Arctic Chill

15

Erlendur drove the Ford Falcon into a parking space in front of the block of flats where he lived. He left the engine running for a while before switching it off. Although old, the car ran like clockwork and purred cosily in low gear. Erlendur was very fond of his Ford and sometimes, when he had nothing else to do, he would go for a drive outside the city. He had never done that before. Once he had invited Marion out for a drive, to Lake Kleifarvatn. Erlendur drove Marion down to the lakeside and told him about the conclusion to a case he had been investigating. A skeleton had been discovered on the bed of the lake and was linked to a group of Icelanders who had studied in the former East Germany in the 1960s. Marion took a particular interest in that. Erlendur wanted to do something for Marion in his ex-boss’s illness. He knew that when the moment of death drew near, there was no one else that the cancer victim could depend upon.

Pulling a face at the recollection, he stroked the thin, ivory-coloured steering wheel. He would never see Marion again. All that remained were memories, fairly mixed ones at that. He thought about his own time on this earth, how brief it was before new generations took over, to be swept even further into the future. His time had gone by without his noticing it, lacking as he did all contact with anything but work. Before he knew it he would be lying in a ward like Marion Briem, staring death in the face.

Erlendur was not aware of any claims to the body. Marion had once asked him to handle the funeral arrangements. He had discussed the next steps with a nurse.

On his way home from the hospital Erlendur had called on Sunee. Her brother was with her, and the interpreter Gudny, who was leaving when Erlendur arrived. He accepted her offer to stay.

“Is it anything special?” Gudny asked. “Any news?”

“No, not yet,” Erlendur said, and Gudny conveyed the fact to Sunee.

“Does she want to tell me where Niran is?” he asked.

Gudny spoke to Sunee who shook her head, staring obstinately at Erlendur.

“She thinks he’s better off where he is. She wants to know when she can have Elias’s body.”

“Very soon,” Erlendur said. “This case is top priority and his earthly remains will only be kept while the investigation is on-going.”

Erlendur sat in an armchair beneath the yellow dragon. The atmosphere in the flat was calmer than before. The brother and sister sat side by side on the sofa. They both smoked. Erlendur had not seen Sunee smoke before. She did not look well, with bags under her eyes, at once grief-stricken and anxious.

“How have you liked living in this neighbourhood?” Erlendur asked.

“It’s a good place to live,” Sunee said through Gudny. “It’s a very quiet area.”

“Have you got to know your neighbours, in the other flats?”

“A little.”

“Have you run into trouble with anyone because you’re from Thailand? Been aware of any racial prejudice or hostility?”

“A tiny bit if I go out to a bar.”

“What about your boys?”

“Elias never complained. But there was one teacher he didn’t like.”

“Kjartan?”

“Yes.”

“Why not?”

“He liked school but didn’t like the Icelandic lessons when Kjartan taught him.”

And what about Niran?”

“He wants to go home.”

“Home to Thailand?”

“Yes. I want him with me. It was difficult for him to come here but I want him with me.”

“Odinn wasn’t pleased to find out about Niran so long after you had got married.”

“No.”

“Was that the reason for your divorce?”

Sunee listened to Gudny translate the question. Then she looked at Erlendur.

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe that was one reason. They never got on together.”

“I’d like to find out about your boyfriend,” Erlendur said. “What can you tell me about him? Did he come between you and Odinn?”

“No,” Sunee said. “It was all over between Odinn and me when he entered the picture.”

“Who is he?”

“He’s my good friend.”

“Why won’t you tell us anything about him?”

Sunee did not reply.

“Is it because he doesn’t want you to?”

Sunee said nothing.

“Is he shy about this relationship in some way?”

Sunee looked at him. She seemed poised to answer him, then stopped.

“Is Niran with him?”

“Don’t ask about him,” she said. “He’s got nothing to do with this.”

“It’s important for us to talk to Niran,” Erlendur said. “Not because we think he did anything wrong, but because he might know something useful to us. Will you think about it until tomorrow?”

Gudny passed on this request but Sunee did not reply.

“Do you ever miss Thailand?” Erlendur asked.

“I’ve been there twice since Elias was born,” Sunee said. “My family will come over for the funeral. It will be nice to see them again but I don’t miss Thailand.”

“Are you going to have Elias buried here?”

“Of course.”

Sunee went quiet.

