The Silence of the Sea (36 page)

‘Methinks the laddie doth protest too much.’ The marks of strain were showing on Thráinn’s face and the weariness in his voice was audible. He lowered himself onto a wooden crate by the wall and leant backwards until his head encountered the steel bulkhead with a low thud. ‘I’m going to let you two search in here. Call me if you find anyone. I’ll sit tight.’

Halli turned to Ægir, having clearly given up all hope of persuading the captain of his innocence. ‘You believe me, don’t you?’

‘I don’t know who to believe. I’m working on the assumption that you’re both equally dangerous. It’s the safest option.’ Ægir ran his eyes over the engines that stood in the middle of the room. He was fairly sure that in addition to the ship’s engine there were two generators, one probably for backup, and some pumps. ‘Where shall we begin?’ He took a couple of steps away from Halli, who had come unnervingly close. ‘This is your domain so you must know it inside out. It’s not as if there are many hiding places here.’ He glimpsed a door at the back of the room, behind one of the generators. ‘What’s that?’

‘The door to the storeroom. Might as well start there.’ Halli now sounded subdued, as if he had given up trying to win Ægir round and would simply accept whatever happened. The effect of this was unexpected; for the first time Ægir was inclined to believe that Halli might actually be innocent. Which meant what? That Thráinn was the one to watch? They walked towards the storeroom, staying ludicrously far apart, as if each expected any minute to be stabbed by the other. Abruptly, Halli halted, and Ægir almost cannoned into him. ‘I can smell perfume.’

Ægir sniffed and became aware of the familiar heavy, sweet odour that had filled the air outside their cabin on the first evening. Perhaps the fragrance emanated from the yacht’s air conditioning system, though it was highly unlikely that they would use air freshener in the engine room. Perhaps the bottle Lára had been hunting for had found its way down here and smashed. It wouldn’t be the first time on this trip that something peculiar like that had happened. ‘Where’s it coming from?’ He sniffed hard, noticing as he did so that his sense of smell was becoming numbed to the scent. It was still present but there was no way of guessing its origin.

Halli turned in a circle, trying to work out the source. ‘For fuck’s sake. I definitely smelt it.’

‘Perhaps the mystery passenger is a woman,’ called Thráinn, who had been eavesdropping on their conversation from where he was sitting. It was hard to tell if he was joking or serious. Neither of them replied.

The storeroom was larger than Ægir had expected. Inside were stacks of toilet paper, cleaning products and linen folded on shelves. Against one wall stood a wine cooler and a chest freezer, and he shivered at the thought of lifting the lid. Halli, on the other hand, went straight to work, reaching behind the shelves to bang on the walls in case there was a hidden compartment behind them. Ægir aimlessly pushed aside some cardboard boxes; they were far too small to hide a person, but he felt he should be doing something. ‘No one here.’ Then he braced himself and opened the freezer. He was met not by a blast of cold air but by a disgusting stench that mingled nauseatingly with the perfume that seemed to be growing stronger again. Holding his nose, Ægir peered inside. It was crammed with vacuum-packed meat and vegetables that would never be eaten now. ‘Shut the lid on that bloody thing.’ Halli held his elbow over his nose. ‘We turned off the electricity supply to that bugger to save energy. Close it before I throw up.’

Ægir dropped the lid, then stepped out of the storeroom and walked over to Thráinn. ‘What now? We’ve been over every inch of the yacht. There’s no one here.’

‘We haven’t been down to the bottom deck where the tanks are yet.’ Thráinn was so red-eyed with exhaustion that he looked like a vampire. ‘We should probably take a look down there. Otherwise there’s little to show for our efforts.’

‘Let’s get on with it then.’ Ægir may not have been awake as long as Thráinn but he was shattered too. It ground one down having to be constantly on the alert. ‘I want to get back to Lára and the girls.’

‘They’re fine. The person they’ve got to fear is almost certainly down here with us.
One
of
us, more to the point.’ Thráinn closed his eyes briefly, then slapped his thighs and stood up. ‘Best get this bullshit over with.’

