The Silence of the Sea (45 page)

Thóra paused for breath before carrying on. ‘Karítas and Snævar give contradictory statements about what happened next. She asserts that Snævar killed Halldór, whereas he insists that
she
murdered him. I doubt the mystery will ever be solved, any more than many other details of this case. It’s clear, though, that after Halldór’s leg had been put in a cast, Snævar took him back to the hotel where he slept it off for most of the day. Meanwhile, Snævar rang Karítas from his friend’s mobile and they agreed to meet down by the yacht. There Snævar set to work, cramming the PA’s body into a large bin-bag and hiding it at the bottom of a big chest freezer. They made a deal that he would throw it into the sea in return for a share of the cash, unaware that this would never be forthcoming. The police believe that after Halldór woke up to find himself in a plaster cast, he went down to the harbour and discovered what was going on. He was furious and threatened to report them, after which one or both of them shut him up by drowning him. He may simply have fallen in during the struggle and been unable to save himself because of his injury. Instead of helping him, they didn’t fish him out until it was too late. Presumably, with the body in the freezer, they were eager at all costs to avoid the unwanted attention that a drowned man would attract.’

‘Which of them is more likely to have killed him?’

‘I’d guess Karítas. She had much more to lose at this stage. But it could just as well have been Snævar. In any case, Halldór’s body ended up on board like the PA’s.’

‘My God.’ The woman rubbed the corners of her eyes behind her glasses. ‘I didn’t know people like that existed.’

‘I’m afraid so.’ Thóra deliberately didn’t remind them that Ægir himself had probably succumbed to the temptation of Karítas’s money while he was in Lisbon with his family. Thóra was fairly convinced that the safe had turned out to contain a fortune in cash and that he had removed it. She hadn’t a clue what he had done with it but it was quite possible that the money had influenced his decision to travel home by ship, since it would have been easier to smuggle it back to Iceland by sea than by air. But his parents didn’t need to hear any of this. Things were bad enough as it was. ‘Their next actions can probably be blamed on the fact that they were in a state of shock; they decided that Snævar should join the crew, posing as Halldór, throw the two bodies overboard during the voyage, and keep up the pretence that nothing was wrong. Karítas dyed his dark hair blond to make him look more like his friend. The other crew members hadn’t met either Halldór or Snævar before, so he had a good chance of getting away with it.’

‘What were they thinking of? How could they imagine it would work?’

‘Apparently, their original idea was that just before the yacht reached land Snævar should jump ship, making it look as if Halldór must have fallen overboard and drowned. Accidents like that aren’t particularly unusual, so it was unlikely to have aroused much suspicion. Then Snævar would pretend that he had been waiting at home with a broken leg after flying back from Lisbon. As it turned out, it never occurred to anyone to check his alibi. After all, Snævar’s leg appeared to be broken and he had papers to prove it from the hospital in Lisbon because Halldór had used his health insurance card. No one thought for a moment that he could have been involved.’ Thóra hesitated. ‘And he would almost certainly have got away with it if Halldór had been the only one to disappear. The investigation of one missing person is nothing compared to a case in which an entire yacht-load of people have vanished into thin air.’

‘I don’t know if I can bear to hear any more.’ Margeir’s expression was grim. ‘These people are sick.’

‘If you don’t want to hear the rest, I can leave it at that. But when this despicable pair are called to the dock, you won’t be able to avoid reading about the case or seeing it on the news. It’ll be impossible to block it out.’ She had resolved beforehand to leave out various details, such as the fact that Snævar had decided to chop off Halldór’s legs, reasoning that it would be best if his body washed ashore as proof that he had fallen overboard, but at the same time needing to disguise the fact that he had a broken leg. As bodies washed up by the sea often have a limb or two missing, he reckoned it wouldn’t look suspicious. But he alone knew why he had amputated both legs rather than just one. Perhaps he thought it would look more plausible as sea damage if both were missing. After this, he had stolen Halldór’s splint and plaster cast to bind round his own leg.

