The Darkness Knows

17

The old man leant on his Zimmer frame, shuffling along the corridor to his room in the nursing home with Konrád at his side. He had been sitting in the canteen over a meal of poached haddock and potatoes when Konrád disturbed him. They had never exactly been good mates. In the old days Konrád had sometimes handled his convictions for theft, forgery and smuggling booze. The man had drunk heavily at one time and ended up on the streets, but had managed to haul himself back up again. After that he had joined a Christian congregation, started attending meetings and promised to clean up his act. It was then that he started working for Sigurvin’s company. He had driven a delivery van and done whatever jobs were required and, as far as Konrád could discover, he’d been well liked. But after Sigurvin’s disappearance the company had undergone a number of changes, and in the end he’d handed in his notice and gone to work for the City Council instead. He’d had his fifteen minutes of fame as the key witness in the Sigurvin affair, but the attention hadn’t been welcome and he often used to say that he wished he’d never heard a damn thing that evening.

His name was Steinar and he had aged a great deal in the intervening years, but despite his failing health, he was willing to talk and his mind proved as sharp as ever. He’d recognised Konrád immediately and knew that he’d come to ask him yet again about the altercation between Hjaltalín and Sigurvin in the car park.

‘I’ve been half expecting you,’ Steinar said, once they reached his room. ‘Seeing as they had to go and dig him out of the ice.’

He put aside his walking frame and dropped heavily onto his bed. His clothes — a shirt with a faded pattern, and worn Terylene trousers — appeared to be several sizes too big for his shrunken frame. He hadn’t shaved in a while and his hair, which had once been thick and bushy, was now thin and grizzled and flecked with dandruff.

‘Couldn’t the poor sod have been left in peace?’ Steinar asked, stroking a hand over his few strands of hair as if smoothing them from habit.

‘I’m sure some people would have preferred that. I wondered if it had jogged your memory at all when it turned out that Sigurvin was on Langjökull.’

‘I’d stopped thinking about that business altogether,’ Steinar said, ‘so it gave me a bit of a jolt when I heard on the news that they’d found him.’

‘To be fair, I don’t think anyone had been expecting to find him up there.’

‘No. You cops weren’t clever enough to spot that,’ Steinar said, with a hint of schadenfreude. ‘Are the police investigating the whole thing all over again?’

‘I’ve retired from the force,’ Konrád said. ‘I’m just curious on my own account, so you’re under no obligation to tell me anything unless you want to.’

‘Retired? That old, are you?’

Konrád nodded.

‘Next thing you know, you’ll be moving in here yourself.’

Konrád had sometimes wondered if he would end up in a home and found the idea distinctly off-putting. He noticed that Steinar shared his room with another man. Konrád couldn’t imagine what it would be like having to live out your last years with no privacy. Even the prisoners at Litla-Hraun got cells to themselves.

‘You never know,’ he said with a smile. ‘Look, I’m aware you must be sick of being asked the same old questions, but now this new information has come to light, I thought it would be good to hear what you had to say.’

‘But what’s it got to do with you — if you’re retired?’

‘I worked on the case for a long time,’ Konrád said. ‘Maybe it’s my hobby. I don’t know. What was the first thing that came to mind when you heard about the glacier?’

‘That Hjaltalín had done a bloody good job of hiding him. And that it must have taken some doing.’

‘Do you remember any talk at Sigurvin’s firm about glacier trips? Was there someone who enjoyed travelling in the highlands or on the ice caps? Or who had an off-roader designed for that kind of thing? Or any clients who turned up in that sort of vehicle?’

Steinar thought about it, scratching his head.

‘No, I can’t say I do. But then it’s hardly fair to ask me all these years later. I can’t say I remember any blokes with big jeeps in Sigurvin’s circle, but of course I didn’t really have any contact with him. I got the job through a cousin of mine who knew the foreman. I hadn’t been working there long when it happened.’

‘You weren’t going to report it at first — the row you overheard.’

‘I’m no snitch. What those men did was none of my business. Nothing to do with me.’

