Blackout (14 page)

It was late in the evening and Ísrún wasn’t feeling at her best. True, she was exhausted after the long drive from Reykjavík, but there was something else. She couldn’t blame the cheap guesthouse, which was fine for what it was: a tidy bed, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers that contained nothing more than a Bible.

Perhaps it was the memories that snapped at her heels now that she was back in Akureyri. She was disappointed in herself – she had thought she would be stronger than this. She had chosen a guesthouse even though she could undoubtedly have stayed for nothing with old friends. But she maintained nothing more than occasional contact with those friends in Akureyri since she had moved back south. And she’d left at very short notice, giving only weak excuses for leaving and without a single word to anyone about the real reasons for her hasty departure. Those facts she kept strictly to herself.

She drew the curtains shut and lay down to sleep. It wasn’t late, but she wanted to make an early start in the morning, beginning with a visit to Elías’s apartment, which, it turned out, was actually owned by his former wife. Then she would move on to Siglufjörður, a place she had never visited.

She was already asleep when her phone rang. A good news journalist never switches the phone off; news comes first. But she swore as she reached for it, telling herself that sometimes it would be worth breaking journalism’s life rules to get a decent night’s sleep.

Kormákur was on the line. He came straight to the point.

‘You’re in Akureyri?’

She rubbed her eyes and mumbled something into the phone that could be interpreted as a yes.

‘Were you asleep? Get yourself up,’ he chattered excitedly. ‘There’s a meeting at the County Sheriff’s office about the murder case.’

‘They’re holding a press conference?’ she asked, still dazed with sleep.

‘No, nothing like that. Nobody knows about it except us – I have a contact. Get yourself down there.’

Ísrún sat on the bed, amazed, not just at the news that Kormákur had shared with her, but that he had such a reliable source in Akureyri. It was unbelievable what the man could come up with.

‘I’m on my way,’ she said. ‘Do I get a cameraman?’

‘He’s on his way too. We’ll cover his call-out fee.’

‘And can I take him to Siglufjörður in the morning?’

‘You seriously expect Ívar to agree to that?’

There was no mistaking the disbelief in Kormákur’s voice. He was right, she couldn’t imagine that.

She forced herself to her feet, although ever fibre in her body fought against being dragged out of bed. She longed to pull the covers up over her head and close her eyes, but instinct told her that news had to come first and a lead had to be followed up, even if it was likely to take her nowhere.

The cameraman, who doubled as the local stringer, was waiting for her outside the County Sheriff’s office.

‘Nobody’s come out yet,’ he said.

They waited for half an hour for something to happen. A slight night-time chill had descended on the town. Ísrún shivered. But, looking up into the sky she found it bright and cloudless. No trace of ash here. She laughed grimly to herself, thinking how shrouded in mystery and shadows this case seemed to be. She glanced at the glass doors of the building. Did everyone inside feel like they were groping through the darkness too?

Finally they saw some movement. People were coming out.
The meeting must be over. The first out was a middle-aged man in uniform who Ísrún didn’t recognise. He was somewhere over fifty, and almost bald. Behind him followed another officer – younger, probably not yet thirty, taller and well built.

She walked towards them and was about to drop her first question when she saw a face familiar from news bulletins: Helga, one of the senior detectives in the Akureyri CID.

‘So the newshounds are already on the trail,’ said Helga with an amiable smile. ‘There’s no information right now. There might be a statement later tonight,’ she added, although her expression told another story. Ísrún knew that the camera was running and stuck to her guns.

‘What’s the status of the investigation?’

‘No new developments,’ Helga said.

‘Have you questioned Svavar Sindrason in connection with this case?’

The question clearly took Helga by surprise.

‘We have interviewed a great many people as part of this investigation. We don’t have a suspect at present,’ she said crisply.

‘Does this investigation have any connection to Ríkhardur Lindgren?’

‘Definitely not,’ Helga replied.

Ísrún was about to ask about Elías’s apartment in Akureyri when Helga cut her off.

‘No more questions for the moment,’ she said.

Ísrún was too tired to pursue the point.

A summer night in Siglufjörður.

Jónatan turned his TV off and peered out of his window. There were few people about. The cruise ship had presumably departed, taking its tourists with it.

On the news they had said that in Reykjavík it was dark and the air choking, the city covered by the ash cloud. There was no evidence of it here. Not yet anyway. The little town was bathed in a luminous glow. But for how long?

He wasn’t happy with the changes to the town: new buildings, coffee shops and restaurants, a new tunnel. No more peace and quiet. That lousy tunnel was nothing but a curse. The tranquillity and the isolation of the place would soon vanish.

The policeman’s visit was troubling him.

Jónatan had done his best to avoid thinking about the past, his parents and the ‘good’ old days.

And the violence. Violence in its clearest and most basic form.

It had been inflicted on him as much as on the other boys, even though he had been a few years older than them.

