Strange Shores

38

That evening he sat in the derelict farmhouse, warming himself at the gaslight, slurping at a mug of hot coffee and taking half-hearted bites at a smoked-lamb sandwich from the convenience store. He had little appetite and soon abandoned the sandwich and lit a cigarette instead. He pushed the meeting with Lúdvík to the back of his mind, telling himself it would do no good to obsess about the habits of foxes.

Meanwhile, Ezra’s story would not leave him alone. Erlendur felt inclined to believe the old man’s account: one only had to listen to Ezra for a minute to feel his torment, the terrible uncertainty he had lived with so long, the deep guilt that had plagued him for most of his life. It seemed certain that Jakob had killed Matthildur and taken the knowledge of her body’s whereabouts to his grave. For Ezra, there had never been any sort of closure and it was only too apparent that his wounds were still raw, even after the passing of more than sixty years. He was old now and, judging by his constant references to his imminent death, no longer expected to live to hear the end of the story — should Matthildur ever be found. Ezra admitted he had given up searching for her decades ago.

Erlendur refilled his mug and drank slowly. Jakob had got away with murder, there was little doubt. What’s more, he had arranged it so that he could confess it to Ezra, torture him with the knowledge, accuse him and tie his hands at the same time. He had taken advantage of the lucky circumstances — the storm and the disaster that had befallen the British servicemen. He had shown incredible audacity in the way he lied about Matthildur’s movements. And he had known just how to apply pressure to Ezra’s vulnerable point: his affair with Matthildur and the betrayal of his friend.

The most obvious flaw in Ezra’s testimony was that he could not call on anyone to confirm it. There were no witnesses; he had never shared what happened with anyone and he was now the only living person who knew the facts. His statement would stand or fall by his own credibility. Erlendur considered calling a halt at this point: he supposed he had been fairly successful in his inquiry, though, strictly speaking, he was not really investigating Matthildur’s disappearance; rather, he was satisfying his own curiosity, aware that no one could be held to account at this late stage. The case had been subject to a conspiracy of silence for a lifetime.

Yet Matthildur’s story had touched a nerve with Erlendur; he felt he could relate to her fate and this feeling had given him a sense of connection to the case — though he didn’t really know what was driving him on. Perhaps it was the thought of Ezra’s dismal plight: doomed to live on in the wreckage of his lost love. If what he said was true, he had only ever learned half the story. And Erlendur knew how unbearable life could be on those terms.

He thought about Jakob’s revenge; how he had trapped Ezra and made him an accessory to his deed, though Ezra had done little to deserve it. Jakob had committed a crime of passion, probably performed without premeditation. These crimes were generally committed in a fog of madness. But what had followed had been a calculated act of vengeance: Jakob had arranged it so that the person he believed bore all the blame would never experience another day of happiness.

Or perhaps it was the love story that had caught Erlendur’s imagination. The love between Matthildur and Ezra denied a chance to blossom, cut short with such brutality.

During the afternoon the wind had picked up and was now making a low keening in the eaves. Erlendur reviewed all that he had uncovered by tracking people down and asking questions about Matthildur, Ezra and Jakob. His thoughts did not follow any coherent path: the individuals he had met, their stories and circumstances became mingled with the East Fjords fog and the blizzard, with his sojourn in the ruined farm, his journeys on foot and by car, the freighters sailing into Reydarfjördur and the astonishing, ever-present signs of industrial development. All these elements coalesced in his mind until, abruptly, he was brought up short by three minor details to which he had paid scant attention at the time. One was the reference to Ezra’s former workplace. The second was a comment, uttered during a conversation, which Erlendur had hardly taken in. But for the wind moaning in the roof he would have forgotten it completely. After he had been listening to the noise for a while, puzzled as to what it reminded him of, a memory suddenly surfaced: someone had heard a noise coming from Jakob’s coffin. The third detail was a remark that Ezra had let fall when they were talking about Jakob’s death and how his body had been stored overnight in the ice house where Ezra worked. It was an innocent statement about Matthildur’s whereabouts that held no significance at the time: I couldn’t get it out of him.

‘Is it possible?’ Erlendur whispered into the gloom.

He rose from his camp chair in sudden agitation.

‘Was he talking about the ice house?’ he asked aloud.

Oblivious to the passing hours, Erlendur wrestled with these three ostensibly trivial threads, trying to find a link between them and growing ever more perplexed until finally he stubbed out his last cigarette and decided that he would have no choice but to impose on Hrund one more time.