Why Did You Lie? (22 page)

Some chance. She knew from experience that the right of parents to mistreat their offspring was much stronger than the child’s right to a safe and happy childhood. If the situation thirty years ago was anything like it was today, the boy had probably been left to fend for himself.

The ticking of the clock on the wall was driving Nína crazy. Her eyes kept straying to it, only to be reminded how slowly time was passing. Her boss, Örvar, was playing the silent card to lure her into filling the awkward gap with some nonsense that he could then refute. But although there were countless things Nína wanted to say, she was not going to give in. She examined her nails, realised how dirty they were and placed her hands composedly in her lap. Then she looked up and made herself smile at Örvar, to convey the message that she could play this game longer than him if necessary – even if she did look as though she’d been dragged through a hedge backwards after her sojourn in the filthy basement.

It worked. ‘There are a finite number of ways to commit suicide, Nína. Your husband chose a fairly common … way out. The documents in the basement go back decades and, quite frankly, it would be surprising if you didn’t come across another case that was similar.’

‘There are plenty of ways to kill yourself.’ Nína had to discipline her voice to stop it wobbling. She straightened her spine. ‘Are you seriously trying to tell me that it’s only to be expected that Thröstur should have attempted suicide in the same way and in the very same spot as a man who lived in his flat thirty years before, who was also a journalist? Are you saying that doesn’t surprise you at all? Two men of almost the same age, who aren’t known to have suffered any major setbacks that might explain their actions? Don’t you at least find it strange?’

Örvar looked unwell; he seemed tired and couldn’t hide how much he wanted this conversation to be over. ‘Well, of course it’s a bit odd. But I don’t see what it changes. Do you?’

‘I’m just trying to point out that the incidents are weirdly similar and involve a worryingly large number of coincidences. In addition to the fact that when Thröstur was a boy he was mixed up somehow with the first suicide. Surely that must make you a bit curious?’ Nína tried to read her boss’s face. ‘It’s all right for me to look into this, isn’t it? Into why the other reports are missing, I mean? Judging by what it says here, there should have been lots of them.’

‘There could be all kinds of explanations for that. Perhaps they ended up in a file belonging to one of the old hands here at the station. Not everything finds its way down to the archives, I can tell you.’ He waved the report. ‘Nína, the affair was investigated at the time, you only have to read this to see that it received far more attention than it warranted. But nothing suspicious seems to have emerged, so the police would have turned to more pressing affairs. The idea of reopening the case thirty years after the event is utterly absurd.’ He replaced the document on his desk and pushed his face towards hers. Instinctively she drew back. ‘I promise you, Nína, we did everything in our power to rule out the possibility of any criminal involvement in your husband’s case. You can hardly believe we would fail to look after one of our own?’

Nína had to choke back a laugh. The last thing she wanted was to mix up her formal complaint with Thröstur’s case; there was too much at stake, so she couldn’t speak her mind. She cleared her throat. ‘When Thröstur’s death was examined nobody knew about his connection to this old incident. So no one can have looked into it.’

‘Connection!’ The word emerged with the force of an expletive and Örvar pulled away from her again. ‘Why not let our imaginations run wild and try to picture what possible crime could be behind all this?’ He cast around as if searching for an answer. ‘Hmm. I just can’t think of any. Can you? If you can come up with a good idea I’ll put someone on the case immediately.’

Nína opened and closed her mouth several times as if she had been ordered to imitate a fish. ‘I don’t have any theories. If I did, I wouldn’t have bothered asking you to reopen the case.’ The courage she had summoned up in order to confront her boss in his lair had now drained away. ‘I’m trying to do the right thing in the circumstances, by coming to you instead of conducting a private investigation. I’m well aware that I’m not neutral and would run the risk of over-interpreting things.’

‘Like now, I’m afraid.’ Örvar hesitated. To give him his due, he didn’t seem to derive any pleasure from speaking to her like this. Quite the opposite, in fact. ‘You’re on a wild-goose chase, Nína. You’re just putting off the inevitable – the need to deal with your own trauma. Unfortunately, the police’s limited finances mean we can’t help you in your search for something that doesn’t exist.’ He glanced at the calendar in his notebook. ‘Take some leave, Nína. You could do with it. I’ll find someone to take over in the basement.’

Nína licked her dry lips. She did her best to maintain her composure, though she wanted to scream. ‘Maybe I will. Especially if I’m left with no alternative but to investigate the matter myself. Then I’ll need all the free time I can get.’

