Why Did You Lie? (36 page)

Then father and son were gone and the recording ended.

Nína paused the video and sat pensively, still with the headphones on. They were so effective that she might as well have had no ears, which suited her fine since she needed peace and quiet in which to consider this latest development. It didn’t help, though: she found it impossible to piece it all together.

Lárus and Thröstur had had a grandstand view of what had happened in front of the garage while Stefán was hanging himself inside. It was only natural to suppose they would have noticed any comings and goings, so the police had questioned them at the scene. Presumably it would have been regarded as a mere formality until it emerged that the boys flatly denied having seen anybody enter the garage, including Stefán himself. Since it was known that he had gone inside while the boys were sitting there, this had aroused suspicion that all was not as it seemed, and the widow had added fuel to this fire. So the boys had been summoned to the police station and interviewed again. But in vain. They had stuck to their story and claimed to have seen nothing. An odd anomaly in an otherwise straightforward incident. Case closed.

Nína was convinced they had been lying. The question was why. She was equally convinced that such young children could not have played any part in the man’s death; the idea was too absurd even to consider, surely? Was there even a remote possibility that they could have gone inside the garage and bumped into the man as he was standing there, head in a noose, preparing to step off the stool? Or even just gone inside, seen him dangling from the ceiling and thought it was their fault or that they would be blamed if the fact came to light? Children have a tendency to misinterpret the adult world and the boys had been so young they could hardly have been expected to think rationally.

But even if her conjecture turned out to be right, it was only half the story. An explanation was still needed for why Lárus and Thröstur had decided to kill themselves in the same month all these years later, shortly after talking to each other on the phone.

It sounded from Klara’s description of their conversation as if they hadn’t spoken since they were children. Something had prompted Thröstur to ring Lárus, but there was no telling what it had been. Perhaps he just wanted to hear his old playmate’s voice and find out how he was doing. Find out if his guilt about their long-ago lie made it hard for him to sleep at night. Neither of them was able to tell the tale. Nína’s only hope was to trace the third child and demand some answers, assuming he hadn’t also committed suicide. That would be bloody typical. She thought about the family in Skerjafjördur and the connection Aldís had thought they had to Lárus. She hoped fervently that the husband was the third boy because he at least was still alive. Perhaps he held all the answers.

Nína fast-forwarded but found nothing but a long interrogation of a drunk who kept sliding off his chair. Speeded up, it looked like a comedy, until he threw up all over the table. The policeman’s leap out of the way was worthy of a farce. Nowadays the clip would have been a big hit on YouTube. Nína didn’t waste time enjoying it but ejected the tape when snow filled the screen and inserted the next. Halfway through it she decided to fetch herself a coffee. The small of her back ached and there was an ominous burning in her shoulders. Perhaps she could trick her body into staving off the stiffness by moving about a bit now. A short break would be beneficial for the video player too. She turned it off and her own face met her, reflected in the black TV screen. It wore an astonished expression, the eyes huge above hollow cheeks. She ran her fingers through her hair and straightened her shirt on her shoulders; there was no need to look as if she’d spent a night in the cells.

When she emerged from the poky storeroom, the tech guy was still in his spot outside, perched on a high barstool, holding a mini screwdriver and inspecting a heap of screws, wires and metal parts on a round table. It looked like a repair job that had got out of hand. She hoped it wasn’t somebody’s new iPhone. Hastily closing the door behind her so the burning smell wouldn’t follow her out, she told him she would be right back. He nodded without comment. The pile of parts held all his attention.

The corridor was empty but the tranquillity of the night hours was gone. She could hear muffled conversations and somewhere the staccato beat of a printer spewing out paper. At the nearest coffee machine she filled a cardboard cup, too lazy to go and fetch her own mug which had ‘Cop Fuel’ printed on it. Thröstur had given it to her after attending an NBA game in the States with his friends and, unbelievably enough, many of her colleagues were envious.

She slurped down the hot coffee, standing by a window that faced onto the back yard. There was an unusual number of police vehicles in the car park this morning as Sunday was the quietest day of the week. The day no one could be bothered to cause trouble: the violent thugs were generally too hungover to resort to their fists and the criminals were probably lying on their sofas in front of the football. Even dangerous drivers generally behaved themselves on the day of rest.