Ægir turned to call Halli but was stopped in his tracks by an extraordinarily loud, penetrating crack that reverberated around the room. ‘What the hell was that?’ When he turned, he saw that Thráinn had set off at a run towards the exit. Without looking back, the captain shouted: ‘A shot. Presumably from the bridge.’

The sickly sweet smell of perfume intensified until Ægir thought it would suffocate him. He raced after Thráinn as if the devil were at his heels.

Photocopies of the ship’s log lay strewn over Thóra’s desk. They had arrived in a muddle from the police, which meant she had to try and work out the chronology from the context. Although the entries were dated, it complicated matters when a day extended over more than one page. Nor did the missing leaves help, since they were probably the very ones that had contained the most significant information. It seemed odd that whoever was responsible for tearing them out hadn’t simply tossed the whole book overboard.

She had been disconcerted to discover that the log was written by hand; it felt somehow macabre to be puzzling over the handwriting of a man who was missing, presumed dead; to read his comments from the beginning of the voyage on the satisfactory condition of the engines and the yacht in general; his reflections on the weather forecast and his list of the crew and passengers – people who had believed they had five days’ pleasant cruising ahead of them. Nothing in the first entry gave any indication that their fates had been decided in advance; on the contrary, everything seemed to have been in good order. To be fair, the captain did mention that the seal placed on the door by order of the resolution committee had been broken, but he did not seem overly concerned by this, noting that there was no sign of a break-in or sabotage. However, since neither the captain nor the other crew members had any experience of forensic investigations, they might well have failed to notice important evidence. For example, it apparently hadn’t occurred to the captain that the person who broke the seal might have had a key. After all, why break in if you could simply unlock the door?

Next came a brief explanation of the passengers’ presence on board, accompanied by a few words of concern about the necessity of ensuring the two girls’ safety during the trip. Although the captain did not actually curse Snævar for his accident, his displeasure was easy to read between the lines. He was far from happy about allowing Ægir to step into the breach, but had been constrained to fulfil the conditions of the minimum safe manning document and to keep to schedule. These initial entries were excellent news for Thóra’s case. It was plain not only that Ægir had been enlisted by complete coincidence but that it had been at the captain’s behest rather than his own. Indeed, it was hard to see how Ægir could have planned a life insurance scam that would have required a complete stranger to propose that he sailed with the
Lady K
. There could be no arguing with that.

Neither did the final entry in the logbook presage any abnormal turn of events, though presumably the situation must have changed shortly afterwards since all the subsequent pages had been ripped out. The captain had recorded that the communications systems were malfunctioning and that the crew were working to fix them. At that point the yacht had still been able to make contact to a limited extent by radiotelephone. But apart from the captain’s barely intelligible conversation with the British trawler a day later, no one was aware of having heard from the yacht. If things had gone to hell at the point where the pages ran out, one would have thought the crew would at least have tried to transmit a distress signal or report the problem. But they had not, and it was disturbing to think that one person may have remained alive; the one who had sailed the yacht close to Grótta and from there to Reykjavík harbour with that strange detour out into Faxaflói bay. It was possible that the boat had taken this extraordinary route because the person who set its course had not known how to program the autopilot or GPS. And that did not look good for Thóra’s case; the only people on board with little experience of boats were Ægir and Lára – and the twins, of course, though she had to assume they couldn’t possibly count.

Thóra’s eyes ached from poring over the entries in the hope of spotting something that was missing, or of gaining a deeper insight into what had happened. She gathered the pages together, feeling frustrated yet again by the absent entries. What she wouldn’t give to know what they had contained, to learn from the captain’s illegible, old-fashioned script the answer to the flood of questions that plagued her; the explanation for the body he had reported over the faulty radio, and a description of the events leading up to the passengers’ disappearance – if that is how the situation had unfolded. Perhaps catastrophe had struck without warning, but if so it was hard to understand why the pages had been torn out. Unless it had been done for another reason – to plug a hole, for instance, or even to use for drawing pictures on. Neither explanation seemed plausible but there was little point wasting time on wondering; the missing pages would be floating somewhere in the sea by now or lying on the ocean floor where the fish would try in vain to interpret their secrets. The remnants of the ship’s log, the certificates of seaworthiness and other relevant documents would have to suffice for her report. Whether this would satisfy the insurance company’s queries remained to be seen.

