The Silence of the Sea (38 page)

His legs felt as heavy as lead, every step a dragging effort, as he approached the door to the pilot house. A succession of horrifying images ran though his mind: Arna and Bylgja lying on the floor in shiny pools of blood. In his vision the pools were identical; his daughters twins to the last. Nausea mingled with the agony in Ægir’s chest until he thought he might suffer a heart attack. If something had happened to the girls as well, he would welcome the chance to die.

But it hadn’t, and the tightness in his chest abated, giving way to a dizzying rush of relief.

Arna and Bylgja were standing huddled at the back of the room, their eyes huge with incomprehension and stark terror. They did not run into his arms as he’d expected, and as he longed for them to. He ached with the desire to hug them tight and bury his face in their soft hair, if only for an instant. To hide from what was happening, from what he simply couldn’t bear. Closing the door softly behind him, he made a superhuman effort to stay calm. ‘Are you all right, girls?’ His voice sounded absurdly normal, as if they had fallen over while playing in the garden. Their eyes stretched even wider and he realised the effect his appearance must be having on them. ‘Thráinn and Halli are helping Mummy. It’ll be all right.’ It was the most terrible lie he had ever told them. ‘Are you injured?’

They shook their heads simultaneously, with a slight lessening of tension. ‘Where’s Mummy? Why isn’t she with you?’ Arna spoke as if she had hiccups, the tears not far away.

‘Mummy hurt herself and Halli and Thráinn are helping her.’ A bleak future stretched out before him. A future without Lára. He was assailed by ridiculous concerns; who would do the girls’ hair, or help them choose what to wear for birthday parties? It was almost impossible to assume a normal, reassuring manner. ‘But it’ll be all right. As long as you’re safe, everything will be all right.’ As he walked over to them, he realised they had not once looked up at his face; their eyes were fixed on his blood-soaked clothes.

‘Why did Mummy have a gun, Daddy?’ Bylgja began to weep. The tears were not accompanied by sobs but slid down her face in two rivers of silent grief and fear.

‘In case a bad man came, darling. The gun was for protection. To protect you and Mummy.’ He had reached them now and crouched down to their level. Unable to bear the bewilderment in their eyes, he struggled to make himself meet their gaze rather than hiding from it; they did not deserve to be let down like that. ‘What happened? Did you see what happened?’

They both spoke at once and in his present state he couldn’t tell who said what. The words emerged in a frantic gabble, punctuated by hiccups and the occasional sob. ‘Something banged against the door. Mummy pulled a gun out of her trousers and pointed it at the door. But it was only a piece of rubbish and she smiled at us and said she was just a bit stressed. We didn’t say anything, we just stared at the gun and then she looked all strange and went to put it back in her belt when … there was a bang. Mummy’s eyes opened very wide and we could see the whites all round them. Then she coughed and grabbed her tummy and told us to wait here. After that she went outside, and there was blood.’ They pointed to the trail that led to the door from the place where the accidental shot had been fired. Ægir had smudged the drops when he walked over them; he had seen so much blood outside that he hadn’t even noticed this light spattering.

‘My darlings, Mummy has injured her tummy.’ Ægir’s mouth was dry and his head felt hot. He came close to breaking down again and stopped speaking while he summoned his few remaining mental reserves. ‘Mummy hurt herself.’ He pulled them to him so they couldn’t witness his distress. His tears trickled into hair that smelt of the strawberry shampoo they had chosen in the Lisbon supermarket. If only they could be back there; if only he could reverse the irreversible. He snorted and did his best to get his emotions under control. He didn’t know how to cry; he’d never had any reason to since he was a little boy.

‘Did the gun shoot her?’ asked Arna as the sisters’ small arms slipped round his waist and clasped him tight, as if to force the right answer out of him. But the right answer was wrong.

‘Scratched her, sweetheart. It only scratched her. Not badly, and Thráinn and Halli are making her better.’ What had Thráinn been dreaming of to give Lára the revolver? And why on earth hadn’t he intervened? He should have known it would end badly; nothing could end well in this waterborne hell.

The door opened behind him and Arna and Bylgja tightened their grip convulsively. ‘Can I talk to you a minute, Ægir? In private.’ Halli’s voice was devoid of all feeling, which only made matters worse.

‘Wait here, girls. I won’t be a moment; I’m not going far. It’s all right.’ Ægir freed himself from their arms and left them, their faces distraught. ‘Please tell me you’ve stopped the bleeding.’ He wanted to get down on his knees, as if humility could help. ‘Please.’