Örvar seemed oddly thrown. ‘If you go on leave, Nína, you’re to do just that. You’re not to try and investigate anything.’ He coughed and snapped his diary shut. His bony hand lay on top of it as if he expected the book to spring open of its own accord. The gnarled vein in the back of his hand showed a rapid pulse.

‘I won’t be able to help myself. If no one else is going to look into it, I’ll have to do it myself.’ Sometimes it was best to be blunt.

Her boss emitted a low sigh. ‘This is ridiculous.’ He shook his head. His eyes searched her face while his fingers tried to find some means of occupying themselves on the desktop. ‘There’s no chance this will turn out well, Nína.’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t believe my situation can get any worse.’

‘That’s what you think.’ The furrows in his face deepened and filled with shadows. ‘I’m going to suggest a compromise which I hope you’ll accept. It goes against the grain but I’ve always had time for you. You’re conscientious and tenacious when you want to be, and you’ve often taken on more than your share. I want you to get over this and be yourself again, so I’m going to stick my neck out.’ Unable to resist the temptation, he lapsed into silence again, but Nína was not going to fall for that trick. What was she supposed to say? ‘Thank you so much’? After a brief pause he carried on: ‘I’ll look into it myself, though I doubt I can spare much time. Still, I’ll do my best. What do you say to that?’

Nína wavered. This was not at all what she had been after. She had been hoping that the police would launch a proper inquiry. ‘OK. But I’m not going on leave. I want to carry on working.’ She would be in a better position to keep Örvar to his promise if she was at the station – and to carry on digging into the case for herself.

‘Fine.’ He couldn’t conceal his chagrin. ‘Fine. We’ll leave it at that then. For now.’

Nína rose to her feet and picked up the report. ‘Thank you.’ She turned in the doorway and their eyes met briefly before she went out into the corridor. She rolled up the report and slapped it on her palm as she tried to bring order to her thoughts. One thing was clear: her boss’s shifty gaze and body language had indicated that he knew a lot more about the case than he was letting on.

Chapter 18

27 January 2014

The blood-soaked sleeping bag lies in a crumpled heap on the floor. They sit huddled around, staring at it as if they expect it to speak if only it could find the right words. All they have been able to agree on since this morning is that they must stop the bag from blowing away, in case it holds the clue to Tóti’s fate. But an argument broke out over how to touch it, since none of them wanted to contaminate it with their DNA or fingerprints. Finally, Helgi took it upon himself to roll it up, armed with plastic bags on both hands. And now it is lying on the floor between them, as a reminder of what has happened.

‘I didn’t lay a finger on him.’ Ívar breaks the silence. He is utterly deflated now, his momentary madness over. It was the writing on the wall outside that caused him to go berserk; he started yelling incomprehensibly, pointing at Heida and Helgi in turn in his fury. One minute he was blaming them for the graffiti, the next he suddenly seemed to think Tóti had written it. Then he sank down, utterly overcome. ‘I swear to you, I didn’t touch him.’

‘Nobody’s saying you did.’ Helgi removes his gaze from the sleeping bag and studies his companions instead. Ívar’s eyes are flickering around in a vain hunt for something to fix on.

‘He must have fallen,’ Helgi says. ‘Got up to relieve himself and lost his footing. If there’s anything else behind it, the police, or whoever investigates this sort of accident, will find out. Let’s think about something else.’

‘Like what? Hunger? The lack of water?’ Heida snaps and buries her face in her knees. She still hasn’t forgiven Helgi for allowing Ívar to come in. ‘And why’s there blood in the sleeping bag if he fell while taking a pee?’

‘I don’t know. Like I said, it’s not our job to find out. All we need to do is sit tight and wait.’ Helgi pauses and takes stock of what’s happened, still feeling faintly stunned at this turn of events. He seems to be the only one capable of thinking straight. Heida and Ívar are behaving as if they’ve lost the plot. Both complain of headaches; Heida blaming the lack of air inside, though she won’t be persuaded to stick her head out of the door. Ívar also refuses point blank to go outside, as if he’s prepared to spend the rest of his life in the lighthouse, if necessary. He seems to be under the impression that some dreadful fate awaits him outside. Clearly he can’t stop thinking about the name on the wall.