“I just want to live here in peace,” she said after a long pause. “I came here in hope of a better life. I thought I’d found it. I knew nothing about Iceland before I came here. I didn’t even know it existed. It was the country of my dreams. Then this happens, this horrible thing. Maybe I will go back. Niran and I. Maybe we don’t belong here.”

“We’ve heard from a very unreliable source, so we’re not attaching much importance to it, that Niran goes around with boys who are involved with drugs.”

“That’s absurd.”

“Do you know what a debt collector is?”

Sunee nodded.

“Has Niran been in any trouble with them?”

“No,” Gudny said after Sunee had spoken. “Niran never goes near drugs. Whoever said that is lying.”

Erlendur switched off the car engine outside the block of flats where he lived and stepped out into the chill winter. He pulled his overcoat tightly around him and walked slowly over to the block. Inside the dark flat, he turned on a lamp. Now there was no moon riding past the window, the sky was overcast and the wind howled past the walls of the building.

He did not know how long he had been sitting thinking about Marion when he heard a tap at his door. He thought he had fallen asleep, but could not be sure. He stood up and opened the door. A figure stepped quietly out of the shadowy corridor and greeted him. It was Eva Lind.

Erlendur was flustered. He had not seen his daughter for quite some time. Their relationship had been at rock bottom for so long that he had actually expected never to see her again. He had decided to stop running after her, to stop rescuing her from drug dens; to stop involving himself if she was named in police reports; to stop trying to make her stay with him, and looking after her; to stop trying to send her away to detox. None of this had changed anything, except for the worse. The more they saw of each other, the worse they got on together. Eva Lind had sunk into depression after a miscarriage and he was helpless to act. All his efforts had the opposite effect on her and she accused him of interfering and being overbearing. His last attempt had been to persuade her to enter rehab for alcohol and drug addiction. When that did not work he gave up. He was familiar with instances of this from his work. In the end, many parents gave up on children who were taking drugs and sinking deeper and deeper without seeing sense or showing the slightest willingness to cooperate.

He had decided to leave her to her own devices, and the feeling was mutual. He realised that he was rarely dealing with his daughter herself. He hardly knew her. What he was continuously wrestling with was the poison that turned her into a different person. It was a hopeless battle. The poison was not Eva Lind. He knew this even though she had never stooped so low as to use it as an excuse for anything. The poison was one thing. Eva Lind was another. Generally it was hard to distinguish between the two, but it could be done. And while this was no consolation as such, he was aware of the fact.

“Can I come in?” Eva Lind asked.

He was more pleased to see her than he would ever have admitted. She was no longer wearing her ugly black leather jacket but a long red coat. Her hair was clean and tied up in a ponytail, her make-up was moderate and he could not see any piercings in her face. Instead of black lipstick, she wore none. She was dressed in a thick green sweater against the cold, jeans and black, almost knee-length, leather boots.

“Of course,” he said, opening the door for her.

“It’s always so horribly dark in here,” she said, walking into the living room. He closed the door and followed her. Pushing a pile of newspapers aside on the sofa, she sat down, took out a pack of cigarettes and thrust it at him with a questioning look. He made a gesture to say that she was free to smoke in his flat but declined the offer himself.

“So, what’s new?” he asked and sat down in his armchair. It was as if nothing had changed, as if she had simply left him the day before yesterday and just happened to be passing by again.

“Same old,” Eva said in English.

“Isn’t Icelandic good enough for you then?” he asked.

“You never change, do you?” Eva looked around the bookshelves and stacks of books, and into the kitchen where there were two stools at the table, a saucepan on the cooker and a coffee maker.

“What about you? Do you change?”

Eva Lind shrugged instead of answering him. Perhaps she did not want to talk about herself. As a rule that ended in arguments and bad feeling. He did not want to provoke her by asking where she had been all this time and what kind of state she was in. She had told him so often that it was none of his business what she got up to. It had never been any of his business, and he was to blame for that.

“Sindri dropped in on me,” he said, looking his daughter in the face. Sometimes her features reminded Erlendur of his mother, she had her eyes and high cheekbones.

“I talked to him a week or so ago. He’s selling timber. Works in Kopavogur. What did you talk about?”

“Nothing special,” Erlendur said. “He was on his way to an AA meeting.”

“We were talking about you.”

“Me?”

“We always do when we meet. He told me he’s in touch with you.”

