Why Did You Lie? (30 page)

She spotted a piece of paper that had definitely belonged to Thröstur. It was covered in familiar doodles of the kind he used to draw while talking on the phone. Countless circles and drawings of flowers, boxes and tornadoes, along with some phone numbers he had jotted down. In the midst of what looked like choppy waves on an ancient Greek urn he had written:
Lalli? Lárus – Lárus Jónmundsson?
The name rang a bell. Without taking her eyes off the paper she asked Berglind to Google it.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see Berglind tapping the keypad with her nail. ‘There’s only one. A man your age. A lawyer.’ She tapped again, then looked up. Nína turned to her and saw from her face that something was wrong. ‘He’s dead. Died in December, at home. The police are asking anyone who spoke to him on the day he died to get in touch.’

It was as if the badly painted walls of the kitchen were slowly but surely closing in on them. Suddenly Nína found it hard to breathe. ‘Come on. Let’s take this stuff and go home to your place.’

She remembered now why she recognised the name. His death had been investigated at the police station and although she hadn’t been involved in the case, it had piqued her curiosity. After all, she was bound to be unnaturally interested in suicides for a while. Lárus was believed to have killed himself. First Stefán, then Thröstur, and now him.

Chapter 25

26 January 2014

The bruises on her face were an angry red at the outer edges but starting to darken in the middle. Nói couldn’t begin to count them, still less all the ones on her neck. Her cheekbones and forehead were covered in small cuts and abrasions and there were two large half-moons under her eyes that extended down her cheeks. She looked like a poster girl for a road-safety campaign. According to the doctor, the black eyes were caused by her broken nose and would get worse before they got better. Vala would be in a lot of pain once the local anaesthetic and analgesics she’d been given at A&E wore off, so Nói should try to get some liquid painkillers down her. These looked disgusting and oddly viscous, but pills were out of the question since her broken lower jaw had been wired to the upper one and the whole inside of her mouth was swollen and extremely tender.

‘It’ll be all right.’ Nói helped Vala into the car, having slid the passenger seat back as far as it would go. He fastened her seatbelt, taking care not to touch the plaster cast on her right arm. He had helped her to dress in the loose sportswear that the nurse on duty had advised him to bring along and it had cut him to the quick when he saw that her body was as bruised and grazed as her face. Before he rushed off to the hospital, he’d talked to the nurse on the phone and she’d told him that Vala had got off incredibly lightly in the circumstances. When a pedestrian was hit by a car travelling at speed, the consequences were usually much more serious. Vala was lucky to be alive and not to have sustained permanent injuries. Fortunately, instead of landing on the road, she had been thrown up on to the bonnet of her own car, which she had been walking towards at the time. Although no one said as much, Nói thought the fact that Vala was in such good physical shape had probably been a factor as well. He imagined her twisting in the air like a cat, but the image was probably drawn from action movies – it was almost certainly simply pure luck. He couldn’t bear to think about the consequences if her head or spine had hit the kerb.

The same nurse escorted them to the door and squeezed his hand in parting, saying that she really hoped the police would catch the driver. Nói bit his tongue to stop himself wasting some well-chosen words on the bastard.

Carefully, he pushed the passenger door shut. As he walked round the car he hoped the cold air would purge the anger from his mind. His rage at the driver was unquestionably justified; less so the portion of it that was directed at Vala. Yet he couldn’t control it. How had she got into this mess? And he was livid about the damage to the car, which was now sitting in her friend’s street, waiting for him to fetch it and take it to the garage. But what angered him most was that Vala wouldn’t be able to utter a word until tomorrow at the earliest. He had so many burning questions but they would have to wait. He couldn’t hand her a pen and paper and order her to write down the answers with her left hand, much as he wanted to.

No, he must restrain himself and make sure she wasn’t aware of his fury. He told himself it was probably caused by the shock of realising how close he’d come to losing her for good.

‘Right. Home we go. Tumi said he was going to wait up but I doubt he’ll have been able to stay awake.’ It was nearly half past one in the morning. ‘Though you never know. It’s not so different from his usual bedtime.’ Nói smiled at Vala but received little response. Then again, how were you supposed to smile with a broken jaw?

