Snowblind (13 page)

‘Of course. But it’s not as if anyone would have given him a push.’

’Did you leave during the dinner break?’

‘I did.’ A touch of fear now appeared in Leifur’s eyes, as it seemed to dawn on him that he could be a suspect in two police investigations. ‘I always do that, take a walk and go home. I went out that back door and had a word with Nína before I went. She said she was going to clear up in the basement during the break.’

Ari Thór stood up. There was little more to be found from this visit and he felt it might be best to leave on friendly terms, as the Reverend Ari Thór would have done.

‘Thanks for the tea,’ he said; then pointed at the confirmation photograph. ‘You haven’t changed’

Leifur looked stunned. ‘That’s my brother,’ he said and hesitated. ‘He’s dead. Died in a car crash.’

‘A long time ago?’ Ari Thór asked, the sympathetic clergyman coming out again.

‘Twenty-three years,’ Leifur answered without having to think about it. ‘Twenty-three years tomorrow. That’s why I have a day off. I always take the fifteenth of January off.’ He was silent, but it was obvious that he had something to add. ‘You never caught him.’

Me? We?
Was Ari Thór supposed to be responsible for the sins of others?

‘Caught who?’

‘The driver. A friend of my brother’s was a passenger in the car. He survived, just, and he described what had happened. He said that there was a car coming the other way, in the middle of the road, that’s why their car rolled over. It wasn’t my brother’s fault. The weather was bad … and this …’ Leifur was clearly struggling to control his fury. ‘… this man forced them off the road. The car rolled over.’

Silence.

‘The police never found him. It was difficult for my brother’s friend to identify the car, other than that it was dark – red, perhaps, hard to be sure. Nobody came forward and the case was closed. It’s probably at the bottom of some drawer at the police station.’

Ari Thór stood in silence. There was nothing he could say.

He offered his hand. Leifur grasped it with his own calloused hand, a carpenter to his boot heels.

Outside there was a carpet of snow over everything and the town felt peaceful. A small cat scampered from under the car, hurrying home to somewhere warm. A few flakes still fluttered down, so light that they could hardly be seen. Ari Thór looked up and took a deep breath.

Maybe everything will work out for the best.

He heard Hlynur calling as he was getting into the 4×4.

‘Ari Thór!’

He turned round.

‘The knife. Found it.’

The knife had been behind a shrub in the garden of the house next door. There was no doubt that it was the missing kitchen knife.

‘He must have hidden it as he ran off,’ Ari Thór said.

So, he had been right about the knife.

Well done.

He hoped he wasn’t right about the phone.

Tómas had no idea when he would next get a chance to sleep. All he knew was that he wouldn’t be going home that night. He wanted to take the opportunity to lie down at the station, which would show his wife what things would be like once she moved south. Then she’d have to sleep alone, or so he hoped.

‘I don’t imagine there’ll be any prints on the knife,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Send it to Reykjavík anyway, just in case.’

He poured hot, strong coffee into a mug.

‘We’ll have to let Karl go soon, won’t we?’ Hlynur asked, yawning.

‘There’s an emergency flight on the way. It’s just as well the weather’s clearing so they can land. Linda still hasn’t regained consciousness and we can’t be sure that she’ll be able to tell us anything. What’s your take on all this, gentlemen?’ Tómas looked at Hlynur, who seemed too exhausted to reply.

‘It doesn’t look good,’ Ari Thór said.

‘You two go home and get some sleep. We’ll meet in the morning and go over everything again. Ari Thór, you keep an eye open for anything to do with the Dramatic Society, just in case. Maybe you ought to have a word with Pálmi tomorrow if you get a chance. He knew Hrólfur well and he’d know if there’s any aspect of this we ought to look into.’

Ari Thór nodded.

‘I found her phone,’ he said. ‘I haven’t had a chance to find out what number she was using.’ He showed Tómas the red mobile. ‘All right if I use it to call my phone?’

Tómas nodded his agreement.

Ari Thór pulled on gloves and punched in a number.

His phone began to ring. He picked it up.

‘I think I recognise the number,’ he said. ‘I think it was her who called me.’

Tómas frowned, he didn’t understand the connection. ‘Called you?’

‘Yes, on Christmas Eve.’

‘The prankster?’ Tómas’s stomach flipped over, as he suddenly realised what Ari Thór was implying.

‘Maybe it wasn’t a prank.’

‘Look it up,’ Tómas instructed.

‘Right away,’ Ari Thór said and went to the computer. He came back a moment later. ‘Same number.’

Tómas took a deep breath. Had he made a mistake? He had assured Ari Thór that it wasn’t anything to worry about, just someone playing a joke on the police.