“He phones sometimes,” Erlendur said. “Sometimes he comes to see me. What do you say about me? Why do you talk about me?”

“This and that,” Eva said. “What a weirdo you are. You’re our dad. There’s nothing odd about us talking about you. Sindri speaks well of you. Better than I thought.”

“Sindri’s all right,” Erlendur said. “At least he’s got a job.”

This remark was not meant in approbation. He had not meant to pass any judgements but the words slipped out and he saw that they affected Eva. He did not even know whether she had a job or not.

“I didn’t come here to argue with you,” she said.

“No, I know,” he said. “Anyway, arguing with you is pointless. That’s been proven time and again. It’s like shouting into the wind. I don’t know what you’re doing or have been doing for a long time and that’s fine with me. It’s nothing to do with me. You were right. It’s none of my business. Do you want some coffee?”

“Okay,” Eva said.

She stubbed out her cigarette and immediately took out another, but did not light it. Erlendur went to the kitchen and put the coffee and water in the coffee maker. Soon it began belching and the brown liquid dripped down into the jug. He found some biscuits. They were a month past their sell-by date, so he threw them away. He dug out two mugs and took them into the living room.

“How’s the investigation going?”

“So so,” Erlendur said.

“Do you have any idea what happened?”

“No,” Erlendur said. “Dealers might be operating close to the school, even in the playground,” he added, and named the two sisters but Eva had never heard of them. Nonetheless, she was familiar with playground dealing. She had briefly done it herself some years before.

Erlendur fetched the coffee and filled the mugs. Then he sat back down in his armchair. Over the coffee, he watched his daughter. He had the impression that she looked older since the last time they had met, older and possibly more mature. He did not realise immediately what had changed. It was as if Eva was no longer the loud-mouthed girl who was in constant rebellion against him and would give him a piece of her mind if she felt so inclined. In that coat she looked more like a young woman. The teenage behaviour that had so long been part of her character was there no longer.

“Me and Sindri also talked a lot about your brother who died,” Eva Lind said, lighting her cigarette.

She came right out with it, as if it had no more personal bearing on her than a story in a newspaper. For an instant Erlendur was angry with his daughter. What damn business of hers is that! More than a generation had passed since his brother had died, but Erlendur was still highly sensitive about it. He had not discussed his brother’s death with anyone until Eva wheedled the story out of him one day, and sometimes he regretted having bared his soul to her.

“What were you saying about him?”

“Sindri told me how he heard all about it when he was in a fish factory out east. They remembered you and your brother and our grandparents, people neither of us had ever heard of.”

Sindri had told Erlendur this too. His son had turned up one day, newly arrived in the city, and told him what he had heard about Erlendur and his brother and their father, and their fateful journey up onto the moors when the blizzard struck without warning.

“We talked about the stories he heard,” Eva Lind said.

“The stories he heard?” Erlendur parroted. “What are you and Sindri-?”

“Maybe that was the reason for my dream,” Eva Lind interrupted him. “Because we were talking about him. Your brother.”

“What did you dream?”

“Did you know some people keep diaries about what they dream? I don’t, but my friend writes down everything she dreams. I never dream anything. Or at least I never remember my dreams. I’ve heard that everyone has dreams but only some people can remember them.”

“So tell me what you and Sindri were saying.”

“What was your brother’s name?” Eva asked, ignoring his question.

“Bergur,” Erlendur said. “My brother was called Bergur. What did Sindri hear about us in the east?”

“Shouldn’t he have been found?”

“They did everything they could to find him,” Erlendur said. “Rescue teams and the local farmers, everyone who was able searched for us. I was found. We became separated in the blizzard. He was never found.”

“Yes, but what I mean is, shouldn’t he have been found later on?” Eva said, with the obstinate tone in her voice that Erlendur knew from his own mother. “Body parts, bones?”

Erlendur was perfectly aware what Eva was talking about although he pretended not to be. Sindri had probably heard this story in the east, where people were still talking about the boys who were lost in a blizzard with their father so many years ago. Erlendur had heard many theories before he moved to Reykjavik with his parents. Now his daughter, who knew nothing of the matter apart from the little that Erlendur had told her, was sitting in front of him eager to discuss the theories about his brother’s disappearance. All of a sudden she had turned up at his flat and wanted to discuss his brother, the memories that had tormented him since the age often.

“Not necessarily,” Erlendur said. “Do you mind if we talk about something else?”