Nína shrugged her shoulders and rolled them backwards and forwards, which alleviated the stiffness a bit. She stood tall and the pain in her back seemed to diminish as well. Feeling her phone in the pocket of her jeans, she thought of ringing Lárus’s widow to tell her what she had discovered. But on second thoughts she didn’t think she had enough to report. Not yet. If she kept pestering her, the woman might start screening her calls. Aldís would be interested, but she had knocked off and gone home, and was probably sleeping like a baby by now. Besides, she hadn’t given Nína her number and although Nína could dig it up, she doubted Aldís would want to hear from her.

Nína realised that she was longing to talk to another human being about her discoveries; to focus her mind by putting her thoughts into words. Since she’d started spending every free moment at the hospital she’d had almost no interaction with anyone except about work or Thröstur’s health. She missed chatting, hearing news of friends and relatives, bitching about politics, gossiping, airing her opinions of actors, moaning about the weather. She couldn’t remember the last time she had let rip about index-linked mortgages. Not that she missed that in particular, but she felt a powerful need for idle chatter. She wanted to fill the corridor with pointless words.

Berglind was the only person she could ring. It was so long since she had been in touch with her friends that she would be forced to begin with a detailed update on Thröstur’s situation. If she just called them for a friendly gossip they would think she was either heartless or crazy, or both.

Rather than phoning Berglind, Nína decided to finish watching the videos. According to the duty rota, Örvar wasn’t due in until midday and she wanted to go through all the material before tackling him. He wouldn’t get away with blowing smoke in her eyes again. This had to stop.

The technician was still sitting there, the heap on the table no smaller. She didn’t bother to greet him but walked straight in, sat down and finished the coffee that tasted of cardboard. She threw the cup at the waste-paper bin but it missed and bounced into the corner. Ignoring it, she put on the headphones and resumed watching.

There was only one VHS left and at quarter to twelve her efforts finally paid off. A little girl walked into the interview room and Nína paused the tape as the child looked up in the doorway. She rubbed her dry eyes. The girl was doll-like with curly hair and an unusually straight back. She looked as if she’d wandered in by mistake and should have been next door at a photo shoot for the children’s clothing section of the Hagkaup catalogue. Nína rewound to the beginning so she could read the handwritten notice. It was the same case number as Thröstur’s and Lárus’s interviews. The girl’s name was Vala Konrádsdóttir. Nína exhaled. The wife of the man called Nói who lived in Skerjafjördur. The one who appeared to have something to hide. Quickly she pressed play and received confirmation that this was indeed the third child on the wall.

When she tried to call to mind what Örvar had said, she couldn’t remember if he had mentioned the sex of the children. Had he talked of three boys sitting on the wall or had she herself merely assumed that? She had the feeling he had said ‘kids’, and, like an idiot, she hadn’t asked for any details. But she couldn’t be sure.

The little girl repeated the same mantra as Thröstur and Lárus. She hadn’t seen anyone go inside. No one, no one at all. Like Lárus she had come with her father. He interfered less than the lawyer had done, but never took his eyes off his daughter and occasionally stepped in when he felt the policeman was putting too much pressure on her. He was restrained, barely raising his voice, but was solicitous of his daughter. And she got away with a blatant untruth. The lie.

The recording ended but instead of watching it again Nína decided to storm into Örvar’s office to make sure she didn’t miss him. She took the two tapes with her, after replacing the rest in the box. She informed the tech guy that she would be back to tidy up and, without waiting for an answer, marched off to her boss’s office. Before she got there she walked straight into him, on his way out, wearing uniform and an anorak.

Nína let rip before Örvar had time to realise who she was. ‘A man called Lárus, who killed himself in December, was a witness in the journalist Stefán’s suicide case. The third child was a girl. Her name’s Vala Konrádsdóttir. She was knocked down by a car last night and—’ She was given no chance to finish.

‘I haven’t got time for this. You’ll have to tell me later. There’s been a serious incident in Skerjafjördur. A man appears to have murdered his wife, then taken his own life.’

