The Shadow Killer

35

Thorson stepped out of the jeep and surveyed the farm. There was a new-looking two-storey house with small windows and raw, unpainted walls, which looked as though it had been thrown up in a hurry. A little way off stood a traditional turf farmhouse, which appeared to serve as a cowshed and barn nowadays. Two of its three gables were leaning drunkenly into the yard, and the walls were so overgrown with grass that the layers of turf were all but invisible. Part of the roof had fallen in, reminding Thorson of a story his father had once told him. When he was a boy in the north of Iceland, a dangerous bull had climbed onto the low, grassy roof of a farmhouse and stamped right through. There it had hung, thrashing and bellowing, its legs dangling down into the living room. His father had never forgotten the sight of the magnificent beast in such a ridiculous plight.

Thorson was worn out after six hours of jolting over rough roads. He had set off from Reykjavík that morning, headed east over the mountains, and stopped for lunch at Tryggvaskáli in the village of Selfoss. There was a military airfield not far from the village and he had watched as one plane landed and another took off. They were engaged in air-defence patrols around the island. Ever since the war broke out there had been occasional sightings of German reconnaissance or fighter planes flying along the coast. They took off from Norway with fuel tanks specially adapted for long-distance missions over the North Atlantic, but so far they hadn’t caused much damage in Iceland.

The British also had a unit stationed in Selfoss to defend the bridge over the River Ölfúsá. Thorson had been studying engineering back in Canada before he joined up and bridges were a particular interest of his, so he had taken this opportunity to examine the structure. It was a fine suspension bridge, spanning the point where the river narrowed between two cliffs, and he had paused to draw it in the sketch pad he always carried. This had attracted the attention of a British sentry, and he had been forced to show the man his ID before he could allay his suspicions.

He knocked at the open door of the farmhouse, then stepped inside, rather diffidently, calling out to ask if anyone was home. He hadn’t seen a soul around the yard or by the outbuildings. The day was hot, sunny and dry as a bone, and when he had looked out over the fields it seemed as though the entire household was hard at work on the hay harvest. In the kitchen, he found an ancient-looking woman sitting in one corner. A little boy of not quite two was playing on the floor nearby, tethered to her chair leg so he couldn’t wander off and get into trouble. The old woman, absorbed in replacing the broken teeth of a rake, didn’t hear him come in, but the little boy looked up and grinned at him, then rose, tottering, to his feet. The tether was too short, however, and he plumped down on his backside again before he could take more than a step. At that the old woman glanced up and, seeing Thorson, removed a pair of battered round glasses from her nose and wished him a good afternoon. She was deaf, and he had to raise his voice to make himself understood. He had come from Reykjavík, he explained, to see the farmer, but of course he must be busy with the haymaking in this fine weather. Yes, he was, she said, and asked what he wanted to see him about. Thorson had worn a brown moleskin jacket instead of his uniform. People wouldn’t be used to receiving visits from soldiers out here, and he was afraid the uniform would put them on their guard. He explained that he was here to make enquiries about a young woman called Vera, to find out if this was the farm she had grown up on and if her parents still lived here.

‘Vera?’ exclaimed the old woman.

‘That’s right.’

‘What about her? Is she in some kind of trouble?’

‘Why do you say that, ma’am?’

‘I’ve no idea where she is,’ the old woman went on. ‘The lass moved to Reykjavík a few years back and hasn’t been seen since. Her parents don’t live here any more. They gave up farming a couple of years ago and moved east over the sands, all the way out to Höfn.’

‘Oh, so—’

‘Yes, my son farms here now. He built this house. We’re from the neighbouring property, you see. Little Vera lived here, right enough, but her whole family’s left the area.’

Thorson looked around the kitchen. A coffee pot stood on the hob, the sink was full of crockery and the stove was stacked with dirty pots and pans, because on a dry day like this every able-bodied person on the property was needed to bring in the hay. Outside the window he glimpsed the crumbling turf building that had until recently served as the farmhouse. Under that grassy roof Vera must have entered the world.

When he and Flóvent had spoken to her in the laundry, it had struck Thorson as interesting that she had come from the countryside and known nothing of Reykjavík when she met Eyvindur. He had pressed her for more detail about her background, but she had seemed flustered and had resorted to deliberately vague answers, giving the impression that she would rather not discuss it. At this point Billy Wiggins had lost patience and said he was fed up with this bloody interrogation.

