The Darkness Knows

8

A series of deep autumn depressions had lined up over the Atlantic and were now advancing relentlessly across the country, bringing rain, gales and plunging temperatures. Konrád had discovered when he retired that the days seemed to stretch out twice as long, not least when summer gave way to autumn. Life acquired a strangely timeless quality. Minutes expanded into hours as time meandered along at its own sweet pace, freed from the fetters of habit. No longer measured off in shifts, lunch breaks, overtime, supper time, meetings, coffee breaks, working days, holidays, weekends. All these were wiped out, to be replaced by one never-ending Saturday. It was as if his life had been transformed into a perpetual holiday.

Now and then he would go for a meal at his son’s house and sit with him for part of the evening. He read newspapers and books, surfed the net, went to museums and galleries, watched films and plays, and hung around in second-hand bookshops, doing all the things he’d persuaded himself he didn’t have time for while he still had a role to play in society. He often felt like a tourist in his own city, and sometimes found he had blundered into one of their groups — in a museum, perhaps, or on his way down Skólavördustígur. All of a sudden it would dawn on him that everyone around him was speaking Swedish. He had twice been addressed in French as he was queuing at a restaurant. That’s what he got for wandering about town during the day, when all normal people were at work.

Time was mainly measured in seasons now. Konrád was happiest in spring, when the days began to lengthen, the sun rose higher in the sky, trees and grass awoke from their long hibernation, migratory birds began to return to Iceland’s shores, and human life shook off its winter torpor. He and Erna had always loved to travel around the country in the summer holidays and had a number of favourite places. One of these was the campsite at Thakgil, which nestled at the mouth of a dramatic gorge in the foothills of the Mýrdalsjökull ice cap in south Iceland, not far from the notorious volcano Katla. They used to try to go there every summer. He had never liked autumn, when the sun sank ever lower in the sky and gales whirled the dead leaves through the streets. As for winter, it was a time of stasis, when everything went into suspension, waiting for the return of the sun.

Yet another autumn depression was passing over, battering them with high winds and heavy rain, when Konrád took a seat in Marta’s office at the police station on Hverfisgata, to ask her about Hjaltalín’s last hours of life. He had, after some reflection, rung her to see if they could have a quick meeting. She had agreed immediately. Konrád hadn’t come into the station much since retiring and there were a number of new faces he didn’t recognise. The old ones greeted him warmly, though, shaking him by the hand and asking how he was doing, telling him that society was going to the dogs, but then that was nothing new.

Marta was the wrong side of forty, plump, with a large head and dark eyes and hair. She’d never been interested in clothes, going in for an unvarying uniform of shapeless trousers and shirts, and her hair was usually a mess. It was almost unheard of for her to put on lipstick or perfume. She had lived for years with a woman from the Westman Islands, but ever since that relationship hit the rocks she had been alone. To her colleagues in the police, she was invariably known as Smart Marta.

‘They were buried a week apart,’ Marta commented, handing him a coffee in a plastic cup. ‘Hjaltalín and Sigurvin. Ironic, don’t you think? One died recently; the other thirty years ago.’

‘You didn’t tell me Hjaltalín was ill,’ Konrád reproached her.

‘No, maybe I should have. Did it bother you?’

‘He didn’t look good.’

‘We weren’t to know he had so little time left.’

‘Did you find anything useful on the glacier?’

‘No. Not a thing. I reckon they’re going to close the inquiry for good.’

‘Hjaltalín never confessed?’

‘Nope.’

‘Then why do you want to close the inquiry?’

‘Not my decision. I expect they think we’ve done enough — the guys upstairs, I mean.’

‘He asked me to find the murderer.’

‘He never gave up, did he? What did you say?’

‘I said I’d retired.’

Svanhildur had told him confidentially that Sigurvin’s death was the result of head trauma, as her preliminary findings had suggested. His nails were clean and neatly cut and he had recently visited a barber. His internal organs were thawed before they could be examined but, even so, Svanhildur’s fingers had got so cold during the post-mortem that she’d had to keep a bowl of tepid water beside her to warm them. The stomach contents indicated that Sigurvin had eaten shortly before his death; a burger and chips, probably at a fast-food place. Nothing was found in his pockets except his house keys and wallet. The assumption was that, after leaving work and having the altercation in the car park, he had gone home, changed out of his suit into more comfortable clothes, then got back in his car and gone to buy a meal, before driving up to the hot-water tanks on Öskjuhlíd. When the appeal for information had been at its height after his disappearance, the police had paid particular attention to checking if he’d been seen at a variety of possible locations, including burger bars and petrol station shops, but no sighting had ever been confirmed.