‘The police came round. That’s how I heard.’ Nói couldn’t bear the silence in the car and the odd whistling Vala made as she drew breath hurt his ears. ‘They sent round a cop as if they thought
I
’d run you over. She wanted to know what you’d been up to, if you had any enemies – then asked where I’d been all evening. It wasn’t until she’d finished interrogating me and had a look at my car that I was allowed to leave. That’s why it took me so long to get to you.’

Vala turned her head with difficulty and gazed at him with wide eyes. Presumably she had been unaware how much time had passed since she reached the hospital. ‘You’ll go out like a light once we’re home. I’ll fetch some extra pillows from the cupboard and prop you up with them so you won’t move in your sleep. That should help.’

Vala looked away; no sign of gratitude could be read from her profile. He longed to scream at her. What the fuck had she been thinking of, slipping out while he was asleep? This is what happened to people who went sneaking off like that. But he clamped his lips shut and concentrated on driving. The journey felt as if it would never end; every bump and bend in the road caused Vala to groan, so he took his foot off the accelerator. It didn’t help that he couldn’t seem to find a topic of conversation that didn’t require her to answer. He was burning with a desire to tell her to nod or shake her head in answer to some questions but didn’t dare for fear she would start crying. It was bound to sting like hell if salty tears got into the cuts on her face.

He was relieved when they pulled into the darkened drive at home but Vala flinched when she saw the broken bulbs of the outside lights by the parking space. She turned stiffly and peered up the street. There was no one to be seen but that didn’t lessen the terror in her eyes, which were almost buried now in her swollen face. Nói helped her indoors as fast as he dared. She limped and her balance seemed shaky. It would be a long time before she went for a run or to work and the thought of her alone at home made him anxious. Perhaps he would be forced to take a holiday from the office, only go in during the afternoons once Tumi had come home from school, or even stay at home while she was recuperating. His staff would probably welcome his absence; after all, they had managed fine while he was in Florida. Perhaps it would be best for everyone. Although the consensus was that the hit and run had been an accident, he wasn’t ruling out the possibility that it was connected to the string of peculiar events that had occurred since their return. A person who could kill a cat and stick it on a barbecue was probably more capable than most of knocking down a pedestrian and fleeing the scene.

Tumi was sitting in the kitchen with his laptop, apparently determined to wait up. Púki was curled up in his arms. The boy was tired but his eyes widened with shock when he saw his mother hobble inside with his father’s help. ‘Holy shit.’ Tumi put down the cat and groped for his phone. ‘I’ve got to take a picture of this.’

The gurgling noises from Vala’s throat said it all and Nói snapped at his son. Tumi seemed thrown by their reactions but accepted the telling-off and, chastened, asked his mother how she was feeling. The noise she emitted could only be interpreted as meaning ‘bloody awful’. He offered to bring her a glass of water but she refused it with the same inarticulate sounds.

‘Did they catch the guy who did this?’

‘No. But hopefully they will. As soon as possible.’ Nói looked at Vala. ‘If it
was
a man … Do they know?’ She stared at him, then nodded slowly. Of course it was possible she had seen into the car, either as she was flying through the air or after she’d landed.

‘Shit! They should lock the bastard up.’ Tumi glanced at his father. ‘Was he drunk?’

‘We don’t know yet.’ Nói read in Vala’s eyes that she wished he had answered differently. Quite against his instincts he added: ‘But it was almost certainly a drunk. Or drug addict. According to the police officer who came round.’ He smiled at Tumi who earlier that evening had stood in the background, watching as his father was grilled by the policewoman. ‘Once she’d established that
I
was at home all evening.’ Tumi frowned.

Púki tripped lightly over to Nói and Vala and began weaving in and out of their legs as if they were standing there purely to create an obstacle course for him. Nói pushed him away for fear he would trip Vala up and the cat shot upstairs, deeply offended. After he had gone, Vala stared at the floor and her husband and son stared at her. None of them seemed to have a clue what to do and it was only when Nói noticed that Vala was having difficulty keeping her eyes open that he offered to help her up to bed. She nodded with the least possible movement of her head and moved slowly over to the stairs.