It was difficult to put a finger on where it had come from, that pure, unmitigated violence. An addiction to power, maybe?

He was sure that power had something to do with.

Had it been an urge to demonstrate just who wielded it?

Despite having been a victim rather than a ‘wrong-doer’, he still felt that he bore a certain responsibility; especially later, when he had remained quiet. If he had come forward maybe he could have helped some of the unfortunate children, if not himself.

He had thought, or hoped, that the whole thing had been long forgotten.

Now he had the feeling that wasn’t the case.

Poor Elías. He had been one of the victims.

Jónatan hoped that those events – events that should have stayed buried deep in the past – hadn’t led to his death.

That would be a heavy cross to bear.

A little boy stood by the roadside. He was dressed in some sort of school uniform, a white shirt and grey trousers, a colourful belt and a striped tie. On his wrist was a digital watch and there was a schoolbag at his side. His hands were clasped tightly together, held up to cover his mouth and nose. Maybe his hands were held this way to protect him from the dust and fumes that were everywhere. Maybe he was just thinking. Maybe he was praying.

Everything around him was grey. Sand and stones surrounded the houses, and there was some scrub grass by the roadside. But even this wasn’t as green as Elías was used to seeing in Iceland; its green was diluted by a heavy, dusty grey.  

Elías sat in the back of a rundown taxi, stopped in a traffic jam. He stared out of the window and waited. He looked straight into the boy’s eyes, before he looked away. Then the taxi moved on a short way before coming to a halt again, and the little boy by the side of the road was out of Elías’s sight. There had been an aura of innocence about him, sending Elías’s thoughts back decades, to a time when his innocence hadn’t yet been stolen away by the monster in the farmhouse.

There were two brick buildings behind him, one of them a supermarket of some description, its window display decked with canned food and on the wall a brightly coloured advertisement for soap. Sacks and boxes were stacked outside the shop, and an older woman waited in the doorway for customers. The other brick-built place sold paint. An old motorbike was parked outside.  

Elías wondered, and not for the first time, if this trip was worth it. He was in a foreign country, commissioned to do a strange job for some rather dubious characters.

He had never been outside Europe before. Normally a week or two drinking beer on a coast somewhere was enough travel for him. That’s the way it ought to be, a break from the endless daily grind back home in Iceland.

But he was aware that the men with whom he was involved could make him rich. He had been given the opportunity to prove himself. First, there would be this job and, if it went well, they’d promised it would be followed by something bigger. But he knew he had to be careful not to let himself be taken for a ride. He had to have eyes in the back of his head.

He had told Svavar about his new friends and mentioned that he was thinking about bringing him into the business. He was even thinking about taking another person into his confidence, cut him into this operation. There was room for one more if there were other jobs like this.

He could hardly wait to get away from that lousy rented apartment in Siglufjörður. He was going to move as soon as the tunnel was finished, but he’d be sure not to let the charity business go. That had proved to be a brilliant outlet for laundering dirty money.

The taxi inched forwards. There was heavy traffic in both directions. Elías had seen a few clapped-out buses packed with people, so full that some passengers had taken the drastic step of hanging on to the outside rather than be left behind.

The sweltering heat was oppressive and there didn’t seem to be any way of opening the taxi’s rear windows.

He had spent the first night of his trip in Kathmandu, followed by another flight the next morning. He had never been particularly afraid of flying, but the flight from the capital in the rattling light aircraft had unsettled him. Now he was at his destination, a small rural town.

He had been in the taxi for half an hour. The taxi driver didn’t spare the horn and now and again he’d look over his shoulder at Elías and shrug as if to say there was nothing else he could do.

Maybe it was as well that Elías couldn’t open the taxi’s windows. The air outside had to be stuffy in this heavy traffic. He understood from the driver that there were roadworks somewhere up ahead and a road had been closed, the likely explanation for the delay.

Was travelling to the far side of the world on behalf of some men
he hardly knew too dangerous? All this to collect some woman and bring her to Europe?

‘It’s a fantastic scheme. You won’t regret it,’ one of the men, a go-between who was organising the woman’s visa, had told him in English.

He had hinted that Elías wouldn’t be forced to do many more such trips. There was something bigger waiting for him. Then other people would have to do all this tiresome travelling.

This trip was a test and he had every intention of passing with flying colours. He just had to try not to let the effects of the long journey fray his nerves.

They drove slowly past a lively outdoor market in the shadow of a red-brick block, fronted by little handcarts laden with garishly coloured fruit. There was business going on here. Sellers chatted to customers, apparently unaffected by the constant hum of traffic.

The tangle of traffic finally seemed to be clearing a little and the driver pushed the taxi up a gear. In the distance Elías could see more brick buildings, mighty trees and, in between, the occasional hoarding with English adverts for European beer.

Elías could have done with an ice-cold one right now.