‘I think we’ll have to keep Karl here overnight,’ Tómas said decisively. ‘The plot thickens by the minute. Of course he’ll want to go to Reykjavík with the emergency flight, but in light of what you’ve just shown me, I don’t think we can release him right away. First the assault on Linda and now this damned phone call. Let’s see if he makes a clean breast of it in the morning.’

Tómas tried to sound confident, but privately felt certain that Karl would do no such thing.

It was a perfectly ordinary kiss; gentle, soft, short and pleasurable. Ari Thór sat stunned for a few seconds, the taste of the kiss on his lips, delighting in the moment. He sat still and thought of Kristín. What the hell had he done?

Had he really done anything? He sat motionless, tired after the long day, his shoulder still sore. He had only meant to stop by for a coffee or a cup of tea and a pastry after a tough day.

It wasn’t his fault. She had kissed him.
She
had kissed
him
. He didn’t even get a chance to voice an opinion on the matter.

Kristín would go wild if she found out.

Ugla had sent him a message as he was walking home from the station, asking after Linda. He had called her and she invited him to drop by for a coffee.
No, I mean tea
, she corrected herself with a good-natured laugh. The pain in his shoulder was obvious, so she offered to massage it for him. He said yes, which of course he shouldn’t have. He shouldn’t have agreed to drop by at all.

Then she had kissed him, and he didn’t return the kiss, only stood up clumsily. He didn’t say a word about Kristín, just said that he had to go. Ugla stared at him in astonishment and disappointment, but didn’t say a word.

He had felt guilty all the way home; guilt over the kiss, and also for having discussed Linda’s and Hrólfur’s cases with Ugla. He was painfully aware that Ugla was, strictly speaking, a potential witness,
and might even be seen as a suspect, if it was indeed a genuine investigation. He wasn’t sure that it was. On the other hand, she had been extremely helpful, telling him about the argument between Úlfur and Hrólfur, and this time she had mentioned that it might be worthwhile paying a visit to a lady called Sandra at the old people’s home. Sandra was in her nineties, as strong as a horse, relatively speaking, and had known Hrólfur longer than most people. He had made a habit of visiting her once a week, Ugla said.

Ari Thór tried to convince himself that Ugla’s information was enough to balance out the fact that he’d disclosed and discussed official business with someone outside the investigation.

But he didn’t try to use the same logic to justify the kiss.

He went to sleep, not sure whether Ugla or Kristín would feature in his dreams.

He was at the pool, deep below the surface with the warm water coursing around him, a little breath left in him and a few more strokes to go. Two more, then one more. He had to breathe, fill his lungs with air, get up to the surface. He swam upwards, higher and higher, his eyes and face emerging to see snow everywhere, thick, heavy snowflakes that peppered his face, filling everything, snatching the oxygen from him; he could find no refuge, nowhere to take a breath. He had to dive back down. Back down deep into the pool, with no air in his lungs and the water smothering him. Up again, still snow and no air. He jerked upright, felt for a moment that he was unable to breathe in bed, could see nothing out of the snow-caked window. And, at last, a little oxygen. His heartbeat slowed and he breathed steadily as the increasingly familiar nightmare faded away.

It had snowed heavily in the night. Ari Thór had overslept and it was already half-past nine. He skipped breakfast and hurried to the station.

Tómas and Hlynur were there before him.

‘Just as well the Reverend shows up at last,’ Hlynur said with a smile. ‘Tómas has been here all night, looking after our guest.’

Tómas was clearly in no mood for joking, even though the joke had been at the new boy’s expense. His tone was serious: ‘We’re going to have to release him. He’s not going to do her any harm now that she’s been taken to Reykjavík. The flight finally went last night. No change to her condition. The whole thing is inexplicable. There’s
every indication that he had subjected her to violence and threats, but he has witnesses who confirm that he simply could
not
have assaulted her unless he was in two places at once.’ Tómas leaned dangerously far back in his chair. ‘We’ll have to release him,’ he repeated and it was clear that this was far from being to his liking. ‘I asked him to stay in town, otherwise I’d be looking for custody. He agreed to stay, but if Linda’s condition worsens he said he’d want to go south. Truth is, he’d struggle to get to Reykjavík at the moment. The roads are terrible, practically impassable.’ Tómas paused and mopped his head, his frustration evident, before continuing. ‘I went to see the lad this morning, the little boy who found Linda. Nothing new there. I’ve seen better witnesses. He’s just a little boy, after all.’

‘Shouldn’t we be on our way?’ Hlynur asked.

Tómas stood up and turned to face Ari Thór. ‘I’m going with Hlynur to check the flat. We need to take another look around. I think we also need to consider the possibility that Hrólfur’s death wasn’t accidental, open up a formal investigation but keep it low-profile – can you start working on that?’