“Why don’t you want to discuss it? Why is it so difficult?”

“Was that why you came?” Erlendur asked. “To tell me what you dreamed?”

“Why was he never found?” Eva said.

He could not understand his daughter’s obstinacy. As time passed it had caused interest that his brother’s remains were never found, not even a hat or glove or scarf. Nothing. People had various theories as to why. He avoided brooding on them too much.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “Another time maybe. Tell me about yourself. We haven’t seen each other for ages. What have you been up to?”

“You were there,” Eva said, refusing to leave him alone. “You were in my dream. I’ve never dreamed anything as clear as that. I haven’t dreamed about you since I was little and I didn’t even know what you looked like then.”

Erlendur said nothing. His mother had tried to teach him to interpret dreams, but he had always been reluctant and uninterested. It was only in recent years that his attitude had softened and his interest became roused, in spite of everything. Eva told him that she never had dreams or remembered them, and his mother had said the same. It was not until the age of thirty that his mother started dreaming to any extent, when she suddenly developed the gift of foretelling deaths, births, visitors and many other events with uncanny accuracy. But she did not foresee her son’s death in a dream and he visited her in her sleep only once afterwards. She had described the dream to Erlendur. It was summer and her boy was standing at the door of the farmhouse, leaning up against the doorpost. His back was turned to her and she could only discern his outline. The image persisted for a long while but it was impossible for her to approach him. She felt she was stretching her arms towards him without his noticing her. Then he stood up straight, bowed his head and thrust his hands into his pockets the way he sometimes did, walked out into the summer’s day… and disappeared.

That was six years after it had happened. They had moved to Reykjavik by then.

Erlendur seldom recalled the world of his dreams unless he became too emotionally involved in a case he happened to be investigating. Then he might have bad dreams, although he would not necessarily remember their substance. It took him a long time to digest the fact that Eva had come to see him after all this time to tell him about a dream she had had, involving him and his brother.

“What did you dream, Eva?” he asked falteringly. “What happened in your dream?”

“First tell me how he died.”

“You know that,” Erlendur said. “He froze to death on the moors. A storm blew up and we were buried in a snowdrift.”

“Why was he never found?”

“Where are you heading with all this, Eva?”

“You haven’t told me the whole story, have you?”

“What story?”

“Sindri told me what could have happened.”

“What are they blathering on about out there in the east?” Erlendur said. “What do they reckon they know?”

“In my dream he didn’t die of exposure, you see. And that fits in with what Sindri said.”

“Please drop the subject,” Erlendur said. “Let’s stop. I don’t want to talk about it. Not now. Later, Eva. I promise.”

“But—”

“Surely you can tell,” he interrupted her. “I don’t want to. Maybe you ought to leave. I… I’m very busy. It’s been a rough day. Let’s discuss it better another time.”

He stood up. Eva watched him without saying a word. She could not comprehend his reaction. It was as if the event had just as much effect on Erlendur now as it did at the time; as if he had proved completely incapable of dealing with it for all those years.

“Don’t you want to hear my dream?”

“Not now.”

“Okay,” she said as she stood up.

“Say hello to Sindri from me if you see him,” Erlendur said, running his fingers through his hair.

“I will,” Eva said.

“It was nice seeing you,” he said awkwardly.

“Same here.”

When she had left he stood facing the bookshelves for a long time, as if in another world. Eva had a knack of riling him. No one else could do it in quite the same way. He was not ready to embark on accounts of his brother’s disappearance. Once he had promised to tell Eva the whole story, but nothing had come of it. She could not burst into his life now, insisting on answers whenever she had the urge.

The book he had read aloud from for Marion Briem was lying on the table in the living room and he picked it up. Like so many of his books, it dealt with fatal accidents, but what distinguished it from all the others was that it contained a short narrative of events that had taken place many years before, when a father and his two sons were caught in a violent storm on the moors above Eskifjordur.

Erlendur looked up the story as he had done so often before. The accounts varied in length but most were structured in the same way. First came a heading and a subheading or source reference. The story generally opened with a topographical description, followed by the narrative proper and a short postscript. He had read this account more often than anything else in his life and knew it off by heart, word for word. It was impartial and impersonal, despite telling of the lonely death of an eight-year-old boy. It made no mention of the devastation that the incident had left behind in the hearts of those who experienced it. That story would never be written.