Halli stared down at his feet. ‘We moved her into the saloon. You’d better go there. I’ll wait with the girls.’

‘No.’ Ægir straightened his back and discovered that his fists were clenched. He wanted to batter Halli’s face until it was unrecognisable and incapable of telling him what he didn’t want to hear. ‘You’re not staying with the girls.’ His mind raced, his thoughts dashing hither and thither so he couldn’t grasp any of them. Lára, the girls. It was
his
job to protect them. Not Halli’s. ‘I’m not taking my eyes off the girls. They’ll have to come with me.’

‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’ Halli continued to stare at the deck, as if fascinated with his shoes. ‘It’s really not a good idea.’

Ægir opened his mouth to speak, to shriek, but suddenly all the fight went out of him in the cold air. There was no point shouting or striking out; it would change nothing. ‘If anything happens to them, Halli, I’ll gouge your eyes out.’ He spoke without anger; it was a simple statement of fact.

‘I’ll look after them. I’d die rather than let anything happen to them.’ Halli was worldly enough to realise that the man in front of him was teetering on the edge. Awkwardly, he patted Ægir’s shoulder, then went into the pilot house, leaving him alone.

He should have stuck his head round the door to tell the girls to wait a little while with Halli while Daddy went to speak to Mummy, but he couldn’t do it. He was incapable of focusing on more than one thing at a time, and now it was Lára who lay either dead or dying on a sofa on board a yacht in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, hundreds of miles from the medical aid that might have saved her life. A great sob burst from his throat when he entered the saloon and saw her lying there.

In his headlong rush he bashed his shin violently against the coffee table, which the men had pushed to one side, and almost went flying. The girls’ colouring books were dislodged and some of the crayons rolled onto the floor but the captain managed to grab his arm in time to stop him falling. ‘Thanks.’ The courtesy was so incongruous in the circumstances that Ægir almost laughed. His mother’s childhood training was so ingrained that even the greatest calamity could not shake it.

‘She’s asleep.’ Still holding Ægir’s arm, Thráinn forced him to meet his eye. ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen. The bleeding’s slowed down; I bound the wound as tightly as I could but it may have nothing to do with the bandages: there may simply be very little blood left.’ He forced Ægir’s face back to his when he tried to look away. ‘I’m no doctor but I do know that it doesn’t look good. Sit with her and speak to her if she comes round. Tell her what she wants to hear, and remember that this may be your last chance to talk to her.’ Thráinn released his head, allowing Ægir to turn to Lára. ‘Let’s hope not – but it’s best to be prepared. I’ll wait outside.’

Ægir couldn’t give a damn whether Thráinn stayed or went. He fell to his knees beside his wife and clutched at the brightly coloured woollen blanket that they had probably used to carry her inside. He didn’t dare take her hand at first for fear of crushing it, for fear of being overwhelmed by rage at the unfairness of it all. Lára had never hurt a fly. She deserved better than this. Letting go of the blanket, he took her white hand in his. To his relief it felt hot and damp; he had been expecting her fingers to be cold. The blanket covering her looked disturbingly like a colourful shroud, so he pulled it off, revealing bare flesh and pink dressings that had no doubt been white when Thráinn applied them. The bullet appeared to have entered her abdomen beside the left hip. Ægir didn’t know if this was a good or a bad place, or if anything in the abdominal area was bad.

He squeezed his eyes shut and the tears spurted out. At first he stroked her hand blindly, then he forced himself to look at her again, concentrating on trying to speak, on groping for words that he would be reconciled to afterwards. He kissed her on the brow and temple and brushed the limp hair from her sweaty forehead. The fine lines that had distressed her so much seemed to have vanished, leaving her forehead unnaturally smooth. His mind blank of all else, he whispered this in her ear.

She opened her eyes, emitting a low croak that might have been a word, though he couldn’t make it out. Everything he had wanted to say came rushing to his lips and he poured out the words in case she could still hear him, though her spirit had departed. But she only stared at him with glassy eyes that would not close, giving no sign that she accepted his plea for forgiveness.

‘The blood turned out to belong to Lára.’ The detective shot a glance at his colleague who thumbed through the sheaf of papers he was carrying, then handed a page to his superior. This time there was no hint of cigarette smoke or chewing gum. Thóra hoped this wouldn’t affect his mood, but the alacrity with which his much younger subordinate jumped to obey him did not bode well. ‘The test results remove practically all doubt, though there’s always a small margin for error. You can have a copy if you like. I imagine this will be helpful for your case.’