Thóra also left out the description of how Snævar had originally tried to hide Halldór’s body in his own cabin. When the smell of decomposition grew increasingly obvious, Snævar had to find a new place for the corpse. First he tried to disguise it with perfume that he had filched from Lára and Ægir’s room. But when that failed to mask the stench, he stuffed it into a freezer that was located in a storeroom adjoining the engine room. There the body remained until Snævar wrapped it in canvas and hung it over the side of the ship so that when he eventually chucked it overboard, it would look as if it had been immersed in the sea rather than deep-frozen. First he removed the legs using an axe that was kept in the pilot house, taking the precaution of putting his own shoes on the feet in case they got caught in a fishing net or washed up somewhere. This was to ensure that those who survived the voyage would identify the legs as Halli’s. Then Snævar turned off the ship’s main engine so that he could push Halldór’s body out through a hatch which couldn’t be opened while the vessel was under way. The navigation computer confirmed that by this point they were only a day’s journey from port.

But Snævar made a fatal mistake in the final stretch. After tethering the body outside the hatch, he locked the storeroom behind him in case Ægir thought of trying to escape with the girls on one of the jet skis. On his way back upstairs to dispose of Halli’s legs, he ran into Ægir and apparently murdered him, losing the key in the struggle. By the time he realised this he was too close to shore and had no time to search for it. As a result, he was unable to jettison Halli’s body as planned.

After his return home, the news of the police examination of the yacht and the collection of forensic evidence had driven Snævar frantic with anxiety that he would be betrayed by the presence of his DNA on Halli’s body. His chance of removing the evidence when he and Karítas went on board was thwarted by an inquisitive nightwatchman and they were forced to flee. So when Snævar was offered the opportunity to go on board with Thóra, he planned to pretend to stumble on Halli’s body by chance, in the hope that this would explain any forensic traces linking him to the corpse. As it was, his friend was in such a horrific state of decomposition that he didn’t need to force himself to vomit; the reaction was involuntary. And his plan had worked.

‘I want to hear the rest.’ Sigrídur jutted out her chin as if she could handle it, though her wet eyelashes told a different story. ‘Go on.’

‘Unfortunately, not much more can be established with any certainty. Snævar insists that he had no part in any other death, and is sticking to his story that all he did was deal with the bodies for Karítas. She, on the other hand, claims that he gave her a very different account after his return home, in a long phone call that his telephone company confirms took place. According to her, Snævar killed Loftur because Loftur had worked out that it must have been Snævar who threw the body of the woman in the freezer overboard. It wasn’t hard for him to guess, since only two people could have done it, him or Snævar – or rather Halli, as he was calling himself. When Loftur accused him of this, Snævar drowned him in the Jacuzzi, which Loftur was in the process of heating up at the time. After that Snævar invented a story about a mysterious stowaway but the others weren’t convinced, so when the net began to tighten around him he killed them too – the captain, Thráinn, when the poor man fell asleep on watch.’

‘How did he kill …?’ Margeir couldn’t finish the sentence but there was no need. Thóra was well aware of what he was asking.

‘According to Karítas, Lára died as the result of an accidental shot. No one knows if that’s yet another lie but the gun that should have been on board is missing. Snævar told Karítas that Ægir threw the weapon overboard, but I very much doubt that. The police believe that Snævar murdered her as well as the others.’

‘And Ægir?’

‘He supposedly killed him last. Karítas claims this was unintentional. Snævar had hoped that Ægir and the girls would stay out of the way below deck and that he himself would be able to keep a low profile once they reached Iceland. Ægir would believe that Halli, who had vanished, was the murderer and no one would ever find out that Snævar had been posing as his friend on board. However, I find it hard to believe that he’d have taken such a risk, so I’m guessing that he killed Ægir to save his own skin. If everyone on board disappeared, people would put it down to an accident and no one would suspect a man with a broken leg whose only connection with the yacht had been before the vessel had left harbour. Apparently he went around the ship and removed all the mobile phones and cameras he could find in case he appeared in any pictures. Then he flung them all in the sea. During his time on board he had taken care to touch as little as possible and to wipe away his fingerprints when no one was looking. So there weren’t many prints to give him away. In fact, his actions seem to have been carefully premeditated, which suggests that he wasn’t just Karítas’s innocent dupe as he would like us to think.’

