House of Evidence (32 page)

O
n the way home from Birkihlíd, Jóhann thought about the day to come. It would be strange to start working on another case after tonight; the investigation had lasted only five days, but he felt as if many weeks had passed since he had first examined those footsteps in the snow outside Birkihlíd. Hrefna sat in silence beside him, and he wondered what she was thinking about.

He parked the car in one of the central parking bays on Hringbraut, and they walked, against the wind, toward the house.

“You’ve made this very homey,” Hrefna remarked, looking around his apartment.

Jóhann looked around, too. He had tried to make the apartment comfortable, but it was nice that she thought it seemed homey.

Hrefna caught sight of herself in the hallway mirror.

“Just look at me! I’ve got to have that shower,” she said. “Can you lend me a towel and something clean to put on?”

Jóhann handed her a big towel, and while she showered, he rummaged through his wardrobe and dug out a GWU T-shirt and some cotton shorts; much too big, he thought, but they’ll have to do. He slipped them inside the bathroom door.

When Hrefna came out, she had rolled up the sleeves of the T-shirt and the bottom of the shorts some.

“I’ve got a bottle of white wine in the fridge. How about I open it?” he offered.

“Okay, if you have some, too,” she said.

“I can’t. I’ll have to drive you home later.”

“I think you’re just as much in need of refreshment as I am. Why don’t I just stay over?” Hrefna suggested. “Your bed looks big enough for the two of us.”

“Yes, yes, of course you can stay,” Jóhann stammered. He didn’t know quite what to say or do next.

“The white wine,” Hrefna reminded him.

“Yes, of course,” he said, smiling broadly and fetching the bottle and two glasses.

“Cheers,” Hrefna said when he handed her the glass.

“Here’s to a job well done,” added Jóhann.

“A job done, anyway,” Hrefna said. “I don’t feel we can say this case had a good ending.”

“That’s very true.”

“But it’ll be good to wake up in the morning and not have to start the day trawling through those old diaries, trying to work out who might have had a motive for killing the pair of them.”

Jóhann nodded. “That family will stick in our minds for some time, I imagine.”

“Just think. After everything else, it was simply their own obsessions that killed them,” Hrefna said. “They both got hooked on an idea that couldn’t be brought to reality—the railroad for Jacob Senior and the family museum for Jacob Junior.”

They were quiet for a while, and then Jóhann said, “But the path they chose is so far from being a solution. It’s always those left behind that have to saddle the burdens and the pain.”

“Yes,” Hrefna replied. “I remember something Kirsten said to me: ‘The person who killed my father also took a large part of my brother’s life.’ Jacob Senior definitely made many bad decisions in life, but the way he chose to end it was the worst one of all. I’m sure that Jacob Junior would have turned into a very different man had he enjoyed the guidance of his father.”

Jóhann excused himself; he needed a nice hot shower as well. Afterward he put on a clean pair of pajamas and a thick robe, and they sat in the kitchen long into the night, eating a bit of smoked salmon on toast and finishing the bottle of white wine. They talked about everything except police work.

“Let’s go to bed,” Hrefna finally said.

They crawled into bed and she snuggled up against him. “This is good, but let’s not do anything more tonight. Too much has happened today, and I need to think a bit about Matthías and dear Halli.”

They fell asleep wrapped in each other’s arms.

Jóhann woke up toward morning to the sound of a radio from the apartment above. He looked at the clock. It was just after six; that’s weird, he thought, the state radio station didn’t start broadcasting until seven o’clock, but he could clearly hear the voice of a familiar reporter.

He looked over at Hrefna and decided to stop thinking about the radio. Nothing else that might be happening in the world could spoil this moment. He kissed her gently on the cheek and fell back asleep again.

Diary XIX

July 8, 1945. Matthías arrives tomorrow.

The story told here is a novel (as
Merriam-Webster
has it, “an invented prose narrative of considerable length”); no characters that appear in the story are real, nor are they based on real persons. The events as described in the novel have not actually happened.

In writing the story, however, I have consulted a large body of source material, both published and unpublished, and in a few instances have copied sentences unaltered into the narrative, for which indulgence I should like to thank their authors.

The original of the poem quoted in chapter 46 is by Adalsteinn Ásberg Sigurdsson, and was written specifically for this novel at the request of the author. It has not been published anywhere else prior to this.

Before parting with my reader, I should like to explain what lies behind the final paragraph of the novel. On the night before Tuesday, January 23, 1973, an unexpected volcanic eruption began in the Westman Islands, just off the south coast of Iceland, and what Jóhann hears indistinctly is the Icelandic State Radio reporter’s account of that event.

Viktor Arnar Ingólfsson

September 1998, Reykjavik

Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson is the author of several books, including
Daybreak
, which was the basis for the 2008 Icelandic television series
Hunting Men
.
House of Evidence
, his third novel, was nominated for the Glass Key Award, given by the Crime Writers Association of Scandinavia, in 2001, and
The Flatey Enigma
was nominated for the same prize in 2004.

Björg Árnadóttir is Icelandic but has lived most of her life in England; her husband Andrew Cauthery is English but fluent in Icelandic. They have worked together as translators for some years now, both English into Icelandic and Icelandic into English. Their experience includes a wide variety of subjects, including books on Icelandic nature, technical topics, and literature.

House of Evidence
is their first work for AmazonCrossing.