The Darkness Knows

52

Konrád drove back to Bernhard’s house, only to discover that his car wasn’t there. He kept an eye on the place for a while but, when nothing happened, he drove slowly away again, heading for the scrapyard. When he got there he saw a faint light inside and Bernhard’s car parked out front. Konrád switched off his engine. Apart from the buses roaring at regular intervals along the road behind the yard, all was quiet.

As he sat there, Konrád tried to make sense of the new connections he had uncovered, which he hadn’t been aware of before, and kept coming back to Salóme, Hjaltalín’s ex-girlfriend. Where did she come in? What role had she really played?

These days Salóme owned and ran a womenswear shop with her sister. How had it come into her possession? True, the unlikeliest people had got rich when the Icelandic economic miracle was at its height, so it was perfectly possible that she had been among them; that she had been canny with her finances and acquired the shop thanks to her own resourcefulness and good management. When looking into her background the first time round, Konrád had discovered that she’d been brought up by a single mother, left school at sixteen and had done a variety of jobs, mostly in retail. That’s how she had met Hjaltalín: she’d been working in one of his clothes shops. They had been seeing each other for a while when Sigurvin went missing but, by a twist of fate, she’d ended up as one of the key witnesses in the case against her boyfriend. Having admitted that the alibi she originally gave the police was a lie, she had never budged from her subsequent statement that Hjaltalín had gone out, intending to meet a ‘friend’, on the evening of Sigurvin’s disappearance. Although Hjaltalín had insisted that she was lying, her testimony had been considered credible and in the end he’d admitted to having met Sigurvin in the car park.

Next, Konrád considered the fact that Salóme had been at the same school as Bernhard, perhaps all the way through. What was the nature of their relationship? Bernhard had also known Sigurvin from their time in the Scouts. Could he be linked to Sigurvin’s disappearance? Was he the man who had knocked Villi down on Lindargata?

Konrád sat patiently in his car, his mind running through different scenarios, while nothing moved outside apart from the half-empty buses trundling by.

It was past midnight when the door of the garage finally opened and Bernhard appeared in the gap. He peered out into the darkness and lit a cigarette. Then his phone obviously rang because he fished it out of his trouser pocket and answered it. The conversation lasted some time. Konrád saw Bernhard shake his head. Then the phone call ended and Bernhard remained standing in the doorway, smoking. Finally, he flicked away the butt and peered out into the night again, before going back inside and closing the door. Shortly afterwards, Konrád saw the faint light at the back of the workshop go out and expected Bernhard to emerge from the building immediately afterwards.

He waited, puzzled that the man didn’t reappear, then noticed a car entering the street. It crawled past, then turned round and came back again. Konrád couldn’t make out the driver in the dim street lighting. The car stopped in the road in front of the scrapyard. The headlights went out. Time passed but nothing happened.

Eventually, the car door opened and the driver stepped out and started walking slowly towards the workshop.

It was Salóme.

She scanned her surroundings carefully, as if afraid someone was watching her, but failed to spot Konrád sitting in his car. Then she quickened her pace, almost breaking into a run. The door was apparently unlocked because she turned the handle and slipped inside, pulling it to behind her.

Half an hour passed. Konrád was dithering over what to do when the door opened again and Salóme came out. She closed it and headed straight towards her car. Konrád braced himself to dash out into the road and block her way, but changed his mind. Another bus roared along the street behind. Salóme got into her car, the headlights came on and a moment later she was gone.

Why on earth had she been visiting Bernhard in his workshop in the middle of the night? What were the two of them up to? Konrád sat there racking his brains in a vain attempt to work out what was going on, his eyes fixed all the while on the door of the workshop. The lights were still off and there was no sign of Bernhard.

After watching the entrance for a while, expecting Bernhard to come out any minute, Konrád considered his options. Finally, he eased himself out of his car and walked hesitantly over to the building. Both yard and workshop were silent and the entire area was shrouded in darkness. There was no outside light and the nearest streetlamp was broken.

Konrád reached the door and paused doubtfully before taking hold of the handle. It was unlocked. But the dark made him nervous. He was filled with dread at the thought of what it might conceal, unable to shake off the memory of all those stories about bad things that happened under cover of darkness.

Bracing himself, he opened the door and stepped inside.

‘Bernhard?’ he called into the workshop.

He thought he heard a faint noise.

‘Bernhard!’

The man didn’t answer.

‘I know you’re in there,’ Konrád called.

Unable to feel a light switch on the wall, he inched his way warily to the reception desk, trying to remember the layout of the place from when he had visited earlier. He recalled the racks of spare parts, and the mounts running the length of the ceiling with exhaust pipes, bumpers and wings hanging from them.

‘Bernhard!’ Konrád tried a third time, but got no answer. There was that faint sound, though.

‘I know you’re in here,’ Konrád called. ‘I can hear you.’

Still no answer.

Konrád felt his way round the reception desk, then halted, his heart pounding, his breathing coming fast and shallow. He wasn’t sure he dared to venture any further inside. What had Salóme been doing in there? Why had they been meeting after midnight?

‘Bernhard!’

Nothing.

‘I know you know Salóme,’ he called into the gloom. ‘I know she was here with you. Why won’t you talk to me?’

After a moment, overcoming a sick feeling of dread, Konrád made himself go on, picking his way through the workshop, towards the faint light from the windows at the back.

‘Why were you two meeting?’ Konrád called, his voice sounding thin and breathless. ‘Why did Sigurvin have to die?’

He had reached the windows. The rustling sound was clearer now. He could make out the shadowy shapes of racks of engine parts on either side of him. The reek of metal, oil and rubber filled his senses. He continued his wary exploration, constantly glancing back towards the door, fighting a rising panic at being alone and defenceless in the dark.

A loud rumble announced the approach of the last night bus, which sped past outside, its headlights briefly illuminating the innermost corner of the workshop through the filthy windowpanes before receding into the distance. Konrád stared, stunned, at what it had revealed.

Then everything went dark again.

Konrád had no idea how long he had been standing there, rooted to the spot, when he noticed the rustling again. It had nothing to do with Bernhard but came from a torn plastic bag, which had blown against the window outside and was caught in a crack where it was flapping against the glass in the night breeze.

The rustling of the bag must have been the last thing Bernhard heard in this life. His body was hanging from a ceiling bracket by a thin cable. He had climbed onto a shelf in the wall rack, slipped the noose over his head and let himself drop, and now rested up against the engine parts that he had once removed from written-off cars and placed on the shelves.

Konrád shuddered. The wind’s cold fingers played with the plastic bag in the window, the rustling passing through the garage like a requiem for the damned.