Black Skies

24

By Monday afternoon the search for Thórarinn had still not yielded any result. The police had interviewed a large number of people who either knew him or had some connection to him, including other van drivers, relatives and regular customers, but no one had heard from him or knew where he was hiding, though various theories were put forward. The police followed up some, though others were deemed too far-fetched to be worth investigating. Wanted notices had been put out for him in the media using a recent photo supplied by his wife. The police announcement warned that he was wanted in connection with the murder of Sigurlína Thorgrímsdóttir and might be dangerous. They did not have to wait long before news of sightings started to flood in, not only from Reykjavík but from other parts of the country, even from as far away as the East Fjords.

While this was going on, Sigurdur Óli spent the best part of the day dealing with another, more puzzling matter that required him, among other things, to find a lip-reader. He finally managed to arrange a meeting with one towards evening. At Elínborg’s suggestion, he had called the Society for the Deaf and the woman in the office there had proved very helpful, providing further contacts until he was eventually put in touch with a woman reputed to be one of the top lip-readers in the country. He emailed her and they arranged to meet at Hverfisgata at six.

Sigurdur Óli wanted her to watch the film clip that had been sent to him wrapped in a dirty carrier bag.

He had handed the film over to the experts who examined it, transferred it to DVD and did their best to clean it up and sharpen the images in the limited time available. The film turned out to be an eight-millimetre Kodak type, which the firm had stopped making in 1990. From the contents, it appeared to be an amateur effort intended for home viewing, though it was very hard to be certain, or indeed to guess, what country it had been filmed in. It might be Icelandic but could equally well be foreign, as one of the technicians put it bluntly when he rang Sigurdur Óli with the results of his analysis.

For a variety of reasons it was difficult to guess where or when the film had been recorded. For one thing, it had a very narrow field of view, as the technician explained, referring to the fact that not much of the surroundings were visible, apart from a glimpse of a piece of furniture that might have been a bed or a couch. In this respect the material offered very little to go on. It could have been recent, meaning shortly before 1990, but then again it could date from the period when this type of Kodak film was most commonly used, around half a century ago. There was no way of telling. Moreover, the clip was extremely short — sixteen frames a second, 192 frames in all — and the view was the same in all of them, same angle, same movement. It was clearly shot indoors, in a house or flat where people were living at the time, and the presence of a bed or couch would suggest a bedroom. But in the absence of any view from a window there was no way to locate the house: the lens was pointed downwards throughout the clip.

The clip was also silent and yet words were clearly being spoken. The technicians could not distinguish them, however, nor could Sigurdur Óli work out what was being said, and it was then that the idea of a lip-reader came to him.

He would not have been interested in the film at all, but for what those twelve brief seconds failed to show. What caught Sigurdur Óli’s attention was what was hinted at. For the clip, however uninformative, told a very specific story; it was a silent witness to the misfortune and suffering endured by some of the most helpless members of society, giving a depressing promise of more and worse events than those it revealed. There was no reason to discount these fears, bearing in mind the manner in which the film clip had come into police hands. Experience suggested otherwise. Sigurdur Óli could not shake off the feeling that something much more harrowing would be revealed if the rest of the film could be found.

It was nearly six when he was called down to the lobby with the news that two women had arrived to see him. One, the lip-reader, was called Elísabet; the other, Hildur, was a sign-language interpreter. They exchanged introductions, then went up to Sigurdur Óli’s office where he had positioned a trolley carrying a DVD player and flat-screen TV. They took their seats on three chairs that he had arranged in front of the TV and he explained the situation in more detail for the lip-reader. The police had been sent a clip from a film but did not know exactly who it belonged to. It showed a possible crime, which seemed to have taken place at some indeterminate time in the past, and she might be able to help them by providing the missing soundtrack to the images. The sign-language interpreter conveyed his words as he was speaking. The two women could not have been more different: the lip-reader was around thirty, slender and petite, almost bird-like — she looked to Sigurdur Óli as fragile as a china doll — whereas the interpreter was a tall, immensely fat woman in her late fifties, with a booming voice. She had perfect hearing and it was fairly evident that she had never been mute, but what mattered was the unusual speed at which she was able to sign; nothing threw her, and she interpreted the lip-reader’s words clearly and concisely.

They watched the film. Then watched it again. Then a third time. What they saw was a boy of not much older than ten, who was trying to get away from the unseen person holding the camera. The boy was naked and fell off what appeared to be a couch or bed, lay on the floor for a moment, then crawled away from the camera, spider-like, looking directly either at the camera or at the person holding it, his lips moving. His grotesque efforts to escape were reminiscent of an animal in a trap. It was obvious that he was terrified of the cameraman and he appeared to be begging for mercy. The clip broke off as suddenly as it had begun, during a scene of helplessness and degradation. The suffering in the boy’s face distressed the two women as much as it had Sigurdur Óli when he first watched it. They both turned to him.

‘Who is it?’ Hildur asked. ‘Who’s the boy?’

‘We don’t know,’ Sigurdur Óli answered, and Hildur interpreted his words. ‘We’re trying to find out.’

‘What happened to him?’ asked Elísabet.

‘We don’t know that either,’ Sigurdur Óli said. ‘This is all we were sent. Can you tell us what the boy’s saying?’

‘It’s very hard to tell,’ Elísabet said via the interpreter. ‘I’ll need to see it again.’

‘You can watch it as many times as you like,’ said Sigurdur Óli.

‘Do you know who filmed this?’

‘No.’

‘It’s only short. Do you have any idea if there’s more?’

‘No. This is all we have.’

‘What year was it filmed?’

‘We don’t know but it’s probably old. We don’t have much to go on because there’s nothing in the frame that can be dated with any accuracy, and although we know that this type of film was in use up until 1990, there’s nothing to say that it wasn’t used more recently. The only thing we could conceivably go by is the boy’s haircut.’

Sigurdur Óli told the women that he had had three stills made and taken them to several barbershops with long-serving staff. When he showed them the pictures, all had made the same comment: the boy had the sort of cut that had been in fashion until about 1970, a short back and sides, with a long fringe.

‘So the film was made in the 1960s?’ Elísabet asked.

‘Possibly,’ replied Sigurdur Óli.

‘Weren’t lots of boys given a short back and sides in those days before being sent to work on farms over the summer?’ said Hildur. ‘I have two younger brothers who were born around 1960 and they were always trimmed like that before going to the country.’

‘You mean this might have been filmed somewhere in the countryside?’ said Sigurdur Óli.

Hildur shrugged.

‘It’s very difficult to see what he’s saying,’ she interpreted Elísabet’s comment, ‘but I think it could be Icelandic.’

They watched the clip again and Elísabet concentrated hard on the boy’s lip movements. The clip passed before their eyes again and again, ten times, twenty times, while Elísabet focused wholly on the boy’s mouth. Sigurdur Óli had tried himself to guess what the boy was saying, without success. He would have liked it to be a name, for it to transpire that he was addressing the cameraman by name, but knew it was unlikely to be that simple.

‘… stop it …’

The words were uttered by Elísabet, her eyes still fixed on the screen.

They emerged without emphasis, monotonous, robotic and a little distorted, her voice as high and clear as a child’s.

Hildur glanced from her to Sigurdur Óli.

‘I’ve never heard her speak before,’ she whispered in amazement.

‘… stop it …’ said Elísabet again. Then repeated: ‘Stop it.’

It was late in the evening before Elísabet finally felt fairly confident that she had made out the boy’s pleading words.

Stop it.

Stop it.

No more, please …

Please, stop it.