The Darkness Knows

56

The man wasn’t home. As agreed, Konrád had informed the local police of his arrival, and a squad car had accompanied him to the address. The house was in a residential street on the west bank of the River Ölfusá, above the old bridge. When no one answered the door, Konrád followed a hunch and wandered down to the river, where he spotted a figure sitting with his back to them, his legs dangling over the steep, rocky bank, and thought he looked familiar. Turning, Konrád signalled to the uniformed officers that he was going down there alone. They nodded.

There were small birch trees growing close to the water’s edge and a carpet of moss that extended to the rocky outcrop where the man was sitting. A short way off was the semicircular shape of a Second World War Nissen hut, roofed with grass, its grey-painted front facing onto the river. But most picturesque of all was the sheer rocky islet that rose out of the milky water a stone’s throw from the bank, as if trying to withstand the destructive power of the torrent. It was capped with grass and at the very end perched a lone fir tree, looking as if it might topple into the flood at any minute.

The man on the bank heard Konrád approaching and turned his head.

‘You’ve come then?’ he said, as if he’d been expecting him for a long time.

‘Hello, Lúkas,’ Konrád replied, approaching him warily. ‘This is a beautiful spot.’

‘It’s not bad having the river right on your doorstep like this,’ Lúkas said. He was inadequately dressed for the chilly weather, his jaw was covered in several days’ worth of stubble and he had entrenched dark circles under his eyes. Below his feet the Ölfusá surged and boiled.

‘Do you mind if I join you?’ Konrád asked.

‘Be my guest,’ Lúkas said. ‘I can sit here for hours, watching the river.’

‘I’m not surprised.’

‘I discovered this spot after I moved to Selfoss, and I come here from time to time to enjoy the view and just savour the feeling of being here. Of course you have to be careful and know what you’re doing. To be honest, I’ve always been shit-scared of the river. It has a strangely magnetic power that draws you to it. You have to respect that.’

‘It’s powerful, all right,’ Konrád replied.

‘I’ve been expecting you, to tell the truth.’

‘For quite a long while, I would guess,’ Konrád said.

‘Yes, of course. For years — decades, in fact. I see you’re not alone this time.’ Lúkas glanced round at the police officers, who were hanging back at a discreet distance.

‘No. I’m not alone.’

Konrád watched the grey waters of the glacial river churning against the rocks as they had for countless millennia, long before humans ever set foot in this place. The turbulence was accompanied by a deep-throated roar, as one would expect from the largest river in the country. Konrád could feel what Lúkas meant about its magnetic force.

‘Why did Sigurvin have to —?’

‘Stupidity,’ Lúkas cut in, as if reluctant to hear the rest of the sentence. ‘Inexperience. Foolishness. But mostly stupidity. Goddamn, fucking stupidity.’

‘Bernhard’s dead,’ Konrád said.

Lúkas stared out over the river to where its banks narrowed above the bridge. ‘Dead?’ he exclaimed belatedly, turning to look at Konrád. ‘How...?’

‘He hanged himself. In his workshop.’

‘Oh no... Poor Benni.’ Lúkas groaned. ‘He’s... It’s never going to end... There’s no end to it...’

‘He’d had enough,’ Konrád said.

‘So fucking stupid,’ Lúkas swore again.

They were both silent.

‘Did he say anything?’ Lúkas asked after a while.

‘He directed me here,’ Konrád said.

Again they were silent.

‘Do you... do you mind if we sit here by the river for a bit?’ Lúkas asked.

‘We’ve got a few minutes. Do you want to tell me about it? What happened? And why?’

Lúkas didn’t reply.

‘Lúkas?’

‘Yes, sorry, where... where should I begin?’

‘Maybe you could begin by telling me about Villi.’

‘Villi?’

‘The young man at the sports bar. Was it Bernhard who knocked him down?’

‘Was he called Villi?’

‘His name was Vilmar and he had a sister who wants to know how he came to die.’

‘Bernhard bumped into him when he went out to watch the football. He immediately started getting jittery because he’d never got over what we’d done. He said the young man had recognised him. He rang me in the middle of the night, panicking that the guy was going to go to the police. I told him to calm down and take it easy. But Bernhard was in a state. He said he’d told the guy his name. He was drinking heavily in those days. It had got out of hand and he couldn’t control it any more. He’d become a nervous wreck, constantly frightened and paranoid.’

‘Because of Sigurvin?’

‘Yes. The whole thing affected him very badly and he just got worse and worse over the years.’

‘He must have remembered the boy he encountered by the hot-water tanks.’

‘That was the thing. Bernhard was forever obsessing about that kid, saying he’d seen him on Öskjuhlíd and spoken to him. He couldn’t stop thinking about the boy by the tanks. Kept going on about him. He was terrified of what he might do. Terrified of being found out.’

‘Did he follow Villi from the bar?’

Instead of answering, Lúkas changed the subject. ‘How do you mean, he directed you here?’

‘He’d kept an old photo of the two of you with Sigurvin. And he talked to a childhood friend of his called Salóme and told her what he’d done.’

‘Hjaltalín’s girlfriend? I was aware he knew her. I’m actually... I think he was doing me a favour,’ Lúkas said. ‘Because, to be honest, I’m relieved it’s over at last. You can’t imagine how difficult it’s been living with this. The constant hiding. The dread. The nightmares. It’s... No one can imagine what it’s like...’ He didn’t finish.

Konrád couldn’t bring himself to feel sorry for him. ‘Did Bernhard follow Villi in his jeep?’ he asked, returning to his theme.

‘Yes.’

‘And deliberately run him down?’

‘Yes.’

Away on the opposite bank, a young couple appeared pushing a pram. They paused while the mother bent over the pram to tend to the child, then continued on their way without paying the two men any attention.

‘He kept his promise, then,’ Konrád said.

‘What?’

‘Of killing the boy, as he’d threatened to when he was a kid. He kept his promise, all those years later.’

Lúkas made no reply to this.

‘Did he stop drinking after that?’ Konrád said. ‘Go into rehab?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is that the wreck of the jeep under the tarpaulin in his scrapyard?’

‘No,’ Lúkas said. ‘He broke his old jeep up for parts a long time ago. He got rid of it little by little, selling the parts until nothing was left but the skeleton, and I believe he even managed to sell that.’

Neither of them spoke for a moment or two.

‘Why did Sigurvin have to die?’ Konrád asked.

Lúkas drew a deep breath. ‘We were amateurs,’ he said. ‘Bernhard and me. We hadn’t a clue. Didn’t know what we were getting into. You see, Bernhard had this brainwave of how to make some serious money by using the search and rescue team as cover for smuggling drugs into the country. Well, that was the plan, but the whole thing was a disaster.’

They locked gazes — two strangers who had been led by fate quite literally to the brink. Konrád could sense Lúkas’s distress and believed him when he said that he had been suffering for a long time.

‘You probably know where most of this water comes from,’ Konrád said, following the river upstream with his eyes towards the highlands and ice caps of the interior. He was still preoccupied by the irony of it all. ‘Which glacier the river comes from?’

‘Of course,’ Lúkas said. ‘I know it comes from Langjökull.’

‘It must have been a constant reminder.’

‘It was.’

‘Hearing the cries in its waters at night.’