The original investigation into Sigurvin’s background had failed to unearth any bad habits or underworld connections to drug smugglers, debt collectors or thieves, let alone to hardened criminals. He had run his company successfully and employed a sizeable staff, all of whom had spoken well of him as a boss and owner. The reason for Sigurvin’s presence by the hot-water tanks on Öskjuhlíd was unknown. At the time, the tanks, which had formerly supplied geothermal hot water to the city’s homes by the power of gravity, had been taken out of use. Empty and crumbling, they had served as a playground for the local children, who scrawled graffiti over their walls and clambered inside them or were even, in some cases, foolhardy enough to climb up to the top.

‘So,’ Konrád said, ‘Sigurvin must have met a person, or persons, unknown by the old tanks and got a lift with him or them to the glacier — if that’s where he was killed?’

‘Yes, except he wasn’t wearing protective gear. In fact he wasn’t dressed for the outdoors at all,’ Marta pointed out. ‘Which means the person with him would have had to lend him some clothes, then take them off his body afterwards, which seems a bit far-fetched.’

‘OK, so it’s February when Sigurvin vanishes but he isn’t warmly dressed. He’s wearing a shirt and a lightweight jacket. In other words, he’s not expecting to be outdoors for long.’

‘No,’ said Marta. ‘And he’s wearing trainers, which means he can hardly have been intending to get out of the car. Though, having said that, the weather on the evening he was last seen wasn’t that bad here in Reykjavík. It had snowed heavily after New Year, but that was followed by a spell of milder temperatures before it started freezing again. At the time of Sigurvin’s disappearance, the streets were bare of snow, as I’m sure you’ll remember.’

‘Could he have been taken to the glacier by force? He gets into a jeep and next thing he knows he’s being carted off to Langjökull? A struggle ensues, during which he’s hit over the head. Or did he go voluntarily?’

‘The post-mortem indicates that he was taken there after he died. Rigor mortis was setting in and his tissues had begun to show signs of deterioration.’

‘But why the glacier? What’s on Langjökull? Why does he take Sigurvin there?’

‘Hjaltalín? I haven’t a clue.’

Konrád shrugged, defeated. He recalled the moment they found Sigurvin’s car. Shortly after it had been advertised as missing, a report had been received of a red Jeep Cherokee parked on Öskjuhlíd. Konrád often thought about that jeep because he’d had a hankering for one himself; it was the perfect size and he admired the design, the interior and the fact it had gears on the steering wheel. He’d never have gone for a red one, though, had he been able to afford it; definitely a white.

In those days the tanks had been approached by a gravel track, and the jeep had been found abandoned at the end of this. The police had conducted an exhaustive search for Sigurvin on the wooded slopes of the hill and in the surrounding area, with the help of dogs, but to no avail. There had been countless wheel marks on the gravel track and in the vicinity of the tanks, and casts had been made of some of the marks closest to the jeep. But there had been no signs of a struggle near the vehicle, and the gravel had been too hard for any footprints. The police’s job hadn’t been helped by the fact the area was popular with kids, as well as a much-visited viewpoint offering a 360-degree panorama over the city, from the distant Snæfellsjökull glacier, rising out of the sea to the west, to the mountain ranges of Hellisheidi and Bláfjöll to the east, the looming bulk of Esja to the north and the Reykjanes Peninsula far away to the south.

‘Did you send anyone to see Hjaltalín in hospital?’ Konrád asked. He finished his coffee, reflecting that it hadn’t improved much since his day.

‘No,’ Marta said. ‘His health underwent a rapid deterioration in custody and he was admitted to hospital almost immediately after his release. His doctor hadn’t expected things to progress that fast.’

‘He must have got a nasty surprise when Sigurvin turned up after all these years,’ Konrád remarked.

‘Yes, you’d think so.’

‘Still, you wouldn’t have known it when I met him. He just lay there in bed, looking calm and stoical. Mind you, I suppose he had other, more serious things on his mind, given the state of his health.’

‘He didn’t have anything new to say, then?’

‘No, he just kept banging on about being innocent.’

‘Are you going to do anything about it?’

‘I can’t “do anything about it”,’ Konrád protested. ‘I don’t have the authority.’

‘He asked you to help him.’

‘True.’

‘And?’

‘There’s no “and”. You tried to talk to him yourself, didn’t you? Did you ask him about Sigurvin’s car keys?’

‘He said he didn’t know anything about them,’ Marta said. ‘Did you ask him?’

‘I didn’t know they were missing. Svanhildur was still examining the body when I went to see him. Sigurvin had his house keys and wallet in his pocket but not the keys to his jeep. Don’t you find that strange? Who had his car keys?’

Marta shrugged as if it was pointless asking her.

‘The whole thing’s so sloppy,’ Konrád said. ‘Like the job was only half finished.’

‘I’ve never in my life come across a more obstinate bastard than Hjaltalín,’ Marta said, after a moment. ‘He knew what was going to happen when we let him go; he knew he was dying.’

‘He still denied having laid a finger on Sigurvin,’ Konrád said, ‘though he had nothing to lose any more.’

‘Flatly denied it to the very last,’ Marta said, crumpling up her coffee cup and chucking it in the bin.