After adjusting the report to include this new information, Thóra read it over for what seemed like the hundredth time before sending it to the printer in Bragi’s office, feeling dispirited. Its contents were so over-familiar by now that she could no longer determine how well she had succeeded in her task. It was time to take a break and clear her head with a cup of coffee. After that she would decide whether to send it to Ægir’s parents in its current form.

‘Fucking weather,’ growled Bella from reception. Melting snow dripped from the shoulders of her anorak and flakes glittered in her hair.

Thóra dodged to avoid a shower as the secretary shook herself like a dog. ‘Where have you been?’

‘I had to run out to the district court with some stuff for Bragi.’ Bella stamped her feet to dislodge the compacted ice from under her shoes. Two dark footprints showed for an instant on the light-coloured parquet but quickly lost their shape on the warm wood. ‘I had to park bloody miles away, so I happened to drive past Faxagardur on my way back. It looked as if the police were sniffing around that yacht of yours.’

‘Really?’ Thóra didn’t know why she was surprised. The investigation might have uncovered a new detail or perhaps they were repeating their tests or subjecting a larger area to detailed forensic analysis. ‘Could you see what they were up to?’

‘No, I just noticed two police cars parked right beside the boat and a cop wandering around on deck. Maybe they were having a go in the Jacuzzi.’

Ignoring this, Thóra decided it was time for some fresh air.

The coffee provided by the resolution committee was far superior to the law firm brew and Thóra felt her dissatisfaction receding, despite having had a wasted journey so far. Ægir’s parents had been out when she called and only with considerable difficulty had she been able to cram the report into their letterbox. Papers and envelopes projected from the opening at all angles, like a failed flower arrangement. It was not hard to understand why: what could possibly come in the post that would matter to them now? In the end she had been forced to weed out some of the contents – junk mail and other unimportant-looking items – to make room. To ensure they received the report, she would have to ring them and let them know it was there. It would not do for the envelope to languish unnoticed among the yellowing newspapers for the duration. In addition, she needed to pass on the information that Ægir’s salary would be paid as usual, and that her conversation with social services about guaranteeing access had proved encouraging. It made a change to be the bearer of good news.

‘Are you making any progress?’ Fannar asked. ‘We’re doing our nuts here over the lack of information. The police keep giving us the brush-off.’ He was sitting facing her in a small meeting room, smartly dressed as usual, looking for all the world like one of the young bankers who used to swagger around the city streets and bars in the days before the crash. ‘Have they managed to clarify things at all?’

Thóra took another sip of coffee and shook her head. She was no better than Bella, inadvertently spraying the room with drops of water. Some landed on the gleaming table and she put down her cup to wipe them away, not wanting to be reminded of her insufferable secretary. ‘No, sadly. The only fact that seems incontrovertible is that Ægir and his family are dead. Nobody’s holding out any more hope that they could have survived.’

Fannar did not look particularly moved by this news. ‘Did anyone really believe that?’

Thóra shrugged; carefully, to avoid another shower. ‘Well, people tend to cling to hope for as long as they can. But now that two of the seven have turned up dead, it’s greatly reduced the chances that the others could have been saved – and time is passing.’ She kept quiet about the possibility that one or more of the people might have made it ashore. She had no intention of sharing with Fannar any details that were not in the public domain. The trick was to give the impression that she was revealing more than she should. ‘But you’ll keep that to yourself, won’t you?’

‘Absolutely. You can count on me.’ A gleam entered Fannar’s eyes. ‘Nothing we discuss here will go any further. That’s why I chose this room. Inevitably, everyone’s dying to know what’s happening because Ægir was one of us.’ He must think she was a complete idiot. Before she even reached her car he would have shared this new information with at least one or two of his colleagues. And by the time she got back to her office on Skólavördustígur, those one or two would doubtless have started spreading the gossip, and so it would snowball.