Hlynur grinned and preened a little, obviously happy to be working on the more prestigious case.

Being asked to play in the sandbox while the adults deal with the real case,
Ari Thór thought to himself. Although he still believed that Hrólfur’s death might not have been accidental, there was no denying that Linda’s case was more important at the moment.

‘No problem.’

Tómas placed a hand on Ari Thór’s shoulder.

Hell. His shoulder wasn’t getting any better.

Tómas accompanied him to the door and spoke in a low tone so that Hlynur would not overhear. ‘That call … on Christmas Eve, we did the right thing, don’t you think? We agreed, didn’t we?’

Ari Thór clearly recalled just how unnerving that call had been, the whispered voice … When he called back, the person, who he now believed to be Linda, had said that there was nothing to worry about. But, all the same …

‘Yes, of course.’

Really?

‘There was nothing we could do,’ Ari Thór added. And what could they have done? The number had been unregistered, and there was no way of finding out who the caller might have been.

There was nothing we could do.

When Tómas and Hlynur had gone, Ari Thór took the opportunity to check the webcam showing the Town Hall Square, watching someone walking across the snow-filled square towards the Town Hall, in real time. It was difficult to identify who it might be on the little computer screen so it wasn’t likely that the webcam would be much help to them, even if there were any recordings from Friday evening. He found the number of the webcam’s owner.

‘Sorry to bother you, my name is Ari Thór, I’m calling from the police.’ He tried to be formal and courteous.

‘Yes, the new guy, right?’ The owner of the webcam was a local man whom Ari Thór had heard of yet never met.

‘I was wondering, your webcam …?’

‘Yes, what about it?’ the guy replied rather grumpily.

‘Is it possible to get access to past recordings?’

‘From my webcam?’ The guy laughed heartily. ‘Do you think I run some sort of surveillance operation? Nothing is recorded, it’s just a live feed from the square. Why do you ask? Is it about Linda, the attack?’

‘Sorry, can’t really comment. Thanks for the help.’

A frustrating dead end. He would really have liked to show Tómas some progress. If only he could call Ugla and get more background information on the theatre group. But that was hardly possible at this point. Since the kiss he had heard nothing from her. That was no surprise considering how quickly he hurried off that night, almost as if he had been bitten rather than kissed. The next piano lesson was on Sunday. Should he turn up as if nothing had happened? How should this relationship be allowed to develop? Kristín was in Reykjavík and he mustn’t forget that or let the distance blur his thinking. It was almost a week since he had spoken to her. He
always assumed that she would call, that she wasn’t as busy as he was. And now, after that kiss, how could he speak to her? He had crossed a line, inadvertently perhaps. The kiss wasn’t just a kiss out of the blue, he knew that he had been flirting with Ugla, that he had kept his relationship with Kristín hidden from her. And, worst of all, he thought he might be developing feelings for Ugla … No, he wasn’t prepared to call either Ugla or Kristín at this moment.

He would have to start by approaching other members of the Dramatic Society, starting with the playwright, Pálmi.

Pálmi lived in a smart detached house off Hvanneyrarbraut that was probably too big for a single man and too small for a family. He was smartly turned out, in a checked shirt and grey flannel trousers. He seemed surprised to see Ari Thór.

‘Good morning, Pálmi. Mind if I come in?’

‘What? Yes, but why? I have visitors. Can’t it wait?’

Ari Thór avoided the question and nodded towards the interior of the house. He had been given an assignment and intended to carry it out conscientiously.

‘This won’t take long,’ he said with one foot inside the door and a smile on his face. ‘We’re speaking to everyone who was at the rehearsal on Friday evening.’

Pálmi appeared to be taken by surprise. ‘Oh? Why’s that?’

‘Nothing serious. Just some loose ends that need to be tied up so we can close the case.’

A little white lie there.

‘Come inside, then.’

‘I’m sorry for intruding.’ Ari Thór looked around. ‘You have guests, you said?’

‘Yes. They’re staying in the flat in the basement.’

‘I see. Out-of-towners?’ Ari Thór asked, speaking as if he wasn’t a newcomer himself, but not sure he sounded convincing.

‘Yes …’ Pálmi said uncertainly, as if wondering how much information to share with the young police officer. ‘An old friend of my father’s, from Denmark. She’s visiting with her son. A pilgrimage to Iceland.’

‘Your father lived in Denmark?’

A little chat didn’t do any harm and it had worked with Leifur. Pálmi appeared ill at ease and it was probably best to tread carefully if he was going to get him to reveal any secrets regarding Hrólfur and that fateful night.

Pálmi looked visibly more relaxed. ‘That’s right. He moved there when I was very small. I don’t remember him.’

