Strange Shores

12

It was after midday by the time Erlendur pulled up outside the house belonging to Kjartan’s son, Eythór. It was a large, detached villa, not far from the Egilsstadir sixth-form college. Eythór, who had popped home for lunch, worked for a firm of contractors involved in the dam project in the highlands. Erlendur repeated his spiel about researching stories of accidents in the mountains and mentioned that he had just come from visiting Eythór’s father, who had given him permission to look at some old papers in a trunk his son was keeping for him.

Intrigued, Eythór asked more about Erlendur’s research and whether he was writing a book. Erlendur managed to dodge the question without telling an outright lie. Eythór said he hardly knew why he was keeping the trunk: he had got rid of lots of his father’s junk when the old man went into the home, and should by rights have binned that too. He had taken a look inside but it contained nothing but papers. Next time he cleared out the garage it would probably go to the dump.

‘How was the old boy, anyway?’ Eythór asked, and it took Erlendur a second or two to realise that he was enquiring after his father.

‘Fine, I believe,’ he replied.

‘His sight’s not getting any better.’

‘So I gather.’

‘I haven’t been able to look in on him for ages. That’s what happens when you’re building the biggest dam in Europe — it takes up all your time. Speaking of which — you couldn’t come back this evening, could you? I’m already late.’

‘I’m afraid I’ve got to head back to Reykjavík,’ said Erlendur, on the off chance that this ploy might work, ‘so it’ll just have to wait.’

The man wavered. His phone rang. He checked to see who it was, then ended the call.

‘OK, come on then,’ he said.

The trunk was in the garage, buried under all kinds of junk that Eythór had to push aside: summer tyres, paint pots, garden tools. He didn’t know what the papers related to and had no time to hang around, but if Erlendur needed any help, he said, his youngest son was at home. A sixth-former who was ‘out to lunch’, if Erlendur had heard correctly. He thanked Eythór for being so obliging, apologised for bothering him and said he would not take long.

The man climbed into his four-wheel drive and departed, leaving Erlendur behind in the garage with the door open and the trunk at his feet. It started to rain. He took out a large brown envelope containing tax returns for the years 1972 to 1977, and placed it on a work bench. Two extremely dog-eared hymn books followed. He flipped through the pages before laying them on top of the envelope. Next he unearthed three copies of Reader’s Digest, together with a sizeable bundle of yellowing newspapers.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he heard a voice behind him ask, and turned to see the sixth-former.

‘Good afternoon,’ he said. ‘I’m researching missing-persons’ cases in the East Fjords.’

‘In our garage?’

‘One of the stories concerns your aunt who disappeared on the moors.’

‘On the moors?’

‘Yes.’

‘What was she doing up there?’

‘She was climbing over a pass and presumably had an accident.’

‘Oh.’

The boy shuffled past him and sauntered off down the street back to school, a gawky figure, his trousers worn deliberately low to reveal his boxer shorts. ‘What is the world coming to?’ Erlendur thought, watching the boy until he vanished round a corner.

He resumed his task of removing papers and pamphlets from the trunk, and finally came across a sheaf of letters which he stopped to read. Some were from Ingunn’s sisters, others from her mother or friends. Matthildur had last written to her sister about three months before she went missing. She reported the local news and described the weather in some detail: it had been unsettled that autumn and now winter was just round the corner. But she was looking forward to Christmas and was busy making herself a dress for the festive season. The earlier letters also stuck to generalities, giving no hint of her relationship with her husband. Erlendur knew he should not necessarily attach any significance to this. People didn’t always commit their private thoughts to paper.

I went to a dance with Ninna, she had written in a letter dated two years before her disappearance, and we had a smashing time. The band was local and played a mix of new tunes and old favourites. Ninna and I danced till we dropped. To begin with, the boys were really shy about asking us up. Jakob — the one you used to know — was there and we had a long talk after the dance. He’s living in Eskifjördur these days.

Having gone through the whole trunk without becoming any better acquainted with either Jakob or Matthildur, Erlendur began to replace the contents, trying to put them back in the same order. It occurred to him that it might be worth looking at the newspapers, so he started turning the pages. He couldn’t imagine why Matthildur’s sister should have kept so many copies of this particular rag, the mouthpiece of the Progressive Party. Reports of heated political squabbles and resolutions passed by the Farmers’ Association were interspersed with news items about the lambing and hay harvest. But one issue contained a story about the disaster that had befallen the British soldiers, as well as a small piece on Matthildur’s disappearance the same night.

In another issue he found an obituary of Jakob. As far as Erlendur could gather the writer, one Pétur Alfredsson, had been a friend. The article traced Jakob’s family to Hornafjördur in the east and to Reykjavík, where he had been born. After the customary enumeration of his virtues, it was stated that Jakob had lost his young wife in a tragic accident, after which he never remarried. Finally, there was a brief description of how he had drowned in a storm while returning from a fishing trip and how his body and that of his companion had been pulled from the sea and, prior to their funerals, stored in the old ice house in Eskifjördur.

But it was not the contents of the obituary that attracted Erlendur’s attention so much as the word, still perfectly legible, that had been scrawled across it in thick black pencil:

BASTARD.