‘How did he get ashore? He was waiting with us on the docks when the yacht put in.’ Sigrídur’s voice was angry, as if she had let herself be tricked and should have seen through him from the beginning.

‘He set the autopilot to bring the yacht close enough in for him to jump into the sea and swim to shore. He was wearing a wetsuit, which he apparently knew how to use, and reached land safely without being noticed. He had brought along a change of clothes, the splint and the plaster cast in a waterproof bag, along with the crutches that had been lent to Halldór in Portugal. Afterwards, the yacht continued on its pre-plotted course, sailing in a large circle in Faxaflói bay to give Snævar time to be waiting on the docks when she entered the harbour. The whole thing had been planned to prevent suspicion from falling on him. He even wore a woolly hat to hide his freshly shaven head; I don’t know if you remember that.’

‘Yes.’ They both nodded, but the woman still had reservations. ‘The harbour may not be far from Grótta but it’s still quite a distance on two feet, let alone on crutches. And he wasn’t out of breath.’

‘He waited until the last minute to put on the cast, which was only loosely fixed round his leg. As for his journey from Grótta; Karítas had ordered her mother to park her car in the neighbourhood with the keys under the seat, two days before the yacht reached land. It was the plan she and Snævar had originally made, when only Halli was supposed to go missing. She kept up her end of the bargain and claims she had no idea what lengths Snævar had gone to during the voyage. Her mother has since confirmed the part about the car; she was under the impression that some mechanic friend of her daughter’s, who supposedly ran a garage in the area, was going to service the car. But in reality it was for Snævar. He changed his clothes and fastened the sawn-off plaster cast round his leg with adhesive tape and string. Then he tied a plastic bag over it and drove down to the harbour where he took up position as if nothing had happened.’

‘God, I wish we hadn’t met him there. I wish we’d never gone to meet the yacht; that we’d never set eyes on that man.’ Margeir rubbed his forehead as if to obliterate the memory. ‘We were just so excited. I’d asked my cousin in the Coast Guard to give us a shout, whatever the time of day or night, when the yacht appeared on their radar. We were worried because we hadn’t heard from them, so we were immensely happy and relieved when we got his call.’

‘Snævar sabotaged the communications equipment, as well as the emergency button that could conceivably have saved them. He disconnected the aerials, with the result that the radios hardly had any range, though we know that at least one ship tried to contact the
Lady K
to warn them about a container that had blown off a vessel near the area they were sailing in. They didn’t think they’d got through.’

Thóra saw that this was enough horror for one day. These people needed some good news, though she had not yet answered the most important question about the fate of those on board. Nevertheless, she felt it would be better to break it up before going any further. ‘I’ve sent the insurance company the court’s verdict that Ægir and Lára are presumed dead, along with a declaration from the police stating that the investigation into their disappearance is in its final stages and that everything points to their having been murdered. The company may send you another letter trying to object, but only for form’s sake. I’ll reply on your behalf. All going well, the insurance money should be paid out in the next few months.’ The couple murmured at this but didn’t say anything aloud. Money mattered little in comparison to what they had lost. Fortunately, however, she had more good news for them. ‘It seems you’ve also passed the Child Protection Agency’s evaluation with flying colours and I’ve been informed unofficially that you’ll be granted very generous access rights to Sigga Dögg. A proviso will be made that whoever adopts her should be fully apprised of the tragic circumstances. So you’ll continue to play an important role in her life as her grandparents. In that respect nothing will change.’

‘Nothing will change. So you say.’ The woman shook herself and shivered. ‘But nothing will be the same either.’ Thóra didn’t reply. The woman was quite right; of course nothing would be like it was before.

Her husband coughed and turned his head to look out of the window. ‘What happened to the girls? I notice you avoided mentioning them but I need to know. As little as I want to.’

Thóra stared down at the table. ‘It’s not clear. Snævar flatly denies having laid a finger on them and swears that they simply vanished. He says he searched high and low for them but with no success. As matters stand, nobody knows if he’s lying, but the yacht did circle for a while as if looking for something that had fallen overboard and the location fits more or less with his statement.’