They were now seated in the living room, Pálmi on the sofa and Ari Thór in a matching armchair, both upholstered in eighties-style shiny brown leather and remarkably underused, given their age. In fact, the whole room looked like an advertisement from an old furniture catalogue with little that bore witness to the owner’s own taste, other than the paintings on the walls. On the walls of Ari Thór’s flat, which he shared with Kristín on Öldugata, and which now seemed so far away, there was just one painting. Inherited from his grandmother, it was a magnificent original by the Icelandic master, Kjarval. He recognised the artist’s brushwork in four of the canvases on Pálmi’s walls.

‘That’s a fine art collection.’

‘Thank you. It’s hardly a collection, just a few works.’

‘Good all the same. I have a Kjarval myself. Are these heirlooms?’

‘No, I collected them myself. I put my savings into the house and art over the years. I’m not one for trusting banks.’

‘Quite right, considering what’s been happening.’

‘Well, there’s that, of course, but I’ve never trusted them – something inspired by my mother. She was the type who preferred to keep her savings under the bed, although she died without much to show for it. Maybe that’s not the ideal way to hang on to your pennies.’ He smiled and the atmosphere lightened.

‘I wanted to talk to you about Hrólfur. You knew him well, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, pretty well. But he tended to keep people at arm’s length.’

Ari Thór decided to go straight to the heart of the matter. ‘Do you know of anyone who might have had a reason to, well, push him down the stairs?’

Pálmi looked up, clearly surprised by the question.

‘What? You don’t think that someone might have pushed him?’

‘Actually, no. But it’s a little too coincidental that Linda should be assaulted only a few days afterwards. It’s given us reason to look more closely into the fatal incident at the Dramatic Society. I understand that he and Úlfur were at loggerheads?’

‘No, I wouldn’t go that far, but they weren’t always in agreement,’ said Pálmi, biting his lip. ‘There’s an artistic temperament there, but they normally parted on good terms.’

‘Were you up in the balcony that evening?’

‘I went up there a couple of times. Most of the time I was watching from the auditorium.’

‘And you came home in the dinner break?’

‘Yes. I needed to make some changes to the script, so I came straight here.’

‘Did anyone see you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Is there anyone who could confirm that?’

‘Well, no.’

‘How about your visitors?’

‘No, as I said they’re using the basement flat. I didn’t see them during the dinner break.’

‘Did you and Hrólfur meet often?’

‘Not often. But occasionally he would invite Úlfur and me for coffee, or a glass of red wine. He kept a magnificent wine cellar.’

‘Expensive?’ Ari Thór felt like he was clutching at straws, looking for a motive – but it was better to leave no stone unturned.

‘Quite.’

‘Do you have any idea what will happen to that wine now?’

‘The wine?’

‘Who inherits it?’

‘I have no idea. To tell the truth, I don’t know any of his relatives, or even if he had any living.’

‘Had he made a will?”

‘Not that he ever mentioned to me,’ Pálmi said, with apparent sincerity.

‘Who did he speak to or see regularly in the town, apart from you and Úlfur?’

Pálmi paused, lost for a moment in his thoughts. ‘Hmm. He used to visit an old lady called Sandra every week.’

Sandra
. Ari Thór recalled that Ugla had also mentioned her, suggested that he visit her.

‘She’s been in the old people’s home these last few years. She’s not as strong as she used to be, although she’s as sharp as a knife. I think she must be ninety-five, bless her,’ Pálmi paused for a moment. ‘Then there’s the girl.’

‘Girl?’

‘Yes. Ugla.’

Ari Thór felt his pulse quicken. He tried not to catch Pálmi’s eye, fearing that he might give himself away.

‘Ugla. Yes, of course.’ He knew he would have to pursue this line of questioning to counter any suspicions that he knew Ugla better than might be thought appropriate. ‘Did they meet often?’

‘So I gather. She rented his basement but she continued to visit him after she moved out. Now she lives …’ Pálmi thought. ‘Yes, on Nordurgata, I think.’

‘That’s right,’ Ari Thór said without thinking.

Damn.

Pálmi didn’t seem to have noticed his slip, and it was obvious that he wanted to get rid of Ari Thór as quickly as possible.

There was a faint knock on the door and a very old lady appeared, accompanied by a tall man with a full beard, in his sixties, Ari Thór guessed.

These had to be the guests from Denmark. Pálmi switched to
Danish to introduce them. ‘Rosa and her son Mads. Ari Thór is from the police.’

Ari Thór stood up to shake their hands and spoke in English, not daring to try his Danish. He had taken Danish at school for many years, but had a hard time speaking it, although he could read it with little effort. The old lady spoke for both of them and her English was excellent although heavily accented. Mads stood behind her in silence.

‘What has Pálmi done?’ she asked curiously and looked deep into Ari Thór’s eyes with a warm smile.