Could the wife be Vala? Suddenly Nína’s ears were ringing; all hope of talking to Vala faded. ‘I’m going to get changed. I’m coming too.’ She ran off before Örvar could forbid her. She called to him as she ran, without turning her head: ‘I’ll meet you in the yard in five minutes. If you leave without me I’ll set fire to your office.’ She wasn’t joking.

Chapter 31

26 January 2014

Nói couldn’t stop thinking about the keys. The keys to the chalet and – what was worse – to their house. He had locked the front door when he brought Vala home from the hospital, feeling that here at least they were safe. Nothing bad could happen to them in their own home as long as they remembered to lock up. That’s how it was supposed to work; that was the basis for the ordinary citizen’s sense of security. Those who left their doors open were inviting disaster, whereas careful types locked them and were rewarded with safety. It had never entered his head that there could be exceptions to this rule. Like now. An individual in possession of a bunch of keys could come and go from their house at will, and the lock in which Nói had placed all his faith was useless. He would have been better off giving in to his impulse to barricade the doors with furniture.

Nói felt his way cautiously from the back door towards the front hall. He took care not to bump into anything, grateful that his eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness outside. The gloom was even more impenetrable in here, without the benefit of the dim lamp over the neighbours’ back door. But he didn’t want to turn on the light in case he attracted attention. It was bad enough that he had opened the door noisily; the intruder, if there was one, must have heard him. He had closed it incredibly quietly behind him but now realised how pointless that had been. The damage had already been done.

A faint but cloying smell of cheap aftershave hung in the air. There was somebody inside. But who? Was it the person who had sent those vile letters?

Nói’s attention was caught by a small red light under the kitchen counter, and he remembered the robot vacuum cleaner that seemed to specialise in starting up at the worst possible moment. He bent down to switch it off and saw the glow of Púki’s eyes. The cat hissed as Nói reached for the vacuum. There was no malice in the hiss; instead the cat seemed to be warning Nói or inviting him to crawl under there and join him.

He straightened up and the cat uttered a low mew. Nói strained his ears but could hear nothing out of the ordinary. The fridge emitted its familiar hum and the clock on the wall ticked with quiet clicks.

Otherwise silence.

There was no creaking of floorboards upstairs, no squeak of a door. The intruder seemed to be keeping still. Nói pictured him standing beside Vala’s or Tumi’s bed, with evil intent. One of those unanswerable questions sprang into his mind: who would you rather save, Vala or Tumi? He couldn’t say, and anyway it wasn’t up to him. He pushed away mental images of his loved ones’ mangled bodies. What kind of person would even think like that?

It was almost pitch black in the hallway by the staircase where there were no windows and the walls were painted dark green. He regretted now that he hadn’t gone with the pale yellow shade that Vala had wanted.

But then he regretted so many things.

Reminding himself of the furniture layout between door and stairs, he took a quick breath and started edging his way forwards. He kept expecting the intruder to be lying in wait, ready to hit him over the head with a baseball bat or stab him with a knife.

Again his mind set him a quick test: would you rather be bludgeoned or stabbed? The answer came straight back, without pause for thought: bludgeoned. At the thought of a shining, lethally sharp blade piercing skin, muscle and internal organs he instinctively clutched at his stomach to deaden the hot pain that his imagination conjured up. But his resolve did not falter. He was going to drive this man out of his house, whatever the cost to himself.

Nói breathed more easily when he felt the bottom step and began to tiptoe up the stairs. He mustn’t make the slightest noise. He had broken out in a cold sweat and his hands were damp as they brushed along the walls.

The whiff of cheap aftershave grew more noticeable the higher he climbed. Nói wondered what kind of person would bother to put on that noxious stuff before breaking into somebody’s house. He recognised the pong; it reminded him of the sleazy blokes who used to visit his mother in the bad old days. It was the sort of aftershave men buy from the corner shop, aimed at those without money or taste. Could it be a smokescreen? Perhaps it wasn’t a man at all but a woman who was trying to disguise the fact to make herself more menacing? That was a long shot. The alternative was more plausible and far worse – that this was a man who had made an effort to smarten himself up in excited anticipation of what he was about to do.