Helgi avoids any mention of it, for fear the man might go berserk again, though there’s no denying that he’d like to interrogate him, watch him squirm. It’s an odd feeling, unlike him, and Helgi guesses it must be a consequence of finding himself thrust into the role of leader. His leadership abilities, limited though they are, seem to go hand in hand with other, darker qualities. But he resists the temptation to needle Ívar, reminding himself that in the circumstances he must shoulder the responsibility for their situation.

If someone had told Helgi at the beginning of this trip that he would have to take charge and ensure the group held on to their sanity, he would have laughed in disbelief. He’s no leader and in the past the kind of people who possess such qualities have wanted little to do with him, no doubt because of his weight. In dodgeball practice, the kids always used to choose him second to last, ahead only of Regína who had glasses and a crutch. He was invited to parties by the other children in his class only because it was forbidden to leave anyone out. How is he to know what a real leader would do in this situation? Well, he can’t bail out now; he’ll just have to do his best. There’s no alternative. ‘Do either of you have a pack of cards? Maybe we could play whist or something to pass the time.’

‘You need four people for whist.’ Ívar has finally brought himself to look at the sleeping bag.

‘You want to play cards? Are you kidding?’ Heida raises her head and shoots Helgi a contemptuous look. But her face has at least lost its frozen expression. Perhaps Helgi’s leadership abilities consist of being useless enough to shake the others out of their despair.

‘It was just a suggestion. We can’t sit here in silence forever.’

‘I can.’ Heida clamps her lips shut and buries her face again.

‘What the hell happened? I just don’t get it. I don’t.’ Ívar shakes his head and it appears to Helgi that his eyes are wet. The man who only yesterday had seemed capable of tearing nails out of planks with his bare teeth.

‘You’re not fooling anyone, pretending to be surprised.’ Heida’s comment is almost inaudible.

‘Pretending to be surprised? What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?’ Ívar’s cheeks are burning and if any tears had crept into his eyes they are gone now.

‘What do you think it means?’ Heida doesn’t look up.

‘How many times do I have to say it? I didn’t go anywhere near the guy.’ Ívar is back to his usual self and Helgi’s not sure this is an improvement. His voice rises ominously and his face is contorted with ill-concealed fury. Before Helgi can think of any means of pacifying them, Heida speaks up again.

‘How do you sleep at night? Lightly? Deeply?’ Although her face is still buried, it’s obvious who she’s addressing.

‘Average. I don’t know. How should I know? When I’m asleep I’m asleep; it’s not like I can check.’ Ívar’s face darkens further and Helgi doesn’t like the way things are going. He may be a useless leader but clearly he’s an even worse peacemaker.

‘Listen to me. If you didn’t go near Tóti, it must have been one of us two. But do you seriously expect us to believe that you wouldn’t have woken up? Space is really tight on the gallery. I couldn’t have moved up there last night without risking treading on you, and as for Helgi …’ Heida rolls her head on her knees. ‘So that leaves only you.’

‘Stop it.’ Helgi is afraid this will end in disaster. ‘There’s no way we can establish what happened. Maybe Tóti started bleeding internally and vomited blood into his sleeping bag. Maybe someone else came here in the night. There are countless other possibilities. It doesn’t have to be one of us.’

‘Internal bleeding! Jesus wept,’ Heida shouts, exasperated.

All right, the idea is absurd, Helgi agrees, but it was all he could come up with off the top of his head. Now Ívar nods at him with a conspiratorial wink: men against women.

Heida ignores the provocation. ‘And who on earth could have been here? If anyone could land, we’d have been evacuated hours ago.’

Helgi decides to stay out of it. All he’s doing is making things worse. Instead he tunes in to the wind that is buffeting the lighthouse from every side. The door bangs in its frame. What are they to do if it gives way? Taking out his phone, he checks the clock. It’s as if time has slowed down; as if the minutes are refusing to leave the rock to make way for new ones. The fact becomes glaringly obvious in the context of their repeated phone calls to the coastguard. Whenever one of them thinks it’s time to check if there’s any news of a rescue, it invariably turns out that they have only just rung. They are politely reminded not to waste their batteries. The coastguard will be in touch the moment there’s any news.
Don’t call us, we’ll call you.
The presence of the phone in Helgi’s hand makes him long to ring yet again in the hope that a time has been fixed, but yet again it turns out to be far too soon after his last call. He’s terrified the coastguard will decide not to fetch them at all if they become too much of a nuisance. Which is absurd, of course, but then the whole situation is absurd.