The Darkness Knows

58

The search for Lúkas’s body along the banks of the Ölfusá and down by the river mouth went on for days without success. In the end it was called off, on the assumption that he had been washed out to sea.

Konrád went to see Sigurvin’s sister, Jórunn, who said she knew nothing about the two men who had killed her brother. She’d heard the whole sordid tale from Marta about how Sigurvin had been murdered in a fight over drugs. She’d had no idea her brother had been involved in anything like that and was grieved to think that he should have got mixed up in such a stupid business, with such fatal consequences. Konrád ended up sitting with her for a long time. Despite her sorrow over the tragic events, he could tell that it was a profound relief to have answers at last to the questions that had been plaguing her all these years. When he left, she hugged him and thanked him for never giving up.

After the initial media frenzy over the solving of this notorious historical case had died down, Herdís slipped round to see Konrád, as quietly as she had that evening, weeks ago, when she first told him about her brother, Villi. They took a seat in the sitting room and he was about to fetch a bottle, saying they could both do with a drink, when she declined.

‘I’m trying to cut down,’ she added dully.

‘Good for you,’ Konrád said, and went without wine himself.

‘I don’t know. We’ll see.’

Konrád admitted to her that he couldn’t stop thinking about Hjaltalín; about the way an innocent man had been forced to suffer half his life, wrongly suspected of murder. Of course Hjaltalín hadn’t helped matters by deciding not to tell the whole truth; by convincing himself that if he did, he would only be digging a deeper grave for himself and dragging down the woman he was trying to protect as well.

‘And Villi?’ Herdís asked.

‘It was largely thanks to him that the case was solved,’ Konrád said.

‘It cost him his life.’

‘I know.’

‘That Bernhard, he...’ Herdís couldn’t find the words.

‘He suffered torments over Villi,’ Konrád said. ‘That was another life down the drain. He wasn’t responsible for Sigurvin’s death, except indirectly. But he couldn’t see any alternative to getting rid of Villi. The secret turned him into a nervous, paranoid wreck and in the end it killed him.’

‘I find it hard to feel any sympathy for him,’ Herdís said.

‘I know it’s not much comfort, but perhaps it might help a little to think that without Villi the case would almost certainly never have been solved. You have to see it like that.’

‘That doesn’t help me at all.’

‘Maybe with time.’

Herdís shook her head. ‘It’s such a waste. The whole thing. Such a waste.’

‘I probably shouldn’t have gone and sat with him,’ Konrád said, his thoughts distracted. ‘I should have got him to leave that ledge straight away. But I wanted to approach him cautiously. I thought he might be intending to—’ He broke off.

‘I don’t know,’ he carried on after a moment. ‘Lúkas said he knew the place well, knew the river and the rocks, and that he wasn’t planning to do anything stupid. He was afraid of the river. It wasn’t deliberate. The policemen who were there with me all say the same. That he was getting to his feet, when suddenly he fell over the edge. There’s nothing to suggest he did it deliberately. Marta, my friend in the police, won’t stop giving me a hard time about it. She’s furious. She’d rather I’d drowned too.’

They sat there in silence for a while, each pursuing their own thoughts.

‘We wrongly blamed Hjaltalín all along,’ Konrád said at last, his bitterness breaking through. ‘He should have lived to see how the case ended. He should have lived to see himself exonerated. But it’s too late now. He was telling the truth all those years and no one believed him. Not a single person. I can’t stop thinking about how the poor man must have felt. All that time. All those years with no one believing him when he protested his innocence. I’ve been thinking a lot about my part in that. About the way I treated him — even when he was dying. How the system failed him — how we all failed him.’

‘But you didn’t know any better, did you?’ Herdís asked.

‘No, maybe not,’ Konrád said. ‘But we should have done. That’s the point. We should have made more of an effort. We should have known better.’

After Herdís had left, Konrád stayed in the sitting room, still brooding over Lúkas and Hjaltalín and thinking about how it might have been possible to run the investigation differently, now that he knew the whole story. The silence was abruptly shattered by the noisy ringing of the phone. He looked at the clock. Seeing that it was getting on for twelve, he guessed Marta had been drinking and needed a friend to talk to. But he was wrong. It was Eygló.

‘Sorry to call so late,’ she said. ‘Am I disturbing you?’

‘No, not at all.’

‘I’ve been thinking about what we discussed when we met. About our fathers and whether they’d been in contact with each other. Are you intending to look into it?’

‘I don’t know,’ Konrád said. ‘I hardly know what I can do. Do you think there’s any point?’

There was a pause during which neither of them spoke.

‘Do you really think they’d started working together again?’ Eygló asked. ‘Is there any way you can find out?’

‘Well, I know they met during the war when they were both members of the Society for Psychical Research,’ Konrád said. ‘Since we last talked, I’ve been wondering if anyone from the society is still alive and might know something about them. Might even be able to tell us whether they’d started meeting again. But I don’t suppose their deaths were linked in any way. I can’t see why they should have been.’

‘Perhaps we should forget about it,’ Eygló said. ‘But I’ve... the thought’s been bugging me... ever since you...’

‘I can understand that.’

‘Will you let me know if you’re planning to look into it? If you learn anything new?’

‘I will.’

‘Promise?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Sorry to disturb you so late. I shouldn’t have called. You’re not in a good way.’

‘No, it doesn’t matter,’ Konrád said.

‘Why... what’s upsetting you?’

‘I’m fine. There’s nothing upsetting me.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, I’m sure.’

‘What happened on that ledge?’ Eygló asked.

‘It was an accident. He fell in the river.’

‘There was something else.’

‘No, nothing else.’

‘Fine, have it your own way,’ Eygló said curtly and hung up on him.