The houses grew sparser, the few they saw now looking close to collapse.

Maybe he’d be doing this woman a favour, taking her away from the poverty he could see all around him. He didn’t know whether she knew what was waiting for her in Europe. Not that he cared one way or the other. Some woman he knew nothing about from the other side of the world wasn’t his problem. He was ready to sacrifice her for his own ends. More than ready in fact; he was delighted to do it.

Elías stood outside the cluster of houses with the girl and her family. He had been invited into their apartment but had declined. He had neither the interest nor the time.

He was impatient to get back to the airport, back to Kathmandu and from there home to Iceland, as soon as possible.

The girl was a beauty. There was no doubt about it. His new employers would be pleased with him once he had delivered the girl to her destination in Iceland.

Would the family never finish saying their farewells? He noticed a woman who had to be the young girl’s mother, her eyes brimming with tears.

For crying out loud. That’s enough, surely?

His mind wandered while he waited. It occurred to him that they would probably never see her again, but he didn’t allow himself to contemplate, let alone feel, any emotion. The world is a hard place; he knew that himself from bitter experience.

The girl had said farewell to everyone but her mother.

And she’s taking her time over it…

She turned to her mother, tears streaming down her cheeks, and was about to embrace her. Elías sighed. He put a hand on her shoulder, as courteously as he could, and told her they would miss the flight.

The girl was startled, tearful. But she nodded and followed him to the taxi.

He hadn’t exactly been truthful. They had plenty of time, but he hadn’t the patience to watch one more wailing farewell.

She stood under a fan at the little domestic airport, wearing her best blouse, the pale pink one. She watched the strange Icelander who had come all this way to collect her. He marched back and forth around the terminal building, without any obvious destination. She had a little sympathy for him. It couldn’t be easy for a foreigner to work out how to find the plane that would take them to Kathmandu. She had stood at the window and watched the aircraft landing and taking off, one after another. This would be her first
time in an airplane. Flying was expensive, something her family had never been able to afford. Not that they had anywhere to go.

She could hardly believe that this opportunity had presented itself, the chance to go and live in Iceland. She was sure that it would be freezing cold so far north, but the pay was good, and she was excited about the prospect of travelling to Europe. Nevertheless she couldn’t quiet her nerves. She was already missing her family. They were the real reason she was doing this: to ensure their future.

The job description had been clear: work in a large hotel. That sounded fine to her, as did the offer of free board and lodging, which would allow her to save all of her earnings. It was just as well that she spoke some English. That was how they had found her – on a website where she had registered to find work. The Icelander assured her that she wouldn’t need to worry too much about language skills in her new job.

The little aircraft was packed with people and Elías felt another surge of disquiet. He hoped he’d get out of this damned place in one piece. At least it was a relief to get away from the countryside and back to the city.

In the rural area where the young girl lived he had found his thoughts taken back to the farm in Skagafjörður, where his own childhood had been made a perfect hell.

He had been six years old and excited at the prospect of spending a summer away from the city, as so many children did every summer, their parents’ keen to let them see the Icelandic countryside, which they had left behind them when they moved to the city in search of work or education.

But the rural dream had rapidly become a nightmare.

To begin with, the abuse had been verbal. There was nothing casual or playful about it; it had been pure and simple malice.

And it didn’t stop there, instead getting steadily harsher. Soon he
began to suspect that everything that his parents sent to him during the summer was being stolen. Then blows took over from words.

The beatings weren’t heavy. Care was taken to leave no marks. But even that wasn’t the worst of it. That was something he couldn’t speak of. It was impossible to describe in words the simple enormity of the violence perpetrated against him. The boys didn’t even talk about it among themselves, although he was sure that they had all been forced to endure the same treatment; even Jónatan, the old couple’s youngest son, who was quite a few years older than Elías. He had probably suffered the most – and he didn’t get to go back south in the autumn.

Elías returned to school a shell of himself after that first summer. But he took care to not let anything show. The threats had been barely disguised – heavy hints that ‘accidents’ might befall his parents unless he promised two things: first, not to whisper a word of what had happened that summer; and second, to return the following summer.

‘We can’t do without our summer kids here to help out with the heavy work,’ he was told in no uncertain terms, knowing also that the parents paid a hefty sum for sending their kids there.  

Elías had no intention of discussing the summer’s events. He was deeply ashamed of what had happened, certain that he was somehow to blame. He had never breathed a word of it, managing to come to terms with it in solitude, although even now he was not sure quite how he had achieved this.

All winter long he had dreaded the coming of summer, sleeping badly and frequently waking in the night, bathed in sweat, shivering and terrified. His parents didn’t understand what was troubling their much-loved son, but he never broke his promise, never mentioned a thing. As spring approached and the winter darkness gave way to light, each day the sun reaching a higher point in the sky, his parents told him that they had made arrangements for the summer and he’d be going back to the same farm as before.