‘It certainly will.’ Thóra took the paper and scanned the figures, though she understood little beyond the summary of results. ‘How did you get hold of Lára’s blood or DNA for comparison?’ She passed the paper back to the younger officer and accepted the offer of a copy.

‘They took a blood sample from her youngest daughter and also found some hairs in a brush in her make-up bag on the yacht. The results aren’t a hundred per cent conclusive, as I said; they never are. But they’re good enough for me and any judge.’ The detective was grave today and the only hospitality on offer was a glass of water, which Thóra had refused. It was just as well; the bitter police station coffee would have ruined the memory of the superior brew she had enjoyed earlier at the committee offices. ‘Rest assured that we’ve prioritised the analysis to make up for the fact that the murder inquiry got off the ground rather late in the day.’ He folded his hands on the desk before him. ‘Of course, that’s because we were originally under the impression that we were dealing with an accident; we can’t afford to launch costly investigations unless we’re certain that a crime has been committed.’

‘The blood stains were found on the sofa, you say?’ Thóra saw no point in discussing what was too late to change now. Would it have made any difference if the yacht had been treated as a crime scene from the beginning? She doubted it. Every time a new piece of evidence emerged it only served to confuse her more. In fact, she had yet to be convinced that any actual murders had been committed, and the police probably took the same view. ‘I don’t remember seeing any blood on the sofa; in fact, I don’t recall seeing a single drop of blood anywhere.’

‘There wasn’t much but it was enough to enable us to run tests. We didn’t spot it until forensics conducted an ultraviolet scan of the yacht and discovered traces on two of the four cushions. All from the same person – Lára.’

‘It doesn’t sound as if the bleeding can have been fatal.’

‘It’s hard to say. There were also signs that someone had cleaned up a trail of blood that led from the deck to the saloon. We can’t tell whether it was a minor accident or the result of something more serious. At any rate, there are no indications that large amounts of blood were spilt anywhere else on the yacht. But then we don’t know if it was an accident at all. Lára may have been stabbed or struck with a weapon of some kind.’ The policeman relieved his subordinate of the stack of papers. ‘Or shot, of course. This latest information puts a completely new light on the possible sequence of events.’

‘You mean the information about the revolver?’ Thóra asked, though the answer was obvious. She watched the young policeman awkwardly shuffling his feet; now that he had surrendered the documents to his superior, his role was undefined. With no part in the conversation and no chair available, he was forced to stand there beside his boss, pretending to be occupied. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve found it?’

‘No. We’re confident we’ve searched every inch of the ship but it’s always possible the gun’s still there. To be on the safe side, I’ve instigated an even more thorough examination which is ongoing as we speak.’

Although the yacht was large, the living quarters were limited and they were prepared to go over the whole place with a microscope. On the other hand, if the gun had ended up in the sea, they hadn’t a hope. ‘Have you had the results of the tests on the blood that was found between the tanks on the bottom deck?’

‘Yes. That was Halldór’s; the comparison was easier in that case since we have his body.’

Thóra began hastily talking to distract herself from the memory of that grisly discovery. ‘So, you have concrete evidence that Halldór and Loftur are dead, and it’s likely that something bad happened to Lára, but the fate of Thráinn, Ægir and the twins remains a mystery?’

‘You could put it like that, yes.’ At his shoulder the junior officer nodded sagely, as if to emphasise his superior’s reply.

‘And if their fate was the result of criminal action, there can’t be many suspects left.’

‘No.’ The detective fixed and held her gaze. ‘And one of those is your man, Ægir.’ The younger officer’s expression grew stern; anyone would have thought his role was to interpret their conversation through mime. Thóra studied him, wondering if she could train Bella to do the same. The secretary should be capable of arranging her features into a far more fearsome grimace than this callow youth. ‘I don’t know if you’re aware, but we took a sniffer dog over every inch of the yacht at the outset, with no result. Smuggling had seemed the most likely explanation but there’s absolutely no evidence of it. Moreover, the Portuguese narcotics division have confirmed that they received no tip-offs about anyone on board being involved in the drugs trade over there. In other words, we’ve pretty much ruled out that angle. Though I suppose the drugs could have been stashed in such a way that the sniffer dog wouldn’t be able to detect them once they’d been removed. But who could have been responsible? Having said that, it’s not hard to guess where they could have brought the stuff ashore if there was any: Grótta. In which case there would have been people waiting to receive the goods and the smuggler too.’