As early in the morning as could be deemed considerate, Thorson had phoned the woman who used to live upstairs from Eyvindur and Vera, and asked if she knew where Vera came from. She was as quick to answer as she had been before. Eyvindur had once mentioned a farm in the shadow of the Eyjafjöll mountains, but it was clear that he had never been there himself. He wouldn’t have minded visiting the farm, he’d said, but Vera wasn’t keen and had very little contact with her family. This had struck their neighbour as odd. She’d concluded that Vera must be lying about her origins, perhaps to cover up the fact that she’d been messing around with soldiers ever since they’d first set foot ashore. The slut.

‘So you haven’t had any news of her at all, ma’am?’ asked Thorson loudly, standing there in the farm kitchen, phrasing his question as politely as he could, anxious to show the old lady his respect.

‘No, none at all. We haven’t once heard from her or seen her since she left.’ The little boy had now climbed onto the old woman’s lap, where he sat staring curiously at Thorson.

‘Were they good neighbours, her parents?’

‘Who did you say you were again?’ asked the old woman, squinting at him. ‘Should I know you? My eyes aren’t what they used to be.’

‘No, you don’t know me, ma’am,’ said Thorson. ‘I’m acquainted with Vera from town and just happened to be passing. I knew the man she was living with. I don’t know if you—’

‘Oh, really? Has she got married, then?’

‘No, they weren’t married.’

‘Well, I don’t know why I should have heard anything about her. We’re not in touch with her family. Was it a soldier? The man she was living with?’

‘No,’ said Thorson. ‘His name was Eyvindur. He died recently.’

‘Oh, poor girl. Still, it won’t take her long to find herself another. She’s no better than... Can I offer you a coffee, young man? Have you come all this way from Reykjavík just to ask about the girl?’

‘I’d gladly accept some coffee,’ said Thorson, ‘but please don’t trouble yourself, ma’am. I’m sure I can fix it myself.’

The old woman laid down the head of the rake and gave directions from where she was sitting with the child on her lap. She told him which tin he would find the coffee in, where they kept the chicory, how to rinse out the coffee pot and how many spoonfuls of coffee to put in. The farm had electricity, supplied by a diesel generator, and a modern electric cooker had replaced the old coal range that Thorson had noticed standing outside in the yard, already looking obsolete. The aroma of coffee filled the air. The old woman asked Thorson to give the little boy a flat-cake and told him where to find it. The child climbed back down to the floor and sat there chewing happily. The woman drank her coffee black, and Thorson followed her example, assuring her that he didn’t want anything with it. She asked him to stop calling her ‘ma’am’: that sort of civility was nothing but an affectation introduced by Danish merchants; why, she’d never called anyone ‘ma’am’ in her life, despite being so terribly old. She was fond of a bit of snuff, though. Taking out a small tobacco pouch, she offered some to Thorson who sniffed a few grains off the back of his hand and immediately sneezed. This tickled the old lady. She took a pinch of snuff, placed it daintily in each nostril, then wiped her nose with a red handkerchief.

They chatted about the weather for a while; they’d had an outstandingly good summer in this part of the country, resulting in a bumper hay crop, and everyone had been so busy with the harvest that almost nothing else had got a look-in. She asked for news from Reykjavík, particularly about the Situation: about local women consorting with soldiers and whether it was very blatant and how such a thing was possible and why didn’t the government step in. Thorson told her that while there was a certain amount of courting going on between the soldiers and Icelandic women, it was perfectly harmless for the most part, though of course there were exceptions, and the so-called Morality Committee had been set up to keep an eye on underage girls. The old woman tutted a great deal at this and said she’d heard it was a disgraceful state of affairs, and of course it was only going to get worse now that the country was being flooded with Yankees.

She helped herself to another pinch of snuff. Thorson noticed a stubby, much-smoked pipe in an ashtray beside her and guessed that it was hers as well. Her gums were almost completely toothless, and she whistled as she talked. Her long grey hair hung in two plaits, on either side of her face, and her skin was as wrinkled as a crumpled paper bag. Her whole appearance, from her gnarled fingers to her bent back, bore the stamp of the long years of toil that had been her lot in life.

‘What about Vera? Is she in the Situation then?’ she asked.

Unwilling to spread gossip, Thorson merely repeated that her boyfriend had died very recently.

‘Well, since you’re asking about her... I was going to say that Vera was one of those women who always attracts trouble. Man trouble, I mean. Of course she had looks on her side, no question, and she knew how to flaunt them. The local lads used to swarm around her like flies. She had them all eating out of her hand. And there was a bit of bother about something that happened...’

‘Oh?’

‘... which may have been why she moved away.’