Konrád remembered Steinar’s first interview as a witness. It turned out that the anonymous tip-off the police had received about Hjaltalín quarrelling with Sigurvin had come from Steinar’s live-in girlfriend. He had told her what he’d witnessed, adding that he wanted to stay well out of it. His girlfriend had ignored his objections, though she was careful not to betray his name during the phone call, saying only that he worked for Sigurvin’s company. After that, tracking him down was easy. Konrád, knowing Steinar and his shady past, noticed that he was jumpy when he talked to him, as if keen to get the interview over with as soon as possible. Konrád told him that, according to information the police had received, Hjaltalín had been overheard making threats against Sigurvin, and was Steinar aware of this? The police had been tipped off by someone who wanted to remain anonymous. Steinar pretended to know nothing about it but later confessed to another detective, Leó, telling him exactly what he’d heard and seen in the car park.

Since Steinar’s reliability as a witness was in doubt, the police had looked into the possibility that he might be trying to get himself off the hook by lying about Hjaltalín. At one point he was even a suspect, but his girlfriend provided him with an alibi, claiming she was with him on the evening and night that Sigurvin had vanished and, besides, he had no obvious motive to kill his boss or wish him any harm. Nevertheless, he had been the last person, apart from Hjaltalín, to see Sigurvin alive, and had been guilty of withholding important information, which made the police suspicious.

Steinar was grilled repeatedly about why he hadn’t gone to the police immediately after Sigurvin was reported missing. He replied every time that he had wanted to avoid exactly the kind of interrogation he was being subjected to now. Anyway, he’d known that because he had form, they’d suspect him of having an ulterior motive. He was afraid the police wouldn’t believe him and might even think he had harmed Sigurvin himself.

He was made to attend an identity parade and quickly picked out Hjaltalín as the man who had quarrelled with Sigurvin in front of the offices. He seemed confident and stuck to his statement throughout the inquiry. According to Steinar, that evening in the car park had been the first time he’d laid eyes on Hjaltalín.

‘I asked you about Öskjuhlíd at the time,’ Konrád said now, his eyes resting on the walking frame by Steinar’s bed. ‘Maybe it’s unfair to make you try and remember it so many years later. But do you recall anything about the men’s cars?’

Steinar thought. ‘No, I can’t say I do.’

Konrád cleared his throat. ‘What kind of car did you yourself drive at the time?’

‘Me?’ Steinar said. ‘You don’t still think I bumped him off? I didn’t own a car. I was sometimes allowed to drive one of the delivery vans home, but that was the only vehicle I had access to.’

‘I don’t think any such thing. I was only asking.’

‘I didn’t like the way you lot used my testimony to hound that bloke,’ Steinar said, his voice suddenly weary. ‘I knew I should never have talked to you. That bitch, ringing you like that. That bloody bitch.’

‘There’s no need to talk about her like that,’ Konrád said reprovingly. ‘We’d have found you anyway.’

‘I doubt it.’ Steinar snorted. ‘I very much doubt it.’

Neither of them said anything for a while. Instinct told Konrád that Steinar was withholding something. A member of staff he’d met in the corridor had said that the old man never got any visits, just sat in his room and didn’t mix much with the other residents. His health had declined rapidly over the last few weeks and they couldn’t be sure how long he had left.

‘Is Le— Is Leó still in the police?’ Steinar asked after a long silence.

‘Leó? Yes, he’s still working. Why do you ask?’

Steinar scratched his white stubble, looking frail and hollow-cheeked.

‘Oh, I don’t know. By the way, about my old girlfriend... I don’t know why I called her a bitch. Maybe there have been enough lies.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Leó never told you?’

‘Told me what?’

‘How he treated me?’

‘What do you mean? How did he treat you?’

‘Oh, it doesn’t matter. It was nothing. Forget it.’

‘What did he do?’

‘No, it doesn’t matter,’ Steinar repeated, raising a hand to his chest. ‘It was nothing. I’m tired. I need to lie down.’

‘Steinar...?’

‘I’d like you to go,’ Steinar said. ‘I’m not up to this. I can’t be doing with this any more. Please, just leave me alone.’

Konrád helped him to lie down on the bed, then said goodbye. On his way out, he let the staff know that the old man had been complaining of feeling tired, and they promised to keep a careful eye on him.