The Darkness Knows

50

Dusk was falling as Konrád parked his car at a discreet distance from Bernhard’s scrapyard. Few people seemed to have any business there. In the two hours he spent watching the place, he saw just three customers go in and only one emerge with the part he’d been looking for. People could save themselves a fortune if a scrapyard had the part they needed, as Konrád had discovered when some completely unnecessary sensor had stopped working in his four-wheel drive and the dealership was charging the earth for a replacement. Konrád wouldn’t have bothered to buy another if it hadn’t been for the warning light that kept flashing on his dashboard. He had rung round the scrapyards and eventually found the part he wanted for a fraction of the cost. So Bernhard was offering a much-needed service, though he didn’t seem to be making much of a profit from it.

Once, Bernhard stepped into the doorway to smoke a cigarette and drink from a plastic cup. Konrád watched. The man’s overalls looked as if they had never been near a washing machine. Towards closing time, the lights went out one by one in the workshop and Bernhard emerged, locking the door carefully behind him. He was carrying a thermos and a lunchbox. He walked over to his car, got in and drove off. Konrád set out after him, careful to stay well back.

Bernhard drove straight home to his terraced house without noticing that he was being followed, and Konrád again parked a little way off and waited in his car, not knowing exactly what for. He wondered if Bernhard had shut up shop unusually early, since it wasn’t yet six. Perhaps he’d thought there were unlikely to be any further customers that day. Konrád turned on the radio and listened to an unbelievably boring cultural programme on the National Broadcasting Service, before giving up and searching the airwaves for some Icelandic music instead. He sat there for a long while, watching Bernhard’s house, before deciding he’d had enough for one evening.

On the way home, he drove past Bernhard’s old school, which Jóhanna had mentioned in connection with his class reunion, and saw that all the lights were on. The surrounding streets were full of parked cars and adults were streaming in through the main entrance. Konrád guessed it must be some sort of parent — teacher evening and decided to seize the chance to have a nose around.

All afternoon he had been pondering what Jóhanna had said about a woman with a biblical name who had once rung up to speak to Bernhard. She had been convinced that Bernhard was having an affair with the woman.

As Konrád entered the foyer, the meeting for parents was just beginning. Chairs had been lined up in front of a small stage where a man in a jacket, presumably the head teacher, was fiddling with a microphone, tapping it, checking it was switched on, then tapping it again. The parents were chatting among themselves. By far, the majority of them were women.

Konrád headed down one of the corridors that led off the foyer in every direction. The old school building had been extended more than once, and long corridors connected it to the new wings. Doors were open into classrooms where the pupils’ work was displayed on the walls. The drawings revealed a wide divergence in talents. Húgó had shown some artistic promise as a boy and had once tried, without much success, to teach his father to draw. The only remotely decent pictures Konrád had been able to produce were of cars. Erna had kept all his efforts.

The walls of the corridors in the old building were lined with framed class photos going right back to the founding of the school. A photo had been taken of every form in its final year and there were so many of them that they had to be displayed in two or even three rows. Like a journey through time they showed the changing fashions and haircuts, from the short back and sides, through the Beatles moptop, to the modern lack of any defining trend. Some of the older photos showed teenage girls with beehive hair, their faces plastered in thick foundation.

It took Konrád a while to work out what order they were in, but once he had he made his way slowly but surely towards Bernhard’s leaving year. Although there had been four forms in that year, which made it harder, he was able to pick out Bernhard in one of the photos. It was black and white, and had obviously been taken in one of the classrooms. The pupils were smiling at the photographer, perhaps mindful that the moment would be preserved for posterity, for as long as the school lasted, and that they would be able to revisit their youth in these corridors whenever they felt the urge.

Bernhard had changed little in the intervening years. His tall, lanky figure could be seen in the back row towards the centre. His shoulder-length hair was parted in the middle, he wore a stripy jumper, and he was smiling along with the other kids at some remark the photographer had made to put them at ease.

According to Jóhanna, her ex-husband had gone to a class reunion where he had met all these people again, many years later, when the morning of their life was over, to be replaced by the daily grind.

As Konrád stood alone in the corridor, studying the class photo, his phone started ringing. It was Marta.

‘I haven’t heard from you for days,’ she said. ‘What have you been up to?’

‘Not much,’ Konrád said. ‘You?’

‘Same story here. I can’t stop thinking about those car keys.’

‘Car keys?’

‘The ones to Sigurvin’s jeep. I keep wondering why he didn’t have them on him. I reckon there can only be one explanation, assuming they didn’t fall out of his pocket.’

‘Which is?’

‘Sigurvin’s killer was intending to move his jeep. To drive it up to the glacier, presumably.’

‘Yes, sounds plausible.’

‘Isn’t that the only possible explanation?’ Marta asked.

‘The killer probably intended to make it look as if Sigurvin had driven himself to Langjökull and died of exposure. Of course, he wasn’t dressed for a glacier trip but maybe they thought that didn’t matter.’

‘At any rate, there’s something unfinished about the whole business,’ Marta said. ‘About how he was disposed of — his jeep in one place, his body in another. As you said yourself when they found him, it’s like a half-finished job.’

‘It’s possible the weather put a spanner in the works,’ Konrád said. ‘There was a severe storm on the glacier for several days following Sigurvin’s disappearance. Perhaps they had to abandon their plan before they could complete it.’

Konrád stared at the class photo. Another face suddenly caught his eye, the pretty face of a girl sitting on the floor in the front row; the only one who wasn’t smiling, but gazing solemnly at the camera instead. He couldn’t be entirely sure but the resemblance was striking enough for his heart to miss a beat.

Marta was saying something on the phone but he didn’t hear her. He was thinking back to what Jóhanna had said about the woman who had once rung Bernhard, pretending she wanted to buy a part for her car. The woman with the biblical name that Jóhanna couldn’t remember through her alcoholic haze. The woman she was convinced had been having an affair with her husband.

‘... like a half-finished job?’ he heard Marta’s voice repeating in his ear. ‘That’s it, isn’t it?’

Konrád didn’t take his eyes off the picture.

‘Yes,’ he said distractedly, ‘unfinished, sordid and ugly.’