast I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to her. It explains so much, if Karl did it. It explains how a woman who watched every penny died destitute, and how Karl could buy that jeep.’

‘Tómas has been in touch with the man who sold it to him, spoke to him yesterday. He remembered it well, how the lad arrived with cash and paid for it on the spot,’ Ari Thór said, with a flutter of pride.

Pálmi nodded. ‘You can exhume her if you need to, if it would help put him away,’ he said in a dark voice.

‘We’ll see,’ Ari Thór said gravely. ‘I’ll stop by this evening.’

The Dramatic Society’s opening night was always a big event and tickets had immediately sold out. Everyone wanted to see Pálmi’s play, and everyone wanted to see the last performance with which Hrólfur had been involved, the one that could perhaps have cost him his life.

The Siglufjördur road had finally been cleared on Friday afternoon and Ari Thór felt as if a burden had been lifted from his shoulders, although the oppressively long nights and the nagging claustrophobia remained in the background. He still struggled to sleep, his thoughts wandering, but he was excited about the next day, eager to see Ugla on the opening night. Giving up on having any sort of real
rest, he went down to the living room and fetched the book she had lent him, the masterpiece,
North of the Hills
. It seemed fitting to be dipping into Hrólfur’s book as a mark of respect.

It was as if the book drew him into a magical world, both with its narrative and the exquisite prose. The bittersweet
Verses for Linda
were so much more than just love poems; he felt himself overwhelmed with emotion. Ari Thór was unable to put the book aside until he had finished it. For the first time in months, he slept peacefully.