She was limping badly and Nói hurried over to support her. On their way past the kitchen worktop her gaze fell on the note that had been delivered after she went out that evening, and she stopped dead and read the brief text:
Serves you right, liar.
She stood transfixed, her body rigid.

‘This came while you were out.’ Nói regretted that he hadn’t put it out of sight, though in truth he had left it there deliberately to see her reaction. ‘It could even have been delivered around the time you were knocked down. Or shortly afterwards.’

The words on the page had gained a horrible significance now. Vala made as if to pick it up but Nói took a gentle hold of her hand. ‘We’d better not touch it. I was so shocked earlier that I forgot to mention it to the policewoman. Then I thought it would probably make more sense to talk to the other officers who took the rest of the stuff. We’d better not add any more fingerprints to it. It’s already covered in mine and Tumi’s.’

‘Shit!’ Tumi had come up beside them and was gazing at the text. He seemed to be catching on and Nói cursed himself for failing to block his view. ‘Shit. Is this from the guy who knocked you down, Mum?’ Without waiting for an answer he blurted out: ‘Why’s he calling you a liar? How does he know where we live?’

Vala made no attempt to answer, not that she could speak anyway. She seemed to have stopped breathing. Nói glared at Tumi to shut him up.

He helped Vala upstairs and into bed. She made it clear that she didn’t want to take her clothes off. She closed her swollen, luridly bruised eyes the moment her head touched the pillow. Nói drew the covers carefully over her but even so she winced as the duvet caught on her plaster cast. For a while he stood there gazing at her blood-caked hair spread out on the white pillow, then switched off the light and left the room.

He shooed Tumi up to bed. The boy’s face was full of questions but he seemed unable to grasp the enormity of what he was thinking because he didn’t put any of them into words. He merely said goodnight and asked his father to make absolutely sure the front door was locked.

Nói went round all the windows on the ground floor to check that none of them was open even a crack. When he tested the back door it turned out to be unlocked, presumably from when Tumi had let Púki in. He locked it and tried the handle. He briefly considered barricading it with furniture but knew he would only regret it tomorrow morning when he had to put everything back.

After fetching some pillows and arranging them between the two of them he crawled into bed with Vala, feeling utterly exhausted. Though he was so tired he doubted he would move an inch in the night, he didn’t want to take any risks. He couldn’t bear the thought of being woken by a moan of pain from her. As he closed his eyes he felt a great weight of fatigue settling on him. But as he lay there as though pole-axed, the blackest thoughts began to plague his mind until he thought his head would burst. He didn’t have the strength to resist them, but finally sleep brought him release from the evening’s burden of upset and fear.

Yet he didn’t have long to enjoy it. Shortly after he dropped off, he started up at a sound. He couldn’t remember what it was but knew that it had woken him. While he was shaking off his drowsiness he strained his ears in case the sound came again. He could hear nothing but the booming of the sea.

Nói coughed and glanced over at Vala to see if she had woken up too. There was no one in the bed. The pillows were all in place but the duvet had been pulled aside. ‘Vala?’ he called, then realised she would have difficulty answering, so he swung his legs out of bed. The wooden floor felt icy underfoot but he stood up anyway. Perhaps she had gone to the loo or was searching for her painkillers. He was an idiot not to have put them on her bedside table. But their bathroom was empty and Vala wasn’t in the kitchen either. The painkillers were still in their paper bag by the sink. Púki was curled up in his bed by the kitchen radiator and rose majestically to his feet, convinced that it was feeding time. He yowled as if he had been starving for days but Nói ignored him; if the cat was fed now he would want to go out and Nói didn’t like the thought of him being outside at night. Not now, and perhaps not ever again.

‘Vala?’ She must be able to make some sound, for God’s sake. What the fuck was wrong with her? He listened and thought he heard a movement in the utility room. After a moment’s hesitation he followed the noise. Perhaps it would be safer to grab a knife or a rolling pin – if they even owned such a thing – as he couldn’t be sure that the sounds were being made by Vala rather than some violent intruder. But Nói couldn’t imagine how a knife or blunt object would help him; he pictured himself battering or stabbing his wife by mistake. Steeling himself, he crept towards the utility room and flung open the door. His heart was hammering in his chest.