The Shadow District

17

Konrád downloaded newspapers from the archives, a page at a time, reading reports of air raids on Berlin and a lull in the fighting in Italy. News of the war tended to dominate, interspersed with domestic reports of political infighting and shipping losses. ‘The Ódinn Believed Lost with Five Men.’ ‘Preparations in Full Swing for Independence Celebrations at Thingvellir.’ They were all freely available online and Konrád carefully scanned the papers from the time of the girl’s death and a good while afterwards. However, he could find few articles about the case apart from the ones Thorson had kept, and those he did find told him nothing new. Censorship had been in operation during the war, Konrád reminded himself, to ensure that nothing would be printed that might be of advantage to the enemy, but that could hardly have applied to the case of the strangled girl.

He had also searched the CID archives for old files relating to the inquiry but found next to nothing. It seemed that almost everything relating to the case had been lost, and he could find no indication that it had ever gone to court. All he managed to turn up was part of an interview with a witness, the woman who had found the body. She claimed she had seen a girl running away from the theatre. In the margin of the witness statement someone had written a name. Konrád copied it down.

It was possible that the case had been handed over to the military authorities. At the time, the occupation forces had included servicemen from Norway, Canada, Britain and the United States, though the Americans were by far and away the largest group. If it had turned out that the girl’s killer was subject to the jurisdiction of the occupying military powers, that might explain why there had been so little about the incident in the Icelandic press and police records.

Konrád searched for other stories from the first few months of 1944, the historic year Iceland had become an independent republic, the year he was born. According to his father, news of the notorious seance held at their flat had found its way into the papers. Konrád had never checked whether or not this was true, but he took the opportunity now, sifting carefully through the dailies in search of anything about a fraudulent medium and his accomplice.

The first he’d heard of the affair was when his Aunt Kristjana stormed into the flat like a whirlwind from the north and unleashed a tirade of recriminations against her brother, full of obscure accusations about ‘that seance’ and warning him to keep his nose out of matters he had no business meddling in. That had been almost a decade after the event. Her anger had been sparked by a newspaper obituary for Rósamunda’s adoptive father who had died in hospital after a short illness. Aunt Kristjana had given her brother a crude tongue-lashing about honour and shame and what a good-for-nothing scoundrel he was to treat people like that, until he lost patience and told her if she didn’t shut up she could just sod off back up north.

His father had held no further seances at their flat. He was no longer a member of the Society for Psychical Research, from which he had previously selected his victims, and had ceased all collaboration with mediums. Konrád’s mother had divorced her husband by the time of Aunt Kristjana’s visit, utterly sick of her life with him, of his duplicity, his swindling and the small-time crooks he associated with. Not only was he unreliable and incapable of holding down a job, but he drank heavily in the company of riff-raff, had dared to raise his fist to her and repeatedly humiliated her in front of his friends. One day she announced that she’d had enough, she was leaving him and taking the kids. ‘Do what you like,’ Konrád’s father had yelled at her, ‘you can bugger off and take the girl with you, but you’re not having my boy!’ She hadn’t let this stop her, though she had hoped against hope that he would relent and let her have Konrád. It was not to be, however, and the matter remained a source of bitter conflict between them.

Following Aunt Kristjana’s visit, Konrád had asked his father what she meant about a seance.

‘Don’t you start,’ he said, ruffling his son’s hair. ‘It’s nothing to worry your head about. My sister’s always been half-cracked.’

Konrád went on downloading newspaper pages from 1944 until at last his attention was caught by a headline: ‘Stir at Seance’. It turned out to be a fairly detailed account of a seance recently held in the Shadow District, which had been exposed as a hoax, much to the disgust of those in attendance, especially an older couple who had recently suffered a tragic loss. No names were given, but the article referred to a veteran psychic and his accomplice, a family man whose home was used for the meeting, who had conspired to elicit information from the sitters, then pretended it had been channelled through the medium from beyond the grave. An ugly trick, the newspaper called it, adding that the couple who had sought their services had been distressed in light of their bereavement and...

Konrád had read enough. He closed the page and didn’t search for any other references to the incident. Suddenly he didn’t want to know what the papers had to say. Rising from his chair, he went into the kitchen and put on some coffee. Then he fished out a scrap of paper from his pocket: he had jotted down the name from the margin of the witness statement. It was a woman’s name he’d not heard before and thought was probably uncommon in Iceland. It was almost certainly borrowed from Danish. Settling in front of his computer again, he clicked on the telephone directory and entered the name. There was only one result.

‘No harm in trying,’ he told himself, picking up his phone and tapping in the number.

It rang for a while.

‘Hello?’ he heard a voice that was elderly but clear answer at last.

‘Is that Ingiborg?’

‘Speaking.’

‘Ingiborg Ísleifsdóttir?’

‘Yes, speaking,’ said the woman. ‘Who’s calling, please?’