Black Skies

29

Sigurdur Óli was standing reading the printout when the phone on his desk rang. He answered testily and could hear nothing but breathing at first, the faint snuffling sounds of rapid breathing.

‘Who’s that?’ he asked.

‘I need to see you,’ said a voice which he immediately identified as belonging to Andrés.

‘Is that Andrés?’

‘I … can you meet me now?’

‘Where are you?’

‘In a call box. I’m … I’ll be in the graveyard.’

‘Which graveyard?’

‘On Sudurgata.’

‘All right,’ said Sigurdur Óli. ‘Where are you now?’

‘… about two hours.’

‘OK. In two hours. In the graveyard. Whereabouts in the graveyard?’

There was no answer. Andrés had hung up.

Nearly two hours later Sigurdur Óli parked his car and entered the old Reykjavík cemetery from the western end. He had no idea where to find Andrés but decided to try going left first. He walked some way down the hill past tombs and headstones, along narrow footpaths that wound between grey slabs, and had almost reached Sudurgata, the road at the bottom, when he caught sight of Andrés sitting on a low, mossy wall that had long ago been erected around a double tomb. Andrés watched as Sigurdur Óli approached. His hands, glimpsed beneath the long sleeves of his jacket, were black with dirt; he wore a woollen hat on his head and looked as dishevelled as he had when he last spoke to Sigurdur Óli behind the police station.

Andrés made to stand up but abandoned the idea. The stench he gave off was beyond belief; a reek of excrement combined with alcohol and urine. Apparently he had not changed his clothes for weeks.

‘You came then?’ he said.

‘I’ve been looking for you,’ Sigurdur Óli replied.

‘Well, here I am.’

He had a plastic bag from the state off-licence that looked to Sigurdur Óli as if it contained two bottles. He sat down on the wall beside Andrés, watching him take one bottle out of the bag, loosen the cork and swig from the neck. Noticing that he had almost finished it, Sigurdur Óli reflected that there was probably more to be gained from him drunk than sober.

‘What’s going on, Andrés?’ he asked. ‘Why do you keep contacting me? What do you want from us?’

Andrés looked around him, his eyes straying from one gravestone to the next, then took another gulp of alcohol.

‘And what are you doing here in the graveyard? I’ve been asking after you at your block of flats.’

‘There’s no peace anywhere. Except here.’

‘Yes, it’s a quiet spot,’ said Sigurdur Óli, remembering how the body of a young girl had once been found on the grave of Jón Sigurdsson, Iceland’s national hero. Bergthóra had been a witness on the case, which was how they had met. The occasional car drove past along Sudurgata and on the other side of the wall the pleasant houses of Kirkjugardsstígur slumbered in the quiet afternoon.

‘Did you get my package?’ asked Andrés.

‘You mean the film clip?’

‘Yes, the bit of film. I found it in the end. Not much, but enough. He only kept two short films. He’d thrown all the rest away.’

‘Is it you we can see in the film?’

‘We? Who’s we? I sent it to you. Have you shown it to somebody? Nobody else was supposed to see it! Nobody else can see it! You mustn’t show it!’

Andrés became so agitated that Sigurdur Óli tried to calm him down by reassuring him that he had only allowed a lip-reader to watch it to find out what the boy in the film was saying. No one else had seen it, he added, which was not far from the truth. He had not put the inquiry on an official footing yet because he wanted to conduct his own investigation first, to see if there were sufficient grounds to call in the vice squad and devote time and manpower to pursuing the case.

‘Is it you in the film?’

‘Yes, it’s me,’ said Andrés faintly. ‘Who else … who else would it be?’

He fell silent and drank from the bottle.

‘It took you a long time to find the film, did it? So where did you find it in the end?’

‘You see, my mother … wasn’t … she wasn’t strong, she couldn’t control him, you know?’ Andrés said, ignoring the question and following some thread of his own. He was unshaven, his tufty beard sparse, his face grimy. A bloody bruise stood out under one eye as if he had been in a fight or an accident. His eyes were small, grey, watery, almost colourless, his nose swollen and crooked as if it had once been broken and never properly set, perhaps during the years that he had spent loitering around the bus station at Hlemmur for warmth.

‘Who are you talking about? Who couldn’t she control?’

‘He just used her, you know? She gave him a home and he kept her in drink and drugs, and no one bothered about me, eh? He could do what he liked with me.’

His voice was hoarse and slurred, fuelled with ancient anger and loathing.

‘Are there any other films?’

‘He got a kick out of making them,’ Andrés said. ‘He had a projector that he stole from some school when he was working in the countryside. Had a stash of porn that they used to smuggle in on the boats.’

He was quiet again.

‘Are you talking about a man called Rögnvaldur?’ asked Sigurdur Óli.

Andrés was staring into space. ‘Do you know who he is?’

‘We spoke to you in January, on another matter,’ said Sigurdur Óli. ‘Do you remember? You remembered the other day. We spoke to you about this Rögnvaldur back then. He was your stepfather, wasn’t he?’

Andrés did not answer.

‘Was it him who made the film you sent us?’

‘He was missing a finger. He never told me why. But I sometimes comforted myself by hoping that it hurt, hoping that he had suffered and screamed from the pain. Because he bloody well deserved to.’

‘Is he the man you’re describing?’

Andrés hung his head, nodding reluctantly.

‘When did this happen?’

‘A long time ago, years ago.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Ten. When it started.’

‘So, around 1970? We tried to work it out.’

‘You can never be free of it,’ Andrés said, so quietly that Sigurdur Óli could barely hear him. ‘However hard you try, you can never be free of it. Mostly I’ve tried to drown it in drink, but that doesn’t work either.’

He raised his head, straightened his back and cast a glance at the sky, as if seeking something in the heavens. His voice dropped to a whisper.

‘I was in hell for two years. Almost constantly. Then he left.’