The Darkness Knows

14

That evening Konrád went round to Húgó’s for supper. His son lived in an attractive terraced house in the new suburb of Grafarvogur, with his wife, Sirrí, and the twins. As usual, the boys were delighted to see their grandfather, who read them stories and poems when he babysat them and told them properly hair-raising ghost stories before bed. Konrád’s daughter-in-law was less than thrilled about this, as he tended to get carried away. Recently she had thrown a fit when she and Húgó had come home to find the three of them watching a film on TV and the boys in a state of wild overexcitement and terror. The film had been The Exorcist.

‘I’ve had it up to here with this!’ Konrád had heard Sirrí saying angrily to Húgó.

His son was an excellent cook and had made a delicious Spanish pork dish that Konrád, who was starving, wolfed down. The twins reported various things that had been happening in their lives since they’d last seen him, then, getting fed up with sitting at the table, they went off to play. Sirrí owned a beauty shop and was forever dropping the names of local celebrities who came in. Konrád didn’t recognise many of them, though he gathered that her regulars included a well-known lifestyle guru. Worse than this, though, was the way Sirrí liked to put down her husband when she’d had a bit to drink. She did so subtly, and it had never led to any kind of row in company, but Konrád and Erna used to feel uncomfortable, noticing the sly digs. Húgó, a man of moderation in everything, got annoyed when she drank and avoided alcohol himself except with meals. Konrád didn’t know if the marriage was happy, but Húgó never complained.

Sirrí was in the middle of telling them about a visit the lifestyle guru had paid to her shop, during which he had said he was blown away by her display of a new range of French cosmetics, when Konrád’s phone rang. Seeing from the screen that it was Marta, he smiled at his son and daughter-in-law, and rose to his feet, saying he had to take this call but he would only be a minute.

‘I thought you’d retired,’ Marta snapped.

‘Retired?’

‘Oh, come on,’ Marta said. ‘She rang us — Hjaltalín’s ex-girlfriend — to complain about being interrogated by a man who’s supposedly left the police. She wanted to know if she could expect any more visits like that.’

‘Calm down, it’s your own fault.’

‘My fault?’

‘You were the one who dragged me into this,’ Konrád said. ‘It wasn’t my idea to go and see Hjaltalín at Litla-Hraun. I told you I’d retired.’

‘Have you been talking to many other people?’

‘No.’

‘Did you get anything new out of her?’

‘No, nothing.’

‘You can’t just start investigating the whole thing again off your own bat,’ Marta said. ‘It’s totally unacceptable. Surely you can understand that? You have to leave it to us.’

There was a lengthy silence. Konrád was thinking hard about whether to take the next step. He had been expecting to have this conversation with Marta sooner or later, and had been wondering how to bring the subject up. Since the opportunity had landed in his lap without his having to make the first move, he decided to go for it.

‘What am I to tell Herdís, then?’ he asked.

‘Herdís who? What are you on about?’

‘The sister of that boy on Öskjuhlíd.’

‘What about her?’

‘She asked me to help, for her brother’s sake. I agreed to do it.’

‘What kind of nonsense is this?’

‘It’s not nonsense. I’m doing it for her. You can hardly forbid me to talk to people.’

‘What? Don’t tell me you’re going to... to start playing the private detective? Is this some kind of joke?’

‘Private detective?’ Konrád laughed. ‘I’m going to do her this one favour and that’s it. Did you talk to her, by the way?’

‘Yes, and I have to say that what she’s claiming is very tenuous. Very tenuous indeed.’

‘Well, I find her convincing and I’m going to help her.’

‘Her? You’re doing this for no one but yourself, and you know it.’

‘Think what you like.’

‘You can’t withhold information from us if you dig something up. You can’t just decide to investigate it yourself. You’re retired!’

‘If I come across something juicy I’ll let you know,’ Konrád said and ended the call.

‘Is everything OK?’ Húgó asked, when he returned to his seat.

‘Fine, it was just Marta.’

‘Anyway,’ said Sirrí, who had broken off her anecdote about the lifestyle guru until Konrád got back. He noticed she had a glass of wine in her hand. She now embarked on a seemingly interminable story about the guru and their friendship and his opinion on various topics, about which they thought exactly the same. Konrád kept losing the thread, preoccupied by his conversation with Marta, but he nodded and tried to smile in the appropriate places, though he hardly took in a word she said.

Later, father and son sat alone in the sitting room, chatting about the English football, which was as boring in Sirrí’s opinion as lifestyle gurus were in theirs. She had gone off to talk to someone on the phone.

‘What did Marta want?’ Húgó asked once they’d run out of things to say about the football. He was named after his maternal grandfather, and was a tall, slim, handsome man, with a dependably level-headed approach to life.

‘It was about Sigurvin.’

‘Don’t tell me you’re up to your neck in the investigation again?’

‘Hardly. I’m just keeping an eye on their progress.’

‘You must have got a shock when he turned up.’

‘You can say that again. I wasn’t expecting it. I didn’t think Sigurvin would ever be found.’

‘Perhaps that’s what you were hoping: that he would never turn up.’

Konrád looked at his son. ‘I was sick to death of that case,’ he said. ‘And now I’m being sucked into it again. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone to see Hjaltalín in prison.’

‘You couldn’t have done anything else.’

‘No, maybe not.’

‘You’ve never been able to shake it off.’

‘It would be good to get to the bottom of it once and for all,’ Konrád admitted. ‘We’re long overdue some answers.’